Euobserver.com

President of the Portuguese Business Confederation, António Saraiva, is at the heart of an apparent conflict of interests.

Federal health officials said in a statement on Tuesday that results from the recently-published US trial of AstraZeneca's vaccine could have relied on "outdated information" that "may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data". AstraZeneca announced on Monday that their vaccine was 79 percent effective against Covid-19 - after concluding a trial involving 32,000 people. The AstraZeneca vaccine has not been approved in the US yet.

Britain has banned people from going on holiday abroad until at least July to avoid Europe's third wave of corona "washing up on our shores", prime minister Boris Johnson said Monday. Violators can be fined £5,000 (€5,900). "The possibility lies that we will have to red-list all of our European neighbours", Lord Bethell of Romford, a health minister, also said, raising the prospect of a ban on all EU travel.

Sweden is preparing to tax high-polluting aircraft in what its government has called a European and world's first such move on climate change. "This means that takeoff and landing fees can be more significant when a plane's climate impact is higher and they can be reduced when the climate impact is lower," the Swedish infrastructure ministry said Monday, referring primarily to choice of fuel, including biofuels.

A Polish novelist could face three years in prison for insulting Polish president Andrzej Duda on Facebook. "Andrzej Duda is a moron," Jakub Zulczyk said, commenting on Duda's reaction to the US election back in January. Prosecutors charged him with "offensive" language under laws that protect also the Polish flag and foreign flags. The Polish ruling party, Law and Justice, has politicised courts in a battle against opponents.

Western powers have shamed China on Uighur abuses in a wall of solidarity, which saw China fire back at MEPs, jeopardising a trade treaty.

Several key virologists in Belgium are pleading for the country to go back into a full lockdown in order to turn the trend of rising infections and hospitalisations. According to top virologist Steven Van Gucht, the situation in Belgium shows "a dangerous cocktail". VUB professor Dirk Devroey said Belgium needs a full lockdown of four weeks, meaning "schools will be closed, workers cannot go to their work ..."

The European Commission on Monday announced the first meeting of its so-called European Contact Group on Search and Rescue for migrants and refugees. Although search-and-rescue is a national prerogative, the commission say it wants the group "to bring clarity" on ways to help. "What we need to improve is our coordination," said EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson.

Hungary gave the initial approval to two more Covid-19 vaccines from outside the EU's procurement program, officials said Monday. The medicines regulator gave emergency approval to Convidecia, a vaccine produced by China's CanSino Biologics, and to India's Covishield vaccine, a version of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine. Hungary was the first in the EU to begin using vaccines from Russia and China, and has the second-highest vaccination rate in the EU.

Denmark is to limit the number of "non-Western" residents in poor neighbourhoods to 30 percent by 2031 under new legislation by its centre-left government. Concentrations of "non-Westerners" increased "the risk of an emergence of religious and cultural parallel societies", interior minister Kaare Dybvad Bek said. The original bill had used the controversial word "ghetto", but that risked "eclipsing the large amount of [social] work" poor areas needed, he added.

US president Joe Biden said Wednesday Russia will "pay a price" for interfering in America's 2020 election in light of his new intelligence. When asked in a TV interview if Russian president Vladimir Putin was "a killer" who tried to assassinate opponents, Biden also said: "I do". Russia recalled its US ambassador in response, to prevent "irreversible deterioration in relations", which, its foreign ministry said, had reached "a blind alley".

"The US administration is not looking to take sides in this disagreement", a senior aide to US president Joe Biden said Wednesday, on the UK and EU's dispute on Northern Ireland customs law, Reuters reports. The "trade issue" was for Europe to solve by discussing "implementation of the agreement", the official said. Irish taoiseach Micheál Martin held virtual meetings with Biden and others in view of St. Patrick's Day Wednesday.

Irish authorities were obliged to put Irish as well as English on veterinary-medical labels, the EU Court of Justice ruled Wednesday. The victory came for Peadar MacFhlannchadha, an Irish-language campaigner, in the first-ever case heard in Irish in the EU tribunal. The ruling also came out on St Patrick's Day, but represented a largely moral victory, as a new EU law superseding the pro-Irish label one is on its way.

Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, has announced a tough new nationwide lockdown amid infections surging to the highest rate since November, The Guardian writes. The country's health minister Adam Niedzielski said shopping centres, theatres, cinemas and hotels will close from Saturday, while schools will have to switch to online learning. Niedzielski added that Poland could see more than 30,000 new daily coronavirus cases starting next week if the trend continues.

'Chasse à la glu' - a French tradition of catching birds by putting glue on sticks is against EU law, the European Court of Justice said Wednesday, in a victory for the League for the Protection of Birds, a French conservationist group. No EU country should allow hunting that caused serious harm to "by-catch" (unintended target-species), the court ruled. French hunters had defended it as being used for songbirds only.

Australia said it will ask the EU to release 1 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine to help Papua New Guinea battle a dangerous outbreak that authorities fear could spread to other parts of the region, Reuters writes. "We've contracted them. We've paid for them and we want to see those vaccines come here so we can support our nearest neighbour," Australian PM Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

The European Commission has presented a common approach to vaccine certificates to facilitate travel. All EU-wide approved vaccines will be accepted for this document, but member states can decide to accept other vaccines too.

EU governments' lack of coordination in the first and second wave of the pandemic has caused concerns around supply chains, long queues at borders, and practically froze the bloc's passport-free Schengen zone.

A Milan court acquitted energy companies Eni and Royal Dutch Shell, plus a series of past and present managers including Eni chief executive Claudio Descalzi, in the oil industry's biggest corruption scandal, Reuters reports. Prosecutors had called for Eni and Shell to be fined and for a number managers from both companies to be jailed.

Greece denies any illegal pushbacks at sea. The EU takes their version of events as face value, in a system unable and unwilling to shed doubt on Greek authorities - posing accountability questions on the EU's border guard agency Frontex.