European Union

The new Czech coalition government led by Petr Fiala of the Civic Democrats approved its policy programme for the next four years in office on Thursday. Among other things, it promises to reform the pensions system and extend the highway...

The Spanish Civil Guard’s Reserve and Security Group (GRS) continues to measure harmful gases that are being emitted, three weeks after the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma was officially declared over, EURACTIV’s partner...

A return to in-person classes is unmanageable at the moment, 1,500 school principals wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Mario Draghi and Education Minister Patrizio Bianchi on Thursday. The government is pushing to maintain in-person classes from next Monday (10 January)....

Tens of thousands of cases of the Omicron variant have not been officially recorded since the start of December, the government has been told, meaning the actual case count in Ireland is likely much higher than previously thought. Officials were...

Four protestors who pulled down the statue of a slave trader during a Black Lives Matter protest were on Thursday acquitted of causing criminal damage in what could be a landmark legal case. The memorial to the 17th century slave trader...

Austria will implement new measures to fight the spread of the Omicron variant and rise in COVID-19 cases but will relax others due to Omicron being less dangerous than previous variants, the government has announced. The new measures were announced after...

Nearly 70% of all greenhouses for vegetable production have stopped producing in the winter due to high gas prices, the Association of Greenhouse Producers told state radio and television. It added that this has led to a lack of Bulgarian...

Following Facebook’s deletion of the page belonging to the opposition nationalist Confederation Party, the party and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki condemned tech giants for throttling free speech. This party is a relevant force in Poland with 11 lawmakers in the Sejm and...

Estonia, which over the years has earned a reputation for being one of Europe’s dirtiest electricity producers, is now going through an energy transition that includes setting up offshore wind farms to improve its track record. The government will decide...

Despite additional COVID-related expenditure, Germany’s new “traffic light” government will not move away from the country’s constitutional debt limit despite additional spending, the liberal FDP’s vice-leader, Johannes Vogel, told the daily Welt on Thursday. In mid-December, the government launched a second supplementary budget...

Turkey is one of a handful of countries using charity and aid to raise its international profile and extend its influence to other countries, particularly in the Western Balkans, while struggling at home with poverty, lack of jobs, rising inflation, and increasingly authoritarian rule.

Poland's new ambassador to Prague is to be recalled for criticising his country in comments about a dispute with the Czech Republic over a coal mine, the Polish government said Thursday.

Two Sudanese protesters were killed on Thursday while taking part in the latest mass demonstrations demanding a transition to civilian rule after a coup, medics said. One of the slain demonstrators took a “live bullet to the head by the...

Ukraine's court froze property owned by former President Petro Poroshenko as part of a formal investigation into alleged high treason by the former head of state, the Prosecutor General's office said on Thursday (6 January).

Almost every country on Earth could experience extremely hot years every other year by 2030, according to new research Thursday highlighting the outsized contribution of emissions from the world's major polluters.

Britain warned Moscow on Thursday (6 January) that it was working with Western partners on high-impact sanctions targetting Russia's financial sector should it invade Ukraine.

Russia must respect the sovereignty of Kazakhstan, said the EU, reacting to the deployment of Russian military forces to quell an uprising after deadly violence spread across the former Soviet republic.

In the first episode of 2022, EURACTIV’s Beyond the Byline focuses on the tension between Russia and Kyiv and the EU’s role in it.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has withdrawn its team on the Belarus-Poland border after Warsaw repeatedly blocked access to migrants there trying to enter the European Union, it said Thursday.

French MPs have adopted the COVID vaccine pass bill in the National Assembly on Thursday (6 January) amid fierce debates laying bare the internal struggles of the right-wing. Now, only Senate approval remains. EURACTIV France reports.