European Union

MEPs from the liberal Renew Europe group came under fire on Thursday for abstaining on the resolution pointing to the conflicts of interest of the Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš. The resolution calls for reinforced measures to protect the EU budget and transparency on who benefits from these subsidies. Liberal MEPs said this week the European Commission must apply the new rule-of-law conditionality mechanism or face legal action.

Spain's health ministry has scrapped a nationwide plan to gradually reopen nightlife, just a week after introducing it, following widespread complaints from regional authorities, who dismissed it as either too strict or too loose, Reuters reports. The plan, scrapped on Wednesday, would have allowed areas with low infection rates to open nightclubs until 3AM.

Amnesty International has collected new evidence of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region of China, which it says has become a "dystopian hellscape" for hundreds of thousands of Muslims subjected to mass internment and torture, The Guardian writes. The human rights organisation has collected more than 50 new accounts from Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly-Muslim ethnic minorities

MEPs have backed a motion demanding the temporality lifting of intellectual properties rights of Covid-19 vaccines - a symbolic move that puts pressure on the European Commission to change its position on the issue of global access to vaccines.

The EU's anti-fraud agency has so far identified more than 1000 of these suspicious companies, many of which are based outside the EU.

It would require between 40 to 75 additional staff to oversee how MEPs spend their monthly €4,500 lump sum on office supplies, according to the European Parliament. An EUobserver Freedom of Information request reveals those calculations are flawed.

The EU is committed to reduce "the risk and use of pesticides by 50 percent" by 2030. However, given the level of controversy and public distrust surrounding EU pesticides regulation over the last decade, which reforms could garner public support?

We at GLOBSEC believe that the aftermath of a period of turbulence can be a spur for change. There is an opportunity for Year Two of the pandemic to be when we define the new normal.

France is eager “to get results quickly” on the EU's proposed battery regulation and would even like the implementation schedule to be brought forward by a year, which would take it to 2024, France’s ecological transition ministry told EURACTIV France.

President Biden’s maiden foreign tour signals his will to restore transatlantic relations. Europe will rejoice, but may not – and indeed, should not – put all its eggs in the US basket, write Óscar Fernández and Ángel Saz-Carranza.

The European Commission will come forward at the end of 2022 with a proposal to remove the most polluting end-of-life vehicles from EU roads, European Green Deal Commissioner Frans Timmermans said on Thursday (10 June).

European healthcare stands at a crossroads. It is time to fully embrace AI and digital technology, argues Jan-Philipp Beck.

The European Parliament urged the European Commission to make cages for farmed animals a thing of the past in a resolution adopted on Thursday (10 June), marking a first step towards a ban on cages by 2027.

On Thursday, Parliament adopted three resolutions on the human rights situation at the Spanish/Moroccan border, in Russia, and in Sri Lanka.
Subcommittee on Human Rights

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

On Thursday, Parliament adopted three resolutions on the human rights situation at the Spanish/Moroccan border, in Russia, and in Sri Lanka.
Subcommittee on Human Rights

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Russian tourists, it seems, will be avoiding beaches in Greece and Bulgaria this year. Our take is that the epidemiological situation surely cannot be the excuse and that the Kremlin has decided which countries to reward with tourists and which...

Intel, the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductor chips, will open a foundry plant for cutting-edge semiconductors in Europe in a bid to diversify its global supply chain.

Caged animal farming could be phased out in the European Union by 2027, say MEPs.
Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Caged animal farming could be phased out in the European Union by 2027, say MEPs.
Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Parliament calls on the EU to punish those involved in forcing a plane to land in Minsk on 23 May and in the detention of journalist Raman Pratasevich.
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP