European Union

Ireland considers it "unlikely" that the EU-Mercosur trade agreement will be concluded during the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union and insists on guarantees that deforestation of the Amazon will be halted.

The Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union on Wednesday warned member states that individual decisions affected everyone regarding the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, involved in risks of blood clots, calling for the most coordinated position possible among the 27. A statement issued after the...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday (8 April) to pull back the Kremlin's military build-up near the border with Ukraine, while he in turn accused Kyiv of "provocative actions" in the conflict region.

We shouldn't place "sofa-gate" into the epicentre of a plenary debate, but rather discuss how to rebuild relations with Turkey under a President who no longer has a commitment toward a European future, a leading MEP told EURACTIV.

In Ankara VDL is denied a chair, Northern Ireland violence is hard to bear and Eurostar's failing and the Brits don’t care.

Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has contradicted claims by EU Council president Charles Michel that Turkey was to blame for a recent fiasco, which saw the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, given a second-class seat in a mini-summit in Ankara. "The protocol ... met the demands of the EU side. In other words, the seating arrangement was designed to meet their demands and suggestions," Çavuşoğlu said on Thursday.

French president Emmanuel Macron has pledged to close the École nationale d'administration (ENA), an elite French academy, which admits fewer than 100 students a year, who are fast-tracked into top civil service posts, and which educated four French presidents, including Macron. The move comes in response to popular anger against social inequality ahead of next year's elections. The ENA closure marked a "profound revolution in terms of recruitment", Macron said.

The number of Covid-19 infections in the UK dropped by 60 percent in March due to the lockdown restrictions and vaccination, a study found. Imperial Collage London researchers said "infections may have resulted in fewer hospitalisations and deaths since the starts of the widespread vaccination". But they warned on Thursday that the UK's current strategy out of the lockdown could lead to 15,700 deaths in the UK by June 2022.

The pandemic has swung the pendulum of political consensus away from the populists, eroding their approval ratings ahead of key parliamentary elections in 2021 and 2022.

The findings of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in the two cases arising from complaints against Facebook by Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems highlight the fundamentally opposed approaches towards data and personal privacy in the EU and the US, writes Dick Roche.

US president Joe Biden, who has Irish roots, has called for "calm" in Northern Ireland, following sectarian riots over post-Brexit border arrangements. "We're concerned by the violence in Northern Ireland and we join the British, Irish, and Northern Irish leaders in calls for calm," the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said. "We welcome the provisions in ... the Northern Ireland protocol," she added, referring to the Brexit border deal.

Italian prime minister Mario Draghi on Thursday called Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a "dictator", drawing condemnation from Ankara. EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel met Erdoğan Tuesday, but the Commission chief was left with no seat, causing a stir. Draghi said "with these, let's call them what they are - dictators ... one nonetheless has to coordinate, one has to be frank".

Russia urged Slovakia on Thursday to return thousands of doses of the Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19, after Bratislava's drug agency said the jab batches it had received were different from those being reviewed by the EU medicine agency, Reuters reported. Slovakia bought 200,000 doses of Sputnik V last month. However, Slovakia's drug agency has not been able to assess the jab, due to gaps in data provided by Moscow.

Four people recently died after taking Russia's Sputnik V anti-corona jab in previously unreported cases, which are being taken "seriously" by the EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency.

The violence came as tensions have been building over Brexit, which has seen trade barriers put in place between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain.

Despite the calls for coordination from Brussels, EU capitals started issuing a jumble of measures for the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to respond to concerns over rare blood clots.

This week's snap election in Greenland resulted in a clear majority for the mining-sceptic IA party, in a historic change.

A report published on Thursday indicates that there is €87bn of under construction or proposed fossil gas infrastructure in the EU. Although the bloc is already oversupplied with fossil gas, import capacity would grow by 35 percent if all projects under construction or planned were completed. Meanwhile, it is estimated that gas consumption needs to decline 36 percent in the next decade to reach the EU's 2030 climate targets.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg said Thursday that compulsory vaccinations are legal in a ruling that might create a precedent for Covid-19 vaccination programmes. The ruling came after a complaint by Czech families regarding compulsory jabs for children. "The measures could be regarded as being 'necessary in a democratic society,'" the court said, adding that compulsory vaccines were in line with the "best interests" of children.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi on Thursday (8 April) accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of humiliating European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week and said it is important to be frank with "dictators", drawing condemnation from Ankara.