European Union

Portugal is considering drawing on €2.7 billion in European loans from COVID-19 post-crisis funds to invest in affordable housing, business capitalisation, and transport, according to its Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) released on Tuesday. However, according to a source in...

Two intermediaries of pharmaceutical companies producing vaccines authorised by the European Medicine Agency (EMA) reportedly offered 27 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to the north-eastern Veneto region instead of the requested four million, several Italian media reported on Tuesday....

A few months before the German elections, voters seem to start seeing the advantages of a Christian Democrat and Green coalition. Asked which party CDU/CSU should consider as a potential coalition partner at the federal level, a third of those...

The EU will launch a programme to study Covid-19 variants and produce "second generation" vaccines against future strains, the Commission president has said.

Regulation alone will not solve the huge disinformation problem Europe faces, but the incoming Digital Services Act can certainly help, writes Carlos Hernández-Echevarría.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of healthcare, encouraging numerous innovative startups to step up and address previously unmet challenges, analyst Benedikt Blomeyer told EURACTIV in an interview, stressing the huge potential of digital applications in health.

Police in Belarus raided the homes and offices of dozens of journalists, rights defenders and trade union members on Tuesday (16 February), investigators and activists said, as part of a probe into mass protests.

Three top officials in Ursula von der Leyen's green-oriented European Commission – Josep  Borrell, Stella Kyriakides and Adina Vălean – have until recently had ties with the fossil fuel industry, according to new research revealed exclusively by EURACTIV. 

The European Union's former Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said on Tuesday (16 February) he was setting up a political faction under the name "Patriot and European", fuelling rumours that he was mulling a possible bid in next year's presidential election.

The leading EU country for Covid vaccinations, Malta, on Tuesday (16 February) credited the bloc's joint procurement for its success, but stressed moves need to be made to counter worrying virus variants.

Belgium has found five people infected with the so-called Brazilian Covid-19 variant, more contagious than the other known variants, the Belgian newspaper De Standaard reports. One of the infected people lives in the city of Seraing, one in Flanders and three in or around Brussels. None of them had travelled. Like the South African variant, the Brazilian variant is able to circumvent Covid immunity.

Belarus has attacked its last few independent journalists in raids that prompted an international outcry.

Greece has temporarily closed its vaccination centres after a severe storm hit the country, carpeting Athens and its iconic Parthenon temple complex in snow. "We obviously recommend great care be taken in all movement, all unnecessary movement should be avoided ... we'll all have to show patience as we deal with a phenomenon that is truly unprecedented," Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said. Migrants in Greek camps also endured hardship.

Consumer groups in 15 European countries, as well as Beuc, a European umbrella group, raised the alarm over children's security and Chinese video-sharing app TikTok on Tuesday. "TikTok fails to protect children and teenagers from hidden advertising and potentially harmful content on its platform," Beuc said. "We're always open to hearing how we can improve," a spokesman for TikTok, which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, told Reuters.

The EU has invited US secretary of state Anthony Blinken to join foreign ministers by videoconference when they meet in Brussels Monday to discuss China, Iran, Russia, and Turkey, according to the Politico news website, citing three anonymous diplomats. The joint talks would be the first since the new US administration, amid tensions over EU efforts to forge closer trade ties with China and Germany's new gas pipeline with Russia.

Digital and human rights organisations, led by European Digital Rights, on Wednesday launched a European Citizens' Initiative calling for a ban on the use of biometric mass surveillance in public spaces, such as CCTV cameras or facial-recognition software. Should they collect one million signatures, in at least seven countries, during the next year, the European Commission will have to respond to their demand and open the debate with MEPs.

Russian security forces have taught Siberian schoolchildren how to detain protesters in a simulated riot, according to video published by local television Tuesday, The Moscow Times reports. The footage comes on the heels of a mass crackdown during protest rallies calling for jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny's release. More than 10,000 people were detained nationwide during those protests, with widespread allegations of police brutality against peaceful demonstrators.

A Dutch court has ruled that the government should immediately lift the nationwide Covid-19 curfew. The government wrongly used emergency powers, to bring in the first curfew since the Nazi occupation during World War II, a judge at The Hague district court ruled. Prime minister Mark Rutte asked citizens to respect the curfew anyway, and said the government would appeal against the decision.

A shipment of 550,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine, developed by the Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm, arrived in Hungary on Tuesday, a first in the EU. Hungarian authorities are the first and so far only country in the EU to approve this vaccine, after the government streamlined the approval process. A recent Median poll showed that among those willing to receive a vaccine, only 27 percent would take a Chinese vaccine.

A joint investigation last year by Reuters and The New Humanitarian revealed alleged sexual abuse by people working for the World Health Organization and other leading NGOs. The European Commission has since collected over two dozen documents on the allegations.