European Union

French pharma giant Sanofi has started phase 3 clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine and is expected to begin rolling it out in December, Sanofi France president Olivier Bogillot has told broadcaster France Inter. The results of phase 2 clinical...

Serbia's progress towards the EU should not be expected as long as Aleksandar Vučić is the most powerful politician in the country, writes Darko Čačić, in an article he submitted to EURACTIV Bulgaria.

Tajikistan's president on Monday (5 July) ordered the mobilisation of 20,000 military reservists to bolster the border with Afghanistan after more than 1,000 Afghan security personnel fled across the frontier in response to Taliban militant advances.

The European Union "speaks with one voice" in condemning a decision by Belarus to allow illegal migrants to cross into Lithuania in response to EU sanctions, European Council President Charles Michel said on Monday (5 July).

The Netherlands is a world leader in EV charging infrastructure, thanks partly to their use of multipliers – a statistical method that encourages the use of renewable energy in transport. But the European Commission's decision to eliminate multipliers for electricity will destroy the successful Dutch model, argues William Todts.

LGBTQ activists in Georgia said Monday (5 July) they had been forced to cancel a planned Pride march, as protesters assaulted activists and journalists and clashed with police hours after the prime minister denounced the event.

Prime Minister Janez Janša told the Slovenian parliament that the EU had to come up with strategic answers to strategic challenges, working both on its soft and hard power to become a major player regionally and globally.

Taxpayers rather than polluting corporations pay for clean-up operations in Europe due to lax regulation, the European Court of Auditors, an EU financial watchdog, said Monday. "Polluters need to pay for the environmental damage they cause ... Up to now, though, European taxpayers have far too often been forced to bear the costs that polluters should have paid," the court's Viorel Stefan said, after a study of 42 clean-up projects.

"It is in the European Union's very own interests to drive the [enlargement] process forward here," in the Western Balkans, German chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday in a video-summit on the region. French president Emmanuel Macron said he "very clearly" supported enlargement, while EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said she wanted to "accelerate" it. Enlargement is currently stuck due to a Bulgarian veto and ongoing Kosovo-Serbia enmity, however.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is the only EU leader in a new report on 37 national heads who are "press-freedom predators", according to French NGO Reporters Without Borders. Orbán "has steadily and effectively undermined media pluralism and independence since being returned to power in 2010," the NGO noted. Belarus, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Syria's leaders also made the list, which was last updated five years ago.

Germany has lifted its ban on British tourists and said those who are fully vaccinated will not need to quarantine either. It reclassified the UK, along with Portugal, Russia, India, and Nepal, despite concern over the 'Delta variant' of coronavirus spreading there. The UK, also on Monday, said it would lift all restrictions, including mask-wearing, from 19 July, but France has voiced wariness of an EU fourth wave of infections.

EU Council president Charles Michel pledged solidarity to Lithuania in Vilnius on Monday after 560 migrants crossed the border from Belarus last weekend. "Belarus authorities are using irregular migration to try and put pressure on the EU," he said, after Minsk started flying in refugees and pushing them into Lithuania in reaction to EU sanctions. More than 1,200 migrants recently crossed, compared to fewer than 50 in a normal year.

Most EU countries, including Hungary, have voiced solidarity with LGBTIQ protesters in Georgia after a violent mob halted their Pride march on Monday.

Social Democrat Stefan Löfven will try to win a new term as Sweden's prime minister in a parliamentary vote on Wednesday (6 July) after the assembly's speaker asked him to return to the post he quit last month.

Just eight of the 27 EU states have transposed a landmark EU law against plastic waste, which entered into force this weekend, into national legislation, according to the European Commission on Monday, Reuters reports. Even these adopted "bare-minimum requirements", green NGO Zero Waste Europe said. The law bans single-use plastics in straws, plates, cutlery, and cotton-bud tips. It also calls for 30 percent recycled plastic in drinking bottles from 2030.

French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel held a mini-summit by phone with Chinese president Xi Jinping Monday, to discuss "international trade, climate protection, and biodiversity" as well as the pandemic and "regional issues", Merkel's office said. It did not mention China's attacks on its Uighur minority or Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, which recently prompted EU sanctions and Chinese counter-sanctions, ruining prospects of a new China-EU investment treaty.

French exporters of champagne to Russia will have to change their labels, replacing "champagne" with "sparkling wine", after a new Russian law entered into force last week, allowing only Russian producers to use the term "champagne" - which EU origin-labels associate with the French region of the same name. Moët-Hennessy, one French producer, suspended sales this weekend, but promised to resume them with new labels despite the extra cost.

After she questioned if Viktor Orbán government's restrictive asylum rules were compatible with EU rules, judge Gabriella Szabó was not given an indefinite mandate. She thinks it is because her request went against the government's interests.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, for the first time European citizens consider climate change as the single most serious problem facing the world, a new Eurobarometer survey has found.

The Five Star Movment crisis has arisen from the clash between comedian Beppe Grillo, co-founder of the party, and presumed saviour Giuseppe Conte. Grillo, accuses Conte of a power-grab, while Grillo is criticised for acting like an "authoritarian father."