European Union

Liverpool is set to be subject to the tightest new local lockdown rules in England when the government’s new ‘three-tier’ system is announced on Monday. Merseyside, which includes Liverpool, is expected to be the only part of England to face...

The Social Democrats (SPÖ) defended their top position with 42% of the votes (up 2.4%) in the Viennese state election on Sunday (11 October), making them the undisputed rulers of Austria’s capital, thus dubbed “Red Vienna.” Their former main challenger,...

As Belgium over the weekend ranked second place in Europe in terms of COVID-19 infections, health minister Frank Vandenbroucke said he cannot guarantee there will be no second lockdown. “It’s not simple. I can’t anticipate the facts, but I can,...

As the number of coronavirus infections continues to rise, cities and localities across Germany are implementing new restrictions in the hopes that this will help curb the spread of the virus without having to undergo a second lockdown. Frankfurt and...

The European Central Bank will on Monday (12 October) launch a public consultation and start experiments to help it decide whether to create a "digital euro" for the 19-nation currency club.

Poland should act as ‘the integrator’ within the transatlantic community, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Sunday as he summed up the 10th Congress ‘Poland: A Great Project’ – the most important meeting of opinion-forming conservative circles in Poland....

Security forces in Belarus detained dozens of protesters on Sunday (11 October) and used force, including water cannon and batons, to break up crowds demanding a new presidential election, TV footage showed.

Our online world lends itself well to a conversation with citizens about the future of Europe. And yet, European leaders have so far failed to reach agreement, even on who should chair the long promised Conference on the Future of Europe, writes Roger Casale.

The "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance demanded Sunday that tech companies insert "backdoors" in encrypted apps to allow law enforcement agencies the access they say they need to police online criminality.

A draft version of the European Commission’s methane strategy, expected to come out on Wednesday (14 October), doesn't set limits on methane emissions from fossil fuels, instead setting the stage for that to happen as of 2025.

New EU measures regulating the web should avoid, in the first instance, rules on the hosting of online content deemed "harmful" but not "illegal", a Brussels trade association representing the world's largest online platforms has said.

Britain might float nets in the English Channel to disable the boats of migrants trying to cross from France, its Home Office "channel threat commander", Dan O'Mahoney, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper this weekend. The nets would "clog propellers and bring boats to a standstill", enabling the coastguard to take people on board and return them to the French coast, he said, despite fears that they could cause dangerous accidents.

EU states, late Friday, agreed new measures to harmonise travel rules. A Swedish-based EU agency will designate European regions as green, amber, red, or grey (insufficient data) based on weekly updates. All states are to allow green-zone visitors and impose the same testing or quarantine rules for red zones. Some Bulgarian, Cypriot, Greek, German, Italian, Nordic and Baltic regions were the only ones that would qualify as green, for now.

Belgian phone networks Orange and Proximus have selected Finnish supplier Nokia instead of Chinese firm Huawei to install 5G data networks amid security fears over Chinese espionage, Reuters reports. "Belgium has been 100-percent reliant on Chinese vendors for its radio networks - and people working at Nato and the EU were making mobile phone calls on these networks," Danish telecoms consultant John Strand said, echoing US concerns on China.

High-level meetings at the European Commission are to exclude assistants, while top officials will face Covid-19 tests prior to attendance and be obliged to wear masks during talks, the commission said Sunday. The move comes after a 90-percent jump in infections in Belgium, the home of the EU institutions, last week, with 113 people a day being hospitalised, rising to 160 on Saturday. Some EU commissioners have also tested positive.

Turkey has said three vessels - the Oruc Reis, Ataman, and Cengiz Han - are to spend 10 days drilling for oil and gas in waters claimed by Greece and Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean in a move likely to redouble calls for EU sanctions. Early results in elections in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus also showed hawkish challenger Ersin Tata neck-and-neck with the more moderate incumbent in a potential new flashpoint.

Police in Belarus used water cannon and stun grenades to break up pro-democracy protests Sunday - the eighth weekend in a row of violence in Minsk after rigged elections in August. They sprayed coloured water on crowds to mark out people for arrest. The EU has said it would increase sanctions, currently covering 40 Belarusian officials, if the regime did not back down and start a dialogue with the opposition.

Lithuania's centre-right opposition party, the Homeland Union, came first in Sunday's elections with some 23 percent, early results showed. They beat into second place the Farmers and Greens party (LVZS), on 18 percent, which had led the previous ruling coalition, in a show of discontent at government handling of the pandemic, as well as economic inequalities. Voters were urged to bring their own pens to ballot boxes, as infections spiked.

The EU is to train Mozambique's armed forces and give humanitarian aid to help stop an Islamist insurgency there, the EU ambassador in Maputo, Antonio Sánchez-Benedito Gaspar, said Saturday, following Mozambique's request for help last week. Rebels linked to jihadist group Islamic State have been fighting in northern Mozambique since 2017, but the country's army has also been accused of human rights violations in the combat zone.

A Russia-brokered ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan has broken down shortly after it was agreed on Saturday.