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The European Commission tabled a new Nature Restoration Law on Wednesday (22 June) with legally binding targets and €100 billion for EU member states to restore nature and reverse biodiversity loss in agriculture, forests, oceans and urban areas.

In today’s edition of the Capitals, find out more about Austria supporting EU candidacy for Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Finnish economy getting hit by the Ukraine war, and so much more.

For the past 30 years, EU nature laws have revolved around conservation but this is clearly not enough. Instead, restoring nature is the best way forward, one of the wisest investments available to society, and also crucial for food security, write  Frans Timmermans and Virginijus Sinkevičius.

Germany extended the military deployment of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission Kosovo Force (KFOR) yesterday (22 June). Especially the Russian influence in the region is seen as a problem. There are currently 80 Bundeswehr soldiers deployed in the mission, which counts...

The G7 will discuss the fate of a Russian turbine blocked in Canada and blamed for reducing gas supplies to Germany, though the bloc may not reach a solution by the end of the meeting, Canada's Natural Resources Minister said.

The European Movement in Serbia urged the European Parliament on 22 June to involve in its regular sessions the parliamentarians of the Western Balkan states that had applied for EU membership in its regular sessions as observers. It would be...

The Council of the EU will next week send a formal proposal about Croatia’s accession to the Schengen area in 2023 to the European Parliament, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković told the EU assembly in Brussels on Wednesday, saying the...

German chancellor Olaf Scholz fully supports the candidacy status of Ukraine and Moldova and urged other EU states that the accession of the Western Balkans is equally important. Germany has made the EU enlargement of the Western Balkans one of...

Klaudia Jachira, who represents Poland’s largest opposition party, the liberal Civic Platform, scattered cut-up banknotes in the parliamentary hall as an act of protest against the election of Adam Glapiński, president of the National Bank of Poland (NBP), for a...

Leader of the free world sounds like a superhero character, but the Joe Biden heading this week to twin European summits is in reality a politically fragile president tasked, somehow, with resolving an unenviable string of diplomatic problems.

Ukraine’s EU integration could cause the EU to implode rather than strengthen and could even be a trap for Ukraine if no consistent decisions are taken, Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa said on Wednesday. The subject of Ukraine was brought...

The 5 Star Movement will continue to support Mario Draghi’s government despite the internal split and the disagreement with the majority over arms deliveries to Ukraine, party leader Giuseppe Conte said on Wednesday. “Support for Draghi is not in question”,...

Finland’s economy was booming before the Russian attack on Ukraine, but now the war is starting to take its toll as economic growth is expected to reach 1.7% this year but will slow down to 0.5% in 2023 based on...

Over 2.5 million Danes over 50 will be offered a booster jab against COVID-19 this autumn, declared Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at a press conference on Wednesday. The cases of people with COVID-19 have been on the rise in...

The threat of an institutional crisis hangs over this week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Kigali, with UK prime minister Boris Johnson leading the campaign to replace the organisation’s incumbent Secretary General Baroness Patricia Scotland, a Labour member...

Bosnia-Herzegovina should receive similar treatment as Ukraine and Moldova for receiving EU candidate status before prerequisites had been fulfilled, according to Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer. Austria has historically considered itself a strong ally of the Western Balkans, most of which...

Opposition parties were called to clarify how far they would be willing to go to build a multi-party coalition by French President Emmanuel Macron in his address to the nation on Wednesday. Macron, who spoke for the first time since...

Ukraine’s application for EU membership, which will be a central topic at Thursday’s European Council summit, has Belgium’s full support, Prime minister Alexander De Croo told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the phone on Wednesday. “Tomorrow, the member states of...

EU leaders will gather in Brussels Thursday (23 June) to discuss calls to formally grant war-torn Ukraine "candidate status" to join the bloc, as Russian forces slowly advance in the eastern Donbas region despite fierce resistance from Kyiv's military.

A no-confidence vote led to the Bulgarian parliament overthrowing the government of Kiril Petkov, which was elected only six months ago, and Bulgarians will likely vote again in general elections in the autumn, the fourth such vote in just over...