European Union

Bulgaria’s caretaker government plans to increase all pensions from 1 October this year, announced Finance Minister Asen Vassilev, adding that if parliament supports his proposals, no pensioners in Bulgaria will be living below the poverty line by autumn. Currently, nearly...

French president Emmanuel Macron has obtained a new phone following reports of Pegasus spyware hacks. The president's office said Macron had also ordered an overhaul of security protocols. His phone had been among those reportedly targeted by Moroccan authorities, according to Le Monde newspaper.

Another Western army is leaving a fragile, landlocked region. But whereas the United States has pulled its troops out of one country, Afghanistan, France is walking away from five, argues Faisal Al Yafai

Several hundred undocumented migrants have ended their hunger-strike protest in Brussels, giving up their demands for a collective legal status in Belgium. The migrants will instead have their individual cases assessed by the state. Around 476 people had been on hunger strike, some for two months.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has rejected calls by the UK to re-negotiate the Northern Irish protocol, which created a customs border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain. "The EU will continue to be creative and flexible within the protocol framework. But we will not renegotiate," she told UK prime minister Boris Johnson, in a telephone call on Thursday.

Thousands of EU nationals over the age of 65 in the UK have missed a deadline to apply for the EU settlement scheme, according to a UK parliamentary report. It found that only two-percent of all applications for the settlement scheme were submitted by people aged over 65, suggesting that many failed to meet the deadline. Some are likely to have had no mobile phone or digital access to apply.

Russia and China failed on Thursday in a bid to get the U.N. Security Council to strip some powers from an international envoy overseeing implementation of a 1995 Bosnia peace accord and shut down the envoy’s office in one year....

Slovakia’s car dealership market is worried that sellers from Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, countries which import tens of thousands of cars to Slovakia each year, could be selling cars damaged by the floods, the TASR news agency reported. After the floods,...

The Italian government will require people to be fully-vaccinated before being allowed entry into closed-door events and spaces - such as cinemas, exhibitions, museums, theatres and swimming pools. Only those with a 'green pass' to prove vaccination against Covid-19 will be allowed access. The restrictions apply as of 5 August.

The Czech Senate this week approved the right to own weapons to defend oneself and others under legal conditions to be embedded in the constitution. This comes as a reaction to the EU’s tendency to regulate firearms acquisition and possession....

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has said that people pushing anti-vaccine messages are spreading a deadly appeal. “The appeal not to get vaccinated is an appeal to die, basically. You don’t get vaccinated, you get sick, you die. Or you...

The conservative Greek government (New Democracy, EPP) has opened the door to obligatory vaccination for all, by allowing the health minister to expand the categories of professions in which compulsory vaccination may be imposed. The new powers granted to health...

The department of health is preparing for a surge in ICU capacity in hospitals because of the “roaring” growth in COVID-19 cases, according to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, the Irish Times reports. Donnelly compared the possible fatality rates to those in the...

After Austria’s Greens pushed a re-evaluation of the CO2 intensity of various road construction projects through parliament, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has criticised the party’s stance on climate protection. Climate protection should not be “a way back to the stone age,”...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for Germany’s citizens to get vaccinated in a bid to halt the spread of the Delta variant on Thursday, in what is likely to be her last press conference as chancellor before she steps down...

Manfred Weber, the conservative EPP leader in the European Parliament, has described as “important” an agreement struck between Germany and the US over Nord Stream 2 as it sends a signal to the Russian leadership not to abuse the controversial pipeline...

Though vast majority of EU countries welcome deeper integration with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, their "Associated Trio" initiative finds more support within Eastern and Central Europe, while the Commission and Western member states remain hesitant to adopt the term.

Plug-in hybrids and electric cars have increased in popularity in France, rising from 2.5% of all vehicles sold in 2019 to 7.5% today. The increase in sales is partly linked to the electric bonuses granted under the country's recovery plan, dubbed France Relance. EURACTIV France reports.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday (22 July) insisted that the EU would not reopen the controversial Northern Ireland protocol, a key part of the Brexit agreement with the UK, just a day after Boris Johnson’s published a paper setting out its plans to renegotiate it.

The Spanish parliament approved on Wednesday a government decree ending the obligation of mask-wearing outdoors when a social distance of 1.5 meters can be observed, Spanish news agency EFE reported. The measure has been criticised, since the country has entered a fifth wave of infections, driven by the more contagious Delta variant, reporting over 30,000 cases per day. Some regional governments are still recommending citizens use face masks.