European Union

German chancellor Angela Merkel said in a speech to MPs on Wednesday she looked forward to "soon" meeting Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and paid tribute to Belarusian women's stand against regime corruption in Minsk. "I admire it and find it really impressive," Merkel said. Tikhanovskaya is due in Berlin on 5 October. She also met French president Emmanuel Macron in Lithuania earlier this week.

Swedish prime minister Stefan Lofven will not take part in the EU summit in Brussels starting on Thursday, and Finnish PM Sanna Marin will represent the Swedish government. Lofven is attending his mother's funeral. Lofven and Marin are both Social Democratic party leaders in their respective countries.

Months after Member States lifted their lockdowns, restaurants and bars are still struggling to attract customers. Today, spiritsEurope launches its five-point Fit For Recovery Plan to support the industry and millions of jobs in an effective way.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and French leader Emmanuel Macron called for a "complete" halt to fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh and said they were ready to intensify diplomatic efforts to help solve the conflict.

Large cities offer millions of square meters of unused roof space. Why aren't they being converted to cultivate crops? The potential seems enormous, but "urban farming" is still in its infancy. EURACTIV Germany reports.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

A golden rule in politics is that the most belligerent rhetoric presages a climbdown. As lawmakers in Westminster passed a bill that would break the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU, accompanied with the usual bellicose statements about ‘taking back control’,...

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday (30 August) Turkey’s “warlike” rhetoric was encouraging Azerbaijan to reconquer Nagorno-Karabakh and that was unacceptable, though he added that he had no proof at this stage of direct Turkish involvement. Fierce fighting broke...

Setting ambitious health targets at the European level after the COVID crisis is not only necessary but also dutiful, particularly to combat those diseases that have a negative impact on the life expectancy of citizens, centre-right wing lawmaker Aldo Patriciello told EURACTIV in an interview.

The European Union is committed to scaling up its role on public health, at the time when well-known diseases such as cancer and obesity intertwine with new cross-border health threats. Drawing lessons from this year’s pandemic, which exposed flaws in...

As the World Summit on Biodiversity opens on Wednesday (30 September), new measures to halt its decline are being discussed, including the concept of payments for environmental services, which is currently widely debated in France and Europe. EURACTIV France reports.

The European Commission Vice president for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová, voiced clear support for the ongoing anti-corruption protests in Bulgaria on Wednesday (30 September), saying that the government of Prime Minister Boyko Borissov should take them “very seriously”.

AMENDMENTS 1 - 65 - Draft opinion General budget of the European Union for the financial year 2021 - all sections
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Nikos Androulakis

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The European Commission said on Wednesday (30 January) that the Union-wide assessment of the rule of law will complete its toolbox with a "preventive" mechanism to guard against backsliding in countries across the bloc.

Polish MEP Sylwia Spurek announced on Wednesday (30 September) she will transfer from the Socialists to the Greens group in the European Parliament, becoming the first Polish member of the now 69-strong group.

The concept of soil carbon sequestration, a cornerstone of regenerative farming, is regaining strength as a key measure in both climate mitigation and adaptation.

The US administration has welcomed reports that Germany is set to take a tougher stance against the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, also noting that they would welcome the country into the US's so-called 5G 'clean network' program.

Platform giants will be prohibited from using the data they collect online unless they make this data available for use by smaller platforms, according to a draft of blacklisted practices, seen by EURACTIV, as part of the European Commission's forthcoming Digital Services Act.

A year from now we may well have a vaccine for Covid-19, but we certainly won’t have one for inequality or social injustice. In addition to its immediate health impact, the pandemic has shone an ugly light on the levels of inequality in Europe and around the world through a variety of lenses from demographic to financial to digital.

Over the years, the European Union has put in place legislation to tackle discrimination, such as the Racial Equality Directive. While the Directive was adopted two decades ago, various problems still persist in the national implementation of European non-discrimination law....