Eurotopics.net

After his meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Beijing's chief diplomat Wang Yi, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also met President Xi Jinping for talks on Monday. Europe's press sees this as an important signal, even if the discussions seem to have produced few concrete results.

The tragedy surrounding the boat accident off the southwest coast of Greece is taking on ever worse proportions. Hundreds of people are said to have been below deck with no chance of survival. More than 500 are now thought to have died, and nine suspected smugglers have been arrested. What responsibility do the authorities bear, and how to address the failures in EU migration policy?

As delegations from Sweden and Turkey met in Ankara on Wednesday, Turkish President Erdoğan again dampened expectations that Sweden will join Nato soon. Although Sweden's counter-terrorism laws have been tightened and the Supreme Court recently approved the first extradition of a PKK supporter, Turkey's demands have not yet been met, Erdoğan said. But his real focus is the US, commentators suspect.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Swiss parliament per video on Thursday, appealing for solidarity and calling on it to allow the export of Swiss-made war materials to third countries, something Switzerland has so far refused to do citing its neutrality. The Swiss People's Party (SVP), the strongest parliamentary group, did not attend the session on the same grounds.

The European Parliament yesterday passed the world's first law regulating artificial intelligence. The legislation defines different risk levels for different applications. Programmes such as facial recognition software that are considered particularly risky are to be banned; others will only be allowed under certain conditions. While some commentators welcome the decision, others fear overregulation.