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Commission vice-president in charge of competition Margarethe Vestager argued that companies getting large capital injections from the state during the corona crisis still have to offset their competitive advantage.

Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban on Friday called the EU Commission's €750bn recovery plan "absurd", saying it is based on jointly-guaranteed credit and would help rich member states more. "They want to take out this loan for 30 years, so even our grandchildren may have to pay for it. We need to think carefully about whether we as a country want this or not," he said.

Björn Ulvaeus, co-founder of ABBA, has been appointed president of CISAC, the global confederation of authors' societies. "As CISAC president, which has a three-year term, Björn will support the confederation's work to secure stronger rights, more royalties, better systems, and improved conditions for creators across five repertoires – music, audiovisual, visual arts, drama and literature", a press statement read.

Malta and Libya are to open anti-migration "coordination units" in each other's countries to help stop the 800,000 irregular migrants said to be in Libya from coming to Europe, Maltese prime minister Robert Abela said after meeting with Fayez al-Sarraj, the EU and UN-recognised Libyan prime minister, in Tripoli on Thursday. "The solution clearly lies in concrete action on Libyan shores and its southern border," Abela said.

Bars, cafes, restaurants, and parks in France are to reopen on 2 June, marking the latest stage in lockdown-easing measures of one of Europe's strictest regimes, French prime minister Edouard Philippe said Thursday. "Freedom will become the rule, bans the exception," he said. Customers will only be allowed to eat in outside areas and staff will wear masks and gloves. Social gatherings of more than 10 people remain prohibited.

The EU needed higher financial guarantees from states over the next seven years in order to hedge against the cost of a potential no-deal Brexit in 2021, Johannes Hahn, the EU' budget commissioner said Thursday. "Our proposal is to increase the [budget] ceiling ... if they [the UK] don't pay what they promised to pay [due to hard Brexit] , it is sound financial management on our side," he said.

The EU is willing to move in negotiations on future EU-UK relations, but Britain must make a bigger effort in talks, EU trade commissioner Phil Hogan said Thursday, adding that negotiations had not made much progress. "Perhaps the UK has come to the conclusion that there's not going to be a deal. I hope not, because we want a deal," he said ahead of new talks due next week.

Germany is seeking to use new targeted EU sanctions against cyber-attackers to impose visa bans and asset freezes on the head of Russian military intelligence and one of his alleged operatives in Germany over Russian hacking of the Bundestag in 2015, the German foreign ministry has said. The Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, was "strongly suspected of being responsible for the hacking attack," a German spokesman said Thursday.

The European Commission has proposed a €9.4bn stand-alone programme dedicated to health known as EU4Health. The proposal is touted as a first step towards a possible Treaty change when it comes to health.

It took Belgium years to decide if a top colonel was spying for Russia - potentially exposing Nato to "grave damage".

The European Commission's recovery package increases five-fold the Just Transition Fund, which aims to support the transition of fossil fuel-dependent regions. But commission vice-president Frans Timmermans warned the allocation of funds could be anchored to Green Deal commitments.

Internal document shows diplomats questioned whether the secretariat of the Council of the EU was legally allowed to write guidelines on the financing of the six-month rotating EU presidency activities.

While Covid-19 brings China one step closer to technology-perfected authoritarianism through improvised health apps and real-time surveillance, Europe is busy looking inward.

The EU Council on Thursday extended restrictive measures against the Syrian regime. "The EU remains committed to using every tool at its disposal to push for a political solution to the conflict that would benefit all Syrians and put an end to the ongoing repression," said the EU's foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell. Sanctions against Syria were introduced in 2011. However, exceptions are foreseen for humanitarian purposes.

Cyprus expects to receive some 600,000 passengers in August, transport minister Yiannis Karousos said Thursday, noting that this estimate includes people flying in on commercial and private planes, Ekathimerini writes. "There is a gradual lifting of measures," Karousos said, noting that "we are kicking off on June 9, and by June 20 passengers from a number of countries won't need to present a certificate [for coronavirus]."

A report on Thursday by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) urges EU governments to respect fundamental rights when using contact-tracing apps to curb the spread of the coronavirus. It also calls for open-source solutions to enhance transparency and confidence in the tools. "Respect for fundamental rights forms part of our public health strategies. This includes maintaining privacy and data protection legal safeguards," said FRA director Michael O'Flaherty.

The number of Americans who lost their jobs in the past 10 weeks soared to more than 40 million, with unemployment claims continuing to rise, the Guardian writes. Earlier this month, department of labor reported that more than 20 million Americans lost their jobs in April, bringing the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent, up from 4.4 percent in March - the highest numbers since the Great Depression.

South Korea has reported its biggest daily increase in coronavirus cases in 53 days, triggering warnings it may have to revert to stricter social distancing measures after appearing to have brought the outbreak under control, The Guardian reports. There were 79 new infections on Thursday, with 67 of them from the Seoul metropolitan area. The new spike in infections has underlined the risks that come with relaxing social distancing rules.

Shares in European banks soared by 4 percent after the EU unveiled its multi-billion pandemic bailout plan on Wednesday, amid broader market gains. Shares in some travel firms, such as Tui, also rebounded, as EU states slowly reopened to tourism. But the value of the British pound fell by 1% against the euro, as EU and UK negotiators appeared no closer to serious progress on future trade talks.

Antisemitic crimes in Germany rose by 13 percent to 2,032 last year, with 93 percent of them committed by far-right extremists, the country's interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said on Wednesday. "We must do everything humanly possible to ensure the protection of our people," he said. "Antisemitism has become commonplace for Jews in Germany. Especially on the internet," Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, added.