European Union

Epaminondas Korkoneas, sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2008 murder of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, has been released from prison. In a new ruling Korkoneas's lack of a previous criminal record has been recognised as a mitigating circumstance. Does the court's decision legitimise violence?

Italy allowed 116 rescued migrants to disembark from a coastguard ship Wednesday with Interior Minister Matteo Salvini's backing after five EU countries and the Church agreed to share responsibility for looking after them.

Swiss President Ueli Maurer played down prospects for quickly ending a standoff with the European Union over a stalled partnership treaty that has disrupted cross-border stock trading and strained ties with Switzerland's main trading partner.

Britain's Boris Johnson faces his first test at the ballot box Thursday (1 August) in a by-election that could reduce his parliamentary majority to one, making it harder to enact his Brexit plan.

An estimated 28% of EU citizens could not afford to go on an annual one-week holiday away from home last year, Eurostat reported Wednesday, although this was less than in 2013 (39.5%). More than half of the citizens in Romania (58.9%), Croatia (51.3%, provisional data), Greece (51%) and Cyprus (51.0%, provisional data) were unable to afford a one-week holiday, while in Sweden that figure was only 9.7%.

One in every eight women giving birth for the first time in 2017 in Bulgaria and Romania were teenagers, Eurostat reported Thursday. They had the highest share of mothers below 20 in the EU, followed by Hungary (8.5%) and Slovakia (8.1%). The vast majority of first-time EU mothers were 20-39 years old, while some 4% were 40 or older. First-time mothers older than 40 were particularly common in Spain (8.8%).

The British government announced on Wednesday an extra £2.1bn [€2.3bn] in preparations for a no-deal Brexit on 31 October, including stockpiling medicines, extra border officials and a public awareness campaign. Sajid Javid, the finance minister, announced an immediate £1.1bn, with a further £1bn available. The opposition Labour party called it an "appalling waste of tax-payers' cash, all for the sake of Boris Johnson's drive towards a totally avoidable no-deal".

Some 7.5 percent of people of working age were unemployed in June in the 19 EU countries in the eurozone, Eurostat reported Wednesday. This was the lowest unemployment rate since June 2008. For the whole EU (28 countries), the unemployment rate was even lower at 6.2 percent, the lowest since monthly reports started in 2000. People under 25 still face more difficulty, with EU youth unemployment at 14.1 percent.

EU citizens filed applications to see documents 6,912 times last year. The commission called this "a striking increase" compared to 2017 - and subtly hints at needing more staff.

The fragmented new Europen Parliament does not necessarily foretell paralysis in future EU work on migration and asylum. It is however likely that any new initiatives to be tabled over the next five years might require increasingly-longer gestation cycles.

One-in-five cars equipped with Audi's emissions cheating technology is still on the road, mostly in eastern Europe.