Eurotopics.net

SUVs, whose popularity with car buyers remains undiminished, cause higher emissions than other car types. In Switzerland, residents of the city of Lausanne are now gathering signatures in a petition aimed at banishing cars that weigh more than 1.5 tonnes from the city, and in Belgium the area around the capital city of Brussels wants to tax cars according to how much pollution they cause. Is this the end of the SUV era?

In Italy a protest movement against the right-wing Lega party seems to be emerging: 15,000 "Sardines" gathered last Thursday in Bologna and on Monday they took to the streets in the northern Italian city of Modena. Their aim is to prevent Salvini's party from winning the regional elections in Emilia-Romagna. Commentators examine the relationship between this movement and the established left.

Teachers in Croatia have expanded the protests they have been holding since mid-October and are staging a general strike this week which they say won't end until the government starts negotiating with them. The latter has so far rejected the teachers' demand for a pay rise of about six percent. For some of the country's media the teachers have lost all sense of proportion.

The protests in Hong Kong have further escalated after activists who had barricaded themselves inside a university used incendiary devices to fend off police surrounding the building. Early on Tuesday morning several hundred left the building, many of whom were arrested. Commentators debate what strategy Beijing will adopt in the long term.