Eurotopics.net

United behind purple banners, hundreds of thousands of protesters have gone on strike across Switzerland for equal rights and equal pay for women and men. Organisers say the rally is the biggest political demonstration in the country's recent history. Media outlets point out parallels with another of today's big protest movements.

Just two days after stepping down as Slovakian president Andrej Kiska established a new centre-right party on Monday. Commentators believe Kiska aims to become prime minister as the leader of Za ľudí (For the people) in next spring's elections and take differing views of the plan.

Athens and Skopje settled their name dispute over "Macedonia" a year ago when on 17 June 2018 they signed the Prespa agreement. The landlocked country in southeastern Europe is now called North Macedonia. Both sides have benefited from the resolution of the dispute, Greek observers conclude.

The Eurozone finance ministers have agreed on the key points of a future Eurozone budget, but the compromise hardly differs from the general decisions that the Eurogroup had already reached at the end of last year. The details of the financing of the budget and its total amount have yet to be decided. Can this reform stabilise the monetary union?

The new parliamentary group Identity and Democracy (ID) was founded in the European Parliament last week. Under the leadership of the Italian Lega politician Marco Zanni the group occupies 73 of the parliament's 751 seats. But commentators say that the new alliance has little in common with the big alliance of anti-European parties Lega boss Matteo Salvini had envisaged in the election campaign.