Eurotopics.net

Details keep emerging in the UK about a lobbying affair involving ex-prime minister David Cameron, sparking a debate about the relations between politics and business. Cameron brought entrepreneur Lex Greensill into the government as an advisor in 2012. After resigning as prime minister Cameron became an advisor to financial services company Greensill, which went bankrupt in March.

The decision of Germany's Constitutional Court on Berlin's rent cap is a big topic in Europe's press beyond the country's borders. The Berlin law entered into force in February 2020 and froze existing rents. Now the court in Karlsruhe has ruled that the legislative powers to adopt such a law were not in the hands of individual German states, but at the federal level, which had already established a 'brake on rents' in 2015.

Latvia's anti-corruption agency Knab this week said it had found no evidence of money laundering at ABLV, Latvia's third-largest bank - two years after US financial authorities accused it of corrupt dealings. ABLV denied the allegations at the time, but Latvia's Financial and Capital Market Commission nevertheless put the bank's operations on hold at the European Central Bank's request.

Domestic flights on routes that take less than two and a half hours to travel by train are to be banned in France. A corresponding bill following up on proposals by the Citizens' Convention for Ecological Transition has been passed by the National Assembly. The move meets with approval in Europe's press, but there are also questions about its impact.

Poland's bishops have voiced "serious moral concerns" about the coronavirus vaccines produced by Astrazeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Catholics should refuse vaccination with these substances because foetal cells are used in their production, Józef Wróbel, the chairman of the bioethics team of experts at the Polish Bishops' Conference, said on Wednesday. The national press takes the bishops to task.