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The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) on Thursday welcomed an agreement reached on extending and updating roaming rules – an initiative widely-regarded as an EU success. But BEUC regrets that the final agreement does not include cheaper calls or messaging to another EU country. "Consumers still face disproportionate surcharges" for the so called intra-EU calls, they say. The current rules were due to expire at the end of June 2022.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday warned rich countries against hoarding vaccines, following the emergence of the new Omicron variant. Experts argue that this is inefficient from the epidemiological and transmission perspective, Reuters reported. "There is risk that the global supply is again going to revert to high-income countries hoarding vaccine," WHO's vaccine director Kate O'Brien said. Just 7.5 percent of people living in Africa have been fully vaccinated.

The initiative is particularly aimed at protecting women and the LGBTIQ community as EU member states are already required to criminalise crimes committed with a racist or xenophobic motivation.

Resistance is emerging among some EU states to proposals to help distribute people saved in search-and-rescue operations as part of its pact on migration and asylum.

"Russia is not planning any attack on anybody," Russia's veteran EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov, has pledged.

The European Commission has unveiled a proposal aimed at improving employment conditions for gig workers, such as Uber drivers or Deliveroo riders. But industry players claim new rules would lead to the loss of thousands of jobs in the EU.

The first two chapters of the EU's sustainable taxonomy have passed - but the future of the ambitious labelling system for green investment is far from certain.

As the European Parliament's internal market and consumer protection committee prepares to vote on its opinion on the Digital Services Act next week, the fate of targeted ads will become clearer.

The Greens and the FDP disagree on major political issues. While they both support the climate battle, their ways of ushering change are vastly different: the Greens advocate tougher environmental laws and regulations, and the FDP calls for market-based solutions.

One of the challenges for the French EU presidency is to convince its European counterparts that Paris's demand for harmonised standards covering agricultural imports is inseparable from the EU's flagship Green Deal, and the core concept of European sovereignty.

US soldiers in Ukraine were "not on the table", US president Joe Biden has said after recently speaking with Russian president Vladimir Putin by phone, while promising spectacular economic sanctions if Russia again attacked Ukraine. "If in fact he [Putin] invades Ukraine, there will be severe [...] economic consequences like none he's ever seen or ever have been seen," Biden told press outside the White House on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

British prime minister Boris Johnson apologised and his aide Allegra Stratton resigned on Wednesday after a video emerged of senior advisors joking about a Christmas party at Downing Street last year, when social events were banned under Covid-19 restrictions. Johnson said he did not know of the party and apologised for the "offence it has caused". Later on Wednesday, he announced tighter Covid-19 measures amid a surge of Omicron cases.

Depression levels have soared in Poland's LGBTI community after years of nationalist-conservative rule by Jarosław Kaczyński's PiS party, according to a study by the University of Warsaw's Centre for Research on Prejudice. Some 44 percent of LGBTI people reported serious symptoms of depression in 2019-2020, compared to 28 percent in 2017, it said. Parents had also become less tolerant of children who came out in the same period, it noted.

EU leaders and eastern neighbours aim to raise alarm on "destabilisation" and "use of migrants for political purposes" at a summit next week.

The Bundestag elected Olaf Scholz as the new German chancellor on Wednesday, in succession to Angela Merkel who held the office for 16 years, Deutsche Welle reports. Members of the parliament voted by 395 from a total of 707 votes cast for Scholz to become Germany's new head of government. Merkel wished Scholz the best of luck, saying it is "the best job there is."

A group of 47 civil society organisations on Wednesday raised concerns over a fresh delay to the publication of the Sustainable Corporate Governance initiative – a proposal that would introduce mandatory due diligence for companies regarding sustainability and human rights. NGOs called on the European Commission to show leadership, arguing that is "unacceptable" that an initiative, announced in 2020, is delayed three times. Its publication is expected in early 2022.

BioNTech and Pfizer said on Wednesday a three-shot course of their Covid-19 vaccine was effective against the new Omicron variant in a laboratory test, France24 writes. Both companies said that two vaccine-doses resulted in significantly lower neutralising antibodies but a third dose of their vaccine increased the neutralising antibodies by a factor of 25, adding they could deliver an Omicron-based vaccine in March 2022 if needed.

The European Chemical Agency revealed on Wednesday that 80 percent of nearly 6,000 products sold online and then inspected were non-compliant with the EU chemicals laws (aka REACH). The products included both professional and consumer products, like children toys, clothes and jewellery. As a result, national authorities launched over 5,000 enforcement procedures, asking companies to remove the products from their websites or adjust their online advertisement to better inform consumers.

The Saudi man arrested on Tuesday at a Paris airport over suspected links to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was released after officials concluded it was a case of mistaken identity, France24 reports. The man had the same name as a suspect reportedly involved in the murder. The Saudi Embassy in Paris had earlier said the arrested person "has nothing to do with the case in question."

Although only a recommendation, the latest proposal on police cooperation would allow them to arrest - or shoot, if necessary - suspects in other EU states. The EU Commission also seeks to automate sharing of facial-recognition images by police.