Euobserver.com

Hungary ordered shops on Friday to sell products, including books, seen as "promoting homosexuality" in "closed wrapping", spelling out restrictions that have set prime minister Viktor Orban on a collision course with the EU, Reuters reported. The decree, issued last Friday included books seen as promoting gender change and containing "explicit" depictions of sexuality. It also banned any sale of them within 200 metres of a school or a church.

No one believes Ukrainian activist Vitaly Shishov killed himself in Ukraine, so who benefitted from his murder?

The EU has blamed Iran for a drone attack on a merchant ship off Oman in July that killed a Romanian and a UK national. "All available evidence clearly points to Iran," EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Sunday, adding: "Such reckless and unilateral actions ... need to stop". The attack took place amid EU-led talks on an Iran nuclear non-proliferation deal, but Borrell did not link the two.

Europe has threatened further sanctions against Lukashenko after a year of intensifying brutality, which has begun to spill across the EU border.

The EU says Belarus must respect its international commitments in combating irregular migration - a message likely to be ignored in Minsk by the regime under president Alexander Lukashenko.

In 2019, 8.4 percent of EU adults consumed alcohol every day, according to figures released by Eurostat on Friday. Portugal had the highest share of people drinking alcohol daily (20.7 percent), followed by Spain. By contrast, less than one percent of people in Latvia and Lithuania consume alcohol on a daily basis. Denmark, Romania and Luxembourg had the highest prevalence of heavy-drinking episodes reported at least once a month.

July 2021 has been Europe's second-hottest July on record, behind only 2010, scientists at the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Thursday. Last month joins July 2020 as one of the world's hottest Julys on record, after 2019 and 2016. The US and Canada have experienced exceptional high temperatures, but parts of east and southeast Asia were also well above average.

The Italian government said on Thursday that teachers will be required to have proof of immunity from Covid-19 before entering a classroom, Reuters reported. They will not be able to work without the certificate, and after five absent days, they will no longer be paid. Italy is already demanding a Covid pass to enter cafes, restaurants and now it has made it mandatory for travellers on trains, planes and ships.

The highest constitutional court in France on Thursday upheld a new law that requires a Covid-19 pass to enter cafes, restaurants and other public venues, as well as the compulsory vaccination for health workers by mid-September, according to France24. The controversial health pass has sparked mass protests for weeks. But the French constitutional court said the measures represent a "balanced trade-off" between public health concerns and individual freedoms.

The UK government of former prime minister David Cameron backed the idea to require non-EU citizens to have an authorisation and pay a fee to enter the bloc's passport-free Schengen area back in 2016, The Guardian reported on Thursday. This week the European Commission announced that British nationals and other visa-exempt non-EU citizens will have to pay €7 to get authorisation to enter the EU by the end of 2022. 

The president of Poland's Supreme Court, Malgorzata Manowska, on Thursday partially suspended a disputed disciplinary chamber for judges until mid-November, amid a row with the EU over its judicial independence, Reuters reported. In two orders, she said that no cases will go to a disciplinary chamber until legislative changes are adopted or until the Court of Justice of the European Union issues a final judgement on this issue.

Hungary's justice minister, Judit Varga, responds to critics - and the European Commission - over Hungary's controversial new LGBTIQ legislation.

The European Commission announced on Wednesday that it had signed a preliminary deal for the purchase of 200 million doses of the promising Covid-19 vaccine developed by the US pharmaceutical company Novavax. The doses will be delivered between the end of 2021 and 2023, but the vaccine still needs to be approved by the European Medicine Agency. Nearly 60 percent of the adult population in the EU is fully-vaccinated.

France's Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, on Wednesday fined the government €10m for failing to improve air quality in several urban areas, such as Paris and Lyon, Reuters reported. But the government could face further €10m fines every six months until it meets its air quality targets, the court said. In the EU, air pollution causes around 400,000 premature deaths every year.

Italy's interior minister Luciana Lamorgese has requested the EU convene an home affairs ministerial to discuss migrant and refugee arrivals - as NGOs seek to disembark over 800 rescued people.

The World Health Organization urged rich countries to halt Covid-19 vaccines boosters to enable every country in the world to vaccinate at least 10 percent of its population by the end of September.

Europe's least-vaccinated countries are in no short supply of Covid-19 jabs - and yet Romania and Bulgaria are both looking for opportunities to sell or donate their excess vaccines which they are not able to administer to their own population.

Last month, president Ersin Tatar of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, unrecognised outside of Turkey, announced the second phase of reopening the derelict tourist district of Varosha in the city of Famagusta.

Europe has reported a decrease in weekly infections of Covid-19 - after more than a month of increases in cases driven by the more-contagious Delta variant.

Thousands of people have fled raging fires near Athens, as Greece grapples with its worst heatwave in more than 30 years. "The foliage is very dense in these areas and it is very dried out due to the heatwave, so the conditions are difficult," greater Athens regional governor George Patoulis told state-run ERT television.