Euobserver.com

EU approval of Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine could be delayed until the end of the year, a German official has told Reuters. "Approval of Sputnik will be delayed probably until September, maybe until the end of the year," he said, citing Russian delays in handing over clinical date to the European Medicines Agency in Amsterdam. The EMA had previously been been expected to decide on Sputnik V in June.

Relations between the US and Russia warmed up slightly after a summit in Switzerland, even as the EU predicted ties with Russia would get worse in future.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, along with Ecre, a Brussels-base NGO, have proposed a plan to increase sea rescues. The call comes ahead of an EU summit later this month among EU heads of state and government.

The UK has asked the EU to suspend an imminent ban on the sale of British sausages in Northern Ireland to give both sides "breathing space" to negotiate an agreement on the Brexit protocol and avert a trade war, The Guardian writes. At the end of June, the grace period on an EU prohibition on the sale of chilled meats from Great Britain in Northern Ireland shops expires.

EU justice commissioner Dider Reyners said on Wednesday that he "deeply regrets" the new law in Hungary that bans the portrayal of homosexuality to minors. "When building their own identities, younger generations need to have access to information that reflects a modern and truly open society, in all its diversity. No one should be censored," he added. The legislation conflates paedophilia and homosexuality and restricts sexual education.

EU member states reached a position on Wednesday on extending roaming rules - which must be negotiated with the European Parliament. The current regulation, which entered into force in 2017, will expire on 30 June 2022. But EU countries have weakened provisions in the proposal, such as the obligation for telecoms operators to provide consumers with the same quality of service abroad as at home, the European Consumer Organisation said.

A Greenpeace logo potentially saved the life of the environmental activist who parachuted onto the pitch at the Euro 2020 France-Germany match Wednesday, the interior minister of the region of Bavaria said Thursday. "Due to the Greenpeace banner the marksmen did not intervene, but if police had [thought] ... they might've been dealing with a terrorist attack, the aviator may well have paid with his life," Joachim Herrmann said.

German defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said she was pulling a whole platoon of soldiers from Nato's Russia-deterrent force in Lithuania after media revelations that soldiers had sung antisemitic songs and filmed a sexual assault at a party in a hotel in April. "The misconduct of some soldiers in Lithuania's a slap in the face of everyone who works in the Bundeswehr [German army]," she said, promising to punish individual culprits.

"Now I can go to the bank?," asked Portuguese prime minister António Costa to EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, as the EU executive approved his country's national Covid-19 recovery plan.

The EU does not expect US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to meet its goal of delivering 55 million Covid-19 vaccines for the second quarter of 2021, due to a manufacturing issue.

The revamped Renewable Energy Directive next month should set an EU binding renewable energy target of at least 50% by 2030, paving the way towards transition to a 100 percent renewable-energy based system by 2040.

The Chinese mission to the EU denounced a Nato statement that declared Beijing a "security challenge," saying China is actually a force for peace but will defend itself if threatened, AP reports. The Chinese news release said the Nato statement was a "slander on China's peaceful development, a misjudgment of the international situation and (Nato's) own role, and a continuation of the Cold War mentality and organisational political psychology."

The EU and US have ended their oldest trade war in a show of transatlantic unity one day before US president Joe Biden meets his Russian counterpart.

Israel has launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the first since a truce ended 11 days of conflict last month, in response to incendiary balloons launched from the Palestinian territory, The Guardian writes. The flare-up in violence, a first test for Israel's new government sworn in three days ago, followed a march in East Jerusalem by Jewish far-right nationalists that had drawn threats of action by Hamas.

Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić met Kosovo prime minister Albin Kurti in Brussels on Tuesday to resume talks on normalising relations, but the meeting saw little progress, the EU mediator, Miroslav Lajčák, said. "It was not an easy meeting, but it was important that it happened," he said. Kurti "wanted to hear when we will recognise independent Kosovo ... and I said never," Vučić told press afterward, according to AP.

A French court ordered Ikea to pay a fine of €1m after the retailer was found guilty of spying on its staff and storing employee data, Reuters reports. Prosecutors said the French subsidiary hired a security company and private detectives to illegally obtain information on its employees and prospective staff as part of a "spying system" that operated from 2009 to 2012.

The EU was set to raise €20bn from its first issue of 10-year bonds in its €800bn post-pandemic recovery fund, amid soaring demand for the triple-A rated financial product Tuesday, Reuters reports. Demand outstripped supply, with investors keen to buy up to €145bn on the day. The programme will make the EU the world's largest supranational debt issuer when completed. The fund is to help member states up till 2026.

A German MEP from The Left group will file a lawsuit at the country's Federal Constitutional Court on Thursday, challenging the legality of the €8bn European Defence Fund (EDF). "The EDF is clearly not only a breach of the EU treaties but is a fundamental violation of the so-called EU peace project that will only benefit the arms industry," said left-wing MEP Özlem Demirel.

Coffee and chocolate supplies in Europe soon could be disrupted by the climate crisis as droughts hit producer countries, according to a study, The Guardian reports. The research also found a high vulnerability for palm-oil imports, used in many foods and domestic products, and soybeans, which are the main feed for chickens and pigs in the European Union.

The European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that any national data protection authority can take a company to court in their own country when there are cross-border data processing, even if they are not the leading authority. The ruling ends a case between Facebook against the Belgian data agency, and it is expected to have implications for the cross-border enforcement of the EU data protection rules (GDPR).