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The four largest banks in Greece - National, Piraeus, Eurobank, and Alpha - have gobbled up €3.2bn in financial aid schemes from the European Central Bank in recent months, but total net lending to Greek enterprises was just €104m in the first two months of 2021, according to new Greek figures out Monday, meaning that the lenders were hoarding the ECB largesse instead of helping to simulate the Greek economy.

Foreign firms buying more than 35 percent of an EU company with a turnover of more than €100m will have to inform the European Commission if they have received more than €10m in state aid, according to draft rules to be presented by European antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager on 5 May, Reuters reports. The plan is aimed to stop state-backed giants from buying distressed EU assets in the post-pandemic recession.

Freedom of movement and stopping wage dumping were Switzerland's main concerns in talks to update a 2018 draft EU agreement, its foreign minister Ignazio Cassis said Monday. "For Switzerland it is primarily the freedom of employees and their families. For the EU it is freedom of EU citizens," he told press, after debriefing MPs on the last round of EU talks. Low-paid EU workers on assignment threatened wages, he added.

Even the EU's most Russia-friendly leader, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, has voiced solidarity with the Czechs, as fallout continues over a Russian bomb attack.

Germany's Green party is more popular than chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU-CSU conservative bloc, according to a new opinion poll, Deutsche Welle reports. The Greens polled at 28 percent, up six percentage points, according to the Kantar research group's Sunday trend poll carried out on behalf of tabloid Bild am Sonntag. The newspaper reported that this was the Green's highest-ever poll rating in the history of the Sunday trend polls.

A vast majority of Russians support the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and do not believe Russia violated international agreements when it took the action in 2014, according to an independent survey published, The Moscow Times reports. The Levada Center polling agency said 86 percent of respondents supported the annexation, while 71 percent of respondents did not see it as illegal and only nine percent said they did.

Total military expenditure worldwide increased by 2.6 percent in 2020, reaching almost $2 trillion (€1.65 trillion), despite the global coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn, according to a report published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Deutsche Welle writes. Just five countries — the US, China, India, Russia and the UK — made up 62 percent of all military spending.

Germany might not need Russia's Sputnik V vaccine if the European Medicines Agency did not clear it in time, German chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday. "If it [EMA approval] is soon it would, naturally, make sense to buy Sputnik doses ... But if it's in some months, we'll have enough vaccines here by then and we will face the question of how much do we order," she said, Reuters reports.

A cross-party group of British MPs on Monday urged prime minister Boris Johnson to publish all communications with pharmaceutical lobbyists, to better understand the UK's position on the waiver of intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines, Reuters reported. This proposal, initiated by India and South Africa in the World Trade Organization last October, is opposed by rich countries like the US, the EU, the UK, Australia and Switzerland.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen blamed sexism for having been relegated to a sofa in Ankara during a meeting with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the presence of European Council president Charles Michel.

The European Union has launched legal action against the pharmaceutical multinational AstraZeneca for failing to meet its contractual obligations for the supply of Covid-19 vaccines, and for lacking a "reliable strategy" to ensure timely deliveries.

After five years and a European Court ruling against Hungary, Frontex finally decided to leave the country, given Budapest's rights violations. Such alleged violations are also taking place in Greece - but the prospect of Frontex leaving is low.

The new EU ambassador, Luc Véron, is going to have his work cut out for him, as his team has the daunting task of projecting a more assertive values-based foreign policy in a country that openly championed disregarding human rights.

Environmental awareness is high in Norway. Holidays are often spent in their cabins in the forest or on the coast. Yet In 2020, Norway's export of gas exceeded €30bn, and five percent of the workforce is in petroleum industries.

The spokesperson for the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, has announced that a face-to-face EU summit will take place on 25 May. Topics will include Russia and climate change. "Details on logistics following soon," said the spokesperson, in a tweet. Recent EU summits have been held over video conference given Covid-19 related restrictions.

Italy has joined other countries by imposing restrictions on travel from India to avert the spread of a Covid-19 variant as the Asian nation struggles with a surge in infections, Reuters reports. India, which is facing a health crisis, is battling a "double mutant" strain of Covid-19. On Sunday, the country posted the world's highest single-day increase in cases for a fourth day in a row.

Czech prime minister and business tycoon Andrej Babiš should return EU funds paid to his Agrofert business since 2017 due to potential undue influence, European Commission auditors said in a report Friday. "Babiš ... through ... [two] trust funds ... also controls the Agrofert group," they said, adding "the Commission services consider that the Agrofert group therefore falls under the prohibition ... of the Conflict of Interests Act".

The EU has urged China to back off in a territorial confrontation with the Philippines, a Western ally, in the South China Sea. "Tensions in the South China Sea, including the recent presence of large Chinese vessels at Whitsun Reef, endanger peace and stability in the region," an EU spokesperson told Reuters Saturday, after Manila complained Friday that China had stationed militia-manned gunboats around the disputed Whitsun Reef/Julian Felipe Reef.

EU states are to send oxygen and medicine to coronavirus-hit India following a request from Delhi, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and humanitarian aid commissioner Janez Lenarčič said Sunday. "Alarmed by the epidemiological situation in India. We are ready to support," von der Leyen said. Patients were dying at home due to lack of medical resources in India, the BBC reported, amid over 350,000 new infections a day.

Americans who have been vaccinated with EU-approved drugs should be free to holiday in Europe this summer, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said. "The Americans, as far as I can see, use European Medicines Agency-approved vaccines ... this will enable free movement and travel to the European Union," she told The New York Times on Sunday. "The [pandemic] situation is improving in the United States", she added.