Euobserver.com

All six British football clubs who were due to play in a controversial European Super League have withdrawn from the project, following a public and political outcry. "It was never our intention to cause such distress ... We made a mistake, and we apologise," the Arsenal football club said in a statement Tuesday. The remaining three Italian and three Spanish clubs in the league are expected to follow suit Wednesday.

Concern is growing in European foreign ministries that Russia is preparing to recognise the sovereignty of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic in Ukraine, amid a massive military build-up on Ukraine's eastern border. The Russian presidential decree could come before the weekend, an EUobserver source said. Russia invaded east Ukraine in 2014 after a pro-Western revolution in Kiev and has kept the region under occupation ever since.

Following a conversation between Spanish justice minister Juan Carlos Campo and EU commissioner for values and transparency Věra Jourová earlier this week, Spain on Tuesday withdrew its proposed controversial reform of the country's top legal body. Brussels previously said that the reform of the General Council of the Judiciary, which has lasted two-and-a-half years, must ensure that the council is not perceived as "vulnerable to politicisation".

EU commissioner for the internal market Thierry Breton told an Irish parliamentary committee on Tuesday that at least 12 of the 27 member states are confident of being able to vaccinate 70 percent of their adult population by mid-July, Reuters reported. "This number is increasing on a daily basis," he also said. The EU has set a target of vaccinating at least 70 percent of its adult population by September.

Europe's medicines regulator has found a possible link between Johnson & Johnson's coronavirus vaccine and very rare cases of unusual clotting disorders that prompted authorities in Europe and the US to pause the shot's rollout last week, The Guardian writes. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said its safety committee had concluded a warning should be added to the vaccine's product information, but that the shot's benefits outweighed its risks.

The Czech Republic called on its EU and Nato partners to expel Russian diplomats in solidarity, accusing Moscow of orchestrating an "unprecedented terror attack" on Czech territory, AFP reports. Foreign and interior minister Jan Hamacek said he would summon the Russian ambassador Wednesday to disclose further steps. "We are calling for collective action of EU and Nato countries aimed at solidarity expulsions," Hamacek told reporters.

The International Energy Agency (IAE) said on Tuesday that global CO2-emissions from the energy sector will raise by nearly five percent (reaching 33 billion tonnes) this year, Reuters reported. During the pandemic, energy-related emissions fell by 5.8 percent to 31.5 billion tonnes. "This is a dire warning that the economic recovery from the Covid crisis is currently anything but sustainable for our climate," IEA executive director Fatih Birol said.

Russia will soon have more than 120,000 troops on Ukraine's border, Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said, calling for new Western economic sanctions to deter Moscow from "further escalation", Reuters reports. "The cost of preventing Russia's further escalation will always be lower than the cost of stopping it and mitigating its consequences," Kuleba said. Western officials say the concentration of forces is now larger than during the annexation.

Norway, Finland, Sweden Denmark lead the world ranking of 180 countries, while - among EU members - Malta, Hungary, and Bulgaria have the lowest placings.

Bogus Covid conspiracy theories are more often debunked in Facebook in the US than those found in Europe - especially when written in Italian and French, a study has found.

The European Union is sending 651,000 BioNTech/Pfizer coronavirus vaccines to the Western Balkan countries - after lagging behind the 'vaccine diplomacy' of Russia, China, and even Serbia, in the region.

Afghans in 2020 constituted the second-largest group of asylum seekers arriving in Europe - outlining the necessity to accelerate the reform of the EU migration regime to avoid another crisis.

In the eyes of the Russian elite, most of Europe is just a bunch of spoiled, decadent, pipeline addicts that takes its illusions for reality, and can be easily played with.

The Czech government has downplayed the significance of Russia's lethal attack on a weapons depot in 2014, but further retaliatory measures, including at EU or Nato level, could follow.

Leading officials for the German conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party voted to nominate Armin Laschet as chancellor candidate for this year's election, Deutsche Welle reports. A majority of 77.5 percent of the party board voted in favour of the party leader, while Bavarian leader Markus Söder received 9 votes. The vote is not an official decision, but Söder said he would respect the wishes of the CDU party board.

The European Commission announced on Monday it has activated the contractual option for member states to purchase 100 million more BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine doses - bringing the total number of doses supplied to the EU in 2021 to 600 million. The EU expects to receive 250 million doses of BioNTech/Pfizer in the second quarter (April to June). The EU is currently in talks with the company to purchase 1.8bn more doses.

EU states have imposed sanctions on two Myanmar conglomerates - Myanmar Economic Holdings Public Company and Myanmar Economic Corporation - said to provide income for the military junta responsible for killings hundreds of pro-democracy protesters in recent months. They also added 10 junta members to their earlier 25-strong travel ban and asset-freeze lists saying: "Sanctions are crafted in such a way to avoid undue harm to the people of Myanmar".

No new Russia sanctions were being prepared, despite its largest-ever deployment of 150,000 troops on Ukraine's borders and the risk a small "spark" could ignite a wider conflict, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Monday. Some foreign ministers in Monday's meeting called for the EU to publicly threaten new economic measures as a prophylactic against escalation, diplomats said. "This is up to EU leaders to decide," one diplomat noted.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg slammed the "tragedy" of vaccine inequity on Monday as she donated €100,000 to the World Health Organization's COVAX scheme. "We have the means at our disposal to correct the great imbalance that exists around the world in the fight against Covid-19," she stressed. Thunberg said earlier she plans to skip COP26 because the uneven rollout of vaccines would not allow countries to participate on even terms.

The Conference on the Future of Europe, thrown off-track by the pandemic and then by an intra-institutional fight over its leadership, will officially kick off on 9 May, but EU citizens can already start the debate online.