Euobserver.com

The pandemic has swung the pendulum of political consensus away from the populists, eroding their approval ratings ahead of key parliamentary elections in 2021 and 2022.

US president Joe Biden, who has Irish roots, has called for "calm" in Northern Ireland, following sectarian riots over post-Brexit border arrangements. "We're concerned by the violence in Northern Ireland and we join the British, Irish, and Northern Irish leaders in calls for calm," the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said. "We welcome the provisions in ... the Northern Ireland protocol," she added, referring to the Brexit border deal.

Italian prime minister Mario Draghi on Thursday called Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a "dictator", drawing condemnation from Ankara. EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel met Erdoğan Tuesday, but the Commission chief was left with no seat, causing a stir. Draghi said "with these, let's call them what they are - dictators ... one nonetheless has to coordinate, one has to be frank".

Russia urged Slovakia on Thursday to return thousands of doses of the Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19, after Bratislava's drug agency said the jab batches it had received were different from those being reviewed by the EU medicine agency, Reuters reported. Slovakia bought 200,000 doses of Sputnik V last month. However, Slovakia's drug agency has not been able to assess the jab, due to gaps in data provided by Moscow.

Four people recently died after taking Russia's Sputnik V anti-corona jab in previously unreported cases, which are being taken "seriously" by the EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency.

The violence came as tensions have been building over Brexit, which has seen trade barriers put in place between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain.

Despite the calls for coordination from Brussels, EU capitals started issuing a jumble of measures for the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to respond to concerns over rare blood clots.

This week's snap election in Greenland resulted in a clear majority for the mining-sceptic IA party, in a historic change.

A report published on Thursday indicates that there is €87bn of under construction or proposed fossil gas infrastructure in the EU. Although the bloc is already oversupplied with fossil gas, import capacity would grow by 35 percent if all projects under construction or planned were completed. Meanwhile, it is estimated that gas consumption needs to decline 36 percent in the next decade to reach the EU's 2030 climate targets.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg said Thursday that compulsory vaccinations are legal in a ruling that might create a precedent for Covid-19 vaccination programmes. The ruling came after a complaint by Czech families regarding compulsory jabs for children. "The measures could be regarded as being 'necessary in a democratic society,'" the court said, adding that compulsory vaccines were in line with the "best interests" of children.

Average life expectancy statistics for 2019 dropped in Spain by 1.6 percent and in Bulgaria by 1.5 percent due to the pandemic, according to European Commission data out Wednesday. Lithuania, Poland, and Romania also suffered falls of 1.4 percent each. Denmark and Finland were the only countries who saw a modest increase, of 0.1 percent each. But not all EU member states reported figures on time, blurring the overall picture.

Myanmar's ambassador to the UK, Kyaw Zwar Minn, was locked out of his embassy in London by a deputy on Wednesday after having criticised the junta back home. "I have been locked out," he told Reuters. "It's a kind of coup, in the middle of London ... you can see that they occupy my building," he said. "This is my building," he added, amid a small street protest.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said Wednesday that unusual blood clots with low platelet counts should be listed as a side effect of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca - falling short of limiting its use, Reuters reported. EMA insisted that the benefits of the shot outweigh its risks, adding that the risk of dying from Covid-19 was "much greater" than the risk of mortality from these rare side effects.

A multilingual digital platform will launch on 19 April, allowing European citizens "to provide their views on any topic that they consider important for the future of the EU," the political organisers of the Conference on the Future of Europe said Wednesday. The platform will allow citizens to "put forward their ideas, comment on other people's ideas, create and participate in events," the executive board of the conference said.

Beatings, forced sterilisation, police violence and fire bombings by right-wing extremists against Romani communities are still a reality in Europe. The corona pandemic only worsened this situation.

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warned Ethiopia of the risk of conflict over its giant dam on the Blue Nile, after talks involving the two countries and Sudan ended without progress, Reuters writes. Ethiopia is pinning its hopes of economic development and power generation on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt and Sudan fear will imperil its water supply from the Nile.

G20 finance ministers are exploring a global minimum tax on corporate profits, amid growing international consensus on tackling tax avoidance after the pandemic, The Guardian writes. The virtual meeting between the group of 20 major industrial nations comes after the US made the case for an international base rate this week, in a move by the Biden administration to end US resistance to international tax reforms.

One-in-three Covid-19 survivors in a study of more than 230,000 mostly American patients were diagnosed with a brain or psychiatric disorder within six months, suggesting the pandemic could lead to a wave of mental and neurological problems, scientists told Reuters. "Although the individual risks for most disorders are small, the effect across the whole population may be substantial," said an Oxford University psychiatrist who co-led the work.

Four nights of paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland was blamed on Wednesday on "dishonesty" over Brexit, by justice minister Naomi Long. More than 40 police officers have been injured in nightly rioting since Easter, blamed on loyalists angered at new customs borders with the mainland UK in the Irish Sea. UK prime minister Boris Johnson promised in advance of Brexit there would be no such border.

This week negotiations on a renewed nuclear deal with Tehran started in Vienna. Iran is desperate to have a deal quickly. Elections are coming up in June, and the economy is in terrible shape.