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Violence broke out in the central German city of Kassel on Saturday at an anti-lockdown protest by 20,000 people, Reuters reports. "Bottles were thrown and there were attempts to break through barriers," police said on Twitter, after using water cannon and pepper spray. Crowds carried placards saying "No compulsory vaccination" and "Democracy will not tolerate censorship" and refused to wear masks or social-distance.

Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov urged Russia to dial down espionage activity in his country after prosecutors charged six people for spying last week. "Once again it could be necessary to declare Russian diplomats as unwanted. With regards the operation yesterday, I again address their superiors to stop spying in Bulgaria," Borissov said, Reuters reports. The US and UK voiced solidarity against Russia's "malign activities", while Russia complained of "demonisation".

Keith Schembri, the one-time chief-of-staff of former prime minister Joseph Muscat, was hauled into police detention Saturday on 11 charges of corruption, including money laundering, criminal conspiracy, fraud, and forgery, The Times of Malta reports. His arrest is ongoing fall-out from investigations into the 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who wrote about Schembri and Muscat's corruption schemes. The murder itself was ordered by a Maltese oligarch, however.

The German Green Party promised to scrap the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with Russia if they enter government. "The pipeline project Nord Stream 2 is not only a political project because of its climate and energy implications but also because it causes damage on the geopolitical level," its programme said. The party did well in recent regional elections, but Nord-Stream 2 could be a coalition deal-breaker with the CDU.

Fewer Europeans trust the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine after several countries reported side-effects, such as blood clots, an opinion poll by YouGov showed on Monday, even though scientific studies have found it is safe and effective, Reuters reports. Sixty-one percent of French adults surveyed said the vaccine was unsafe, a rise of 18 percentage points compared to February, YouGov said.

Europe should be ready to kick Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan where it hurts (in his economy) if he goes back to his gas-drilling piracy in the Mediterranean, EU officials have said.

MEPs working on the new EU-wide asylum reforms have cast doubt on whether agreement will be reached with their co-legislating member state counterparts. A proposal to create independent monitors on human rights is also on shaky ground.

The EU Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly said the European Commission was guilty of "maladministration" by failing to make a timely assessment of any environmental impact from the EU-Mercosur trade deal before finalising negotiations in 2019.

Ahead of the EU summit, on Monday foreign affairs ministers are set to approve a new package of sanctions on individuals in several countries, including China and Russia, over human rights abuses.

Those who want to get the jab have to register and book a place on the government-run vaccination platform at the clinic nearest to them - which, for many in large urban areas, proved impossible to do.

The Left won't let this pass. The European Parliament must establish a Committee of Inquiry to investigate the EU Commission for illegal conduct, maladministration and negligence, and to make sure these mistakes don't happen again.

French prime minister Jean Castex announced a limited month-long lockdown for Paris and several other regions to combat surging Covid-19 cases, AFP reports, while insisting the measures would be less strict than in the past. Non-essential businesses will close and movement outside will be restricted in the affected areas, schools will stay open, and outdoor exercise is allowed up to 10 kilometres from home, he said.

The EU has frozen plans to sanction more Turkish officials over gas-drilling in Cypriot-claimed waters, amid a detente in relations, four EU diplomats told the Reuters news agency. "Work has stopped on additional blacklistings of Turkish individuals, and we are not talking of economic sanctions anymore," one EU diplomat said. EU leaders will discuss long-term plans for Turkey relations at a summit taking place in Brussels next week.

The EU has gotten drawn into a verbal punch-up between the Kremlin and White House by endorsing US president Joe Biden's assertion that his Russian counterpart was a "killer".

The AstraZeneca is both safe and effective, concluded the European Medicines Agency on Thursday. The assessment comes after 13 EU states suspended it over now-unfounded fears of possible blood clots.

The G7 group of leading economic powers said it would not accept Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, in a statement marking seven years since the takeover, AFP reports. "We unequivocally denounce Russia's temporary occupation of the autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol. Russia's attempts to legitimise it are not, and will not, be recognised," it said.

The European Parliament has confirmed its representatives for the executive board of the Conference for the Future of Europe, the body in charge of making the event work. They are: Iratxe García Perez (Socialists & Democrats), Manfred Weber (European People's Party) and Guy Verhofstadt (Renew Europe) - with Gerolf Annemans (Identity and Democracy group), Daniel Freund (Greens/EFA) Zdzisław Krasnodębski (European Conservatives and Reformists) and Helmut Scholz (The Left) as observers.

Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan has called a snap election for 20 June, seeking to defuse a worsening political crisis, Deutsche Welle reports. Pashinyan has faced calls to resign since agreeing to a Russian-brokered ceasefire last November that halted six weeks of fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. When the military joined calls for the PM to step down, Pashinyan tried to dismiss the military's chief of staff, Onik Gasparyan.

Two weeks after Hungary's ruling Fidesz party's MEPs left the largest group in the European Parliament, the European People's Party, the party itself left the larger political family - also called the EPP. Hungarian minister Katalin Novak published a letter to EPP leadership about the move, saying "It's time to say goodbye". It marks on end to an over two-year ideological battle between Fidesz and a majority of EPP members.

Mairead McGuinness said "there was quite some head-turning when the UK negotiated with itself an extra period of time" to facilitate the transition - as the negotiations should have been done with the EU.