Euobserver.com

EU regions have warned that the local dimension of setting adequate minimum wages is not sufficiently reflected in the directive from the European Commission.

The EU's border agency Frontex says the number of "illegal border crossings" at Europe's external borders dropped by 40 percent in the first two months of 2021, compared to the same period last year. It also noted an increase of some 26 percent in the number of attempts to cross from Libya in the period. People from the Ivory Coast and Tunisia made up the bulk of the Libyan crossings.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel will on Friday (19 March) meet via video conference Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The two sides will discuss "an update" of relations. The meeting comes on the five-year anniversary of the EU's migrant deal with Turkey, used to prevent people from arriving on the Greek islands.

Restrictions on the veil represent an important violation of religious freedom. These restrictions naturally breed resentment among stigmatised and marginalised groups.

The European Union's drug regulator said Thursday that the AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine is "safe and effective." The European Medicines Agency said it could not completely rule out a link between the vaccine and blood clots but noted that the risks do not outweigh the benefits. A number of EU states have suspended the vaccine over blood-clot fears.

Denmark is to limit the number of "non-Western" residents in poor neighbourhoods to 30 percent by 2031 under new legislation by its centre-left government. Concentrations of "non-Westerners" increased "the risk of an emergence of religious and cultural parallel societies", interior minister Kaare Dybvad Bek said. The original bill had used the controversial word "ghetto", but that risked "eclipsing the large amount of [social] work" poor areas needed, he added.

US president Joe Biden said Wednesday Russia will "pay a price" for interfering in America's 2020 election in light of his new intelligence. When asked in a TV interview if Russian president Vladimir Putin was "a killer" who tried to assassinate opponents, Biden also said: "I do". Russia recalled its US ambassador in response, to prevent "irreversible deterioration in relations", which, its foreign ministry said, had reached "a blind alley".

"The US administration is not looking to take sides in this disagreement", a senior aide to US president Joe Biden said Wednesday, on the UK and EU's dispute on Northern Ireland customs law, Reuters reports. The "trade issue" was for Europe to solve by discussing "implementation of the agreement", the official said. Irish taoiseach Micheál Martin held virtual meetings with Biden and others in view of St. Patrick's Day Wednesday.

Irish authorities were obliged to put Irish as well as English on veterinary-medical labels, the EU Court of Justice ruled Wednesday. The victory came for Peadar MacFhlannchadha, an Irish-language campaigner, in the first-ever case heard in Irish in the EU tribunal. The ruling also came out on St Patrick's Day, but represented a largely moral victory, as a new EU law superseding the pro-Irish label one is on its way.

Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, has announced a tough new nationwide lockdown amid infections surging to the highest rate since November, The Guardian writes. The country's health minister Adam Niedzielski said shopping centres, theatres, cinemas and hotels will close from Saturday, while schools will have to switch to online learning. Niedzielski added that Poland could see more than 30,000 new daily coronavirus cases starting next week if the trend continues.

'Chasse à la glu' - a French tradition of catching birds by putting glue on sticks is against EU law, the European Court of Justice said Wednesday, in a victory for the League for the Protection of Birds, a French conservationist group. No EU country should allow hunting that caused serious harm to "by-catch" (unintended target-species), the court ruled. French hunters had defended it as being used for songbirds only.

Australia said it will ask the EU to release 1 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine to help Papua New Guinea battle a dangerous outbreak that authorities fear could spread to other parts of the region, Reuters writes. "We've contracted them. We've paid for them and we want to see those vaccines come here so we can support our nearest neighbour," Australian PM Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

The European Commission has presented a common approach to vaccine certificates to facilitate travel. All EU-wide approved vaccines will be accepted for this document, but member states can decide to accept other vaccines too.

EU governments' lack of coordination in the first and second wave of the pandemic has caused concerns around supply chains, long queues at borders, and practically froze the bloc's passport-free Schengen zone.

A Milan court acquitted energy companies Eni and Royal Dutch Shell, plus a series of past and present managers including Eni chief executive Claudio Descalzi, in the oil industry's biggest corruption scandal, Reuters reports. Prosecutors had called for Eni and Shell to be fined and for a number managers from both companies to be jailed.

Greece denies any illegal pushbacks at sea. The EU takes their version of events as face value, in a system unable and unwilling to shed doubt on Greek authorities - posing accountability questions on the EU's border guard agency Frontex.

Enrico Letta will need all his diplomatic skills to unify a party in a state of perpetual civil war, where former communists co-exist with former Christian Democrats, and which has had nine different secretaries since it was founded in 2007.

Studies show that accommodation of the radical-right by mainstream parties leads to increasing vote share - for the radical-right. This is precisely what Emmanuel Macron is doing - and Marine Le Pen is gaining in the polls.

Dutch centre-right prime minister Mark Rutte is poised to extend his 10-year rule after elections in which new liberal and far-right faces also gained.

The EU's internal market commissioner Thierry Breton has voiced support for the Russian-made vaccine Sputnik V. "Sputnik is a good vaccine, because I think Russians are pretty good scientists, and I wouldn't have any reason to doubt [it]," he told reporters on Wednesday. The Russian vaccine is currently undergoing scrutiny at the EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency.