Euobserver.com

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is being held in a prison camp north-east of Moscow known for its strict control of inmates, a message posted on the opposition politician's Instagram account confirmed, The Guardian writes. "I have to admit that the Russian prison system was able to surprise me," Navalny said, adding: "I had no idea that it was possible to arrange a real concentration camp 100km from Moscow."

Ireland's entry into the Schengen Information System (SIS), announced Monday, will "strengthen law enforcement co-operation and enhance security in Europe", Irish justice minister Helen McEntee said. The database enables police and border guards to see who is wanted for crimes, or has been reported missing, in 26 EU countries, as well as Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. It issued some 40,000 alerts on wanted criminals in 2019, Irish police said.

Europe devotes a lot of attention to 'persecuted Christians in the Middle East'. However, Christians aren't persecuted. They are the victims of terror - like anybody else in the region.

Turkey has said it expects to drop all corona-testing restrictions for UK tourists this summer due to the success of Britain's vaccination scheme. "I expect there will be no such requirement from British visitors as the UK government is rapidly, and impressively, rolling out the vaccination program for the whole nation," Turkish health minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said Monday, prompting an immediate surge in British tourist bookings there.

The Vatican has said priests cannot bless same-sex unions and that such blessings are not valid, in a ruling that disappointed gay Catholics who had hoped their Church was becoming more welcoming under Pope Francis, Reuters writes. From the time he was archbishop in his native Argentina, Pope Francis has supported the right of gay couples to have civil legal protections but has always opposed gay marriage.

Data from satellites showed a decline in air pollution in early 2020, when countries introduced nationwide lockdowns to stop the spread of Covid-19. However, one year later, nitrogen dioxide pollution is going back to pre-Covid levels as regular activity resumes. Nitrogen dioxide concentrations in Beijing dropped by around 35 percent between February 2019 and 2020, before returning to similar levels in February 2021, the European Space Agency said on Monday.

The EU's three largest countries have suspended the Oxford/AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine, hours after the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had seen no evidence the shot had caused blood clots in some people who received it. WHO experts are meeting on Tuesday to discuss the crisis, while the the European Medicines Agency is expected to come out with an updated opinion following its emergency talks on Thursday.

The majority of countries in Europe are falling short on tracking coronavirus variants. Only seven member states have increased genome sequencing to the level recommended for detecting and monitoring the emergence and dominance of these strains.

Nearly 230 women and 600 children with EU and UK nationalities remain stuck in dire conditions at camps in north-east Syria. An internal EU document warns of radicalisation if nothing is done to help them.

The EU-UK deal was designed to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland by applying checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, creating checks on the Irish Sea. London is reluctant to put that into place.

Hamed Ahmadi arrived in Italy to showcase a documentary at the Venice Film Festival. Now he's running a restaurant staffed by refugees, telling their journeys through recipes.

Where there is consensus, it should be welcomed. Critics who lament the Dutch tendency to woolly compromises should be careful what they wish for. Muddling through has served the Netherlands well.

A common vaccination certificate – instead of 27 individual initiatives - can form part of the solution, together with other sanitary measures already in place, to resume travel and tourism and reduce current travel restrictions.

Germany's Christian Democrats slumped to record defeats in two regional votes on Sunday after a muddled coronavirus response, dealing a setback to the party which faces federal elections in September without chancellor Angela Merkel, Reuters reports. In Baden-Wuerttemberg, the Greens won 31.4 percent of the vote and the CDU 23.4 percent, projections showed. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the CDU led in opinion polls until last month but secured only 26.9 percent.

Europe is facing a third wave of corona-infections, amid spikes in numbers in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland, reaching new heights since the start of February. "We are unfortunately facing a new wave of infections," Italian prime minister Mario Draghi said, ahead of a national lockdown starting Monday. "Every 12 minutes night and day, a Parisian is admitted to an intensive care bed," French health minister Olivier Véran said.

The Turkish foreign ministry accused Greece of harbouring terrorists following the airing of an interview with Fethullah Gülen on Greek television, Ekathimerini writes. Specifically, the Turkish ministry claims that Greece is providing refuge for members of the Gülen movement (FETO) which it has designated as a terrorist organisation and has accused of orchestrating the 2016 attempted coup its president. Ankara also decried the interview as inexcusable public propaganda.

China must "restore confidence in Hong Kong's political institutions" and end "oppression of those who promote democratic values" the foreign ministers of the 'G7' countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US - said Saturday. "China is consciously dismantling the 'one Country, two Systems' principle in violation of its international commitments," EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell also said Friday, despite a new EU-China investment treaty.

The Netherlands has joined Ireland in suspending use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine as a precautionary measure following further reports of blood clots in people who have received it, this time from Norway, The Guardian writes. The government said it would now wait for an investigation by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). "We can't allow any doubts about the vaccine," Dutch health minister Hugo de Jonge said.

"It's true errors were made on vaccine orders, both in Brussels and in member states," European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans told German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel Sunday. He spoke after AstraZeneca, a leading supplier, announced further shortfalls in Europe on Saturday, potentially compounding delays in national innocluation programmes. The company's failure to deliver was "unacceptable" and "incomprehensible", French EU commissioner Thierry Breton told French radio on Sunday.

Kosovo, on Sunday, opened an embassy in Jerusalem with a flag-raising ceremony, marking the first majority-Muslim country to recognise the contested city as Israel's capital. The EU previously warned Kosovo, which wants to join the EU, not to do so because it contradicted EU foreign policy. The Jerusalem deal was brokered by the US in return for Israel's recognition of Kosovo sovereignty, which five EU states have still not done.