Euobserver.com

The EU has agreed to blacklist Russian officials guilty of wrongly jailing opposition figure Alexei Navalny, in a new "low" in relations.

Russian president Vladimir Putin hosted his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko for talks on Monday, AP reported, with media reports suggesting Lukashenko was aiming to secure another loan. The Kremlin extended both economic and political support to Lukashenko, after he cracked down on the largest mass protests in Belarus' history in the wake of his disputed re-election in August. In September, Putin said Moscow would provide a €1.2bn loan to Belarus.

British prime minister Boris Johnson on Monday announced a slow easing of one of Europe's strictest lockdowns, AP reported. Schools will reopen in early March, people will be able to meet a friend outside. Hairdressers will open in April, alongside restaurants and pubs with outside seating. People won't be able to hug loved ones outside their household until May. The UK had Europe's deadliest outbreak, with more than 120,000 deaths.

The Covid-19 pandemic is likely to widen wealth gaps across Europe unless policymakers help end the health crisis globally, support economies, and green their economies, the International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva warned Monday. According to forecasts, by 2022, per capita income for central and eastern Europe would be 3.8 percent below pre-crisis projections, compared with a shortfall of just 1.3 percent for advanced EU economies, Reuters reported.

It will probably not be before May that Belgium will seriously ease its corona measures - as only then there will be enough certainty of not having a third peak of Covid-19 infections, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo said in a press conference on Monday. Bio-statistician Niels Hens calculated that easing measures too much in March would lead the country to a higher peak than the second wave.

The European Commission said that bloc's strict regulatory process for the evaluation and approval of vaccines is crucial to persuade citizens to get the jab, calling on member states to fight vaccine hesitancy with information.

Romania's ministry of internal affairs wrote to Frontex claiming it did not engage in any illegal pushbacks of people on rubber boats into Turkish territorial waters. The country says it followed EU engagement rules and Greek orders.

Nobody says war will break out in Europe in 2021. But, just as in 1914, the imminent collapse of the multinational Habsburg Empire was the subject of much speculation, some now allude to the disintegration of the European Union.

The treaty enables companies to claim billions in compensation from states in front of international arbitration tribunals, if they feel unfairly treated by the states' energy or climate policies.

EU ministers have agreed to impose visa-bans and asset-freezes on four Russian officials over the jailing of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, Reuters reports. The measures will target the head of Russia's Investigative Committee, its director of prisons, director of the National Guard, and Russia's prosecutor general, Reuters said, citing diplomatic sources. The EU also decided to prepare sanctions on Myanmar's junta and blacklisted 19 Venezuelan officials over its political crisis.

The Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Luca Attanasio, and an Italian military-police officer were killed in an attack on their convoy on Monday, the Italian foreign ministry has said. Attanasio was travelling as part of a UN stabilisation mission in Goma in the east of the country and died of his wounds in hospital. The African country has a recent history of internal conflict and lawlessness.

Slovak foreign minister Ivan Korčok has appealed for EU help on advance of deliveries of coronavirus vaccine due to a health crisis. "We have the highest death-rate in the world at the moment ... this is a very difficult moment for my country," he said in Brussels Monday ahead of talks with EU peers. "Bilateral help would be very welcome," and an "important sign" of European solidarity, he added.

US president Joe Biden pledged "America's back" as Europe's main ally on trade and climate and on pushing back against Chinese and Russian aggression in a video-link speech at the Munich Security Conference Friday. Top EU officials welcomed his remarks. This was "exactly the speech that many Europeans wanted to hear - an America that pats you on the shoulders, that doesn't criticise or demand," German magazine Der Spiegel wrote.

US president Joe Biden will mark the country crossing 500,000 lives lost from Covid-19 with a moment of silence and candle lighting ceremony at the White House, AP reports. The nation is expected to pass the grim milestone on Monday, just over a year after the first confirmed US fatality due to the novel coronavirus. Biden has made a point of recognising the lives lost in the pandemic.

European Union foreign ministers are expected to give the go-ahead Monday to sanctions on Russia over the jailing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and a crackdown on protests, AFP writes. They will meet in Brussels for talks that will also include a videoconference with US secretary of state Antony Blinken. The move comes two weeks after EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was caught in a diplomatic ambush in Moscow.

Europe and the United States should, without delay, send enough Covid-19 vaccine doses to Africa to inoculate the continent's healthcare workers or risk losing influence to Russia and China, French president Emmanuel Macron said, Reuters writes. Earlier, Macron urged Europe and the United States to allocate up to 5 percent of their current vaccine supplies to developing countries in an effort to avoid an unprecedented acceleration of global inequality

Britain has pulled forward its deadline for giving at least one coronavirus jab to every adult in the country from September to 31 July, with UK health secretary Matt Hancock saying on Sunday "we now think that we have the supplies" to speed up the vaccination programme. Britain's mishandling of the pandemic saw much higher death tolls compared to most of Europe, but its inoculation scheme won back political capital.

The EU is preparing an eco-label system for air travel for 2022, according to German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, citing internal documents, which said the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in Cologne had put out a tender for a classification system. The EASA system would be for "providing reliable, comparable, and verifiable information" for consumers on airlines and flight-routes' CO2-emissions footprints to enable customers to choose green options.

Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency struck a deal Sunday enabling nuclear weapons inspectors to keep access for three more months, pending a new deal on sanctions with the US. Iran had first threatened to kick out inspectors right away. The brinksmanship comes as US secretary of state Anthony Blinken speaks to EU foreign ministers Monday for the first time, amid EU-mediated efforts to get Tehran and Washington talking.

Unionist politicians in Northern Ireland and England have threatened legal action against the Brexit deal due to trade disruptions.