Euobserver.com

Spanish foreign minister Arancha González Laya said Wednesday her country was to work with Gulf sovereign wealth funds to leverage extra investment on EU-funded projects on post-corona economic recovery. "They are very interested in projects of decarbonisation, digitalisation, and modernisation of our productive structure," she said, mentioning the United Arab Emirates' Mubadala fund, Qatar's QIA fund, and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, as "good connoisseurs of Spain and good investors".

US firm Pfizer has not delivered some 10m doses of coronavirus vaccine that were due in December, compounding the bloc's difficulties in joint purchasing of drugs, Reuters reports, citing EU officials. The 30 percent shortfall comes after similar delays in EU deliveries by British-based company AstraZeneca and American firm Moderna. An EU source said the Pfizer shortfall ought to be rectified by March, however.

Lithuania has banned a Chinese tech firm on security grounds, while Estonia warned the EU on the dangers of both Chinese and Russian espionage.

EU countries have asked the foreign service to draft a blacklist of Myanmar coup leaders in response to escalating violence.

Hungary is buying up vaccines from Russia and China. But tricky regulatory oversight questions remain as the European Commission sheds doubt on the quality and safety of Sputnik production.

Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki welcomed in the Wawel Castle his Hungarian, Czech, and Slovak counterparts Viktor Orban, Andrej Babis, and Igor Matovic, and European Council president Charles Michel, for the 30th birthday of the Visegrad Four group.

Italy's new prime minister Mario Draghi called on Italians on Wednesday for unity to help rebuild the country following the coronavirus pandemic and promised his new government would introduce sweeping reforms to revitalise the battered economy, Reuters writes. His immediate priorities will be ensuring a smooth coronavirus vaccination campaign and re-writing plans for how to spend more than €200bn of EU funds aimed at rebuilding the economy.

Croatia is negotiating with Moscow the possibility of importing Russia's Covid-19 vaccine, Reuters reported. The health minister, Vili Beros, said that the government asked its drugs regulator to consider approving the shot without waiting for the approval in the EU. "It is not illegitimate to seek solutions also outside the European Union, especially if there is a delay in deliveries within the EU framework," Baros said on Wednesday.

The Covid-19 pandemic has added €20 trillion to global debt over the last year, a new study has shown, leaving it at a record €233 trillion and the worldwide debt-to-GDP ratio at over 355 percent, Reuters writes. The Institute of International Finance's global debt monitor estimated government support programmes had accounted for half of the rise, while firms, banks and households added €4.5 trillion, €3.2 trillion and $2.1 trillion respectively.

Ryanair lost a legal fight in the European Union's second court Wednesday against state aid being granted to pandemic-hit rivals Air France and Sweden's SAS through national schemes., Deutsche Welle writes. Judges at the EU's general court in Luxembourg backed EU competition regulators who had allowed the support, under loosened rules. National governments offered more than €3 trillion in aid to companies across the 27-member bloc.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) called for the release of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny on Wednesday, Deutsche Welle reports. "The Court grants an interim measure in favour of Alexei Navalny and asks to the government of Russia to release him," the court said in a press release. The ECHR is the international court of the Council of Europe, of which Russia is a member.

The EU's proposal for reform of the controversial energy charter treaty pushes for a 10-year phase-out for protection of fossil-fuel investments. But gas gets a more lenient treatment.

From Estonia to Moldova and from Slovakia to Georgia, the wider region of eastern Europe is increasing its number of female heads of state and prime ministers, seeing more women occupying the highest echelons of national politics.

The current Bulgarian veto of North Macedonia's EU accession process partly focuses on 19th century rebels who fought Ottoman rule in the area then known as Macedonia, which included North Macedonia and parts of modern Bulgaria and Greece.

The European Commission announced on Wednesday it had secured an extra 300 million doses of the Moderna vaccine - 150 million this year, and the option to purchase anther 150 million in 2022. The EU has now access to 2.6 billion doses. So far, the Pfizer/BioNtech, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines are the only jabs authorised in the EU. Meanwhile, vaccination delivery delays have caused disruptions in member states' vaccination programmes.

Belgium has found five people infected with the so-called Brazilian Covid-19 variant, more contagious than the other known variants, the Belgian newspaper De Standaard reports. One of the infected people lives in the city of Seraing, one in Flanders and three in or around Brussels. None of them had travelled. Like the South African variant, the Brazilian variant is able to circumvent Covid immunity.

Belarus has attacked its last few independent journalists in raids that prompted an international outcry.

Greece has temporarily closed its vaccination centres after a severe storm hit the country, carpeting Athens and its iconic Parthenon temple complex in snow. "We obviously recommend great care be taken in all movement, all unnecessary movement should be avoided ... we'll all have to show patience as we deal with a phenomenon that is truly unprecedented," Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said. Migrants in Greek camps also endured hardship.

Consumer groups in 15 European countries, as well as Beuc, a European umbrella group, raised the alarm over children's security and Chinese video-sharing app TikTok on Tuesday. "TikTok fails to protect children and teenagers from hidden advertising and potentially harmful content on its platform," Beuc said. "We're always open to hearing how we can improve," a spokesman for TikTok, which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, told Reuters.

The EU has invited US secretary of state Anthony Blinken to join foreign ministers by videoconference when they meet in Brussels Monday to discuss China, Iran, Russia, and Turkey, according to the Politico news website, citing three anonymous diplomats. The joint talks would be the first since the new US administration, amid tensions over EU efforts to forge closer trade ties with China and Germany's new gas pipeline with Russia.