Euobserver.com

The European Commission on Friday published the redacted vaccine contract signed with AstraZeneca last August, following the row over delays. Earlier, the company's CEO said in an interview there was no legal obligation to fulfil the order set up by the EU for the first quarter. But EU officials responded that the "best-effort" basis is "an objective legal standard" that could be measured by a judge if necessary.

A bill that seeks to reform the framework for the production and export of medical cannabis was presented to the cabinet on Thursday by development minister Adonis Georgiadis, Ekathimerini writes. The bill facilitates the export of medical cannabis products, adhering to the same procedures that apply to generic medicinal products produced in Greece.

Britain aims to apply for membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade bloc of 11 Asian countries, following its full Brexit, Reuters reports. The government aimed to apply before it had published an economic impact study, in a break with normal procedure, but that would give voters and MPs less scrutiny on prime minister Boris Johnson's free-trade ambitions, the opposition Labour Party said.

Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić recently announced a vaccination programme in Kosovo without consulting leaders in Pristina. Officials there have called it illegal, and locals are very confused, Deutsche Welle reports. Vučić said the first to receive the vaccine in Kosovo would be elderly Serbs over 75, then everyone else. It was unclear which vaccine the Serbian president was talking about.

"The evidence that they [manufacturers] have supplied is that they think that it is effective across all age groups. It provides a good immune response across all age groups, so I don't agree [with Germany]," UK prime minister Boris Johnson said Thursday, referring to the Oxford-Astrazeneca coronavirus vaccine. Britain has bought millions of doses, but Germany has said there was insufficient evidence to show it worked for over-65s.

Germany is planning a near-total ban on travellers from Britain, Portugal, Brazil, and South Africa as European governments increasingly move to bar entry from countries where more contagious Covid-19 variants are rampant, The Guardian writes. Berlin's initiative comes as EU interior ministers met to discuss a more coordinated approach to travel restrictions. Last week, Belgium barred all non-essential travel by land, sea, and air into and out of the country.

A judge in Frankfurt, Germany, has jailed for life the murderer of a pro-migrant politician. Stephan Ernst had admitted to shooting Walter Lübcke, a 65-year old centre-right governor, in his garden in 2019 in what was Germany's first post-World War 2 assassination by the far right. Ernst, who acted with an accomplice, was a political extremist motivated by "racism and xenophobia", the German court said on Thursday.

The EU has postponed a protocol meeting between the UK's new envoy to the EU institutions, Lindsay Croisdale-Appleby, and the office of EU Council president Charles Michel in a tit-for-tat dispute, The Guardian reports. The meeting, due Thursday, was put off because London has refused to grant full diplomatic privileges to the EU ambassador, João Vale de Almeida, on grounds he did not represent a normal nation state.

EU top diplomat Josep Borrell should needle Russia about Putin's $1bn palace when he is in Moscow next week, Zhanna Nemstova, a Russian activist, told EUobserver.

Portugal is going through its worst moment since the beginning of the pandemic, but experts have said that the new surge of cases will only peak in mid-February - increasing concerns over the potential collapse of the country's health system.

MEPs on the legal affairs committee are calling on the European Commission to urgently propose a new law that holds companies accountable for human rights or environmental abuses that happen across their supply chains.

EU member states, including the United Kingdom, resettled just over 9,000 refugees last year. In 2019, they took in almost 35,000.

"Covid-19 is not just a health and economic crisis. It is a corruption crisis. And one that we are currently failing to manage," Delia Ferreira Rubio, Transparency International's chair said.

As the war in Syria comes gradually to its painful conclusion, the country's destiny is under the influence of ever more regional and international powers. Europe, however, is not one of them.

Germany will not recommend the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus on its over-65 population, citing "insufficient data", according to a statement on Thursday from the Robert Koch Institute. The AstraZeneca vaccine, at the centre of a row over supplies to the EU, is expected to be approved by the European Medical Agency on Friday. This decision only applies to Germany. The vaccine is already in use in the UK.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin told the 'virtual Davos' event Wednesday that: "Of course, Western Europe and Russia should be together." They should "get rid of the phobias of the past", he added. "We're ready for it, we want it," he said, amid potential, new EU sanctions over his jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The EU also imposed economic sanctions over Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which he did not mention.

Poland is bringing a divisive anti-abortion law into force, amid escalating EU doubt on the legality of its court system.

US operatives recently recovered a Russian 'Pantsir S-1' anti-aircraft rocket system from Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar and flew it intact to Germany to collect intelligence, British newspaper The Times reported Wednesday. Russia had sold it to the Emirates, who gave it to Haftar. The US went after it amid fears of a repeat of MH17 in 2014, when a rogue Russian system shot down a passenger flight over Ukraine.

The UK is to extradite 'Tai', a Vietnamese man allegedly involved in causing a human-trafficking tragedy, to Belgium on a Belgian European Arrest Warrant issued last month, before the UK's Brexit transition ended, in a test of post-Brexit cooperation. Belgium accused Tai of driving migrants in taxis from Brussels to Bierne on the Belgian-French border, in 2019, before they got on to UK-bound lorries, where 29 of them later suffocated.

Boeing 737 Max planes were again permitted to fly, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (Easa) in Cologne, Germany, said Wednesday, lifting a 22-month ban after two air crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018. "We have every confidence that the aircraft is safe," Easa director Patrick Ky said. Ed Pierson, a leading US expert on Boeing, testified to Congress two days ago that US and EU re-certification was premature.