Euobserver.com

While online is becoming the main method for buying pets, the lack of rules on the responsibilities of platforms regarding pet advertising has severely compromised consumer protection, fair competition, and animal health and welfare.

The European Commission aims to increase the bloc's wind energy production at sea massively, reaching at least 300 GW by 2050 - a 25-fold increase from the bloc's current offshore wind capacity of 12 GW

EU leaders also agreed on Thursday on the need to clearly communicate the importance of vaccines amid rising scepticism, and avoid prematurely ending confinement measures.

The German EU presidency will take the lead in negotiations between the key supporters and opponents of the rule-of-law conditionality in the next weeks.

The EU and UK chief negotiators have suspended their meetings on post-Brexit talks, after a member of the EU team tested positive for Covid-19. Michel Barnier said his UK counterpart David Frost agreed to suspend negotiations between them for a "short period". Their teams would continue talks, in "full respect" of safety guidelines. The UK and the EU have only weeks to sort out on agreement on their future relations.

The European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that cannabidiol (CBD) cannot be regarded as a narcotic drug and is thus subject to the bloc's principle of the free movement of goods. "A member state may not prohibit the marketing of cannabidiol lawfully produced in another member state. That prohibition may, however, be justified by the objective of protecting public health," the EU's top court said.

Romanian prime minister Ludovic Orban said on Thursday that Hungary and Poland blocking the EU budget and coronavirus recovery package is "negative for the whole EU", AFP reported. "Blocking the adoption of a decision on the recovery plan negatively affects the whole EU, including the citizens of Hungary and Poland," he said. "It's in everyone's interest, including every Hungarian citizen, that the recovery plan is adopted as soon as possible."

A new Polish judicial disciplinary chamber, stuffed with government loyalists, has lifted the immunity of a government-critical judge, Igor Tuleya, meaning he could be jailed for up to three years on a technicality. "I can appeal to Europe ... You allowed the rule of law to be destroyed in Poland," Tuleya told Reuters. An EU court injunction earlier said the disciplinary chamber must suspend its work, but Warsaw ignored it.

The UK has said it will ban sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2030, five years earlier than previously promised, in what its prime minister Boris Johnson called a "green revolution". The news comes amid falling car sales in EU markets, due, in part, to the pandemic, with almost 1 million fewer vehicles sold in October this year than last year, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association said.

EU foreign ministers are to announce a third round of sanctions against Belarus on Thursday, amid lethal regime violence.

Several thousand people protested in Berlin on Wednesday against the German government's push to enshrine restrictions introduced to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 into an existing law. Some 190 protesters were arrested and nine police officers were hurt in the clashes as police tried to disperse the crowd. The protesters say the coronavirus laws give the government too much power and endangers citizens' civil rights.

Calls for the resignation of Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen mounted on Wednesday after her agriculture minister Mogens Jensen resigned over an illegal order by the government to cull the country's farmed mink, Reuters reported. Earlier this month, Danish authorities culled more than 17 million mink from 1,100 farms across the country to prevent the spread of Covid-19, including a new mutated strain that could hamper vaccines' efforts worldwide.

Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi said on Wednesday authorities are working towards finishing the construction of new, better-equipped, reception centres for asylum seekers on the islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos by the autumn of 2021, Reuters reported. "In 12 months from today we should not have any of the legacy reception system we are seeing today," Mitarachi told a news conference.

Vladimir Putin has said it would be "suicidal" for the Armenian government to back out of a Russian-brokered ceasefire in the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, as opposition forces in Yerevan protest against the week-old truce and call for the resignation of the prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, the Guardian writes. The deal gave Azerbaijan significant territorial concessions after launching a bloody six-week war.

France's EU affairs state secretary Clement Beaune said his country and Germany are looking into "technical clarifications" on rule-of-law conditionality to resolve the issue, but floated the idea of doing the recovery fund without Poland and Hungary.

The Greek ministry of foreign affairs, in a 25-page letter to the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, says its border operations are designed so that approaching potential asylum seekers "retreat and flee to the interior of the Turkish territory".

The "unravelling" of Ethiopia, millions of new refugees, and warfare spilling to the Red Sea coast - this is what the EU and its regional allies fear, a leaked report says.

The European Commission recommended a slew of anti-corona measures, urging member states scale up testing capacity, by increasing the use of rapid antigen tests, in order to help ease travel restrictions and prevent laboratory collapses.

Let us be frank, in Europe too, we are grappling with democratic backsliding and assaults on our democracy from the inside.

Egyptian security officers have arrested two members of the leading human rights organisation Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, after they met with ambassadors from EU countries, including Germany and France. The French ministry of foreign affairs said "France expresses its deep concern" over the arrests, which have also been condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other NGOs.