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European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said Thursday (11 January) that interest rates in the eurozone had reached their peak after rising rapidly in response to high inflation last year.

The European Union’s decision to ban exports of plastic waste in and outside Europe is threatening to collapse the market for the collection and recycling of plastic packaging, Belgian industry association Valipac has warned.

In today’s edition of the Capitals, find out more about Germany wrestling with calls to ban the far-right party AfD, the EU Commission inisting on changing Polish state media laws, and so much more.

A group of women victims of Bosnia's 1990s war pressed charges on Thursday (11 January) against organisers of a rally glorifying Ratko Mladić, the wartime army chief given life in prison over war crimes, including genocide.

Kosovo is set to buy Javelin anti-tank missiles from the US in a move which has bothered Belgrade at a time leaders mull compulsory military service in a bid to ensure the survival of President Aleksander Vucic’s “new Serbian world”.

Slovenian police dealt with 54,017 criminal offences last year, up more than a tenth over the year before and on a par with pre-pandemic for years, the latest police statistics show.

The matter has become a hot potato for Tusk’s government as it seems he has the EU backing but is faced with a divided public opinion.

Romanian ports dealing with an increase in trade flows from Ukraine due to Russia’s war in the country will benefit from a state aid scheme the European Commission approved on Thursday.

Bulgaria’s state-owned Kozloduy NPP has filed a lawsuit requesting €250,000 in compensation, claiming civil activists Natalia Stancheva and Yordanka Kulinska distributed false information about the plant.

Bratislava claims it will join the 48 countries that condemned the alleged ballistic missile transfers between North Korea and Russia to attack Ukraine, noting, however, that it “needs relevant evidence” before doing so.

The European elections will be a face-off between those who push for a Europe that champions equal rights and environmentalism and those who question fundamental rights and hold positions contrary to the EU in the run-up to the European elections in June, warned Spanish Employment Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz on Thursday.

In this episode EURACTIV’s Beyond the Byline podcast takes a deep dive into the agreement reached by EU member states to initiate talks with the European Parliament concerning a €50 billion aid package for Ukraine.

Revelations that members of Germany's far-right AfD party secretly met with extremist neo-Nazis and businessmen in a hotel in November have sparked fresh calls for the party to be thrown out of parliament at a time it is polling higher than any of the governing parties at 22%.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on partners to provide decisive political and military support during a visit Thursday (11 January) to his staunch Baltic allies, as other backers waver on aid.

Europe’s last generation rocket launcher Ariane6’s first flight is planned for the summer, the European Space Agency’s boss said on Thursday (11 January), after almost three years of delay, giving the continent hope for newfound access to space.

The United States and Britain launched strikes from the air and sea against Houthi military targets in Yemen in response to the movement's attacks on ships in the Red Sea, a dramatic regional widening of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Czech and Polish laws do not allow citizens of other EU countries to join Czech or Polish political parties, violating EU electoral law, according to the EU’s Court of Justice Advocate General Jean Richard de La Tour.

A non-binding opinion of Polish advocate general Maciej Szpunar to the Court of Justice of the EU suggests reaffirming the country of origin principle on joined cases of the short-term rental industry.

While Brussels has been working to solve the Hungarian blockade since Prime Minister Viktor Orbán vetoed the EU's Ukraine aid package in December, the bloc's officials now have prepared a potential compromise in exchange for dropping his veto. 

Stéphane Séjourné, Emmanuel Macron’s top man in the European Parliament and Renew Group’s President, was appointed Foreign Affairs minister on Thursday (11 January), leaving a question mark as to who will lead Macron’s party in the EU elections.