THIS WEEK: EU parents’ rights, US trade war, and a Western Balkans summitA new EU law on ‘recognition of parenthood’ will top the agenda of home affairs’ ministers in Brussels. MEPs will also get an update on the Ebola and Hantavirus outbreaks.
As EU lawmakers turn their fire on “foreign-funded” NGOs, Natacha Kazatchkine warns that a coordinated witch-hunt is starving civil society of money, legitimacy and space to defend basic rights.
Pope Leo has chosen to confront one of the most pressing issues of our time by placing lethal autonomous weapons and the militarisation of artificial intelligence at the centre of his thinking.
Albania is already becoming unaffordable for many of its own citizens during the summer months. Entire coastal areas increasingly cater to foreign investors, luxury tourism, and speculative real estate markets. What was once a shared natural space risks becoming privatised scenery for multimillionaires.
The outbreak of Ebola currently hitting the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is being fueled by armed conflict — but also, and perhaps above all, by the global decline in humanitarian aid.
The depopulation situation in Ukraine is particularly acute. The country faces a dual crisis: its population has been declining for over 30 years, and the Russian invasion has only accelerated this trend. Safeguarding a country’s demographics and its future during wartime is a dilemma with no easy solutions – and EU accession might not suffice to reverse the trend.
Most of Europe has seen antisemitism re-emerge dramatically and in explicit and violent forms. Yet alongside it, a more insidious trend is also taking hold: the growing normalisation of Holocaust distortion through fabricated imagery, misleading historical narratives and manipulated content.
From concerns over Israel to getting negotiations right with “our American friends,” data protection has been no walk in the park for veteran EU supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski.
West Bank Israeli settler exports are ending up in Europe’s shops – even in member states which want the EU to ban them in order to curb Israeli aggression, such as Belgium and Spain.
In 2020, the European Parliament even adopted a resolution calling for the EU to become more self-sufficient in medicine security by securing supplies, restoring local medicine production, and better coordinating national health strategies at the EU level. But can the EU actually achieve pharmaceutical sovereignty?
The EU is rushing to authorise its “ICE-style” migrant returns, while spending be millions of taxpayer euros to expand its detention centres in third-countries beyond bloc’s borders.
Why are hundreds of rare disease patients like me still waiting for European Medicines Agency approved drugs?
Last week, the European Commission proposed easier cross-border transport in a new strategy. But what is it, and can it really improve travelling across the EU?
Israeli flag still popular in Europe, song contest indicatesI bet some EU diplomats, just like Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also tuned in on Saturday to see Eurovision and which way the cultural wind was blowing.
As Poland faces mounting pressure to recognise same-sex marriages registered in the EU, one young activist from Warsaw tells EUobserver how conservative forces are trying to resist reform and what it means for LGBTQ+ rights in the country.
South Asians have emerged as a convenient target for the political right, most notably supporters of the far-right nationalist Chega party, which is targeting education fairs and Muslim festivals and created a human rights crisis for the community.
Europe’s creative and cultural sector is outstanding in its diversity, economic significance and in its capacity to innovate. It would be wrong to use it as a means to promote an orchestrated self-image.
From Hungary to France, financial strains, political influence, and growing restrictions on press freedom are ever worse in Europe, the general secretary of the European Federation of Journalists, Ricardo Gutiérrez, tells EUobserver in an interview.
Rightwing groups in the European Parliament have extended for six months a controversial committee investigating NGOs that receive EU funding.
“The reality is that the frequency and intensity of disease outbreaks are increasing”, warned EU international partnerships commissioner Jozef Sikela on Wednesday, as he unveiled a new agenda to boost supply chains and health ‘sovereignty’.