Euobserver.com

A legal battle between locals on the one hand and the state and the labour youth organisation on the other side postponed the inception of the memorial in remembrance of the victims of Anders Behring Breivik.

Gas flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline have restarted after 10 days of maintenance work, despite fears of further gas supply disruptions of a full cut-off next winter.

The EU Commission has drastically cut its Covid-vaccine order from French firm Valneva from 60m doses to 1.25m, amid slowing demand in EU countries, where many vaccination programmes have matured, Reuters reports. The French vaccine had faced drawn-out delays by the EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency, ultimately seeing it miss out on the European spending spree at the height of the pandemic.

Local councillors in the Slovak village of Varin have caused outrage by declining requests from central authorities to rename a street which honours Slovakia's WW2-era fascist leader Monsignor Jozef Tiso. Just one councillor voted to rename 'Tisova' street, meaning the case will end up in courts. Tiso led Slovakia as a Nazi vassal between 1939 and 1945, overseeing the deportations of some 90,000 Slovak Jews to die in concentration camps.

The internal Conservative race to replace Boris Johnson as party leader and thus British prime minister has been narrowed down to two final candidates — former finance minister Rishi Sunak, and current foreign secretary, Liz Truss. The pair will now spend the summer campaigning to win the votes of the party's approximate 140,00-200,000 members, with a result due to be announced on 5 September. Johnson remains PM until then.

Polish rule-of-law anomalies mean it shouldn't get EU pandemic recovery funds until further reforms are made, MEPs said after visiting Warsaw this week. "It seems that there are systemic problems caused by the government that prevent Poland from meeting all conditions for receiving the EU money," German conservative MEP Monika Hohlmeier said. "There are signs that the distribution of public funds, including EU money, is increasingly politicised," she added.

Wild fires continue to burn in Portugal, Greece, Italy, and France, German news agency DPA reported Thursday morning. Three people have died and more than 1,000 have had to be evacuated in northern Portugal, where temperatures reached all-time highs of 47 degrees Celsius in recent days. A fire near Athens closed parts of a motorway into the city and damaged suburbs. Fires in Tuscany, Italy, prompted 500 evacuations.

Italy looked set to lose its highly-respected prime minister Mario Draghi on Thursday, after his attempt to relaunch his grand coalition government ended with right-wing parties joining the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) in deserting him.

Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow will consolidate its territorial gains in the south, saying that the West has provided long-range weapons to Ukraine, now Russia must push back.

TV viewers have become familiar with images of bodies in the streets of Ukraine, buildings destroyed, and people crowding onto trains to flee. What has gone mostly unreported is the significant increase in domestic violence, and its grave implications.

The European Commission will unveil a new plan to reduce gas consumption by industry and consumers in a bid to prepare for "a likely deterioration" — or a full cut-off of Russian gas flows this winter.

The EU foreign service has said Russian hacker groups were becoming increasingly disruptive in Europe since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. "The latest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against several EU member states and partners claimed by pro-Russian hacker groups are yet another example of the heightened and tense cyber threat landscape that EU and its member states have observed. We strongly condemn this unacceptable behaviour," it said Tuesday.

Italian prime minister Mario Draghi will address the senate on Wednesday morning, before a vote on his speech later the same evening that could decide whether he stays or goes, Reuters reports. Draghi recently resigned due to disloyalty from coalition members, but the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella rejected his resignation, putting the country in limbo. If Draghi's government cannot be revived, elections are expected in September or October.

EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovksis and Chinese vice premier Liu He agreed to "strengthen communication and coordination of macroeconomic policies, increase cooperation in global food and energy security and other fields, and jointly promote global economic and financial stability" in virtual talks Tuesday, China said in a readout. The EU froze a China investment pact last year in a dispute on sanctions and human rights, but this was not mentioned.

Tampere University Hospital in Finland is preparing to receive wounded soldiers from Ukraine, amid concerns whether NGOs bringing in the casualties are well prepared. "We are doing our small part to assist victims of war wherever necessary," the hospital's chief doctor, Juhani Sand, said, Yle reports. "For an NGO to take such risks with people's lives, I hope they have thought it through carefully," health-affairs ministry specialist Krista Lyyra said.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei full-throatedly endorsed Russia's invasion of Ukraine when Russian president Vladimir Putin visited Tehran on a rare foreign trip on Tuesday. The West was against a "strong and independent" Russia, Khamenei said. "Had you not taken the initiative, the other side would have taken the initiative and caused the war," he added.

Human rights groups have criticised the EU for signing a gas-supply memo with Azerbaijan despite its track record of abuses. "The EU should not say a country is 'reliable' when it is ... crushing political dissent," Human Rights watch told The Guardian. "Repressive and unaccountable regimes are rarely reliable partners," Amnesty International added. The EU was making itself more dependent on pipelines instead of less so, Global Witness said.

Business lobbies are voicing cautious support for a proposed EU ban on products made by forced labour, Reuters reported Wednesday. "Companies are increasing their efforts to address issues in their supply chains," the Brussels-based BusinessEurope said. "With more and more countries introducing forced labour/modern slavery related laws with different requirements, it risks becoming an increasingly complex regulatory environment," the International Chamber of Commerce, a global association, also said.

Many Germans saw the country as a benign power that will always favours diplomacy and peace-making over the use of force. Not any more.

Hungary aims to reach a deal with the EU Commission to unblock EU funds by the end of August, Reuters reported. The commission has been withholding its approval for EU's recovery fund over rule-of-law concerns, and delayed unlocking cash to be spent under the EU budget. "Hungary's objective is to close all outstanding issues in the budgetary conditionality by the end of August," Hungarian state secretary Janos Bóka said Tuesday.