Euobserver.com

Finnish foreign minister and EU special envoy Pekka Haavisto has embarked on a second trip to Addis Ababa to appeal for humanitarian access to Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray region and to urge that "Eritrean forces shall withdraw from Tigray". He will also visit Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, amid concern on regional instability. Ethiopia was fighting a "difficult and tiresome" guerrilla war in Tigray, its prime minister said Sunday.

Greece has accused a Turkish coastguard vessel of twice crashing into a Greek port-authority boat in a recent incident and other Turkish ships of pushing migrant dinghies toward Greece. The reports come amid EU efforts to reset relations with Turkey, including new funds for refugees. "Everyone in the region, including the United States, are interested in stability and peace, the only troublemaker is Turkey," Greek military chief Konstantinos Floros said.

Russia has suddenly started preparing for a full-scale war in Ukraine, but what does it really want?

The EU failed to reach its target of having at least 80 percent of the elderly and healthcare workers vaccinated by the end of March. According to estimates, 55 percent will be vaccinated by the end of June.

A family law bill currently under talks in Greece was drafted by an international men's movement, says Giota Massouridou, vice-president of the European Democratic Lawyers Association. Critics say the bill rolls backs international treaties to protect women against domestic violence.

According to the latest opinion polls, Matteo Salvini's League party is leading with 24 percent, followed by Brothers of Italy at 18 percent.

Iceland's international reputation masks two blunt realities that face the country's women - the disproportionate levels of gender-based violence that they experience, and a justice system that is frequently suspicious and hostile towards victims of this violence.

Jens-Peter Bonde, one of the longest serving MEPs in the European Parliament, lost his battle against cancer on Sunday (4 April) in his hometown of Copenhagen. He was elected member of the European Parliament in the first direct elections in 1979. He was re-elected six times consecutively and was a member of the conference of presidents for 17 years. Bonde is the husband of Lisbeth Kirk, the founder of EUobserver.

French economy minister Bruno Le Maire has said Europe should follow America's example by pouring in more money to stimulate its economy after the pandemic. "Whatever we may think about it, the American stimulus plan shows ambition, and the return of US ambition is a good thing," he said. The US plan is worth $4.2 trillion (€3.6 trillion) while the EU's equivalent is worth €750 billion only.

China's Irish embassy has attracted an inundation of online jokes and memes internationally after tweeting a confusing analogy about its tough new style of diplomacy and a Greek fable. "Some people accused China for so-called 'wolf-warrior diplomacy'. In his well-known fable, Aesop described how the wolf accused the lamb of committing offences. The wolf is the wolf, not the lamb … BTW, China is not a lamb," the tweet said.

Dutch caretaker-prime minister Mark Rutte has narrowly survived a vote of confidence over his conduct in coalition-forming talks by MPs. "Parliament has given me a serious message," he said. The motion to censure Rutte came over his handling of rebellious MP Pieter Omtzigt. Rutte had first claimed not to have spoken of sidelining Omtgizt, then to have forgotten having had the talks, but opposition MPs said Rutte had lied.

The European Union has asked India to allow it to buy 10 million doses of AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine from Serum Institute of India, a government official told Reuters. The EU wants the doses to offset supply shortfalls from AstraZeneca's European plants and speed up the bloc's vaccine rollout. Any quick approval of the EU request is unlikely, however, with India scrambling to expand its own domestic vaccination drive.

UK's prime minister Boris Johnson said that experience had shown that the Covid-19 situation usually hit the UK a few weeks after it hurt France. "I'm afraid you can see what's happening in France... It's very sad actually - it's very, very sad," Johnson said. "When they get it in France and they get it bad, two or three weeks later it comes to us."

Europe's vaccination campaign is "unacceptably slow" while rising infection rates in most countries across the region mean its virus situation is "more worrying than we have seen in several months", the World Health Organization (WHO) said, The Guardian reports. WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said that vaccines "present our best way out of this pandemic. Not only do they work, they are highly effective in preventing infection.

A British court has convicted a serving officer in the Metropolitan Police Service on terrorism charges in a first such verdict. Benjamin Hannam, 22, was found guilty of belonging to banned neo-Nazi group National Action and having illicit material on a USB stick on how to kill with knives and home-made bombs. Far-right terrorism was a bigger threat than jihadism in Europe today, its joint police agency, Europol, recently warned.

Hong Kong District Court found seven activists, including 82-year-old barrister Martin Lee and media tycoon Jimmy Lai, guilty of organising and taking part in an unauthorised assembly, Deutsche Welle writes. "We will continue the struggle," said Lee Cheuk-yan. The activists were convicted for their involvement in a massive protest held on August 18, 2019 against a proposed bill that would allow for criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China.

A study from the London School of Economics found both political and economic nativism divides far-right MEPs across Europe, casting doubt on a possible future alliance - as proposed by Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán.

Nine members of the expert group advising the European Commission on sustainable finance rules say criteria for gas, forestry and bioenergy are "a clear contradiction to climate science" - threatening to step down if lobbying and politics prevail over science.

Bulgaria's burgeoning information technology sector is becoming a voice of change – and parties are starting to take notice, as the country votes for a new parliament on Sunday.

At any one time, there are over 100,000 people in prison waiting for a trial - one-in-five of the total EU prison population. These numbers have consistently grown over the past few years and are fuelling Europe's prison overcrowding crisis.