Euobserver.com

OLAF said fraudsters may offer to sell large quantities of vaccines, deliver a sample in order to pocket the first advance payment - and then vanish with the money, or deliver fake vaccines.

The unprecedented events of 2020 pushed the LGBTI communities in Europe "to the brink", ILGA-Europe, an umbrella organisation for LGBTI rights said.

Flying below the radar, given the recent upheaval within the Italian government, is the small but significant steps taken to improve Italy's migration policies.

In my opinion, the contracts Europe negotiated with the pharmaceutical companies were extremely unbalanced. Precise on pricing and liabilities but weak and vague on supply and timing, and with escape routes to the contractual obligations of the pharmaceutical companies involved.

The US and Japan were more of a threat to the City of London than the EU, the UK has said, after Amsterdam recently overtook London as Europe's biggest trading hotspot in the wake of Brexit. "The challenge to London as the global financial centre around the world will come from Tokyo, New York, and other areas, rather than from those European hubs," British foreign minister Dominic Raab said Sunday.

Albin Kurti, a left-wing anti-Serbia hawk, and his allies won parliamentary elections in Kosovo on Sunday, scooping almost 48 percent of votes. "This is an unprecedented event in Kosovo's post-war history," Kurti said. Kurti briefly held power in 2020, but his coalition fell apart under US pressure, in former US president Donald Trump's bid to force through a Serbia-Kosovo peace deal, which remains moribund in EU-brokered talks.

Mutant variants meant that Covid was going to remain a threat for many years to come despite the progress in vaccination roll-outs, Andrea Ammon, the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm, told AFP Saturday. The virus was "very well adapted to humans" and vaccines would need to be changed over time. "So we should be prepared that it will remain with us," Ammo said.

The EU has said China was wrong to ban BBC news from broadcasting there and in Hong Kong, calling it an undue restriction on "freedom of expression and access to information" in a statement Saturday. China did it after the UK banned a Chinese broadcaster, CGTN, earlier in February and the BBC reported on mass-rape of Uighurs in Chinese detention. It was unclear if BBC correspondents in China could stay.

The European Commission has urged Hungary to let opposition radio station Klubradio keep going after it lost its licence. "I would request the Hungarian authorities to take urgent action, pending the ongoing court proceedings," senior EU official Roberto Viola wrote to Hungary's EU ambassador Tibor Stelbaczky 12 February, AP reports. Klubradio was being forced off air on "highly questionable legal grounds" in what would cause it "irreparable damage", Viola said.

EU regulators will fast-track vaccines that combat mutant corona-strains, EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides told the Augsburger Allgemeine Sunday. "A vaccine that has been improved by the manufacturer on the basis of the previous vaccine to combat new mutations no longer has to go through the entire approval process," she said. Meanwhile, Prague is in talks with AstraZeneca to buy extra vaccine after EU approval delays, Seznam Zpravy reported.

Small groups of people held candle and phone-light vigils in support of jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny in cities induing Irkutsk, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, and Moscow on Sunday despite official threats, Reuters reports. There were just a handful of arrests in the town of Kazan. Some 100 women also formed a human chain in a shopping centre in Moscow. EU diplomats had promised to observe the rallies.

A bloc of pro-independence parties won 51 percent in Catalonia's devolved parliament in elections Sunday, gaining a majority for the first time since 2017 in what separatist politician Quim Torra called a "resounding pro-independence victory". The centre-left Catalan Socialist party came first overall (23 percent), saying that meant it was time to "turn the page" on secession. The far-right Vox party did well, winning 11 percent, while centre-right parties floundered.

Draghi will surely win an upcoming confidence vote, but the formation of his cabinet triggered a rupture in the 5 Star Movement, undermining the stability of a key ally.

Outside of Brussels, Visegrad prime ministers will come together to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the central European cooperation within the V4 group. European Council president Charles Michel will join them.

European Parliament president David Sassoli called for the Conference on the Future of Europe "to start as soon as possible". Meanwhile, nearly half of EU citizens would like to see reforms to the bloc.

Last October, Der Spiegel published an investigation into illegal pushbacks off the Greek islands, implicating the EU's border agency Frontex. Journalists asked Frontex to release location data of its vessels, so has an MEP - without success.

On Monday, yet another brick in the Hungary's democracy was removed, with the silencing of the Klubrádió station - with devastating implications for press freedom both in the country and the wider EU.

The UK may be leaving the EU, but it is not leaving Europe. British students have a moral right to connect with their home continent and European students should continue to feel welcomed in the UK.

Some western diplomats will go to opposition rallies in Moscow on Valentine's Day despite Russia's expulsion threat.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Friday specified the EU executive wants to see 70 percent of the adult population vaccinated by 21 September. Previously, the commission said it wanted to see the 70-percent goal reached "by the summer", and "by the end of the summer". "This sets a date, it is very clear the summer ends normally on the 21st of September," she told journalists.