The main debates held during the February 2021 plenary session concerned the state of play of the EU’s Covid‑19 vaccination strategy and the de facto abortion ban in Poland.… Read More Plenary round-up – February 2021
Alexey Navalny is one of Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critics. After surviving an assassination attempt and recovering in Germany, he returned to Russia in January 2021 to face arrest and imprisonment. Mass protests over his detention and revelations of high-level corruption show that an increasingly repressive Kremlin has not succeeded in crushing opposition to Putin’s rule.… Read More Navalny vs Kremlin: Latest developments
With the coronavirus continuing to rage throughout Europe, Parliament’s plenary agenda focuses firmly on getting beyond the crisis.… Read More European Parliament Plenary Session – February 2021
Established as an informal summit meeting in 1975, the European Council became a formal European Union institution, with a full-time President, in 2009, on the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon.… Read More Key issues in the European Council: State of play in December 2020
Armenia and Azerbaijan are bitterly opposed over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-backed separatist territory that international law recognises as part of Azerbaijan.… Read More Armenia and Azerbaijan on the brink of war
While Parliament and its Members were hopeful that the plenary session would return to Strasbourg this month, the significantly higher Covid‑19 health risks for the local population as well as Members and staff mean that the 14-17 September 2020 session will take place in Brussels.… Read More European Parliament Plenary Session – September 2020
Following the post-Cold War reset of the 1990s, EU-Russia relations have become increasingly tense. Although initially seen as a pro-Western reformer, since the start of his first presidency in 2000 Vladimir Putin has shown increasingly authoritarian tendencies, and his efforts to assert Russian influence over post-Soviet neighbours threaten the sovereignty of those states.… Read More The EU and Russia: Locked into confrontation [Policy Podcast]
The European Council video-conference meeting of 19 August 2020 was called by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, due to the increasingly worrying situation in Belarus after the recent national elections.… Read More Outcome of the European Council video-conference of 19 August 2020
The global health crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic – which is currently hitting EU Member States, not least Italy and Spain, particularly hard – raises concern that a combination of disinformation and heavily promoted health diplomacy, echoed by local proxies in Europe, could potentially pave the way for wider influence in other sectors in the wake of the crisis.… Read More Covid-19 foreign influence campaigns: Europe and the global battle of narratives
At their most recent meeting, EU Heads of State or Government postponed decisions on nominating a set of high-level EU appointments, including the position of President of the European Commission.… Read More Outcome of the European Council and Euro Summit, 20-21 June 2019