Author: Press Room

Published on 22/06/2026 – 10:47 GMT+2•Updated 16:10 British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced he will step down as leader of the Labour Party but will remain as caretaker prime minister until a new candidate is elected. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Following mounting pressure within the party for a change in leadership, Starmer has begun the process of mapping out a timeline to hand over power. His departure comes just hours before the former Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, a favourite to replace Starmer, was sworn in as an MP after gaining a seat in the House of Commons following a recent…

Updated: 22/06/2026 – 12:20 GMT+2 Moldovan Foreign Minister Mihai Popșoi said the country’s EU accession process and the Transnistria conflict are “parallel” tracks to prevent Vladimir Putin from gaining “leverage”. Moldova is working “tirelessly” to ensure all Moldovans benefit from accession, said the minister. … More

The spread of the horseshoe whip snake in the Balearic Islands has become one of the biggest threats to the islands’ biodiversity. Accidentally introduced from mainland Spain along with ornamental olive trees, this invasive snake has colonised much of Ibiza and Formentera and is driving a decline in native lizard populations, some of them unique to the archipelago. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Experts warn that the species behaves like an apex predator in an ecosystem where it has virtually no natural competitors. Its advance has been so swift that local extinctions of the Pityusan wall lizard have already been documented on several…

Efforts to tackle climate change are facing “changing political circumstances,” but international cooperation must not be “weakened” by leaders like US president Donald Trump, China’s Minister for Ecology and Environment, Huang Runqiu, said on Monday. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Speaking on the sidelines of the EU’s annual “ministerial on climate action” in Brussels, Huang’s remarks appeared to be an indirect reference to the Trump administration’s retreat from international climate commitments. Despite being the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter after China, Washington bailed on last year’s COP30 in Brazil and quit the Paris Agreement. “We have a shared responsibility to safeguard commitments and…

Businesswoman and campaigner Gina Miller, known for leading two successful landmark legal challenges related to the Brexit process, said she hopes that Britain’s next leader will have “a plan” for the UK’s future relationship with Brussels, hours after Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he would resign. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT The British-Guyanese 61-year-old became one of Britain’s most divisive political figures after she took the successive Conservative governments of Theresa May and Boris Johnson to court, contesting their handling of the UK’s exit from the European Union in 2016-17 and 2019. “I’m hoping that the new leader of the Labour Party will…

Belgium has issued visas to a Taliban delegation to attend a migration meeting in Brussels, paving the way for the first visit by Taliban representatives to an EU-hosted event since the group returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT The planned talks have already sparked criticism from human rights organisations, which argue that engaging with the Taliban risks undermining the European Union’s commitment to human rights. However, the Belgian government said it approved five visas for members of the delegation after security assessments found no evidence that the individuals posed a threat. The visas are tightly restricted, allowing…

Published on 22/06/2026 – 16:22 GMT+2 The European Commission is pushing to ban China-made power inverters from all EU-funded projects, but a full phase-out in the near future appears unrealistic. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT The Commission recently announced plans to gradually eliminate the use of Chinese-made inverters in EU-funded energy projects, in a major step aimed at protecting critical energy infrastructure from possible cyber threats that could trigger power outages. The rationale: China-made inverters are deemed a cybersecurity liability, since manufacturers might be able to remotely manipulate them or even switch them off, destabilising energy grids and potentially causing blackouts. But the…

The Belgian judiciary has issued an arrest warrant for former European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos as part of its investigation into the “Qatargate” scandal. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT The so-called Qatargate investigation centres on allegations that Qatar and Morocco sought to influence decision-making in the European Parliament through payments and gifts to current and former lawmakers. Both countries have denied wrongdoing. Belgian authorities are seeking the lifting of Avramopoulos’ immunity so that he can be questioned as part of the investigation. Avramopoulos was the EU’s commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship between 2014 and 2019 under then Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. He…

Published on 22/06/2026 – 16:44 GMT+2•Updated 17:05 “There is an urgent need to address hunger and malnutrition while also tackling the structural causes that sustain them.” ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Pope Leo XIV made the remarks during a visit to the headquarters of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Rome on Monday 22 June. The pontiff thanked the international organisation for its work in “saving lives in emergency situations and providing food assistance amid conflicts and natural disasters”. Addressing WFP staff, he said their work is “deeply in tune with the mission of the Catholic Church”, which seeks to “defend…

The European Union has set the stage for decoupling Moldova’s accession process from Ukraine’s after both candidates overcame Hungary’s two-year veto and opened the fist cluster of negotiations. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT The two countries have been informally paired since the early days of Russia’s war of Ukraine, which prompted the back-to-back membership applications. Since then, the question on when Chișinău should part ways from Kyiv has been looming over the conversation. But the optics of leaving a country at war behind on the waiting list proved problematic and the duo remained united in practice. On Tuesday, at the end of an…