Author: Press Room

Record temperatures are sweeping across Spain and into Finland. This summer, droughts have spread across Europe, prompting urgent water rationing measures and temporary bans on non-essential water uses. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT The World Weather Attribution links current droughts to months of below-average rainfall and record heat between April and June. In 2026 alone, soil moisture deficits are 5 to 11 times more likely. France’s maize harvest is at a 50-year low, and Romania is losing over a million hectares. Reduced water levels in rivers and lakes are affecting tourism and transportation, including on the Danube, which is at its lowest since…

A member of the European Parliament takes the floor, delivering an impassioned speech. Then the camera zooms out, revealing an awkward reality: a nearly empty chamber, with only a few dozen lawmakers scattered across the benches. Many are glued to their phones, while hundreds of seats remain vacant. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT For years, this has been a familiar sight in the European Parliament. During Strasbourg’s long plenary weeks, many MEPs arrive just before their speaking slot, deliver a tightly rehearsed one-minute speech and leave almost immediately afterwards. “It is the most expensive backdrop for social media clips in the world,” an…

Published on 11/08/2026 – 15:40 GMT+2 Europe’s prolongued drought is putting immense pressure on Hungary’s Villány wine region, where scorching temperatures are taking a heavy toll on grape production. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Due to the lack of rainfall, berries are smaller, while vines struggle to survive in the relentless heat. Beyond a lack of rainfall, there is also not enough moisture in the air. Gergely Nagy, secretary of the Villány Wine Region Hill Community Council, told Euronews that they are slowly getting used to these severe drought conditions, which is not only affecting the wine region, but the entire country. Expertise…

Hungarian lawmakers approved former supreme court chief András Baka as the country’s new president on Tuesday following the contested removal last month of the previous head of state as pro-EU conservative Prime Minister Péter Magyar pushes to loosen his predecessor’s lingering hold over state institutions. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Parliament, where the ruling Tisza party holds a two-thirds majority, elected Baka, who served 17 years as a judge on the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), with 140 votes in favour and six votes against. Tisza nominated 73-year-old Baka for the largely ceremonial role on Saturday. Magyar said Baka’s life served “as…

TikTok and Meta have agreed to join a voluntary coordination mechanism chaired by the European Commission with fact-checkers, following the spread of disinformation online that fuelled the mass crossings in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, in which around 100 people died. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT On Monday, Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, announced that TikTok and Meta had activated a crisis protocol to set up a cooperation mechanism with fact-checkers after tens of thousands of migrants illegally crossed the Spanish border. “The EU Commission, Europol and platforms are exchanging daily and we have increased…

Switzerland is opening the taps on Lake Lugano to help prop up Lake Maggiore. It is an emergency solution that, more than any set of figures, shows how sensitive the water situation in northern Italy has become: more water will be released from the Ceresio towards Ponte Tresa, with the aim of supporting the level of Lake Maggiore and, above all, guaranteeing supplies for the rice fields on the plain. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT The discharge will rise from the current 3 to 8 cubic metres per second. The two lakes are connected and a significant share of the extra water will…

Published on 11/08/2026 – 17:29 GMT+2•Updated 18:05 The United Kingdom is on course to record its “warmest summer on record,” according to the country’s national weather service. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Provisional statistics released by the Met Office on Tuesday showed that the current recorded mean temperature across the UK from 1 June to 10 August was 16.48°C – 1.88°C above the average for 1991-2020. “To equal the current UK summer mean temperature record of 16.12°C set in 2025, the remainder of August would only need to average 0.21°C below the 1991-2020 long-term average for meteorological summer,” the Met Office said. “Any…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s statement that Kyiv does not recognise Kosovo’s independence may have handed his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vučić a diplomatic win during his visit to Belgrade. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Yet it triggered a sharp backlash in Prishtina, which has demanded that Zelenskyy and Kyiv respect Kosovo’s right to self-determination and the 2008 independence declaration recognised by over 100 countries, including key Western powers such as the US, the UK and 22 EU members. During a press conference in Belgrade on Saturday, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine supports the territorial integrity of its partners and international law, in response to a…

When news broke that members of the Taliban visited Brussels in late June to discuss migration with European Union officials, Sami Samar said she was left crestfallen. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT “I was so disappointed because we really count on European countries as they believe the principle of human rights and the universality of human rights,” she tells Euronews. “This is kind of (an) endorsement of the Taliban, even if it’s low rank of the Taliban.” Samar, a former Afghan minister for women’s affairs from 2001 to 2002 turned human rights advocate living in exile in the United States, made the comments…

A right-wing, security-first approach to migration has become mainstream. The mass influx of migrants into Ceuta showed that Spain’s more progressive model has become an exception in Europe, with even left-wing parties adopting securitarian language. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT At the end of July, tens of thousands of irregular migrants crossed into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco, an incident that left around 100 dead and pushed migration policy back to the centre of European politics. The episode has not only opened a deep diplomatic rift between Rome and Madrid over how migration should be managed, but also exposed Spain’s…