EurActiv

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reiterated his call for an EU-wide vaccination certificate that would simplify travel across the bloc, noting the importance of setting it up ahead of this year's summer season.

Ursula von der Leyen will have to wait a month before heading to the next European Commission, as the European Parliament rejected three candidate-commissioners, the institution's spokesman said Wednesday (16 October), Euractiv reported.

Sofia lost the race for the seat of the European Labor Authority. The new EU agency will be located in Bratislava, EUobserver reported. Slovakia received 15 out of 28 votes during the vote in the ministerial meeting of the Council on Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban wrote a letter on September 14 to Golden Dawn Euro PM Lambros Fountulis thanking the far-right Greek party for its support during a European Parliament vote backing sanctions against Hungary for rule of law violations, Euractiv has reported.

European lawmakers are expected on Tuesday to pass a resolution calling on Turkey to release two Greek soldiers held since the start of March after accidentally crossing the border on a patrol in northeastern Greece, EurActiv has reported.

 Bulgaria's parliament on Wednesday (20 December) passed a law aimed at improving its fight against high-level corruption, a move long sought by the EU just days before the country takes over the bloc's rotating presidency, EurActiv reported.

BRUSSELS - Joining the EU is "a matter of endurance and not a competition," Serbian PM Ana Brnabic told the Euractiv.com portal in an interview.

"For Serbia, joining the EU is like a marathon. When you run a marathon you are not competing against anyone else but yourself. In that sense, I don't think any country should be bothered by who is the front or second runner," she said.

Slovenia's money-laundering office has opened an investigation into claims by opposition parties that the country's biggest state-owned bank, Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB), may have laundered nearly €1bn from Iran between 2008 and 2010, breaking an international embargo and failing to enforce rules on the financing of terrorism.

From 2009 the interest from the loans which the German financial institutions send to help the Greece economy are now more than EUR 1.34 billion according to data of the German ministry of Finance, cited by Suddeutsche Zeitung.

Russia's EU Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov says there is always an alternative to Euro-Atlantic integration when it comes to the Western Balkans.

Beta reported this citing an article published on the Brussels-based euractiv.com website.