European Union

Brussels – Slovenia has produced a proposal to grant Bosnia-Herzegovina EU candidate status as early as at the EU summit next week. Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon will present it to her EU counterparts on Monday at a session of the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg.

The European Commission has recommended that Ukraine and Moldova be granted candidate status as a symbolic step on the long road to membership in the European Union.
Georgia will be asked to fulfill certain conditions before it receives that status, Reuters reported today.

ESM praises Greece: “Important milestones for economic reform have been met”

Industrial production that increased by 9.8 percent in March rose by another 10.8 percent on an annual basis in April, while retail sales grew nearly 15 percent, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) said yesterday.

The country's industrial output grew 7.6 percent and 13.3 percent in January and February, respectively.

Luxembourg – Slovenia did not inform the European Commission of the re-introduction of border checks on EU borders due to the Covid pandemic in the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2021 and the Commission did not check compliance with Schengen rules, the European Court of Auditors has found.

The European Union has agreed to introduce gender equality quotas to ensure that women hold at least 40% of the seats on the boards of large companies.

Over 70% of people surveyed in the EU agree with the imposition of economic sanctions on Russia, with two-thirds feeling that more stringent sanctions should be imposed. Support for economic sanctions is particularly high in Scandinavian countries, the Baltic states, Romania, Poland and Ireland.

The European Court of Justice has ruled today that Brits living in EU countries have lost the right to vote and stand in local elections after Britain left the bloc in 2020. Exceptions are those British citizens who also have EU citizenship, the DPA and AP reported.

The European Central Bank confirmed on Thursday that it would end a long-running scheme to pour billions of euros into the Eurozone economy on July 1st by buying bonds and signaled a series of interest rate hikes as early as next month as it fights persistently high inflation.

According to the new instrument of the ECFR - the European Sovereignty Index, Bulgaria is among the weakest links in the concept of European sovereignty, with significant gaps in the economy, defense and technology.