Jens Spahn

BUCHAREST - Serbian PM Ana Brnabic met with several European officials on the sidelines of a European People's Party (EPP) congress in Bucharest on Thursday.

After a meeting with Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Brnabic briefly met with Jens Spahn, an MP of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who is also a former German federal minister of health.

However, critics have argued from the outset that the system is vulnerable to fraud. Now those premonitions have come true.

European Union member states will begin vaccinations against Covid-19 in 10 days, Germany said, as Europe tries to catch up with Britain and the United States after what some have criticized as a slow EU approval process for the jabs.

After days of pressuring the European Union's medical regulator, Germany's health minister said Tuesday that he has received assurances that the European Medicines Agency will approve a coronavirus vaccine by December 23.

Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias and his German counterpart Jens Spahn spoke on the phone late on Wednesday to discuss the need for better coordination and contact among EU member-states over the coronavirus outbreak, state-run news agency ANA-MPA reported Thursday.

The G-7 countries plan to discuss a unified approach to the coronavirus, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Tuesday.

A spokesman for the Health Ministry confirmed that Spahn had told reporters that he had spoken to U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar to look for a joint approach and they had agreed to hold a conference all among G7 countries, Reuters reported.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a close ally of Angela Merkel, won a tight race to succeed her as party leader Friday, seeing off a longtime rival of the German chancellor, reports AFP. 

The contest, which required a runoff vote to secure a 52-percent majority for AKK as she is known, is expected to increase the likelihood that Merkel will be able to see out her fourth term until 2021.

Talks on forming a new German coalition government "can work", Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday ahead of a long night of negotiations at which she must forge a three-way alliance or risk seeing her 12-year stint in power come to an end, reported Reuters.