Polish farmers on tractors took to the streets across the country to protest against the European Green Deal, EU policies that hurt local agriculture and the influx of Ukrainian food, in what deputy agriculture minister Stefan Krajewski said were protests aimed at Brussels – not Warsaw.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday (24 January) his government will propose legislation to liberalise a near-total abortion ban and ease restrictions on the morning-after pill, which, if adopted, would dramatically reverse the previous administration's policies.

Road blockades across the country and growing exasperation from farmers are shaping up to be the first major political test for EU election candidates in France, as they attempt to court the agricultural community.

In this episode, the Beyond the Byline podcast looks into the EU’s new push towards a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico assured him that Bratislava will continue to support Ukraine's accession to the EU and will not block €50 billion in EU financial aid, despite Fico's previous harsh rhetoric towards Kyiv.

The European Parliament’s Environment Committee (ENVI) approved on Wednesday (24 January) new rules for new genomic techniques (NGTs). The plenary will vote in two weeks, but doubts remain on whether a law can be approved before the elections. 

Despite pressure from some EU countries, the European Commission is still trying to prevent private companies from being excluded by default from the first international treaty on Artificial Intelligence.

EU regulation failed to meaningfully reduce the level of carbon emissions from combustion engine vehicles over the last 12 years, making the uptake of zero-emission vehicles imperative to the bloc’s climate goals, a new audit has found.

Russia’s “hybrid warfare” against Moldova is expected to increase in intensity through 2024, focusing on Moldova’s planned constitutional referendum on joining the EU expected to happen in November.

Despite record sales in 2023, Germany’s political target of 500,000 heat pumps for 2024 looks out of reach amid a drastic drop in natural gas prices and a drawn-out political fight over heat pump mandates.

The European Union and its member states must take "concrete and immediate" action to put sanctions on Russian food imports, Latvia's Agriculture Minister Armands Krauze stressed at the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council on Tuesday (23 January).

Farmers taking to the streets are making headlines all over Europe, and this is not their first season of discontent.

Before the ministry was disbanded in the latest government reshuffle, former energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher was preparing a joint paper to be co-signed by her German counterpart as a show of conciliation ahead of the EU elections - though whether the paper will now ever see the light is unclear.

After a year-long discussions, the EU Parliament and the Council of the EU reached their negotiating positions on the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation. SBFE shares its take on the likely outcome of reuse and refill obligations, as well as suggestions for enhancing recyclability.

Lack of enthusiasm among national members of the European Left is driving the party to pick a widely unknown politician for its lead candidate in EU elections, echoing a general lack of appetite for the contested Spitzenkandidaten system.

Ukraine’s EU accession could help develop the country’s vast potential in agriculture, energy, and raw materials to the benefit of Europe’s economic security, write Philipp Lausberg and Svitlana Taran.

French MEP Valérie Hayer will become the new president of Renew Europe with “overwhelming consensus” after current interim President Malik Azamni failed to gather enough support following widespread worries about his party’s involvement with coalition talks with the far-right. 

Chinese officials just made an unprecedented, yet almost unnoticed, economic power grab. And instead of condemning the move, today, European officials could softly condone it -- by voting to implement a similar policy that would gut tech innovation across the EU.

The story got off to a rather good start almost a year ago. On March 8th 2023, Macron said he was in favour of enshrining the right to abortion in constitutional law, making France the first country in the EU to do so. 

The awaited proposal of the Commission on prolonging the food trade benefits for Ukraine, driving food sector discontent, will be tabled “next week” Czesław Siekierski told Euractiv, and it might include some Warsaw demands.