Romania's centrist government on Thursday approved a United States-backed bill that effectively bars China and Huawei from taking part in development of its 5G network, Pavel Popescu, a member of the IT&C and National Security Committee told Reuters.

The German aviation industry agreed terms with main local railway to shift at least 20 percent of the passenger flow, DPA reported. The move aims to reduce greenhouse emissions. However the parties at this stage oppose total ban of domestic flights over environmental concerns, as some climate campaigners have demanded.Deutsche Bahn and the German Aviation Association signed an action plan on the initiative in Berlin.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended on Friday her plans to introduce a strict night-time curfew to head off surging new coronavirus cases amid growing opposition to the proposed new law, dpa reported.

Sweden will ease restrictions on those, mostly elderly, citizens who have had at least one vaccination shot against Covid-19, the Public Health Agency announced on Friday. Authorities said that three weeks after their first shot, people could meet others from outside their socially-distanced bubble - even indoors - and that communal activities in care homes for the elderly could resume.

A controversial cap to control soaring rents in the German capital has been scrapped in the courts, in a ruling welcomed by landlords but panned by tenants, thousands of whom took to the streets to protest, dpa reported.

France's official Covid-19 death toll rose on Thursday to more than 100,000, making the country of 67 million the eighth nation in the world to reach the mark, news wires reported.

On Thursday evening, at a ceremony in Brussels, chief negotiators EU Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen and Togo's Foreign Minister Robert Dussey initialled the new Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS). This marks the formal conclusion of the three-year negotiations of the Post-Cotonou Agreement, setting the political, economic and sectorial cooperation framework for the next twenty years.

A day after she announced the good news that 100 million vaccinations were already administered in the EU, EC President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted on Thursday that she got a Covid-19 vaccine.

The EU Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Trade Committees voted on Thursday in favour of the agreement that sets the rules of the future relationship between the EU and the UK. Their members backed the proposal by rapporteurs Andreas Schieder (AFET, S&D, AT) and Christophe Hansen (INTA, EPP, LU) by 108 votes, one against and four abstentions, and thus recommend that Parliament’s plenary approve the treaty.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will receive her first anti-coronavirus vaccination on Friday, Die Welt newspaper reported. Merkel would receive the AstraZeneca injection, the newspaper wrote without naming a specific source, dpa reported.