Austria hopes for a safe ski season this year as the country is likely to admit only vaccinated tourists. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz confirmed that if the Covid-19 situation gets worse and the number of new cases rises, only vaccinated guests will get access to ski establishments, dpa reported. In Austria, 70 per cent of people over age 12 are vaccinated and most tourists are too, Kurz said.

France stepped up a diplomatic row with US and Australia over a failed contract which resulted in dumped security deal concerning building and delivery of submarines to Canberra. Paris recalled its ambassadors in US and Australia, Reuters reported. The decision taken by President Emmanuel Macron was made due to the "exceptional gravity" of the matter, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.

Hungary must remain an EU member in order to ensure continued access to its single market, PM Viktor Orban said on Friday, adding the country would be among the last to leave the bloc if it were ever to disintegrate.

Dutch Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag has quit her post over her handling of the Afghan evacuation crisis last month, news wires reported. She is the first Western government official to step down over the chaos that followed the Taliban takeover.

Ten days ahead of parliamentary election in Germany the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) increased their lead over their conservative rivals, the CDU/CSU bloc, dpa reported. According to the latest poll, published on Thursday by the opinion research institute Kantar, the SPD improved by one point to 26%, while the CDU/CSU slipped to 20%.

The Italian government approved on Thursday some of the strictest anti-Covid measures in the world, making it obligatory for all workers either to show proof of vaccination, a negative test or recent recovery from infection, Reuters reported. The new rules will come into force on 15 October in the latest effort by PM Mario Draghi's broad coalition to persuade people to get inoculated and blunt contagion in one of the countries worst-hit by the virus.

Four former Volkswagen employees went on trial on Thursday over the Dieselgate scandal in which illegal software was used to cheat emission tests, news wires reported. The trial, being held in the city of Braunschweig, close to Volkswagen's headquarters in Wolfsburg, started without former CEO Martin Winterkorn, whose separate trial will take place at a later date, Reuters disclosed.

French President Emmanuel Macron is to receive German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday evening for a working meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, news wires reported. According to Elysee sources, the meeting will focus on the situation in Afghanistan and the Sahel. They will also talk about the upcoming French presidency of the EU Council which starts in January.

The head of the Polish ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, ruled out a Poland-EU split, but nevertheless slammed the bloc's "interference" as a rift over judicial reforms deepens, news wires reported. Amid rising tensions with Brussels, he claimed on Wednesday that his country would remain in the Union.

A Swedish court on Wednesday sentenced a 47-year-old man to three years in prison for spying for Russia, which involved selling secret information from truckmaker Scania, news wires reported. The court found the man guilty of acquiring and selling the secret information from the truckmaker to a Russian embassy official.