Slovenia’s centre-right ruling coalition sought on Friday to strengthen its tiny majority as it steers a recovery from economic woes caused by coronavirus, signing a cooperation agreement with an opposition party and two independent parliamentary members.

German lawmakers have finalized the country’s long-awaited phase-out of coal as an energy source, backing a plan that environmental groups say isn’t ambitious enough and free marketeers criticize as a waste of taxpayers’ money.

French President Emmanuel Macron named Jean Castex, who coordinated the country’s virus reopening strategy, as the new PM after Edouard Phillipe resigned earlier on Friday. The new PM is a career public servant who has worked with multiple governments. The replacement comes as Macron is reshuffling the government to focus on restarting the French economy after months of lockdown.

Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez said on Thursday that fiscal reform was needed if Spain was to deal with the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. He hinted that tax hikes, notably for larger companies, seems inevitable. The PM also pledged €9bn for Spain's regions to reinforce the public health system, which was stretched to the maximum by the epidemic.

French PM Edouard Philippe resigned on Friday after heading President Emmanuel Macron's government for three years, news wires reported.  Philippe met the president and they agreed the government would resign, Philippe is considered more popular than the president. Macron promised a "new path" in an interview published on Friday.

Croatians will go to polls on Sunday to elects new parliament amid rising coronavirus cases, which is putting further pressure on ruling conservatives facing stiff opposition by their traditional centre-left rivals and a new nationalist party, which at the end could become kingmaker, news wires reported. Polls put the two biggest political parties neck-to-neck.

Hungary will not comply with the EC-proposed safe travel list and will not let citizens of non-EU countries to enter Hungarian territory, except for Serbia, PM Viktor Orban said. "For the time being we cannot support the EU's request, because this would go against the healthcare interests of the Hungarian people," he said on Thursday in a video posted on his Facebook page.

Half-a-year after Athens tightened its asylum laws, a new report from Oxfam and the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) estimates that the changes systematically undermine the right to seek asylum there and put those seeking protection at greater risk.

France has informed NATO that it is suspending its involvement in a naval operation in the Mediterranean after the results of a probe into an incident between French and Turkish warships, an official at the Armed Forces ministry said on Wednesday.

Austria issued travel warnings for the whole of the Western Balkans, on the same day the EU included two of the six states in the region to a safe list, news wires reported. Several Balkan states are seeing a spike in cases, but the EU agreed that borders could be reopened to Serbia and Montenegro.