The Anti-trafficking directive is our core instrument within the European Union, which is comprehensive, victim centred, gender specific and child sensitive. The Commission will make legislative and other proposals to make effective the fight against the financial aspects of organised crime, including trafficking, Olivier Onidi, Deputy Director-General of the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs at the European Commission and EU Anti-trafficking Coordinator, says in an interview to EUROPOST.

In his first days in office, US President Joe Biden got down to the business of restoring the status quo that had been dismantled by Donald Trump's stint in the White House. His strategic message America is Back, both for the domestic audience and the world, contains a number of suggestions, but I think the main one is that the US had been on a very clear and successful path before it was derailed in the past four years by the poor and downright harmful governance of the previous US president. It also means a course correction back to the familiar liberal paradigm and approach to international relations, which says that America is strong when it shares its global leadership with his partners, says Zdravko Popov, professor of political philosophy, in an interview to EUROPOST.

There are real fears that because the digital revolution is still in its early days, major mistakes will be made. These could be in the areas of data management, delayed processes, or even situations where an algorithm effectively makes the final decision. So the fear is that fundamental human rights would be infringed, says Séamus Boland, President of the EESC Diversity Europe Group, in an interview to EUROPOST.

It is a welcome step that the vaccine contracts have been or are in the process of being published but regrettable that transparency was not an automatic step. The public row in February between the Commission and one of the companies about the contents of one of the contracts was very damaging to public trust, says Emily O'Reilly, European Ombudsman, in an interview to EUROPOST.

Europe today has no doubts about whether the Western Balkans belong in the EU, but it needs to be made clear that this process (of accession) depends primarily on the work that each of the six candidate countries does. Their progress is assessed on the basis of the reforms they implement and the individual achievements they accomplish, says Bulgarian Vice PM and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ekaterina Zaharieva.

All of us who are actively involved in the process of North Macedonia's accession to the EU would like to see dialogue with Bulgaria resumed and sustainable solutions to existing bilateral issues found. No one benefits from a protracted dispute, says Ilhan Kyuchyuk, Bulgarian MEP from Renew Europe/MRF and EP standing rapporteur for North Macedonia, in an interview to EUROPOST.

The differential paces of vaccination we see across countries could drive different economic recovery speeds, says Colin Ellis, Chief Credit Officer, EMEA - Moody's Investors Service, in an interview to EUROPOST.

The direct impact of the NGEU programme on economic stabilisation in the current crisis is rather limited. A large part of the spending will probably not start flowing until mid-2021 at the earliest and will thus hardly serve as a cyclical stabiliser to cushion the economic decline during the Corona crisis, says Florian Dorn, Economist at ifo Institute, in an interview to EUROPOST.

GALA is not an ordinary voice interlocutor, it can also express emotions, analyse the environment and make associations on this basis, as well as form its own opinion, says founder of the GALA AI project Lyubomir Mihalchev.

Healthcare is a domain where the processing of personal data is not only inevitable but also crucial. Pseudonymisation techniques are, thus, critical in several processes, as we at ENISA have also seen recently in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and the discussion on the associated tracing apps, says Athena Bourka, a Network and Information Security Expert at ENISA, in an interview to EUROPOST.