For making the largest free travel area in the world more robust, the EU executive put in a new Strategy towards a fully functioning and resilient Schengen area. Last years this ‘jewel in the Europe’s crown’ was challenged in many ways, either due to the introduction of strict sanitary measures to limit the spread of coronavirus in recent times or earlier due to the huge migration flows or other threats directly related to security.

Today, the Federal Council took the decision to terminate the negotiations of the EU-Swiss Institutional Framework Agreement and we take note of this unilateral decision of the Swiss Government, the Commission statement of Wednesday afternoon read. 

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.

In their debate on the OpenLux investigations with the Commission and the Council Presidency, MEPs pointed out the need for enforcement of existing rules and called for straightway introduction of country-by-country reporting. 

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 CEOs of seven pharma companies received tough questions by the lawmakers during a public hearing, organised by two EP committees – ENVI and ITRE, on ‘How to increase the capacity of COVID 19 vaccine production and improve delivery’.

After a five-hour video conference on Thursday, EU leaders remain determined to maintain tight restrictions while stepping up efforts to accelerate the provision of Covid-19 vaccines and to prepare for a tough fight with the variants of the virus.

The EU executive issued on Thursday the new reports by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, TikTok and Mozilla, signatories of the Code of Practice on Disinformation, on the evolution of the measures taken in January this year in fighting vaccine disinformation.

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.

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.