Новости за 19.03.2021

French prime minister Jean Castex announced a limited month-long lockdown for Paris and several other regions to combat surging Covid-19 cases, AFP reports, while insisting the measures would be less strict than in the past. Non-essential businesses will close and movement outside will be restricted in the affected areas, schools will stay open, and outdoor exercise is allowed up to 10 kilometres from home, he said.

The EU has frozen plans to sanction more Turkish officials over gas-drilling in Cypriot-claimed waters, amid a detente in relations, four EU diplomats told the Reuters news agency. "Work has stopped on additional blacklistings of Turkish individuals, and we are not talking of economic sanctions anymore," one EU diplomat said. EU leaders will discuss long-term plans for Turkey relations at a summit taking place in Brussels next week.

The EU has gotten drawn into a verbal punch-up between the Kremlin and White House by endorsing US president Joe Biden's assertion that his Russian counterpart was a "killer".

The AstraZeneca is both safe and effective, concluded the European Medicines Agency on Thursday. The assessment comes after 13 EU states suspended it over now-unfounded fears of possible blood clots.

The G7 group of leading economic powers said it would not accept Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, in a statement marking seven years since the takeover, AFP reports. "We unequivocally denounce Russia's temporary occupation of the autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol. Russia's attempts to legitimise it are not, and will not, be recognised," it said.

The European Parliament has confirmed its representatives for the executive board of the Conference for the Future of Europe, the body in charge of making the event work. They are: Iratxe García Perez (Socialists & Democrats), Manfred Weber (European People's Party) and Guy Verhofstadt (Renew Europe) - with Gerolf Annemans (Identity and Democracy group), Daniel Freund (Greens/EFA) Zdzisław Krasnodębski (European Conservatives and Reformists) and Helmut Scholz (The Left) as observers.

Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan has called a snap election for 20 June, seeking to defuse a worsening political crisis, Deutsche Welle reports. Pashinyan has faced calls to resign since agreeing to a Russian-brokered ceasefire last November that halted six weeks of fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. When the military joined calls for the PM to step down, Pashinyan tried to dismiss the military's chief of staff, Onik Gasparyan.

Two weeks after Hungary's ruling Fidesz party's MEPs left the largest group in the European Parliament, the European People's Party, the party itself left the larger political family - also called the EPP. Hungarian minister Katalin Novak published a letter to EPP leadership about the move, saying "It's time to say goodbye". It marks on end to an over two-year ideological battle between Fidesz and a majority of EPP members.

Mairead McGuinness said "there was quite some head-turning when the UK negotiated with itself an extra period of time" to facilitate the transition - as the negotiations should have been done with the EU.

EU regions have warned that the local dimension of setting adequate minimum wages is not sufficiently reflected in the directive from the European Commission.

The EU's border agency Frontex says the number of "illegal border crossings" at Europe's external borders dropped by 40 percent in the first two months of 2021, compared to the same period last year. It also noted an increase of some 26 percent in the number of attempts to cross from Libya in the period. People from the Ivory Coast and Tunisia made up the bulk of the Libyan crossings.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel will on Friday (19 March) meet via video conference Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The two sides will discuss "an update" of relations. The meeting comes on the five-year anniversary of the EU's migrant deal with Turkey, used to prevent people from arriving on the Greek islands.

Restrictions on the veil represent an important violation of religious freedom. These restrictions naturally breed resentment among stigmatised and marginalised groups.