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BUDAPEST
Hungary’s top EU court nominee chosen unilaterally without formal selection, sources say. Neither a public application nor any other formal selection procedure preceded the nomination of Zoltán Csehi as the country’s new member of the European Court of Justice by Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga. According to Telex sources, Csehi had been a lawyer in the law firm of Varga’s predecessor until 2016 and had little experience in European law prior to being appointed to the European General Court that same year. Read more.
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EU PRESIDENCY
Commission wants to ‘explore options’ for India trade, investment. The European Commission said on Thursday it wants to “explore options” for expanding the EU’s trade and investment with India, notably ahead of a summit scheduled for May in Porto as part of Portugal’s presidency of the Council of the EU. Read the full story.
In today's edition of the Capitals, find out more about Croatia and Slovakia looking into getting the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, Lithuania's parliament calling for the persecution of Uighurs in China to be investigated, and so much more.
NORDICS
HELSINKI
Fifth-generation mobile networks from China may pose a certain number of possible risks, the director of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service, Antti Peltarri, warned in an interview with the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (YLE), adding that countries like Russia and China are attempting to get hold of Finland’s critical infrastructure. Read more.
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BERLIN
Germans start showing liking for CDU/CSU and Greens coalition. A few months before the German elections, voters seem to start seeing the advantages of a Christian Democrat and Green coalition. Read more.
Plans for free rapid tests as of March. German Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) wants rapid tests to be available to everyone in Germany free of charge. Since there will be more tests on the market, “all citizens should be able to be tested free of charge by trained personnel with rapid antigen tests,” Spahn told German media group RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND).
In today’s news from the Capitals:
China lures CEE countries with trade, vaccine promises. In the next five years, China intends to import more than €140 billion of goods from Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) countries, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday during the “17+1” summit of China and Eastern European countries.
“We need to deepen agricultural cooperation in a bid to double CEE countries’ agricultural exports to China and raise two-way agricultural trade by 50% over the next five years,” he added. Read more.
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EU PRESIDENCY
China is an economic partner but US is an ally, Portuguese FM insists. Portugal’s foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva said on Tuesday (10 February) that China is no substitute for the United States, emphasising that Beijing is an economic partner while Washington is an ally. Read the full story.
BERLIN
| STOCKHOLM | WARSAW | MOSCOW
Berlin, Stockholm, Warsaw expel Russian diplomats. Germany expelled and classified a Russian diplomat as “persona non grata” on Monday in response to Moscow’s expulsion of EU diplomats on Friday, which the German foreign office said was “in no way justified”. Poland, and Sweden also expelled Russian diplomats the same day, which
Tagesschau reports was a closely coordinated move between the three governments and the European External Action Service, citing sources in the German foreign ministry. This is the latest escalation in the row over the poisoning and now imprisoning of opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Read more.