AMLA invites stakeholders to submit their expressions of interest by 18 October 2026 at 23h59 CEST. Further details on eligibility, selection and practical arrangements are available in the call for expressions of interest. For more information on the initiative and the purpose of the roundtables, see AMLA’s news announcement. Interested stakeholders can submit their application […]
The war in Ukraine is a human rights catastrophe that is “growing and intensifying by the week” and threatening an even greater disaster across the region, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on Friday.
As the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) began its debate today on “Eradicating colonialism in all its forms and manifestations”, speakers highlighted modern-day manifestations of that phenomenon. While decolonization is one of “the most significant transformations that we saw in the twentieth century”, Cuba’s delegate said, “regrettably colonialism is not a relic of the […]
The Black Sea is a strategic region of key importance for food security, the blue economy, maritime transport, tourism, fisheries, and aquaculture. This was stated by the Bulgarian Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food, Prof. Dr. Ivan Paligorov, at the opening of the Stakeholder Conference on the Common Maritime Agenda for the Black Sea 2026 […]
Iranian Airlines Face Chronic Difficulties: On September 30, bailiffs boarded a Caspian Airlines Boeing 737—while passengers sat ready for takeoff—and served an order to collect a debt of 3 million euros before the aircraft could depart. The detention occurred just days after US secondary sanctions against the Iranian aviation sector came into effect, halving international […]
Tourism’s contribution to Russia’s gross domestic product exceeded 3 percent in 2025, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko stated, as reported by TASS in late September. According to him, tourism is among the fastest-growing sectors of the Russian economy. Chernyshenko attributed these results to measures under the “Tourism and Hospitality” national project, which he said […]
Santorini is much more than white houses, blue domes, and beautiful sunsets. The volcanic island holds treasures and stories known to few. One of these is a unique dwarf tomato that locals call “tomataki.” This is no ordinary vegetable; it is a true natural wonder. There is almost no fresh water on Santorini, and rainfall […]
Exactly one month ago, the world’s longest cruise set sailed from Rome. The world’s longest continuous scheduled cruise—that is precisely what *Explorations by Norwegian* offers. The *Regatta*, a ship with 348 cabins, departed from Rome; over the course of 371 days, it will circumnavigate the globe, visiting 220 ports across 62 countries. Although the first […]
Armed with rockets and storming target buildings, Chinese "robot dogs" have made their debut in Serbian military drills, signaling the expansion of defense and industrial ties between Belgrade and Beijing right on Europe’s doorstep.
A bipartisan, bicameral group of US lawmakers is pressing for tougher action on what they describe as democratic backsliding, corruption, and growing Russian, Chinese, and Iranian influence in Serbia, just weeks before snap parliamentary elections.
At its monthly meeting, EMA’s safety committee (PRAC) carried out its broad range of responsibilities to manage the safety of medicines, including the assessment ofsafety signals,risk management plans,periodic safety update reportsand post-authorisation safety studies. The Committee did not start or conclude any referral procedures. Information on ongoing safety referrals is provided in the ‘Ongoing referrals’ […]
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the 80 year-old president of the world’s fifth largest country, is facing a tight race in a bid for his fourth presidential term in Brazil’s general elections on Sunday (4 October). The EU, which earlier this year concluded a landmark trade deal with the Mercosur bloc, which includes Brazil, will be watching the polls closely.
He holds a narrow poll lead over Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the country’s former president Jair, who is currently serving a 22 year prison sentence for staging a coup against Lula’s newly formed government in 2023.
The left-wing leader’s third term, won by with a slim 50.9 percent majority in 2022, distinguished itself for leading anti-deforestation policies and getting the EU-Mercosur trade partnership across its long-awaited finish line, 26 years after negotiations started.
Though Brussels suspended animal product imports from Brazil on 3 September, due to insufficient guarantees of antibiotic regulation compliance, “President von der Leyen commended President Lula’s role and political leadership in the negotiations leading up to the agreement,” the EU commission said in a statement.
The Mercosur deal marked a historic diversion of EU energies South of the Rio Grande river, at a time when Europe and Latin America were both being bombarded by tariff threats from Washington.
The Bolsonaros’ professed support of US president Donald Trump have critics worrying “this election could have major implications for the direction of Brazil’s foreign policy, its global influence,” wrote Dr. Christopher Sabatini, Latin America director at the Chatham house think tank.
Election interference by the US was discussed throughout Lula’s campaign, most notably with Meta disabling his Facebook ads just days before Brazilians went to cast their votes, state-run Agência Brasil reported on 25 September.
At a time when virtually every other democracy on the South American continent has pivoted to the right, a win for a Brazilian Trump enthusiast and supporter of environmental commodification would be a setback for the EU’s climate ambitions.
“A Flávio Bolsonaro government would represent a much stronger geopolitical alignment with Washington and the Trump administration. That could affect climate cooperation, deforestation policy, critical minerals and European access to Brazilian commodities and industrial partnerships,” said Eduardo Raguse, climate co-coordinator at NGO network Friends of the Earth Latin America.
Brazil’s climate observatory recorded its biggest annual fall in emissions in 15 years, with a 16.7 percent reduction in 2024 from the previous year, largely due to a drop in forest clearance in the Brazilian Amazon, which was halved over Lula’s third term.
But Lula has been simultaneously expanding Brazil’s national petrol company’s drilling area into the Amazon’s depths.
“Lula’s government has increasingly framed critical minerals as an issue of national sovereignty and industrial policy,” Raguse told EUobserver, since the Workers’ party leader has referred to Brazil’s petrol reserves as its “passport for the future.”
But along a global pivot to the right, a win for Bolsonaro’s heir or Lula’s renewed interest in fossil fuel politics would not stray too far from the EU’s current conservative climate script, and according to Socialist and Democrat MEP Leire Pajin, will mean little for EU trade.
“Whoever wins the election in Brazil, the EU-Mercosur relationship goes far beyond electoral cycles or trade,” the Spanish vice-president of the Euro-Latin American parliamentary assembly told EUobserver. “Governments may differ in priorities or pace, but the agreement transcends them.”
People in Russian-held Oleshky in Ukraine's Kherson region have endured war, occupation, and devastating flooding. Now, trapped by land mines and cut off from basic supplies, they face "hell," starving in a virtual ghost town, Ukrainian officials and volunteers say.
The Security Council will hold two signature events in October — on children and armed conflict and on emerging technologies with an emphasis on maritime security — the representative of Greece, its President for the month of October, told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference today. “We feel particularly honoured to be serving the Council […]
Mária Bieliková began studying computer science before the World Wide Web was launched from CERN in 1989. She has lived through the development of programming from punch cards, which stored instructions for computers, to large language models, which allows almost anyone to write basic code.
Mária Bieliková founded the Kempelen Institute of Intelligent Technologies which she leads. She previously served as dean of the Faculty of Informatics and Information Technologies at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava.
Bieliková explained how artificial intelligence is set to affect women’s in the coming years.
“Studies predict women will be worse off in the labour market due to AI,” she said, while claiming such drawbacks also come with opportunities.
Do you think artificial intelligence can end humanity? And is that a tired question, or do you find it relevant?
This question needs to be answered patiently and sometimes with a smile, because nobody knows. Often it is just speculation, and there are many more immediate problems that we need to address.
It is true that AI is unlike other the technologies we have known so far and so were steam engines. But AI is fundamentally different. Still, I believe that if anything destroys us, it will be people. I am more afraid of those who use any technology carelessly, or those who do not take care to avoid hurting the planet. But I do not see a doomsday scenario where AI end the world. After all, our planet is very resilient.
AI research and development is largely in private hands. When you said you were afraid of people, did you mean specific individuals?
I did not mean specific people, but types of people who hold incredible power through technology and the data they hold about us. So for example, I fear for democracy. It is a system that evolved alongside society in a series of twists and turns since the days of ancient Greece, and we have come a long way since then. Democracy still has weaknesses, but so far we have not devised a better tool.
Yet the ability of AI to influence elections undermines a fundamental principle of democracy. Data administrators who nobody elected have suddenly become very powerful. And elected officials often follow and support tech titans. Technology is transforming geopolitics, and this could have serious consequence concerning us all; these are not mere political games played by those in power.
Experts warn thatdisinformation campaigns and deepfake videos generated by artificial intelligence, which can be easily made, will flood our online spaces. What can individuals do about this?
If I knew what an individual could do to resolve these problems, I would go and do it. But action should come from both the government and individual.
But we should not rely on someone at the top to change everything. Indeed, we determine the outcome of elections, but the major problem is we are being influenced and manipulated in entirely new ways. And many politicians lack the will to protect us from that. The only way to prevent being manipulated is for us as individuals to inform ourselves.
In the past, when someone said something publicly, we usually believed it. It is uncomfortable, but we will have to change how we trust. We cannot believe things automatically; we must demand trustworthy sources for every claim.
A good place to look is towards media outlets that we know verify information diligently – a layman cannot do so with all information they stumble upon.
Mária Bieliková said that in the age of artificial intelligence, we must change how we believe information. Source: Tomáš Hrivňák, Denník N
Other concerns linked to artificial intelligence include how much control we give it, whether our data is safe, and the environmental burden it creates. Are there other “landmines” ordinary people have not noticed?
We live in a society where we cannot trust everyone. Human nature is such that, say, 90 percent of people consciously or subconsciously act in their own interest. I do not mean to condone stealing or cheating, of course, but it is clear to me that people will act in their own interest.
This brings me again to democracy, a vital tool which needs to be protected. Without checks and balances, which AI can undermine, democracy is at risk.
The last thing I asked a chatbot was what I should pack on holiday. Do you ever talk to them about everyday matters, or do you avoid this so as to avoid sharing data about yourself?
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Historian Margaret MacMillan warns that increasingly interconnected wars are increasing the risk of a wider conflict, as she discusses Ukraine’s future, Putin’s Russia, NATO’s vulnerabilities, and an emerging “new world disorder.”
Tourism is entering a new digital era. Artificial intelligence, data spaces, 3D technologies and extended reality are creating new ways to experience cultural heritage, manage destinations and make tourism more accessible and sustainable. The theme of World Tourism Day 2026, “Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism”, highlights how digital innovation can transform tourism […]
Some expected a change in Hungary’s pro-Russian foreign policy after Viktor Orbán’s fall. But they failed to take into account the domestic political pressures on Hungary’s prime minister Péter Magyar.
An unexpected source of tension in Ukrainian-Hungarian relations came at a meeting of the newly formed ‘Carpathian Eight’ (C8) in late September. At the meeting in Kyiv, PM Magyar was embroiled in a sharp exchange with Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha, who criticised Budapest for not taking part.
Magyar responded to Sybiha by claiming that Hungary had been included in the C8 without his consent.
“To claim that a sovereign country is a member of an international cooperation (Carpathian Integration) without prior consultation or consent of the country concerned is completely unacceptable,” Magyar said on social media.
This comes after Hungary-Ukraine relations began to improve rapidly following the formation of the Tisza government in May.
Under Orbán’s government, relations had fallen to a historic low, raising the prospect of escalation. In June, Magyar announced that he had reached an agreement with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on settling the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, hailing it as a historic deal.
Ukraine’s Deputy PM Vsevolod Chentsov informed me that legislation on minority education rights will be submitted to Parliament. I welcome this step after weeks of 🇭🇺🇺🇦 expert consultations. Thank you to all Hungarian and Ukrainian colleagues for their constructive work. Looking…
Since June, however, Hungary has repeatedly blocked Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations, arguing that progress on settling the rights of Hungarians in Transcarpathia has fallen short of expectations.
Orbán’s Fidesz party previously used the same argument to block Ukraine’s integration efforts.
Three months after the so-called historic agreement, Ukraine’s foreign minister Sybiha wrote that although Orbán had lost the election, Orbánism (a policy based on isolation and obstruction) prevailed in Hungary.
“Orbanism has done no good, neither to Hungary nor to the broader region, in the past — and it will not do anyone any good moving forward,” said Sybiha on social media.
Domestic Hungarian politics can explain the dispute.
MOL, an oil company, signed a memorandum with Ukraine’s Naftogaz at the C8 meeting on the possible establishment of Ukrainian oil storage facilities in Hungary.
The deal was criticised by Fidesz politicians, and Magyar’s government strongly distanced itself from the deal, too. Fidesz may have contributed to Magyar entering the dispute over C8 participation so very forcefully.
What is the Carpathian Eight?
In August, Zelensky announced the creation of the C8 to bring together countries from the wider Carpathian border region. The Ukrainian president said its members would focus primarily on the economy, security, the environment and investment.
Ukraine described it as a project intended to strengthen cross-border cooperation even with countries that do not provide it with military aid. Alongside Ukraine were to be Romania, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Austria and Hungary.
Michal Lebduška, an analyst at the Association for International Affairs in Prague (AMO), said that it was one of many regional initiatives. While he did not believe it would trigger “major cooperation”, it could nevertheless be important.
The inaugural summit of the newly formed C8 was held last month (18 September) in Bukovel, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, around 160 km from both the Slovak and Hungarian borders. Zelensky called it “an important beginning” and thanked the countries of the Carpathian region for being among Kyiv’s most reliable allies.
From Ukraine’s perspective, however, the meeting had mixed results. On the one hand, several leaders travelled to Bukovel in person, lending the gathering greater diplomatic weight. Polish PM Donald Tusk, Romanian president Nicușor Dan and Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić all attended in person.
On the other hand, the remaining countries sent lower-ranking representatives. Slovakia’s PM Robert Fico had initially indicated that he would attend, and was originally due to meet Tusk. At the last minute, however, he announced that he could not attend the summit due to sudden illness.
Slovakia was ultimately represented by Marek Eštok, state secretary at the foreign ministry.
Andrej Babiš’s Czech government all but completely ignored the initiative. As Respekt magazine wrote, Babiš declined the opportunity to visit Ukraine and did not send any representative to Bukovel.
So Czechia was represented at the summit only by opposition deputy Senate president Jiří Drahoš.
And Austria was ultimately represented by Christine Schwarz-Fuchs, president of the Federal Council.
Hungary sent Ádám Ceglédi, the acting chargé d’affaires at the Hungarian embassy in Kyiv, as the Hungarian foreign ministry confirmed to Telex.
According to the analyst, Ukraine may have hoped that Orbán’s fall would bring a clear shift in Hungary’s Ukraine policy. Anita Orbán, as foreign minister, has confirmed this by pursuing a foreign policy moving away from Russia.
However, Ukrainians did not take Magyar’s domestic political interests into account.
Magyar panders to anti-Ukraine crowd
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The event was organised under the auspices of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union and in cooperation with the Irish Embassy to Romania. Delegates received an overview of the ECCC’s contribution to enhancing Europe’s cybersecurity ecosystem and the discussions highlighted the Centre’s role in supporting cybersecurity research, innovation, deployment, and capacity […]
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