With Algeria's hand strengthened by its relatively new status as Europe's leading gas supplier, economic experts say its poised to clinch a more favourable trade deal with its neighbour to the north

With clashes intensifying, Georgia appears to be in a pre-revolutionary state

How a fiery speech by far-right Hungarian PM Victor Orbán at the European Parliament, followed by an unusually stirring speech by Ursula von der Leyen, inspired a group of MPs to break out into song

A minister in Angela Merkel's German cabinet for 16 years, Europe's most powerful politician has just won a second five-year term. A tour of swing voters helped....

With $175bn worth of annual business between the two blocs, a free trade deal seems only sensible, yet visas and vested commercial interests remain obstacles.

A deal in Brussels to update the bloc's 25-year-old Stability and Growth Pact on spending and borrowing rules could lead to new EU bonds and regulations. Yet it could also help the populist far-right.

Politics were played down when Russia brought former Soviet states into a trading bloc to counter the EU. But suspicions over deeper motives were there from the start. Sanctions are a major test.

Georgia has never been so close to its historic drive to re-integrate into the West. It could gain EU membership, yet a government preoccupied with its own grip on power jeapordises this dream.

The united response to Russia might have been the exception rather than the rule. It has long proved difficult for the EU to agree on foreign policy positions.