European Union member states led by France and Germany are walking back on their commitment to protect human rights and the environment in global supply chains, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 23, 2025, member states agreed on a European Council position that, if it becomes law, would hollow out an EU directive on protecting rights in supply chains.

The directive, known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), was designed to protect victims of human rights abuses as well as the environment while creating a level playing field for companies. It marked an important shift from voluntary standards to holding companies legally accountable for human rights and environmental abuses in their entire supply chain. It entered into force in July 2024 as part of the European Green Deal, the EU Commission’s flagship project to make the EU more sustainable and climate neutral by 2050.

PDF.

The student protests in Serbia have persisted for seven months, yielding widespread and diverse effects. All state universities are still blocked and primary and secondary school teachers ceased work from January to April 2025. Lawyers went on strike throughout the whole of February, while farmers and university professors have also voiced their support. Roads have been blocked and students have organized marches not only across many parts of the country but also to EU institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg. Notably, national minorities reported feeling equal to Serbian citizens for the first time.

However, the most significant outcome of the student protests has been the substantial delegitimization of Aleksandar Vučić’s populist Serbian Progressive Party (SPP) government. After half a year of struggles, it has become clear that the government’s legitimacy is not only questionable but non-existent.

Yet the SPP rema

Asmat Shanava, owner of the Pirosmani restaurant in Karlovy Vary, is an indispensable figure for both Russian organized crime and the Russian state. She works as an intermediary, securing payments, setting up companies, and coordinating meetings. She arrived in Karlovy Vary with her husband in the late 1990s. He died shortly afterwards. However, Asmat Shanava stayed and expanded her connections to include the mayor of Karlovy Vary. Russian citizen Alexandr Franchetti also contacted her for help. Franchetti was arrested in Prague in 2021 on suspicion of forming an armed group during the annexation of Crimea, he urgently sought someone to pay his lawyers for his defense.

Ukrainian scientists confirmed that after the Russian oil spill in the Kerch Strait, all Black Sea countries have found themselves in a risk zone. For some, these are oil spills, for others – birds in fuel oil or fish and water, polluted with toxins. But pollution affected all the coasts.

Several days later, oil clots and dead fish were found in almost all the Black Sea countries, but it turned out to be complicated to prove that these were the consequences of the spill of that very Russian oil. Yet, Ukrainian scientists developed a model to forecast the movement of oil in the sea and proved this fact. They also forecast that the swimming season will not pass without surprises – oil that went to the bottom in the cold season rises to the surface in summer.

The “James Bond-like” Russian Duma politician Leonid Slutsky and his Russian Peace Foundation helped arrange the Moscow visit of David Lindtner, a close ally to and advisor of Robert Fico, our investigation has found. Slutsky and his foundation have close ties to the GRU—and routinely pass information about their guests to the agency’s European espionage department.