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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) trumpeted its return to Hungary after a 27-year hiatus, marking its third re-entry into an EU member state following the 2019 resumption of services in Bulgaria and Romania. RFE/RL’s refocus on countries where media pluralism is under threat.

Source: Balkan Insight

The Croatian parliament has stripped three MPs of their immunity at the request of the State Prosecutor's Office for the purpose of pressing criminal charges against two of them and continuing a trial against the third.

Source: Balkan Insight

Human Rights Watch published a report on the “systematic beatings and torture” of demonstrators arrested during the protests in Belarus. The report included a collection of first-hand accounts from victims of police brutality. Among them, is the story of a 30-year-old IT worker named Ales, who recounts how a senior riot police officer raped him with a truncheon in a police van.

Source: Meduza

The EU acted legally when it imposed sanctions on Russian energy companies and banks, the European Court of Justice has ruled. The EU hit firms such as Rosneft with sanctions over Russia's destabilisation of Ukraine.

Source: DW

The European Union’s chief executive said there was no place in the EU for so-called “LGBT-free zones”, a pointed criticism of Poland’s nationalist government pushing to curb the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Source: Reuters 

International perpetrators of genocide and torture, but not corruption, are to face new-model EU sanctions, a leaked document shows. Those guilty of crimes against humanity, slavery, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary arrests will also face EU asset-freezes and visa-bans.

Source: EUObserver

Greenpeace will mount a legal challenge to a 3.4 billion euro bailout for Air France-KLM’s Dutch subsidiary if the government does not attach stricter environmental targets to the deal.

Source: Reuters

Russia’s Interior Ministry is reportedly drafting reforms to foreign citizens’ legal status that would require all visitors who remain in the country for more than 30 days to surrender fingerprints. The reforms would grant some additional flexibility to foreigners on extended stays, allowing visitors to change the purpose of their entry into Russia without leaving the country as currently required.

Source: Meduza

An independent Hungarian talk radio station is set to lose its license after the country's media regulator said that the station had "repeatedly infringed" the rules.

Source: DW

The government is planning to “opt out” of parts of the European convention on human rights in order to speed up deportations of asylum seekers and protect British troops serving overseas from legal action.

Source: The Guardian

A court has found businessman Marian Kocner not guilty of ordering the killing of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée in 2018, in an attack that rocked Slovakia. Judges found that prosecutors had failed to prove Kocner and a third defendant had ordered the killings.

Source: BBC

A story about a gay man who beat depression has seen a Norwegian news website taken offline for well over a year in Russia. The Norwegians and a Russian NGO are fighting the blockade in court, but they face an uphill struggle, as the differences between Europe and the Russian regime deepen.

Source: EUobserver