The 1 German/Netherlands Corps (1GNC) will officially assume tactical command of the Estonian and Latvian land forces from Multinational Corps Northeast next Tuesday (June 30).

A protest against the multi-million euro prison rental agreement between Estonia and Sweden took place in Tartu at noon on Sunday.

Several of Estonia's political parties have already begun campaigning for the next Riigikogu elections, hanging banners and ordering newspaper adverts, which will take place in March 2027.

A nearly 12-hour Narva City Council meeting Friday ended in three no-confidence motions after repeated procedural clashes, long recesses and a stalled agenda fight.

A protest against the multi-million euro prison rental agreement between Estonia and Sweden took place in Tartu at noon on Sunday.

The footpaths and bastion in Tallinn's Hirvepark will be lit up by a new lighting solution and residents can submit feedback on the plan until July 2.

1957 – Sillamäe sai vabariikliku alluvusega linnaks.

Venemaa president Vladimir Putin ütles pühapäeval, et ootab USA läbirääkijate meeskonna saabumist Moskvasse pärast seda, kui Washington on jõudnud Iraaniga Lähis-Ida konflikti asjus kokkuleppele.

The pilot and 10 passengers - including five first-time parachutists - died in the incident, local officials said.

An estimated 150 million people have been experiencing temperatures of over 35C across Europe.

The US president says "Numerous European countries" have been discussing bringing in such a levy.

Some analysts say the first non-stop London to Sydney flight is a major milestone - but would you buy a ticket?

Geopolitical tensions, energy price volatility and growing concerns about economic security have brought competitiveness, resilience and strategic autonomy to the center of the European Union’s policymaking. Across energy, industry and defense, the focus is increasingly on reducing dependencies, strengthening domestic capacity and making the EU more resilient to external shocks. Yet one essential enabler of these objectives is still too often overlooked: commercial road transport. This becomes particularly clear when disruption hits. Energy price volatility is felt almost immediately across the sector. Higher fuel costs quickly feed into transport operations, supply chains and, ultimately, the wider economy. Costs rise, connectivity suffers and pressure builds across value chains. This reflects a broader reality. Commercial road transport is not simply another sector of the economy. It is strategic infrastructure that keeps the real economy functioning. Every day, it connects factories to markets, industrial hubs to supply chains, and businesses to workers and customers. It also ensures the mobility of people. Buses and coaches provide essential connectivity to jobs, education and services, particularly in regions where alternatives remain limited. This strategic role becomes even more important as the EU accelerates decarbonization. Decarbonizing commercial road transport is not only about meeting climate targets. It can also help reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels, strengthen energy security and improve long-term competitiveness. But this will happen only if the transition is economically and operationally workable. Commercial road transport is not simply another sector of the economy. It is strategic infrastructure that keeps the real economy functioning. The sector is committed to the transition and investment in cleaner technologies is already underway. The challenge is no longer a lack of ambition. The challenge is making deployment work at scale. Too often, policy still assumes that setting targets will automatically drive market transformation. The reality on the ground is more complex. Grid access is becoming another major bottleneck. Even where operators are ready to invest, deployment is often slowed by limited capacity, long connection times, power delivery certainty and unpredictable electricity costs. The three A’s of the grid — accessibility, affordability and assurance — will be decisive for the business case of electrification. At the same time, charging and refueling infrastructure must scale much faster. Around 70 percent of heavy-duty vehicle charging is expected to happen at depots, logistics centers and operational bases, yet policy support remains heavily focused on publicly accessible charging. Public charging is essential, but it will not be enough on its own. Public, semi-private and private infrastructure must function as an integrated system. Investment conditions must also improve, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, which represent the majority of the sector and face the greatest difficulty absorbing high upfront costs for vehicles and infrastructure. Investments could be de-risked if policymakers supported investments through grants, guarantees and blended finance. CO2-differentiated taxation and favorable tolling schemes across the EU can significantly improve the total cost of ownership of zero-emission vehicles. The transition has a powerful built-in financing mechanism. If revenues generated by road transport, including ETS2 (a new emissions trading system) and road charging revenues, are reinvested in the sector’s decarbonization, they could unlock the scale of investment needed to accelerate change. But who will ensure that these funds are channeled back into the sector that generates them? Policy must also reflect operational diversity. Commercial road transport is not a single use case. Long-haul freight, regional logistics, urban delivery, scheduled bus services and long-distance coach operations all face different technical and economic constraints. A one-size-fits-all approach will not work. While electrification will play a central role, it cannot be the only solution. Sustainable renewable and low-carbon fuels, including renewable and synthetic fuels, will be essential for long-distance operations and vehicle segments where alternatives remain limited. Commercial road transport should therefore no longer be viewed primarily as a sector to regulate or decarbonize in isolation. It should be recognized for what it already is: a strategic enabler of resilience, competitiveness and economic security. A coherent EU policy framework, including technology-neutral CO2 standards for both light- and heavy-duty vehicles, must recognize road transport as a long-term market for clean fuels. This would not only accelerate decarbonization in road transport but also support aviation and maritime sectors, which are expected to rely heavily on these fuels to achieve their own climate objectives. Looking more broadly at the EU’s industrial policy, including efforts to strengthen domestic production and reduce strategic dependencies, everything starts from efficient transport connectivity. Industrial hubs do not operate in isolation. Their performance depends on how efficiently goods and people move to, from and between them. Stronger connectivity, integrated transport terminals, charging and refueling infrastructure, faster permitting and targeted support will be essential if industrial acceleration is to deliver in practice. Commercial road transport should therefore no longer be viewed primarily as a sector to regulate or decarbonize in isolation. It should be recognized for what it already is: a strategic enabler of resilience, competitiveness and economic security. That requires a greater focus on infrastructure, affordable energy, financing, clean fuels and smart regulation, which will determine whether the transition accelerates at the pace policymakers expect. Regulation should make decarbonization easier, not harder. Europe’s resilience will depend not only on stronger industry and cleaner energy, but also on something more fundamental: whether goods and people can continue moving efficiently, reliably and affordably across the EU. Disclaimer POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT The sponsor: IRU – International Road Transport Union, Av. de Cortenbergh 71, 1000 Brussels, Belgium The political advertisement is linked to ongoing EU policy discussions on transport decarbonisation, clean mobility infrastructure, energy transition and industrial competitiveness. More information here.

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s most important climate policy is up for review this summer, and Ireland must be the go-between in a major ideological contest among member countries. The European Commission will release a closely watched review of the Emissions Trading System in mid-July, barely two weeks into Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the EU.  Months of arguing will follow among member countries over how far to water down the 20-year-old policy, a cap-and-trade scheme designed to reduce the emissions of the EU’s most polluting industries by making them pay for each ton of carbon they emit. Already, the review has become intensely political. As soon as U.S. and Israeli bombs fell on Iran and oil and gas prices skyrocketed, a gang of 10 EU member countries — led by Poland, Italy, Czechia and Austria — released a letter characterizing the ETS  as a plague on household energy bills, a business killer and a constrictive mandate for European decarbonization. Since then, other countries have piled in. On the moderate side, France, Germany, Spain and others are now also arguing the ETS requires reform so the private sector can catch its financial breath amid market uncertainty. But Sweden, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands — among the biggest defenders of the ETS — kept their signatures off a pair of critical papers to the attention of the Commission in May. Heavily polluting industries like steel, cement, aluminum and chemicals — all subject to the ETS — have publicly committed to decarbonizing. But they, too, have lobbied against parts of the ETS and many make no secret of their dislike of it in the backrooms of Brussels. Irish Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment Darragh O’Brien is pictured at the North Sea Summit in Hamburg, Germany on Jan. 26, 2026. | Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images Ireland stands as one of the relative neutrals in the ETS debate. Darragh O’Brien, Ireland’s minister of energy and transport, told POLITICO that’s because his country is not a heavy industrial nation and less affected by the ETS. “There’s no baggage coming into this,” O’Brien said about Ireland’s history with the bloc’s carbon pricing framework. “So I think, we will operate as an efficient, honest broker through this. And it’s important for industry, so we need to advance it as far as we can over the course of the six months.” But the biggest question in the European capital is: What will the Commission actually end up doing to satisfy the naysayers and the ETS-purists, alike? Walking the line If you listen to the Commission’s party line on what it can do, it will say the fundamentals of the ETS must remain, but still concedes changes are needed. Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra has signaled at least three main things that may appear in the July review. Firstly, he’s repeatedly mentioned in public, including at a POLITICO summit in early June, that the Commission was considering mandating a larger percentage of ETS payments — last year, annual revenue hit €43 billion — be delivered straight into the pockets of businesses to help pay for decarbonization. “A system where more of the money is filtered back to use for the transition of the hardest-to-abate sectors and of cleantech — intellectually [that] makes a hell of a lot of sense,” Hoekstra told a roundtable of reporters in May.  Over the course of its 20-year lifespan the ETS has brought in more than €250 billion from selling allowances to industry, with annual yields creeping higher over time as fewer free allowances are doled out. Around 20 percent of those billions goes to EU programs like the Social Climate Fund and the Innovation Fund, but the remaining 80 percent funnels to the coffers of member countries to be spent on a broad range of energy and climate programs. Clawing some of that money back from member countries to give to industry would be a tough sell: Finance ministers across the bloc have come to love the money coming from the ETS, and in places like Poland — where defense spending is close to 5 percent of gross domestic product — that revenue won’t be given up easily. Then there’s the question of free allowances. Many countries and industries say the EU executive’s latest calculations of how many free allowances heavy industries receive are flawed, and are calling for more generous treatment. The Commission has firmly pushed back on this. Under current rules, the overall cap on emissions under the ETS is due to tighten annually until it reaches zero by 2039 — essentially meaning companies will have to stop emitting altogether at that date. But at a public roundtable in May, Mette Quinn — deputy director for carbon markets and clean mobility under Hoekstra — suggested the EU executive would “reduce the speed” of the ETS by extending the cap past the 2039 deadline, and that it expected “allowances far into the [2040s] under the ETS.” During the roundtable, the Commission also displayed a slide clearly stating: “The review will aim to find a more realistic trajectory for free allowances.” Whether or not all these changes make it into the review remains to be seen. Two EU diplomats and two other people familiar with the inner workings of the Commission, granted anonymity to reveal sensitive information, said first drafts would be internally making the rounds as early as June 19.  O’Brien is keen that his country has the goods to find consensus on the ETS across the bloc, but much will depend on exactly what the Commission proposes. “The first milestone date is getting the review published,” O’Brien said.

Simon Peter Carman has been charged with murder after the body of 17-year-old Tunchanok Donhomla was found in a suitcase

Venezuelans angry government as time runs out to dig out survivors.

Russia’s president says Ukraine’s attacks on infrastructure are causing ‘obvious’ but not critical problemsThe Russian president, Vladimir Putin, acknowledged that the country was suffering from “a certain shortage” of fuel in an interview published by the Kremlin on Sunday, after repeated Ukrainian strikes in their four-year war.Kyiv calls the attacks fair retribution for Russia’s near-daily barrages on Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure since its February 2022 offensive. Continue reading...

Heat records of over 40C set as extreme weather spreads east, with more than 191m in Europe enduring 35C or aboveAfter decades of warnings, why is Europe so unprepared?Germany, Czechia, Poland and Hungary reached record temperatures of more than 40C on Sunday as a heatwave linked to hundreds of deaths in western Europe spread east.More than 191 million people in Europe faced temperatures of at least 35C, with extreme heat warnings across the region. Continue reading...

President’s comments are first admission that Kyiv’s long-range attacks have dented production

As Kyiv’s battlefield fortunes change, policies long favoured by the west could now do real damage to Moscow