Germany's Manfred Weber and the Netherlands' Frans Timmermans hope to succeed EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. In a debate aired on German TV, the two discussed climate change, taxes, terrorism and migration.

Top EU civil servant Martin Selmayr is to leave Brussels to head the bloc's mission in Vienna, Austria. The German aide to outgoing EU Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker was regarded as influential but controversial.

A 3-year-old girl is rescued from the rubble of destroyed buildings in western Turkey 91 hours after a large earthquake hit on Friday 30 October. At least a hundred people have been killed in the quake and two people were rescued from the debris.

In the week that the United States said goodbye to Donald Trump and swore in a new president, European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova tells FRANCE 24 the arrival of Joe Biden in the White House is "very good news". "We have big plans with America: in security, climate change, the fight against Covid-19 and also democracy and technologies which should serve the people and not the other way around," she says.

Speaking to FRANCE 24, Vera Jourova, a Vice-President of the European Commission, strongly condemned what Russia says are evacuations of civilians in the Kherson province of southern Ukraine. "I come from Czechoslovakia and this is the old playbook," she told Catherine Nicholson. "The Soviet military invasion of 1968 was presented as brotherly help."

It's one emergency the EU didn’t need. Already dealing with a war on its doorstep, an energy crisis and rising inflation, the handling of the Ocean Viking – a ship carrying migrants rescued in the Mediterranean – starkly showed the limits of European solidarity.

After years of waiting, Croatia is adopting the euro and joining the Schengen Area. EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen praised it as "a day for the history books" during the ceremony at the Croatian border.

Emily O'Reilly, who heads the EU Ombudsman, says she has been stonewalled by the European Commission when asking for information in relation to the "Pfizergate" affair. At the core of this controversy is an exchange of text messages between the EU Commission chief and the CEO of Pfizer in the run-up to a major contract signed between the EU and the pharmaceutical company for a Covid-19 vaccine.

The instability of old buildings was responsible for much of the wreckage in Monday’s earthquake along the Turkey-Syria border. But the earthquake was also abnormally strong for its magnitude.

The European Commission has proposed a drop of 90% in emissions in heavy vehicles by 2040 as compared to 2019. From 2030, new city buses should be zero-emission vehicles.

Talking Europe speaks to European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas, whose wide-ranging portfolio covers migration and asylum, security issues, education and what the EU calls "promoting the European Way of Life", among other things. We focus on migration and the EU's efforts to rectify what Schinas calls a historic failure to build a cohesive asylum and migration policy.

Following an EU-hosted donors conference, the bloc says it will fund humantiarian assistance, but not full-scale reconstruction in Syria.