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An early scorching heatwave across Spain has worsened the impact of the country’s long-term drought, causing unprecedented damage to the country’s crops. As farmers grow desperate for irrigation, the government’s plan to limit the rerouting of water from the nation’s longest river – the Tagus – for agricultural purposes lies at the centre of a heated debate. FRANCE 24 reports.

In this edition of “Brussels, my love?”, we take a look at Germany’s role in Europe following Chancellor Scholz’s speech before the European Parliament and ask whether the belated ratification of the Istanbul Convention to fight violence against women was a relief – or an embarrassment.

After a long battle, Portugal on Friday passed a law legalising euthanasia for people in great suffering and with incurable diseases, joining just a handful of countries around the world.

The watchdogs of EU democracy will have to be “much louder in the future” if they hope to see off a mounting threat from homegrown populists and autocrats who are chipping away at Europe’s founding commitments to free speech and the rule of law, a top EU official has warned. “We have to make sure, wherever democracy is under threat, [where there is] shrinking space of civil society, then we have to raise our voices,” Oliver R?pke, the newly elected president of the European Economic and Social Committee, an advisory body within the European Union, told FRANCE 24.

Asylum seekers from Latin America will be able to apply to go to Canada, Spain and the US in migrant processing centres set up in their home countries.

Turkey is officially a candidate to join the EU but its accession talks have been frozen since 2018 over rule of law and democratic concerns.

Taiwanese battery maker Prologium said Friday it will invest billions of dollars in building a new factory in northern France for its first European plant.

Spain’s cabinet on Thursday approved measures worth more than two billion euros to alleviate the impact of a prolonged drought that has hit its key agricultural sector.

Eurostat’s Demography of Europe report documents various factors affecting the lives of tens of millions of people.

Armenia and Azerbaijan on Thursday blamed each other for an exchange of fire along their restive border, which killed one person and wounded four, days ahead of EU-hosted peace talks.