The online advertising system is based on the collection and sharing of user data, in an opaquely competitive market which rests mostly in a few powerful hands, including Google. Privacy and data protection are at issue, and Europe is debating what action should be taken.

As a result of more stringent standards, recycling of plastic packaging is set to fall in the EU. Without better industrial capacity, the EU will not reach its 50% target in five years' time. And illegal exports are likely to increase.

For weeks, Spain and Italy were epicentres of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their health defences had an important gap: large staffing shortages and low ratios of nurses to doctors. At the same time, nurses had higher infection rates than the general population, mainly because of the lack of personal protective equipment.

An exclusive investigation reveals that Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women, shaping the behavior of content creators and the worldview of 140 millions Europeans in what remains a blind spot of EU regulations.

We have gathered data on excess deaths from 500 European regions to better understand the spread of the virus. Some regions report up to three times as many deaths as usual since March, but a large part of Europe has been able to live through the first wave of the pandemic without any significant excess death.