Despite substantially increasing their vote share, party president Alberto Feijóo could face a challenge from regional PP leader Isabel Díaz Ayuso, as socialists contemplate an unstable alliance with Catalan separatists to form a new coalition.

Shouts of “Allahu Akbar” were heard right outside the Parliament as an almost exclusively male crowd gathered at Place du Luxembourg.

This week saw a cross-partisan Gallic alliance of French MEPs unite to secure a new parliamentary building on French soil, which led even federalists to complain of wasteful EU spending.

The new Algeria-China partnership, along side Algeria’s growing military and economic relationship with Russia, feed into a regional conflict between Algeria and Morocco over Western Sahara.

EU MEPs blamed nationalist rhetoric for the cultural clash; the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said the EU would do better to look after its own internal affairs.

Comparable in exasperation to recent Dutch protests, Irish farmers gathered to object to the imposition of nitrogen quotas, as the Irish government looks set to commence the mass culling of livestock to meet environmental goals.

Closed-door negotiations between NATO and Ankara have irritated MEPs who rebuffed the likelihood of Turkish EU membership anytime soon in a report from the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee this week.

Belgian authorities confirmed to The European Conservative that they conducted raids on properties connected to Maria Arena after the Belgian socialist MEP resigned from her post on Parliament’s human rights committee.

Despite a wish by MEPs to pursue a bilateral deal with Taiwan business groups, the EU Commission warned that any embrace of Taipei could jeopardise already tense relations with China.

The latest iteration of EU visa policy will make it possible for Ecuadorians to gain visa-free access to the Schengen countries, as Latin American leaders drove a hard bargain during this week’s CELAC summit in Brussels.

The Commission said it was the prerogative of member states to set migration policy with third-party states, and the duty of Spain to set limits on numbers coming in.

Anti-communist MEPs fear that the EU is set to normalise relations with Venezuela and Cuba entirely due to the geopolitical need to win over South America, warning that such a move would only strengthen China and Russia’s position in the region.