FRANCE: Interior minister Gerald Darmanin announced multiple nationwide anti-drug crackdowns today in a law-and-order move ahead of European elections.

Mr Darmanin said that police units conducted raids and made several arrests in the northern city of Lille as well as Villeneuve-d’Ascq and Roubaix. 

SOUTH AFRICA: Prosecutors said today they intended to charge the parliament speaker with corruption, alleging she took $135,000 (around £106,000) and a wig in bribes over a three-year period while she was defence minister.

Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has not been arrested or charged. The prosecutors spoke at a court hearing over her claims that authorities hadn’t properly informed her of allegations or followed correct procedure.

BULGARIA: Prime minister-designate Maria Gabriel withdrew her nomination today after negotiations between two political coalitions failed, which could send the European Union’s poorest member into a new crisis.

Ms Gabriel, a former EU commissioner, had been proposed by the largest group in parliament, the centre-right GERB-UDF coalition, to form a new government. 

Bulgaria is now likely headed for early elections.

EUROPEAN UNION: An EU plan to fight climate change and protect nature was indefinitely postponed today, underscoring how farmers’ protests sweeping the continent influence politics ahead of the June EU parliamentary elections. 

Member states were supposed to give final approval to the Bill today following months of proceedings through the EU’s bureaucracy. But the expected rubber-stamp approval has been shelved.