Spanish government approves new emergency housing decree.

Von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Strasbourg the EU plans to appoint a single market operator to coordinate joint energy purchases and to elevate the post‑Russia‑Ukraine gas joint‑procurement mechanism to a “next stage,” extending it beyond gas to other energy products. She said the move comes as the EU faces a second round of energy price shocks in less than five years. The current mechanism aggregates EU gas demand and matches it with potential suppliers to lower prices and reduce reliance on Russian supply, but its success in closing final deals is disputed and many large buyers still prefer bilateral contracts. The Commission intends to shift from simple supply‑demand matching to demand aggregation under a designated market operator and called for investment to strengthen resilience.

NVIDIA-backed U.S. AI startup Reflection AI on the 5th (local time) released its cutting-edge open-weight model "Beam". The company said the model's performance is comparable to mainstream open-weight models.