Strasbourg/Vienna - The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) said Friday that corruption was common in Austria and legal measures against it were still in the early stages, according to a spokesman and a report presented in Strasbourg.

In the construction business, in political life and in public administration, such practices were common occurrences, said a spokesman for GRECO, which was founded by the Council of Europe.

Although Austria had initiated some anti-corruption measures, "overall, the country is still at an early stage of the fight against corruption," the report said.

Strasbourg - The European Parliament on Wednesday awarded its Sakharov Prize to jailed Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia, rebuffing warnings from Beijing that doing so might damage the European Union's relations with China.

The prize, which each year honours worthy human rights activists around the world, was given to Hu in absentia.

"I would like to express my deep concern that our laureate Hu Jia could not be here today with us and receive the award in person as he remains imprisoned for defending human rights in China - freedom of speech, freedom of thought and the basic right of access to the health service," said Laima Andrikiene, the conservatives' spokesman on human rights issues.

Strasbourg - The European Parliament on Wednesday endorsed an ambitious climate and energy package designed to reduce the European Union's greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent.

Strasbourg, France - Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday defended the European Union's watered-down deal on climate change, saying the compromises that have been agreed by leaders will avoid imposing unbearable sacrifices on its citizens.

"We didn't want to impose constrictions which no country in the world could have survived socially," said the French president in his final address to the European Parliament at the helm of the bloc's rotating presidency.

Strasbourg/Bucharest - The Council of Europe's anti-torture committee criticized the treatment of patients in psychiatric institutions in Romania in a report published Thursday in Strasbourg.

London/Strasbourg - A ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg condemning Britain's policy of storing DNA samples from innocent people was described as "disappointing" by the government in London Thursday.

The court said the DNA and fingerprints of two British men who had no previous convictions should not have been kept on a national database by police in Yorkshire, northern England.

The judges said keeping the information constituted a "breach of rights" and "could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society."