European Union

The Europea Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) will run its own tests on Boeing's grounded aircraft rather than simply accept the assessment of its US counterpart, the regulator's head said this week, marking a break with international air safety convention.

Eurojust, the EU’s agency on judicial co-operation, launched a Counter-Terrorism Register on Thursday (5 September), designed to streamline the exchange of information between EU member states for potential terrorist offences.

The first session between the negotiation teams of the Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez's centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE) and the leftist Unidas Podemos (UP) finished without making progress. "The PSOE maintains its immovable position. They have presented their electoral programme," said a UP member. PSOE proposed a "progressive programme" last week aiming to convince UP to support him in the next investiture. However, UP aims to form a coalition government.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has urged a "peaceful" solution to the Hong Kong protests on a visit to China designed to boost trade.

The EU has recognised that there are member states which do not comply with the procedures of the European arrest warrant, reported Spanish newspaper El Mundo. This follows the response of the European commissioner for justice, Věra Jourová, to a letter sent by the Spanish MEP Maite Pagazaurtundúa. Jourová says in her response that "it is a priority of the Commission to ensure that the European arrest warrant works well."

Facebook, in partnership with Microsoft and several academics, has launched a contest to help people to better detect "deep fakes" - realistic videos of real people doing or saying fictional things to mislead the viewer. The social media giant is investing $10m [€9m] in "The Deepfake Detection Challenge", which will include a dataset, a leaderboard, grants, and awards, to encourage industries to create "fact-checking" techniques to prevent AI manipulation.

The new Italian foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, said to a gathering of Italian diplomats that migration will be his priority and that Italy will "overcome" the Dublin agreement, according to La Repubblica. Under the Dublin agreement, European members states agreed that migrants and refugees should ask for asylum in the country where they are first registered. Italy is Europe's main entry point for migrants.

European countries that avoid repatriating ISIS fighters and put them on trial in their country of origin threaten the regional security in Syria, warned the US defence secretary Mark Esper. Thousands of ISIS fighters, many from Europe, are held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in north-east Syria. EU nationals are mostly from France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, and Sweden, according to a research.

Irish opinion leaders reacted angrily on the visit of US vice-president Mike Pence to Ireland earlier this week. In a statement Pence declared: "Let me be clear: the US supports the UK decision to leave the EU in Brexit". As the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is at the centre of the Brexit debate, one Irish Times columnist wrote that Pence had "shat on the carpet".

"There is [...] a worrying pattern of attacks on critical civilian infrastructure, including health facilities, schools and water facilities by the Syrian regime and its allies and such attacks have to stop," an EU spokesperson told Anadolu newsagency. For four months the Syrian regime, supported by Russia and Iran, has bombed the north-western region of Syria, killing at least 1,000 people, even though they earlier declared it a demilitarised zone.

President-elect of the European Council, Charles Michel, said in a speech to EU ambassadors that the "European Union should play a leading role on the global stage". He stressed that only by acting "boldly and confidently" Europe will avoid becoming a victim of the competition between the United States and China which is "defining today's international relations". The approximately 150 EU ambassadors were gathering for their annual meeting in Brussels.

Italy's new government, combining the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and centre-left Democratic Party (PD), was sworn into office on Thursday (5 September), promising to reset Rome's often fraught relations with Brussels.

Sucking CO2 from the air to mitigate global warming may sound silly at first, but it’s likely to be necessary nonetheless, says Nils Røkke. And the more we delay it, the higher will be the demand for carbon removal technologies in the future, he warns.

A horrific rape and murder of a kidnapped teen in Lithuania prompted the European Court of Justice on Thursday (5 September) to order mobile phone operators to hand over data enabling the localisation of calls made to the international emergency number 112.

Sensitive party politicking in the run-up to the appointment of the next European Commission has further escalated an already intense debate in Greece over a new law under which members of an independent competition authority have  been ousted.

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson heads to Scotland on Friday (6 September) in campaign mode despite failing to call an early election after MPs this week thwarted his hardline Brexit strategy.

This week, Westminster debacle left us all slack-jawed, Italy’s new government is a little bit odd, and Vdl has her full Commission squad.

Oil and gas companies have spent $50bn (€45.3bn) on investment projects that undermine the Paris Agreement, with a new report from think tank Carbon Tracker warning that major companies risk wasting $2.2 (€1.9trn) on stranded assets by 2030. EURACTIV's media partner edie.net report.

A Ukrainian court on Thursday (5 September) released on bail a man suspected of involvement in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine in 2014 that killed 298 people.