Euobserver.com

The EU's border and coast guard agency Frontex said Friday it had suspended its travel agency contract. Frontex said in an email that it had experienced difficulties with travel arrangements for standing corps officers during deployments — but the move also follows anger over its treatment of migrants and lavish expenditures. Frontex said the decision was effective immediately.

The EU has sent a "common agreed response by all the 27 member states ... to all the issues raised by [Sergei] Lavrov," on European security, the bloc's foreign affairs spokesman said Thursday. The letter, signed by EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, comes after Russian foreign minister Lavrov wrote bilaterally to several EU capitals questioning Nato's future, in what some saw as efforts to sow division.

EU needs to do more to tackle "oligarch structures" in its member states, lawmakers tell European Commission.

Linking the climate fund to the rule of law would especially hit Hungary and coal-dependent Poland, aggravating tensions even further and potentially harming vulnerable households in these countries.

EU countries are intensifying talks on how to deal with an increasingly hostile junta in Mali that has deepening ties with Russian mercenaries.

The lead MEP on the screening regulation, has already warned against a "legal fiction of non-entry" that would lead to de facto detention.

Yachts are responsible for 1.1m tonnes of CO2 emissions in Europe alone, yet are exempt from new EU emission rules. If Bezos is hellbent on having a superyacht, at least he should at least pay for its carbon emissions.

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, from the Green party, on Wednesday announced former Greenpeace international chief Jennifer Morgan as "the face of Germany's international climate policy". Morgan, who was born in the US, will start her role as Germany's special envoy for climate diplomacy in March. "Time is running out" and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will require "international cooperation like we have never seen before," Morgan said.

​The European Union is expected to add Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Israel and Russia to a so-called grey-list of tax-havens, in a public relations blow.

The European Commission is asking French authorities to explain whether they authorised the sale of cyber-surveillance tools to the regime in Egypt, posing questions over possible violations of EU export rules.

The inquiry could uncover the extent to which EU governments use the smartphone spyware against critics and political opponents.

If the EU institutions adopted a single working language, couldn't the substantial amount of money saved on translation services be put to good use: such as protecting and preserving the many endangered languages of Europe?

Britain has formally sided with the EU in defending Lithuania against Chinese trade restrictions, representing a rare post-Brexit show of solidarity. "We support our allies, Lithuania and the EU, in standing against China's use of coercive trading practices," British trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan tweeted Tuesday. The US and Australia are also backing Lithuania, after China restricted imports due to Lithuania's close ties with Taiwan.

Belgian police detained 13 people in a counter-terrorist raid in the country's second largest city, Antwerp, Tuesday. "An Antwerp group within the Salafist [a hardline Muslim school] jihadist milieu has come under scrutiny and the aim of this operation was to further map out the group's activities," Belgian prosecutors said, Le Soir reports. Islamist terrorists killed 32 people in bomb attacks in Brussels in 2016.

More than 60 percent of people in the EU think "Nato should come to Ukraine's defence if Russia invades," according to a poll from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think-tank, The Guardian reports. The figures fell below 50 percent in France and Germany. Most Europeans thought a Russian invasion is "likely" this year. The data suggested "a geopolitical awakening in Europe," the ECFR's Mark Leonard said.

A Polish anti-migrant wall risks the "collapse" of rare species, such as lynx, in EU-protected areas, a group of 150 NGOs and 1,500 academics warned the European Commission in a petition against the barrier submitted on Tuesday, Reuters reports. The 180-km fence in the primeval Białowieża Forest is to cut through areas protected by the EU's Natura 2000 programme and by the UN.

France, and Europe more broadly speaking, has enough gas to get through the winter even if supplies were disrupted by a Russian attack on Ukraine, French EU affairs minister Clément Beaune told France 2 TV Tuesday. "We have looked at this very closely. French gas stocks in particular and those of Europe in general ... are sufficient in any scenario to make it through the winter," Beaune said.

Countries worldwide should phase out wildlife markets and receive incentives to report new viruses under a new international treaty on pandemics, Reuters reports. Talks on the accord, led by Japan, the Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, and Thailand get under way on Wednesday, aiming for a deal by August. The Dutch, representing the EU, want legally-binding obligations to report viruses, but Brazil favours a voluntary approach, Reuters said.

In an unprecedented move, the EU Commission has started the procedure to deduct EU funds, slated for Poland, over Warsaw's failure to pay fines already imposed by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over a polluting lignite mine, the commission said Tuesday. Poland has refused to shut the mine, close to the Czech border, or pay the fines, which the ECJ set at €500,000 per day.

The Dutch government appointed a commissioner Tuesday to tackle sexual abuse after recent high-profile #MeToo cases, AP reported. "Recent incidents in the sports and television world show us that the reason for the #MeToo movement in our country is still alive. This must change," said education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf. The government-appointed former MP, Mariëtte Hamer, is tasked with creating an action plan to tackle sexually-inappropriate behaviour and sexual violence.