Euobserver.com

"Soldiers from the 18th Airborne Corps arrived in Wiesbaden [Germany] today ... These are the first of 2,000 soldiers to arrive in Europe following the Pentagon's announcement of additional forces moving from the United States to Europe in support of our Nato allies," the Pentagon said Friday. A plane carrying US soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, also landed in Poland on Sunday, Reuters reports.

Polish president Andrzej Duda discussed the threat Russia poses to Ukraine with Chinese president Xi Jinping on the margins of the Beijing Olympics on Sunday, Duda's spokesman told Polish broadcaster TVN24. Duda told Xi "the point of view of European countries" and said "China is a great power and it's good that they should be informed." Almost all other top EU VIPs stayed away from Beijing.

The race is on to find a successor for Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg who said he would become Norway's central bank chief in December. The end of Stoltenberg's eight-year Nato mandate comes amid heightened tension with Russia. Former British PM Theresa May, Dutch PM Mark Rutte, Estonian PM Kaja Kallas, and former EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini are among those previously cited in European media as possible candidates.

The move came after 20 civil society organisations and think tanks, 62 MEPs from 19 countries, and five different political groups wrote separate letters demanding a fully-fledged election observation mission to Hungary.

The EU has blacklisted Mali's prime minister for postponing elections, risking a fresh tantrum from a junta with ever-closer Russia ties.

Polish president Andrzej Duda submitted legislation on Thursday to dismantle the country's controversial disciplinary chamber for judges. Warsaw hopes the bill would allow the government to end its rule-of-law dispute with the EU Commission, and thereby unblock Poland's allocated Covid-19 funds. Last October, the European Court of Justice ordered Poland to pay a €1m daily fine for failing to suspend the chamber, which it found breaks EU law.

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg has raised the alarm on the kinds of weapons that Russia was pouring into Belarus. The weapons included "fighter jets including SU45s, Iskander dual-capable missiles, and S-400 air defence systems," Stoltenberg said Thursday, amid concern the systems could be used to strike Ukraine. Meanwhile, the US has said Russia was planning a fake video of a Ukrainian attack that could be used to justify an invasion.

Russia is to close the German state-broadcaster's Moscow bureau, according to Russia's ministry of foreign affairs. The move appears to be a response to Germany's decision this week to block the German-language version of Moscow state-broadcaster Russia Today. "The measures by the authorities in Russia are completely incomprehensible and a total overreaction," said Deutsche Welle director general Peter Limbourg. "We have been made into a kind of pawn," he added.

Data-processing service providers like Amazon will have to prevent the illegal transfer of data to countries outside the European Union, according to a leaked document obtained by Reuters. The news agency says the additional safeguards are part of the European Commission's Data Act to be published this month as part of moves taking aim at US tech giants.

"Rampant torture by police" and jailings of "thousands of perceived dissidents" mean EU states and others should push to create a UN Human Rights Monitoring Mechanism on Egypt, a group of 175 MEPs and national MPs from Europe said in an open letter Thursday. The signatories included scores of French politicians, after French president Emmanuel Macron hosted Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in Paris last year.

"A large capital of vaccine-derived and natural immunity, a favourable seasonality pause, and a lower severity of the Omicron variant" augured "a long period of tranquillity" and a "ceasefire" on the pandemic, the World Health Organization's Europe director, Hans Kluge, told press Thursday. Sweden, the same day, announced it was lifting almost all its anti-coronavirus measures, joining Austria, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway, which recently took similar steps.

EU countries will coordinate their response to Russian letters recently sent to several EU capitals seeking new security guarantees, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday. "We're united in the EU and therefore it is clear that the response will mirror, will reflect that unity," she said. Russia has so far declined to hold talks with the EU on the Ukraine crisis, favouring bilateral and Nato-level meetings instead.

Turkish officials say a better EU perspective would entice Ankara to enact further reforms - although that's a position some are likely to view with scepticism.

Warsaw still faces budget penalties in a case involving polluted groundwater

Ursula von der Leyen is under fire for having lost her text messages with the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla. The charges are not entirely fair – and acting on them risks doing more harm than good.

Poland and Luxembourg were the only EU countries expected to send top VIPs to Beijing's Olympics, as Russia and China use the games to forge closer ties.

The EU needed a "real Schengen Council to supervise the Schengen area, like what we have for the eurozone" French president Emmanuel Macron said in a speech in Tourcoing, France, Wednesday, following a meeting with EU interior ministers, AP reports. The passport-free Schengen travel zone covers most EU states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. The eurozone is governed by a so-called Eurogroup of finance ministers, which meets regularly.

Firms such as Amazon and Google may have to delete EU nationals' private data after Belgium's Data Protection Authority said Wednesday that IAB Europe, the online advertising industry's trade body, had violated EU data-protection laws in the way it handled pop-up windows asking for internet users' consent. The Belgian authority spoke on behalf of the 27 EU states as the lead regulator on the case under EU 'one-stop shop' measures.

A €10.6m loan to French far-right and pro-Russian presidential candidate Marine Le Pen to help fight the April election was provided by a Hungarian bank, according to French broadcaster RTL. But the name of the bank remains under a non-disclosure agreement, it said. Le Pen recently met Hungary's far-right and pro-Russian prime minister Viktor Orbán in Madrid. Russia also lent her millions of euros for French elections in 2017.

EU Western-Balkans envoy Miroslav Lajčák and his US counterpart, Gabriel Escobar, have urged Kosovo to grant quasi-autonomy to its majority-ethnic Serb municipalities, Reuters reports. "There's an universal principle that says what was agreed must be implemented and this is what we are telling both parties," Lajčák said Wednesday in Pristina. The deal was agreed by previous Kosovo governments, but Kosovo's PM, Albin Kurti, says it could tear Kosovo apart.