Euobserver.com

Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney has said Northern Ireland would be in "breach of international law" if it unilaterally halted agri-food checks at ports on goods from the UK. He spoke after Northern Ireland's agriculture minister, Edwin Poots, announced on Wednesday he would halt checks at midnight based on new legal advice. The EU Commission and the UK are currently in talks on tweaking their post-Brexit customs treaty.

Turkey has accused Greek authorities of acting "like thugs" after the bodies of 12 migrants were found on the Greek-Turkish border on Wednesday, having died of exposure. "They behave like thugs", Turkey's interior minister Süleyman Soylu said on Twitter, accusing Greece of having illegally pushed back a group of 22 people trying to get to Europe. But that was "false propaganda", Greece's migration minister, Notis Mitarach, said.

Large numbers of Kremlin-linked Russian mercenaries are leaving the Central African Republic (CAR) to go to eastern Europe in the event of a war on Ukraine, The Daily Beast reports. "Usually when we hear that some have left we find out that they are just a handful ... it's the first time we are hearing that dozens have departed in a month," a senior CAR military officer said.

The EU's second-highest court has ruled the EU Commission broke no rules by settling a 2018 antitrust investigation against Russian energy firm Gazprom by obtaining concessions on pricing structures and competitors' access to markets instead of imposing a huge fine. "The General Court finds that the contested decision is not vitiated by any of the procedural or substantive errors raised by the applicant [Polish energy firm PGNiG]," the court said.

A Budapest court says it is fine to conflate homosexuality with paedophilia, especially when the prime minster does it too.

When Fridays4Future started our school strikes the EU elections were approaching and you sweet-talked us and told us that you genuinely understood and shared our concerns. Truth is you have co-opted our messages without putting them into practice.

Russia has not built up enough forces for a "full-scale" invasion of Ukraine and travel advice that foreign nationals should leave was "premature", Kyiv has said.

Frontex spent €8,500 to send its executive director Fabrice Leggeri on a private jet to attend an evening meeting in Brussels. The Warsaw-based agency said there were scheduling conflicts preventing him taking a commercial flight.

The European Commission has decided to include gas in its new guidelines for clean and sustainable finance - a move that responds to the bloc's environmental goals and the dramatic rise in energy security concerns.

I am not sure why Putin is considered a master-strategist. He may be a good tactician who can play chess and do Judo. But there are fewer and fewer people who want to play any games with him.

Poland is to send Ukraine artillery ammunition, mortars, portable air-defence systems, and surveillance drones, Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in Kyiv Tuesday. "Living close to a neighbour like Russia we have the feeling of living at the foot of a volcano," he said. The British leader also visited Kyiv for solidarity. Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin said the US was using Ukraine as a "tool to hinder Russia".

As the snow settles in Beijing ahead of the most controversial Olympics in decades, EU leaders and officials have stalled and skirted around the question of a diplomatic boycott for far too long, failing, once more, to reach a consensus.

Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden have urged the EU Commission to set "bolder" standards on green aviation fuel or to let EU states make their own rules instead, Reuters reports. The Commission proposed using 2 percent green fuel from 2025, rising to 5 percent in 2030, and 63 percent in 2050. But Denmark and Sweden want fossil-fuel free domestic flights by 2030.

The world needs to take action against plastics production to meet environmental goals, EU environment commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius told Reuters Tuesday. "The biggest topic is oil use for plastic production ... if we want to reach our decarbonisation goals for 2050, clearly we have to decrease steadily the use of fossil fuels, and one of the areas as well is plastics," he said, calling for a "binding" global treaty.

The World Health Organization head warned Tuesday it is too early for countries to declare victory over Covid-19 or give up attempts to stop transmission. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the "virus is dangerous, and it continues to evolve before our very eyes." His comments came as Denmark became the first EU country to lift all its domestic Covid-19 measures, despite record numbers of Omicron cases.

Austria, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands have urged the European Commission not to label gas projects as green investments under the so-called EU taxonomy on sustainable finance rules. They argue the EU's proposal would make gas power plants taxonomy-compliant, even if they are above the threshold set by scientists to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement. The new rules for gas and nuclear activities will be presented on Wednesday.

The EU has agreed to blacklist five members of Mali's junta, but not its defence or foreign minister in order to keep dialogue possible, according to diplomats speaking to Reuters Tuesday. The measures come in protest at the junta's decision to delay elections for years and to invite Russian mercenaries. "What's certain is things can't stay the way they are", French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on France's Mali strategy.

The European Commission has approved German plans to grant up to €1.7bn for the recapitalisation of Berlin's troubled new airport. The measure was approved under the state aid temporary framework. "Airports have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus," commission vice-president Margrethe Vestager said in a statement, adding that "public support will come with strings attached to limit undue distortions of competition."

France's sports ministry has said foreign athletes vaccinated with drugs which do not have EU approval, such as Russia's Spuntik V or China's Sinovac, will be allowed to come to France, so long as they first stay in a "health bubble" for 24 hours and take a Covid test. "These measures allow all vaccinated athletes, wherever they come from, to participate in competitions in France," a French spokesman told AP.

Russia has de facto "occupied" its neighbour Belarus, MEPs have warned, even as the world's attention focuses on Ukraine.