Euobserver.com

In an escalation of the rule-of-law row, the EU Commission on Wednesday launched an infringement procedure against Poland because of "serious concerns" over the recent ruling by the country's controversial Constitutional Tribunal, which put into doubt the primacy of EU law. The commission argues that the ruling breaches the EU treaty. The EU executive also "has serious doubts on the independence and impartiality" of the tribunal itself.

Austria is citing hybrid-attacks to detain rejected asylum seekers for up to 20 weeks along Europe's frontier borders, while Poland wants to limit people's access to international protection at the borders.

The taxonomy for sustainable activities was meant to be a purely science-based classification system - but it has become bogged down by political infighting (not least between Paris and Berlin), threatening its credibility.

The European Commission has presented three new sources of revenues for the EU´s coffers aimed at repaying the emergency coronavirus recovery fund and supporting vulnerable households in the transition towards climate neutrality.

How close are we to battery-powered planes? What effect has Greta Thunberg had on the attitudes of her fellow Swedes? Is small-scale farming the future? These are some of the questions up for discussion in a new podcast series.

The EU Commission also proposed measures to better detect shell or letter box companies which do not carry out any real economic activities.

When you are told "we are all in the same boat", be suspicious. In fact, 205 years after the survivors of the Frigate of Medusa shipwreck were reduced to cannibalism to survive, "we are all on Medusa's raft".

The Belgian federal and regional governments will decide on Wednesday on new measures to stop the rapid surge of the Omicron variant, De Standaard reports. There would be no hard lockdown on the table, saving Christmas gatherings for most families. However, New Year parties might be restricted as the closing hour for bars and restaurants would remain 11PM. Indoor and outdoor activities might be cancelled.

An EU travel ban on southern African states due to the Omicron variant was "inefficient", but member sates were reluctant to scrap it, EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders told Reuters Tuesday. "We [the EU Commission] will continue to push not only for diplomatic reasons, but also because it [the ban] is becoming inefficient. We have other tools," he said. South Africa was creating "huge pressure" over the ban, he said.

Germany's new chancellor Olof Scholz did not mention human rights in his first phone call with Chinese president Xi Jinping Tuesday, according to readouts, while focusing on improving trade relations instead. Scholz said he hoped a new China-EU Investment Agreement "will take effect as soon as possible", even though the European Parliament has blocked this because China blacklisted dozens of MEPs and EU officials in a sanctions dispute.

The US is keen to start security talks with Russia in January, while threatening "immediate" sanctions in the event of a new attack on Ukraine.

Denmark is to rent 300 prison cells from Kosovo to house non-EU prisoners convicted in Denmark and awaiting deportation to their home countries after serving their sentences. The €210m fee over the next 10 years will be used to help pay for Kosovo's green transition. Prisoners will be held at Gjilan, 50km from Pristina, from 2023, according to Danish rules and prison standards, with Danish ministers visiting the facility Tuesday.

The European Commission unveiled on Tuesday new rules limiting the validity of the EU Covid-19 certificate to nine months (precisely 270 days) for intra-EU travel - unless a booster shot has been administered. Booster doses will also be included in the certificate. The rules will apply from 1 February 2022 to help member states coordinate restrictions. Some 807 million certificates have been issued in the EU so far.

EU firms can terminate contracts with Iran if the cost of US sanctions would lead to "disproportionate economic loss," the European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday. The case arose after Iran's Bank Melli sued Deutsche Telekom for terminating a contract early in 2018. The court also upheld the EU's "blocking statute", which was meant to forbid European firms from complying with US penalties, but said the "economic-loss" rule over-rode this.

The German government is expected to allow only a maximum of 10 people to take part in private gatherings, with the rules also applying to vaccinated people, according to a draft agreement seen by Deutsche Welle. Nightclubs and discos are also expected to be shut down. Germany has registered 16,086 new coronavirus cases and 119 deaths over the past 24 hours, according the Robert Koch Institute.

More than 160 people drowned in two separate shipwrecks off the coast of Libya in the past week, a UN migration official has said, The Guardian reports. At least 102 were reported dead after their wooden boat capsized on Friday, while on Saturday the Libyan coastguard retrieved at least 62 bodies. The deaths bring the total number of people drowned this year on the central Mediterranean route to about 1,500.

Thousands of recognised refugees and others in Greece are said to be going hungry. The issue has been brewing for months by a Greek government that appears to be using hunger as an asylum deterrence for others.

The protest was organised by the far-right populist party the Alliance for Romanian Unity (AUR), which is strongly against Covid restrictions and against the law that would make a certificate mandatory for the workplace.

Thirteen members of the EU Commission's Technical Expert Group (TEG) put out a petition on Tuesday calling on nuclear energy not to be classified as 'green'.

Viktor Orbán also pledged to nominate his minister for family affairs, Katalin Novák, to be Hungary's first female president - locking in another public position before the April 2022 general election.