Euobserver.com

Hungarian and Estonian diplomats have blocked a revised set of tax rules, potentially derailing an effort to curb the race for ever-lower corporate taxes in the EU.

The EU Commission is expected to present a revision of the Schengen border code, plus a proposal on the rights of so-called platform workers.

France will take over the EU presidency on 1 January. If Emmanuel Macron wants to make it a stepping stone in European integration, he should make additional efforts to Europeanise its objectives and seriously engage with EU partners beyond Germany.

Belgium has introduced new measures to curb the surge of Covid-19 infections in the country, following the third emergency meeting of its federal and regional governments in three weeks.

Today, Friday, Belgian governments are meeting again in order to decide on new Covid measures in order to stop the spreading of the virus as numbers are spiking. This time the concertation committee is gathering on the request of the Flemish minister-president Jan Jambon who suggested to close down all indoor events, including all concerts and theatre productions. The closing of schools is also on the agenda.

European consumer groups can sue US tech-giant Facebook for privacy violations, an advisor to the EU court in Luxembourg said Thursday. "Member states may allow consumer protection associations to bring representative actions against infringements of the protection of personal data," he said in a non-binding opinion, which judges follow in most cases. The legal action arose from a German online gaming dispute, with a final verdict to follow shortly.

Valérie Pécresse, a moderate conservative who has likened herself to former British and German leaders Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, has emerged as a front-runner in primaries in France's centre-right Les Républicains party, Reuters reports. "I won't flinch. I have a project for a clean break, a project for the unashamed right," she said Thursday, ahead of elections against liberal incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right contenders in spring.

Some 86 civil-society organisations including Access Now, Amnesty International, and the Digital Rights Foundation have urged EU countries to blacklist Israeli firm NSO, which produced the so-called Pegasus spyware, used against dissidents and journalists around the world. EU sanctions had the power to stop "violations or abuses that are of serious concern as regards to the objectives of the common foreign and security policy" their open letter said.

The EU has blacklisted travel firms and Belarusian officials who helped create the migrant crisis with Poland.

Austrian former chancellor Sebastian Kurz, leader of the centre-right People's party (ÖVP) since 2017, suddenly announced on Thursday that he was quitting politics., The Guardian reported. Kurz became chancellor in 2017, but recently stepped down after being placed under investigation on allegations of corruption. Kurz said he was leaving politics to focus on his family since he recently became a father.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention said on Thursday the Omicron variant is expected to be detected in over half of all cases of Covid-19 in Europe within the next few months, Reuters reported. It is estimated that Omicron is likely to be more contagious than the current Delta variant. However, experts in the EU and abroad are still assessing Omicron's transmissibility and how effective vaccines are against it.

The German government decided on Thursday to bar non-vaccinated people from entering business other than essential grocery stores and pharmacies, Reuters reported. "We have understood that the situation is very serious and that we want to take further measures in addition to those already taken," chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference. Legislation to make vaccination mandatory is expected to be adopted early next year, taking effect from February.

Asylum seekers have been sleeping in the streets, some for weeks, in the Belgian capital Brussels - as the government grapples over the lack of capacity to accommodate them despite months of debate over the issue.

MEPs failed to convince member states to set concrete and legally-binding deadlines for phasing out fossil-fuel subsidies and other environmentally-harmful subsidies .

EU energy ministers met on Thursday to debate spiking gas and electricity prices, and clashed over market reform - with some countries, led by Germany, opposing actions put forward by France and others.

A court ruling next year, in line with the opinion, would clear the way for the EU Commission to launch the mechanism against Poland and Hungary.

Objectively speaking, German politicians have earned a good report card for their management of the corona pandemic so far. Why then is there so much anger about the national coronavirus response?

Speaking at the Global Progressive Forum, former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta describes the victim-shaming of Italy and Spain during the financial crisis - and explains how a big bag of money from Brussels may be helping heal the wounds.

The European Commission unveiled on Wednesday a proposal to digitalise EU cross-border justice systems, aiming at making them more accessible and effective. Under the new draft law, the EU executive wants to tackle inefficiencies affecting cross-border judicial cooperation and barriers to access to justice in cross-border cases. Shifting paper-based communications to electronic formats would save up to €25m per year across the EU in postage and paper costs.

The fourth wave of infections surge is expected to peak by mid-December in Germany, which could mean having 6,000 intensive care being occupied by Christmas, the country's association for intensive care medicine (DIVI) said on Wednesday, according to Reuters. There are only 9,000 beds where patients can receive artificial respiration, compared to 12,000 from a year ago, DIVI said. Currently, there are some 4,600 Covid-19 patients in the ICU.