Euobserver.com

The EU drug regulator's chief said the bloc is ready to tackle mutations and allow for the fast-track approval of redesigned vaccines. The EU's disease agency said all known European Omicron cases were so far asymptomatic or had mild symptoms.

The EU Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly has launched an inquiry to assess if the European Commission complies with transparency obligations over tobacco lobbying – ahead of upcoming revisions of rules targeting tobacco consumption.

Spanish centre-left MEP Juan Lopez Aguilar chairs the European Parliament's civil liberties committee and is the lead on the crisis regulation, a bill presented by the EU commission last September as part of its migration and asylum pact.

Will the Global Gateway become yet another dead-end? If the Green New Deal, projects to secure supplies of important minerals, the Open Strategic Economy and now this are put together, then the pieces of the puzzle could fall into place.

In Europe, there is a prominent victim of injustice whose case I take quite personally. It seems that Turkey's leaders do as well and, to prove it, they and have gone to such absurd lengths to keep him behind bars.

EU-bound gas transit via Ukraine may halt after 2024 when its contract with Russia runs out, the head of Ukraine gas distributor Naftogaz, said Monday, amid Russian reluctance. "There's nothing, not even a hint, no official or unofficial talks, [with Russia] ... we are discussing it with the Americans and the Germans that all of us would like transit to continue, but the Russians are reluctant," Yuriy Vitrenko told Reuters.

France is prepared to talk to Britain about migration if it is ready for serious discussions, interior minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday, as he urged the UK to "limit" its economic attractiveness to migrants, Reuters writes. Darmanin also told a news conference that prime minister Jean Castex will write to British prime minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday to detail French demands.

Latvia needs a permanent US military presence to deter Russia and wants to boost its defences with US Patriot missiles, Latvian defence minister Artis Pabriks said on Monday as Nato's chief visited allied troops in the Baltic country, Reuters reports. "We need additional international assistance," Pabriks told Reuters. "We would like to have a permanent United States [military] presence in our country."

Some 54 member states of the Organisation fo the Prevention of Chemical weapons in The Hague have urged Russia to "disclose in a comprehensive and transparent manner" how dissident Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent last year. "Centrifugal tendencies are growing, the practice of consensus-based decision-making has been lost and the environment is extremely politicised," Russia's envoy to Monday's OPCW meeting in The Hague, Oleg Ryazantsev, said.

Just weeks after loosening some entry rules, Japan will now ban entry to all foreign arrivals to curb the spread of the omicron variant, officials announced on Monday, Deutsche Welle writes. Prime minister Fumio Kishida said the ban on foreign travellers would take effect on Tuesday. Japanese returning passengers from 14 countries where the variant has been found will be required to quarantine at designated facilities.

The United States will expel at least 54 more Russian diplomats next year, Russia's ambassador to Washington said, as worsening relations have left both countries' embassies and consulates badly-understaffed and unable to provide routine services, The Moscow Times writes. Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said 27 Russian diplomats were scheduled to leave the US with their families by 30 January, with an additional 27 expected to leave on 30 June.

China's president Xi Jinping has pledged Africa one billion Covid vaccine doses, with the continent struggling to acquire enough jabs to immunise against the disease, AFP writes. In a speech made to a China-Africa summit in Senegal, president Xi said his country would donate 600m doses directly. A further 400m doses would come via other sources, such as investments in production sites.

Magdalena Andersson, who last week became Sweden's first female prime minister for a few hours before resigning after a budget defeat saw a coalition partner quit, was elected again on Monday as the Nordic nation's head of government, France24 reports. Andersson, leader of the Social Democrats, was elected in a 101-173 vote with 75 abstentions, in the 349-seat Riksdag. She will form a one-party, minority government.

Jonas Grimheden is the EU's border agency Frontex fundamental rights officer. Almost seven months into his job he says the agency "could be seen as being implicated or supportive of fundamental rights violations". His recommendations have yet to be implemented.

The emergence of the new and more-contagious Omicron variant has revealed how "perilous and precarious" the Covid situation is and "why the world needs a new accord on pandemics," the chief of the World Health Organisation said.

A Paris-based NGO found pesticide producers cost the EU €2.3bn in subsidies, while only booking €900m in profits - and suggest the money is better spent elsewhere.

As Germany enters a new phase in its political history, the European Union faces a fresh foreign policy challenge on its doorstep that will test its credentials as a cohesive organisation.

Almost every weekend, protesters continue to hold demonstrations and sit-ins across Italy in opposition to the so-called "green pass" — proof of vaccination, recovery or a negative Covid test needed to access workplaces and a whole host of public services.

G7 health ministers will hold an emergency meeting on Monday about the new Omicron Covid-19 variant spreading across the world and forcing border closures, as experts race to determine the level of threat posed by the new strain, The Guardian writes. The meeting was called by G7 chair Britain, which is among a steadily growing number of countries that have detected cases of the heavily mutated new strain.

Czech president Miloš Zeman appointed the leader of a centre-right alliance Petr Fiala as prime minister on Sunday in a ceremony he performed from a plexiglass cubicle after testing positive for Covid-19, Reuters writes. Fiala leads a bloc of five centre and centre-right opposition parties that won an election in October, ousting the incumbent premier Andrej Babiš and his allies.