Euobserver.com

The Belarus migrant crisis could be the prelude to broader aggression by Russia, Poland has warned, but EU solidarity does not mean a free pass on rule of law.

Violent anti-lockdown protests erupted in Belgium on Sunday and continued for a third night in the Netherlands, amid wider unrest in Europe.

EU senior officials say Belarus needs to do much more than move migrants and asylum seekers into a shelter. They want UN aid agencies to have unhindered access to people stranded in Belarus. Poland is still refusing any humanitarian aid.

EU lawmakers have agreed not to ban tracking-based advertising, after a lobby campaign. But experts have warned MEPs these techniques pose a risk for users' privacy rights and the EU's digital sovereignty.

The fishmeal industry in recent years has been growing fast in West Africa, in Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia. But that creates problems, with a proliferation of fishmeal factories leading to a "serious overfishing situation."

The debate over a successor for David Sassoli, the centre-left Italian president of the European Parliament will heat up, and Belarusian democratic opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya will address the plenary.

Climate change, economic opportunities and geopolitics make European and German attention to the 'High North' a political necessity, writes the EU's special envoy for Arctic matters.

The EU watchdog has found no proof of manipulation of the carbon markets, allaying European Commission fears. However, the European Securities and Markets Authority did note that it had only limited access to essential data.

The Slovenian government has finally decided to nominate two delegated prosecutors for the European Public Prosecutors Office (EPPO), but the EPPO still has to decide if they are suitable.

Austria will become the first country in western Europe to reimpose a full lockdown to tackle a new wave of Covid infections, and will require its whole population to be vaccinated as of February, Reuters writes. Austria has one of the lowest vaccination-rates in western Europe. Austria introduced a lockdown for all those who were unvaccinated on Monday but since then infections have continued to set new records.

France will push for motion on migration when it hosts the European Union presidency from January, president Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday, Reuters reports. "We should take a number of actions: stop the institution of lasting camps, act to dismantle the smuggling networks, and strengthen work with the international locations of origin to stop these flows," he said, adding "I'll carry reforms under the French presidency of the EU."

Slovenian interior minister Aleš Hojs, whose country chairs the EU presidency said the EU should seal its borders to prevent people coming to claim asylum in line with their international rights. "I believe external borders must be secured, even with fences if necessary ... There is no more 'Refugees Welcome'," he said at a conference in Sarajevo Thursday. He also said movements of "illegal" migrants were "destabilising the European Union".

China has verbally attacked Lithuania for opening a 'Taiwan Representation Office' in Vilnius, breaking with a convention in which Taiwan's de facto embassies called themselves 'Taipei' offices instead as a euphemism. "We demand that the Lithuanian side immediately correct its wrong decision," the Chinese foreign ministry said calling Lithuania's move an "extremely egregious act" and saying Taiwan's aspirations to be recognised as an independent sate were "doomed to fail".

NGOs on Thursday slammed the new transparency policy of the European Investment Bank (EIB) for not following recommendations from the EU ombudsman on disclosing information of the projects it finances. The EIB is not obliged to publish the projects it selects for funding, the role of financial intermediaries like commercial banks and investment funds, the criteria of selection or the environmental impact of such projects.

Russian president Vladimir Putin said the West is "escalating" the Ukraine conflict by holding drills in the Black Sea, AFP writes. His comments come as the US accuses Moscow of a troop build-up near Ukraine. "(Our) Western partners are escalating the situation by supplying Kyiv with lethal modern weapons and conducting provocative manoeuvres in the Black Sea," Putin said, claiming that Western bombers are flying "20km from our border."

Doctors without Borders' (MSF) rescue boat - GeoBarents - is seeking to disembark 186 people it has rescued in the Mediterranean Sea. The NGO had also recovered 10 corpses earlier this week from a boat with 99 survivors. "Some had to identify the dead bodies of family members or friends who perished in front of their eyes," said MSF.

The European Commission's chief spokesperson Eric Mamer said there would be no negotiations with the Belarus regime, noting that its foreseen "technical talks" announced on Wednesday will deal purely with repatriations of trapped migrants and asylum seekers. Those talks will be held between Belarus and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration. "There is no question of negotiating with the Lukashenko regime," said Mamer.

The Polish army detained hundreds of migrants who crossed the Belarus border, and accused Belarusian special forces of masterminding the operation, France24 writes. Around 2,000 people, mainly from the Middle East, are estimated to be living rough near the Polish-Belarus border, in dire conditions. G7 foreign ministers on Thursday urged Minsk to end the migrant crisis: "We call on the regime to cease immediately its aggressive and exploitative campaign."

Almost 200 MEPs want to use remote voting rather than attend next week's session in Strasbourg, due to Covid-19 worries. The parliament's senior administrator has instructed staff to follow Belgian four-day home working rules - as has the European Commission.

The European Commission should give greater legal clarity on what terrorism actually means in EU criminal law - to prevent abuses of fundamental rights and discrimination against specific groups, an EU agency has warned.