Euobserver.com

A six-party opposition alliance that aims to topple Hungary's Viktor Orbán in elections next year is four points ahead of Orbán's Fidesz party, according to an opinion poll, The Guardian writes. The poll, published 10 days after the alliance chose a small-town mayor, Péter Márki-Zay, as its prime ministerial candidate, showed support for the united opposition at 39 percent, compared with 35 percent for Fidesz, but 23 percent undecided.

The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday that the bloc is expected to produce more than 3.5 billion doses of vaccines next year. She said that the majority of these doses will be exported to other countries. On top of exports, the EU and its member states have committed to donating 500 million doses of vaccines by mid-2022.

A group of MEPs resorted to scare tactics and false information on Thursday (28 October) to rail against European Parliament plans to impose a digital green pass in order to gain access to its buildings.

The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen called for climate leadership, warning that next week's UN climate summit in Glasgow (COP26) is "a moment of truth" for climate action.

A French government spokesman has threatened "systematic customs and sanitary checks on products brought to France and a ban on landing seafood" at French ports, a major UK gateway to EU markets, saying Britain had granted French fishermen just half the licences agreed under Brexit. A French minister also warned on cutting electricity to British Channel Islands. The UK threatened to hit back at any sanctions with a "calibrated response".

Israel, Wednesday, gave the green light to build some 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank, according to TV broadcaster Kan and NGO Peace Now. The move came shortly after the EU and US condemned Sunday's decision to build 1,350 settler homes. Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney also said Wednesday Israel was wrong to "unjustifiably undermine civil liberties" by using counter-terrorism laws against six Irish and EU-funded Palestinian NGOs.

The Italian senate voted by 154 to 131 on Wednesday to block a new law criminalising homophobic and misogynist attacks as well as violence against disabled people. Far-right parties had said it would lead to "homosexual propaganda" and the Vatican had said it would curb "freedom of thought". But for Pina Picierno, a centre-left MEP, the decision was "one of the worst pages in the history of the Italian republic".

EU countries blocked mention of waiving vaccine patents to help fight the pandemic at a meeting in Africa, overshadowed by the Sudan coup.

The EU Commission has agreed a €60m grant for Moldova to help its pro-EU government deal with an energy crisis linked to hard-nosed bargaining by Russia. "The grant ... is great news for the Moldovan people," Moldovan prime minister Natalia Gavrilița said Wednesday. The FT recently reported Russia's Gazprom had asked Chișinău to dilute an EU trade treaty in return for securing supplies, but the Kremlin denied the report.

Bulgaria's Covid-infection tally jumped by some 6,800 from Tuesday to Wednesday, a record increase, Reuters reports, while 124 people died from the virus in the same 24 hours. Some 7,300 infected people were currently in hospital, with 608 out of the country's 700 intensive-care beds occupied. "The only option left will [soon] be a full lockdown and a halt of economic life," interim health minister Stoicho Katsarov said.

Goods traffic between Ireland and the EU has grown 36 percent since Brexit, a new report by Dublin port shows. Business with the UK on the other hand dropped by a fifth. Importers and exporters are bypassing the UK by using new ferry services opened since January. There are now 44 direct ferry routes between Ireland, France and the Benelux countries, up from seven before Brexit, Reuters reports.

Some 87 percent of EU nationals said they were in favour of replacing short-haul flights with train services, according to a poll by the European Investment Bank, while 69 percent backed new taxes on high-polluting products. But at the same time, 58 percent said they did not believe the upcoming COP26 climate summit would see their national leaders agree to drastically cut CO2 emissions by 2050.

Hackers offering services for hire to other criminals were Europe's biggest cybersecurity threat, according to Enisa, an EU agency, Wednesday. Criminals lured people, many of whom were glued to computers due to home-working, with Covid-scare stories in emails. They targeted health officials, looking for vaccine secrets. They sought payment in cryptocurrency and also 'cryptojacked' computers - secretly taking them over to use their 'data-mining' power to generate crypto-income, Enisa said.

World leaders and national negotiators from almost 200 countries will meet in Glasgow next month to discuss global cooperation in response to the climate change emergency. What outcome can be expected? Why does it matter?

It is the latest episode in the long-running legal and political battle between the nationalist government led by the Law and Justice party (PiS) and EU institutions over Warsaw's highly-controversial judicial overhaul.

Leaked commission documents, dated earlier this month, outline draft migration proposals on Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. They also provide insights into bilateral moves by individual EU states.

The Basel III rules were initiated after the financial market crisis of 2008 in order to reduce the risk of another financial meltdown, but critics worry about risk posed by stranded fossil-fuel assets.

The designation perfectly fits into Israel's long-conceived strategy to besmirch Palestinian civil society voices under false allegations of terrorism and antisemitism, while pressuring any international actor that grants them a hearing, and actively demanding their defunding.

The US is planning to add Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Romania to its visa-waiver programme, letting people stay for up to 90 days without a permit. "We have four candidates in the pipeline: Israel, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania," homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Tuesday, Reuters reports. "Each time you add one of these countries, travel just booms," a US tourism-association chief said. All other 24 EU states already have waivers.

"Granting certification [to Russia's new Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline] is not threatening security of gas supply to the Federal Republic of Germany and the European Union," Germany's economy ministry said Tuesday, in a recommendation to energy regulator Bundesnetzagentur. The regulator has until January to decide, but may act earlier, amid accusations Russia was manipulating supply to enable it to run the pipe as a monopoly despite EU anti-monopoly laws.