Euobserver.com

Why the European Parliament's vote against the discharge of Frontex is the only plausible position for anyone who values human life.

With Poland throwing the legal order of Europe in disarray, Russia rationing Europe's gas supply and the UK reneging on its Brexit commitments, perhaps the moment has come again to read a few essays by French philosopher Michel de Montaigne.

What we call for is another approach to the financing of the European Grean Deal. While a lot of attention is being paid to decarbonisation, the other two aspects - de-financialisation and democratisation - are largely ignored.

Russian firm Gazprom has booked just one third of offered additional gas-transit capacity via the Yamal-Europe pipeline via Poland for November and not booked any volumes via Ukraine, Reuters reports. The tightening of the supplies amid a crunch in world energy markets was "blackmailing Europe in order to obtain Nord-Stream 2 certification", Yuriy Vitrenko, the head of Ukraine gas firm Naftogaz said, referring to Russia's new pipeline to Germany.

Turkey's foreign ministry summoned the ambassadors of 10 countries, including the United States, Germany and France, over a statement calling for the urgent release of philanthropist Osman Kavala, state-owned Anadolu agency and Reuters said. The statement, shared by some of the embassies on Monday, called for a just and speedy resolution to Kavala's case, four years after he was jailed, saying the case "cast a shadow over respect for democracy."

EU foreign ministers meeting Monday provisionally decided to block jet-leasing firms from working with Belarusian airline Belavia because Minsk was shuttling migrants from the Middle East and pushing them into Europe, diplomatic sources said. "We have a political agreement," a source said, after Ireland, which leases jets, had raised objections. EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said it was "unacceptable" that Russia was "weaponising poor people" to attack the EU.

Roberto Gualtieri, a former economy minister and an ex-MEP for the centre-left Democratic Party, won 60 percent of the vote on Monday in Rome's mayoral election, ahead of his rival from the far-right Brothers of Italy, Enrico Michetti, who received 40 percent, Corriere della Sera writes. Gualtieri is succeeding Virginia Raggi, a politician with the populist Five Star Movement (M5S), as mayor.

Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said in an open letter to EU leaders Monday he wanted to "reassure" them that "Poland remains a loyal member of the European Union", in the wake of an anti-EU court verdict. But he also complained the EU was becoming "an entity that would cease to be an alliance of free, equal and sovereign states - and become one, centrally managed organism".

Russia has suspended its embassy to Nato citing a spy row, but some EU diplomats see it as part of a wider attack on multilateralism.

European Commission climate commissioner Frans Timmermans said on Monday that "there is a huge responsibility of the developed world to share technologies with the developing world" to tackle climate change, not just out of altruism, but also because "it is a good business opportunity". "We need to make sure that the whole world can profit from this," he said during a visit in Indonesia, ahead of the COP26 climate summit.

The European Commission will start its review of its budgetary rules on Tuesday. The Stability and Growth Pact was signed in 1992, but since then the rules have ballooned and many consider them too complex and no longer fit for purpose, because they limit public spending and leave too little room for green investment, critics say. The landmark review will likely take until the end of 2022.

The European Commission said on Monday that member states have issued over 591 million EU digital Covid certificates since the regulation entered into force in July. In total, 43 countries are connected to the EU technical system, including Morocco, Panama, Turkey or Ukraine. Another 60 are interested in joining. Meanwhile, 20 member states are using the certificate to grant access restaurants, cinemas, museums, events or venues.

Péter Márki-Zay, 49, won the run-off of the first ever primary elections in Hungary, organised by six opposition parties in order to have one united opposition figure run against Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz candidates.

The EU has exported more than one billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines this year, and announced it will donate 500 million extra doses to poorer countries in the coming months.

The ultra-conservative candidate Jeanine Áñez from Bolivia was selected by the Spanish far-right Vox for the EU Sakharov prize on behalf of the conservative ECR. Socialist MEPs were instructed to support her, over a Western Sahara activist.

Despite being the first black head of state in modern western Europe, the life of Florentine duke Alessandro de' Medici is relatively unknown.

In a Kafkae-sque irony, Frontex is withholding public access to documents pertaining to the response of a public institution to a protest by members of the public on grounds that this would violate the "public interest".

International monitors in Russia-occupied east Ukraine have suspended operations to protect staff following protests in Donetsk over Ukraine's capture of Andrei Kosyak, who Ukraine said was a Russian national on a covert mission. "Because of our safety concerns and because of our safety rules and considerations we suspended our operations," Yaşar Halit Çevik, the chief monitor of the Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe's 'special monitoring mission', told Reuters Sunday.

Peter Marki-Zay, a 49-year old economist, Christian, and father-of-seven, who was once mayor of Hodmezovasarhely, a small Hungarian town, will try to unseat prime minister Viktor Orbán in elections next year after Marki-Zay won an opposition primary vote Sunday. "We can only win together," he said, as he prepared to lead a coalition of six anti-Orbán parties. Orban's Fidesz party called Marki-Zay a "career leftist" who would raise taxes.

Belarus has expelled France's ambassador, Nicolas de Lacoste, the French embassy in Minsk said Sunday. "The Belarusian foreign ministry demanded that the ambassador leave by 18 October," it told AFP, adding that he had already gone, leaving "a video message to the Belarusian people, which will appear tomorrow morning on the embassy's website". De Lacoste had, just last Wednesday, hosted the leaders of Govori Pravdu, a banned NGO, Reuters reported.