Euobserver.com

Some 43 percent of Poles said there should be a referendum on EU membership to settle Warsaw's rule-of-law dispute with Brussels in a survey by SW Research for the Rzeczpospolita daily, while 21 percent were undecided. Meanwhile, 64 percent would vote to stay in the EU if there was a referendum now, while 15 percent would vote to leave, 14 percent were undecided, and 7 percent would boycott the referendum.

Support for Austrian ex-chancellor Sebastian Kurz' 'ÖVP' party has fallen from 32 percent to 26 percent in the wake of his resignation in a corruption scandal, according to a poll in the Kurier newspaper Sunday. Some 71 percent of people also said he was justified in stepping down. Two thirds of people in a separate poll for the Profil magazine Saturday said they believed there was substance to anti-Kurz allegations.

The EU has sent 250 oxygen concentrators and 5,200 vials of antibodies used to treat coronavirus to Romania, where one person was still dying of Covid-19 each six minutes at the start of October and where vaccination rates were just 33 percent. Russia, on Saturday, also recorded over 1,000 deaths in one day - equivalent to someone dying every one-and-a-half minutes, with the Kremlin blaming vaccine scepticism for the problem.

"We in Russia have record-high gas-consumption figures this year, which is also due to ... [our] economic recovery," Russian deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said on TV Saturday, while assuring Europe Russia could increase supplies if asked to, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, draft conclusions for this week's EU summit pledged "short-term relief to the most vulnerable consumers and to support European companies", amid a massive surge in global gas prices.

US tech giant Facebook is to hire 10,000 people in the EU in the next five years to build a "metaverse" - a virtual world where users' avatars can socialise and work together. "This investment is a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of European tech talent ... Europe is hugely important to Facebook," it said while announcing the move on Monday.

Indecision on what kind of EU military forces would fight in what kind of conflicts is holding back EU ambition on "strategic autonomy", according to an internal document.

There is a stretch of brand new, EU-funded railway line from the town of Bitola in North Macedonia to the Greek border, but no train has ever used it.

MEPs have voiced serious concern on rule of law in Slovenia, amid snubs and hate-speech by its top officials.

Vaccine roll-outs, energy prices, migration and an upcoming climate summit will top the agenda at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, while MEPs in Strasbourg tackle rule of law.

Polish MPs voted Thursday to let officials immediately expel asylum seekers who entered Poland irregularly, in what would be illegal pushbacks under international law, and to build a €350m wall on the Belarusian border, where police found the body of a sixth dead refugee. Up to 150 people a night were now also arriving from Belarus to Eisenhuettenstadt, a German migrant camp near the Polish border, local authorities told Reuters.

Chinese prime minister Xi Jinping will not personally attend the 'COP26' climate summit in Scotland, UK prime minister Boris Johnson has been informed, British newspaper The Times reported Thursday. The no-show might mean China would not submit a 'nationally defined contribution' (NDC) on CO2-cuts either, British officials feared. Just half of the world's 'G20' wealthiest countries have filed NDCs so far, amid a supply crunch in oil and gas markets.

Wednesday's murders "appeared ... to be an act of terrorism" Norway's 'PST' intelligence service said Thursday, noting that the killer, Danish national Espen Andersen, had been a "known" threat. Andersen was a Muslim convert and extremist, but might also have had psychiatric problems, Norwegian police said. Norway's terrorism-threat level was "moderate", the PST added, while monitoring the risk of "follow-up actions, revenge actions" by either "extreme Islamists" or "right-wing extremists".

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has vowed to tear down wind turbines in France if voted president. "If I am elected, I will put a stop to all construction of new wind parks and I will launch a big project to dismantle them," she said on RTL radio Thursday. "Mme. Le Pen would cause blackouts," French environment minister Barbara Pompili said, as wind-power creates 8 percent of France's electricity.

MEPs in the legal-affairs committee have urged the EU Parliament president to sue the EU Commission for failing to use its new rule-of-law powers.

MEPs at committee level are seeking greater protection against lawsuits aimed at silencing and intimidating journalists and civil society in Europe.

African countries are seeking EU help on waiving vaccine patents to combat the pandemic at an upcoming meeting in Rwanda.

Andre Ricard is the man behind many of the most iconic European designs of the 20th century - from ashtrays to perfume bottles, municipal litter bins to the Olympic torch.

Neo-fascist groups are planning new protests in Rome after last weekend's riots, in a heady climate in which the pandemic and immigration have fuelled extremist feeling.

Fatih Birol said high gas prices will end up hurting the industry, but warned climate negotiators and lawmakers they need to up their climate investments by 300 percent if they want to meet climate targets.

The Arctic is warming up to three times as fast as the rest of the planet, putting increasing pressure on Greenland's ice sheet and livelihood in this region, scientists have warned