Euobserver.com

Alexander Schallenberg, 52, has been sworn in as the new chancellor of Austria, replacing Sebastian Kurz, who resigned over the weekend. The 35-year old Kurz and nine others are being investigated for breach of trust, corruption, and bribery. But Kurz will remain head of his ÖVP party and become its leading MP, with Schallenberg accused of being Kurz's "puppet" by Austrian opposition parties on Monday.

Last month at a summit in Budapest, Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán told Czech PM Andrej Babiš referring to the election: "Please, win! We need you!"

The International Monetary Fund has voiced full confidence in its chief, Kristalina Georgieva, a Bulgarian former EU commissioner, following a row on China.

Two dozen countries have joined the US-and EU-led initiative to reduce global methane emissions, as momentum builds ahead of the UN climate change conference in Glasgow. Delivering on this pledge could reduce global warming by 0.2 degrees by 2050.

In 2020, the German presidency of the EU rejected the idea of accepting corporate sponsors. On this point, France seems unwilling to follow Germany.

Some 50 scholars working on antisemitism and related fields issue a stark warning against the political instrumentalisation of the fight against antisemitism.

Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš seems set to lose power after elections on Saturday in which two opposition coalitions, who both vowed never to work with him, won 108 out of 200 seats in parliament. The country's 77-year old president, Miloš Zeman, who has suffered from a range of health problems for years, was also taken into intensive care on Sunday shortly after holding talks with Babiš.

Italian police have arrested the leaders of the extreme-right Forza Nuova political party over an anti-vaccination rally in Rome on Saturday, which ended in violence. Thousands of people protested against making vaccine-passes mandatory in the workplace. Some tried to push past police into government offices, while others broke into the offices of Italy's main 'CGIL' trade union and the Policlinico Umberto I hospital, where medical staff had erected barricades.

British Brexit minister Lord Frost will say in a speech in Portugal Tuesday the EU should remove the European Court of Justice's (ECJ) oversight role from a Brexit-linked deal on Northern Ireland customs, British media report. EU Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, is also to unveil "far-reaching" proposals on Northern Ireland on Wednesday, including concessions on import/export of British sausages, but the ECJ's role is sacrosanct for EU institutions.

Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz has resigned over allegations his ÖVP party misused state funds to manipulate opinion polls in its favour. "What's required now is stability ... I want to step aside to prevent chaos," he said Sunday, while denying accusations. Kurz is to remain ÖVP chief and proposed his ally, foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg, to replace him, in what some saw as an interregnum prior to a Kurz comeback.

EU approval of Russia's 'Sputnik V' coronavirus vaccine has been delayed because Russia "repeatedly postponed the timing of the inspection requested by the EMA [European Medicines Agency]," the EU's ambassador to Russia, Markus Ederer, told Russian media RBC Friday. The process was a "technical one", but Russian officials "make this about politics," he added. EMA non-approval means Russian travellers face difficulties in Europe because their vaccination-pass is not universally accepted.

Emotions ran high at pro-EU rallies in Poland on Sunday in the wake of a landmark, anti-EU court-ruling.

The EU commission is to deliver three new P150 patrol boats to the Libyan coast guard, despite a recent UN report citing possible crimes against humanity at Libyan detention centres.

Rule-of-law conflict in Europe is getting worse, but top EU officials also go to Kyiv for a summit, while MEPs hold talks on spiralling energy prices.

Environmental lawyers have warned the EU Commission that labelling some types of natural gas facilities as "green" would clash with EU laws and international commitments.

The former bad boy of Italian politics, Matteo Salvini, risks splitting his own party in an attempt to make the far-right League into a national force.

Hungary and Poland have vetoed an EU strategy paper on children's rights in their latest blow against the rights of sexual minorities.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief and former World Bank head and EU commissioner Kristalina Georgieva is fighting to keep her IMF job after a US law firm, WilmerHale, accused her of massaging figures in a Word Bank report, called Doing Business 2018, to make China look more investible than it was. Georgieva's lawyers rejected the report as "unsupportable", but the IMF board will hold talks on her future on Friday.

A US special-operations unit and a contingent of marines have been secretly operating in Taiwan to train military forces there, US officials said, part of efforts to shore up the island's defences, as concern regarding potential Chinese aggression mounts, the Wall Street Journal writes. The report came as Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen said Friday that it would "do whatever it takes to defend its freedom and democratic way of life".

"We need more clarity from the Chinese ... on when they're going to peak out with emissions, what their plans are with coal-fired power generation in China," EU climate commissioner Frans Timmermans said at a conference Thursday, ahead of the 'Cop 26' climate summit at the end of the month. "We hope China will join us in this effort to have serious enough reductions," US climate envoy John Kerry added.