Euobserver.com

People from the Western Balkans could create the next EU migration crisis, if Europe lets enlargement promises fail, the EU's enlargement commissioner, Olivér Várhelyi, said Monday. "We must keep our promises to the Western Balkans. For me, this is one of the most important lessons of the Afghan situation," he told Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet. The EU and Turkey also needed "a new kind of partnership," on migration, he said.

French president Emmanuel Macron's ex-bodyguard, Alexandre Benalla, arrived at a Paris court on Monday, for trial for allegedly assaulting two people during a 2018 protest while posing as a police officer, AFP reported. The incident caused deep embarrassment for Macron, who was forced to fire Benalla. The presidency also held off reporting the assault to authorities, and it came to light only after the daily Le Monde revealed it.

On Wednesday, the European Parliament is to adopt a report calling on the EU Commission to propose laws to better protect platform workers. The S&D want to ensure platform workers can be considered employees, with full social and worker's rights.

Pope Francis on Monday in Slovakia warned against too much focus on individual rights and culture wars at the expense of the common good. Francis reiterated the message he made during a stopover on Sunday in Hungary, on how nations should avoid a selfish, defensive mentality, as he recalled the region's communist past, according to Reuters. "Fraternity is necessary for the increasingly-pressing process of (European) integration," the pope said.

A report by the European Court of Auditors, the EU's Luxembourg-based watchdog, suggests the current, ineffective, EU agreements to return migrants may end up encouraging people to come.

The European Commission is planning to ask companies selling certain products in the EU, like palm oil or soya, to prove that they are not contributing to deforestation, a leaked document shows. Environmentalists, however, foresee loopholes in the regulation.

Some 227 climate activists were killed in 2020. European financial institutions have in the past contributed to the problem by financing infrastructure projects that later were linked to the targeted killing of environmental activists.

EU customs-check delays for British food imports were a "fandango of bureaucracy" because the two sides' food standards were aligned anyway, Archie Norman, the chairman of British retailer M&S said Monday. "Our fresh sandwiches and ready meals, going to Ireland or France are delayed by about a day - that is not good if you are a sandwich," he said on LBC radio, adding: "the French, predictably, are draconian".

Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has urged the EU, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK to stop blocking coronavirus vaccine patent-waivers ahead of a World Trade Organisation meeting on the issue on Tuesday. "People in [poorer] countries, facing life or death in this pandemic, can no longer rely on charitable or voluntary measures dictated by a small number of high-income countries and the pharmaceutical industry they host," MSF said.

Russian mercenary firm Wagner could send up to 1,000 fighters to Mali to train soldiers and protect VIPs under a new deal with its military junta, according to diplomatic sources speaking to Reuters. The deployment could jeopardise France's 5,000-man strong counter-terrorist mission in the region, which was to involve more EU states. "Public opinion in Mali is in favour of more cooperation with Russia," a Mali defence-ministry spokesman said.

Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has renewed her call for a second independence referendum, but was immediately shot down by the British government.

Germany's Greens party received a donation worth €1.25m from Dutch tech-billionaire Steven Schuurman last week - the largest in its history. "I wanted to ... make the world a little bit of a better place," Schuurman said. The gift comes after a German bitcoin speculator paid the Greens €1m in April. The party has received €3.14m in donations of €50,000 or more this year - more than the ruling CDU.

From 25 September, the Netherlands will impose a corona-pass to enter restaurants, bars, hotels, theatres, and cinemas, sources in the Dutch government say, the Dutch news channel NOS reports. The 1.5-metre distance rule, however, will be abolished. Face masks remain mandatory on public transport. The closing hours for bars and nightclubs remain in place at midnight. Football stadia can be fully filled again, if people show a corona pass.

The socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has announced a bid for the French presidency, saying that as a woman with working-class, immigrant roots she will try to repair the anger and divisions in French society and win back low-income workers disillusioned with the left, The Guardian writes. "The Republican model is disintegrating before our eyes," Hidalgo told supporters gathered on the docks in Rouen, Normandy.

The Social Democrat (SPD) candidate to become Germany's next chancellor beat his conservative rival in a primetime TV debate, a poll showed, further boosting his campaign, Reuters writes. A snap poll for ARD television taken soon after the 90-minute debate showed that 41 percent of those asked thought Scholz was the most convincing performer, compared to 27 percent for Laschet and 25 percent for the Greens candidate, Annalena Baerbock.

British heir to the throne, Prince Charles, offered to meet a Russian banker, Dmitry Leus, tainted by past money-laundering allegations, after the Russian man paid hundreds of thousands of euros to one of the Prince's foundations via an intermediary in expectation of a peerage, The Times reports in an investigation. The news comes one week after The Times revealed Charles was paid to fix a 'CBE' for a Saudi tycoon.

Pope Francis warned against antisemitism and alluded to being open to refugees in a brief visit to Budapest Saturday. "The threat of antisemitism still lurking in Europe and elsewhere ... This is a fuse that must not be allowed to burn," he said. "The cross ... extends its arms towards everyone," he also said. Hungary's right-wing government has used antisemitic tropes in election campaigns and been hostile to receiving refugees.

German chancellor Angela Merkel reassured Poland during a visit to Warsaw Saturday that Germany's Nord-Stream 2 pipeline with Russia, which was completed on Friday, would not be used to cut off Ukraine's gas. "I made clear that it is our concern that Ukraine will remain a transit land for Russian gas," she said. She also held "in depth" talks on rule of law in Poland, she added.

CWT Global is the European Parliament's in-house travel agency. But the US owned firm cannot book MEP flights to Cuba, due to the American embargo. MEPs now question why this agency was selected in the first place.

MEPs expect the EU Commission president to also address issues such as the economy, climate change, digital transformation, the EU's role in the world, migration policy, and the Conference on the Future of Europe.