Euobserver.com

Afghan exiles living in Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan would be among the first to try to enter the EU via Belarus, Greece, and Turkey, if things went badly under Taliban rule, Fabrice Leggeri, the head of the EU's border-control agency, Frontex, told Reuters Wednesday. "What will very likely happen first is that the Afghan communities living abroad might try to move to the European Union," he said.

Ryszard Terlecki, a senior MP with Poland's ruling PiS party, told a congress Wednesday Poland should seek "drastic solutions", such as following the UK out of the EU, if the EU court and European Commission went against its judicial reforms. Łukasz Andrzejewski, a pro-PiS judge and former PiS senator, said Poland should halt its donations to the EU budget, which feeds "a vast amount of freeloaders", referring to EU officials.

Britain is to rewrite its interpretation of international maritime law, enabling its coast guard to intercept migrant boats, push them into French waters, and notify French authorities that people were in need of rescue, instead of rescuing them directly, The Times reports. The move would have "a negative impact on our co-operation", French interior minister Gérald Darmanin said. More than 1,000 people crossed the Channel in one day last week.

EU leaders are planning to repeat old promises to Western Balkan states at an upcoming summit, but enlargement is going nowhere for now.

The group leader of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, said he will run for the umbrella party's leadership (also called EPP). The German politician, who hails from the Bavarian CSU, also intends to keep the group leadership. Current EPP chairman, Donald Tusk, will step down officially in April, as he returns to Poland to lead the opposition against the nationalist government there.

The European Union voiced disapproval of the Taliban's provisional government in Afghanistan, saying they had not kept a promise to include women and other religious groups, Reuters writes. "It does not look like the inclusive and representative formation in terms of the rich ethnic and religious diversity of Afghanistan we hoped to see and that the Taliban were promising over the past weeks," foreign affairs spokesperson Peter Stano said.

Salah Abdelslam, the main suspect in the 2015 jihadist rampage that killed 130 people across Paris, described himself as "an Islamic State soldier" at the start of the long-awaited trial into the 13 November 2015 attacks. He appeared in court dressed in black, wearing a black face mask, one of 20 men accused of involvement in the attacks on six restaurants and bars, the Bataclan concert hall and a stadium.

The study shows that the 29 biggest energy companies in Europe have lost much of their financial clout. But it also shows that most of these companies can still afford to meet EU climate targets by themselves.

The green and digital transition, together with the pressure on democracy and the shift in the shares of the global population and GDP, will shape the geopolitical world order, according to a new report published by the European Commission.

The EU's Brexit negotiator spoke ahead of his first-ever visit to Northern Ireland where he wants to focus on "concrete problems" after the UK has once again postponed the implementation of checks between Northern Ireland and the UK.

With a surge in new Covid-19 cases and the second-lowest vaccination-rate in the EU, Romania's current political mess could not come at a worse time.

Throughout history, revolutionaries willing to sustain extreme conflict have been 'devoted actors', fused together by faith in defending or advancing non-negotiable 'sacred values', whether religious or secular, like God or country.

A trial of unprecedented scale starts under high security on Wednesday to judge 20 men suspected of involvement in jihadist attacks across Paris on November 13, 2015 - the deadliest attack in peacetime-France's history, Reuters writes. Some 130 people were killed and hundreds wounded when gunmen with suicide vests targeted six bars and restaurants, the Bataclan concert hall, and a sports stadium, leaving deep scars on the nation's psyche.

Japan, as well as Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Brunei, and Serbia are shortly to be removed from the EU's 'white list' of countries for which it recommends no Covid-linked travel restrictions, diplomats told Reuters. The preliminary decision, on Tuesday, comes after the EU, in late September, also removed Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and the US from the safe list, which now numbers fewer than 20 nations worldwide.

France has said Britain would look bad if it placed new conditions on a previous deal to pay £54m (€63m) toward coast-guard patrols to stop migrants crossing the English Channel. "Conditions of the funding were negotiated in detail with the British and it was never a question of conditioning the money to specific targets [of interceptions]," the French interior ministry noted, saying the UK risked "a serious loss of trust".

A new EU permanent camp for asylum seekers is being inaugurated later this month in Samos. Vagelis Stratis from the International Rescue Committee says people are leaving the island to avoid to it, amid a spike in mental health cases.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has made an impassioned plea to German voters to back her would-be successor, Armin Laschet, at this month's national election, as an opinion poll showed support for the conservatives slumping to an all-time low, Reuters writes. The latest Forsa opinion poll puts the Social Democrat (SPD) candidate Olaf Scholz on 25 percent, while CDU/CSU's candidate Laschet is only on 19 percent.

Europe had its warmest summer time on record this year, although onley by a small margin over two earlier highest temperatures for June-August, the EU's Copernicus weather service stated, Reuters reports. The previous warmest summers, 2010 and 2018, were just 0.1C cooler. This summer's record is another milestone in the global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Air pollution from coal-powered plants in the western Balkans has caused 19,000 deaths over the past three years, according to a new report. Coal-fired power plants in the region have breached emission legal limits for years.

Green bond-funded projects may not add significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, but the financing of new natural gas infrastructure with green bonds will be possible in some cases.