Euobserver.com

An EU Commission spokesperson called the situation's origins as "an attempt by a third county to instrumentalise people for political purposes, which we very firmly reject and described as a form of aggression".

The parliamentary elections set for 17-19 September could be an opportunity for democracy in Russia - amidst voter dissatisfaction over economic recession, growing inflation, environmental problems and an unfolding health crisis.

Social Democrat Olaf Scholz won a televised debate on Sunday between the three leading candidates to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor after Germany's federal election on 26 September, a survey by pollster Forsa showed, Reuters writes. The snap poll showed 36 percent of voters believed Scholz won, ahead of 30 percent for Greens candidate Annalena Baerbock and 25 percent for Armin Laschet, the candidate of Merkel's centre-right CDU/CSU.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are working on a United Nations proposal aimed at establishing a safe zone in Kabul to allow passage for people trying to leave Afghanistan, French president Emmanuel Macron said, Reuters reports. Macron, who said France had begun discussions with the Taliban on further evacuations, said the resolution would be brought on Monday to an emergency UN Security Council meeting of veto-wielding members.

The Italian coastguard picked up 539 people from a fishing boat drifting near the small Mediterranean island of Lampedusa on Sunday in one of the largest single rescue operations on record, the BBC reports. The asylum seekers, who had come rom Libya, included women and children, and many of them showed signs of having been physically abused prior to embarking, according to charity MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

UK carrier British Airways is to launch a low-cost airline in Europe by the summer of 2022 to compete with rivals Easyjet and Ryanair, according to a leaked internal memo, CNN reports. The firm confirmed it was working "on proposals for a short-haul operation at Gatwick", but declined to comment further. It made a loss of €2.3bn last year, but expects the short-haul market to quickly recover after the pandemic.

EU banks have done little to adapt to new environmental, social, and governance-related (ESG) risks, according to US asset-management firm BlackRock in a report tasked by the European Commission, Reuters reports. Implementation of new ESG measures "needs to be accelerated", it said. Awareness of ESG risks in lending policy and stress testing was sometimes "superficially" applied, "limited ... in scope", and "at an early stage", it added.

The messy US pull-out from Afghanistan has shown Europe must build up its own army, EU internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, a close ally of French president Emmanuel Macron, has said. Europe needed "a military projection force" capable of "intervening militarily outside our border", he wrote in a blog on Friday, adding: "Europe has always exercised its global influence through its soft power ... this is no longer sufficient".

The former leader of Austria's far-right FPÖ party, Heinz-Christian Strache, was found guilty of corruption by a regional court in Vienna on Saturday and given a suspended 15-month jail sentence. The court said he changed a law to help a friend secure public-health contracts back when he was part of a ruling coalition which collapsed in 2019, but Strache denies wrongdoing and can appeal the verdict in a higher tribunal.

German police detained over 100 people and four officers were injured at an anti-coronavirus rules rally in Berlin Saturday, in which thousands marched through the city centre and some tried to storm barricades near parliament, Reuters reports. Most candidates for federal elections September have promised no new lockdown despite a fourth wave of infections. But some regions, such as Baden-Wuerttemberg, are tightening restrictions on unvaccinated people's access to public places.

US travellers coming to the EU face higher chances of being asked to quarantine upon arrival due to an increase in coronavirus infections in America.

To reject any humanitarian, military intervention is not only problematic from an ethical point of view. It also shows a lack of long-term thinking about European self-interest.

The EU has started paying Italy billions in pandemic aid. It is Europe's biggest beneficiary and could see a major GDP bump, but only if the money is well spent.

With its new special envoy at the helm, the EU can play a significant role in effectively moving us towards a world where our diversity of beliefs is valued and respected by all.

EU countries and the UK were wrapping up operations on Thursday and Friday, as the deadly attack struck. The EU has managed to evacuate over 400 members of local staff and their families.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has coloured Brussels as a dark-red zone, Le Soir writes. Regions become dark-red if the 14-day, cumulative Covid-19 case notification rate is 500 or more. Brussels and the region of Wallonia were put as a red zone already weeks ago, while Flanders remains orange. Brussels is the city with the lowest vaccination level of all Western European capitals.

Bulgarian defence minister Georgi Panayotov said that a contingent of 400 soldiers equipped with specialised equipment for the protection of land and sea borders has set off for the frontiers with Turkey and Greece, Polish news website Onet.pl writes. In total, 700 soldiers are expected to support over 1,000 border police officers. Since the beginning of the year, some 14,000 migrants have been stopped at the Bulgarian border.

The remains of between 5,000 and 8,000 people have been found in 29 graves in the southern city of Odessa in Ukraine, the BBC reports. The site, believed to date back to the late 1930s, was uncovered during exploration works for a planned expansion of an airport. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians died during Joseph Stalin's rule of the Soviet Union.

Workers at public hospitals in Greece held a five-hour work stoppage to protest a government decision making vaccination against Covid-19 mandatory for all health-care workers in the public and private sector, AP news agency reports. About 300 hospital workers rallied outside the health ministry in Athens to protest the measure, which goes into effect on 1 September. The government has made clear that no extension will be granted.

Poland has accused the Belarusian authorities of not allowing humanitarian assistance to be delivered to a group of about 30 migrants stranded on the border between the two countries, RadioFreeEurope writes. Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that Poland has dispatched humanitarian aid by road that Belarus has so far refused to accept. "We are appealing again. We are trying to ensure that we receive their consent," Morawiecki said.