Euobserver.com

Western allies hope that the leverage of not recognising the Taliban, which would mean withholding funds, would be enough to tame the extremist group that took over Afghanistan after 20 years of Nato and US involvement.

Europe will no longer need Russian gas in 25 years' time, German chancellor Angela Merkel said at a meeting with Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky, last weekend. "Europe will need to achieve climatic neutrality step by step by 2050," Merkel said, as quoted by Russian ned agency Tass. "It means that in 25 year[s] no gas, or very small volumes of gas, will be supplied to Europe from Russia," she added.

Climate change has made extreme rainfall events of the kind that sent lethal torrents of water hurtling through parts of Germany and Belgium last month at least 20 percent more likely to happen in the region, scientists said Tuesday, Reuters reports. "We will definitely get more of this in a warming climate," said the group's co-leader Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford.

Tunisia's president Kais Saied has extended the suspension of the nation's parliament until further notice, his office said in a statement, Deutsche Welle reports. The president also extended the suspension of the immunity of lawmakers. Saied had dismissed prime minister Hichem Mechichi and suspended the legislature last month, saying his intervention was needed to save Tunisia from collapse following mass protests over the government's handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has allocated Belarus roughly €850m in reserve funds as part of the body's unprecedented program to support the global economy as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic, the Moscow Times reports. The payout comes despite last-ditch attempts by opponents of the embattled regime to block the transaction, fearing it could embolden the strongman president Alexander Lukashenko and further escalate the wave of repression in Belarus.

The government of Cyprus said it would revoke the passports from Turkish Cypriot officials in the northern part of the island, Ekathimerini writes. A number of Turkish Cypriot officials are known to hold or held passports of the Republic of Cyprus. "With their acts and deeds they undermine the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and security of the Republic of Cyprus, in violation of the Constitution," government spokesman Marios Pelekanos said.

US president Joe Biden is likely to come under pressure to extend the stay of US troops to be able to continue evacuations, but it is unlikely that Biden will budge.

Poland has become the latest European country to start building an anti-refugee wall, with a new fence on its border with Belarus.

Last year, 1,200 Afghans were deported from the EU. Thousands of them left voluntarily. Clearly 2021 is not 2015, despite what some governments might say.

The foreign ministers of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, Greece, Nikos Dendias, and Israel, Yair Lapid, affirmed Friday in Jerusalem their countries' close ties, Greek newspaper Kathimerini reported. Dendias noted that the recently triumphant Taliban considered Turkey a friendly country and that Hamas, the Gaza-based Islamic movement that denies Israel's right to exist, congratulated the Taliban with their victory. The cooperation was born amid Turkey's oil-exploration exploits in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven caught the nation off guard on Sunday, saying he would resign in November ahead of a general election in September 2022 to give his successor a chance to improve the Social Democrats' standing in the polls, Reuters reported. Löfven has been prime minister since 2014, but his two coalition governments have lurched from crisis to crisis, unable to command a majority in parliament.

Parades for LGBTQ rights took place under heavy police presence Saturday at the foot of Catholic Poland's most revered monastery in Czestochowa, in the south, and in Gdansk, on the Baltic coast, AP news agency reported. The massive police presence, which included officers on horseback, was seen as the factor that prevented any clashes with far-right groups, which shouted anti-LGBTQ slogans like "No Homosexual Love" at the marchers.

Russia's new "weapon" in its war on Ukraine, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany, has cast a shadow over EU leader's show of solidarity with Kiev.

The Kremlin failed to mention French president Emmanuel Macron's calls for Russian president Vladimir Putin to release his critic Alexei Navalny from jail in its readout of the two leaders' phone conversation Thursday, The Moscow Times writes. "The president of the republic called for the release of Alexei Navalny, one year after the assassination attempt of which he was the victim," Macron's office said in a statement.

The Belgian federal and regional governments have decided to ease Covid-19 rules from 1 September on. Restrictions for bars and restaurants will disappear, as well as all restrictions for private meetings and parties, where dancing will be allowed again. Teleworking is no longer recommended. However, Brussels minister-president Rudi Vervoort (PS) said that the rules will not be eased in the capital as the vaccination level remains too low.

With just five weeks to go until Germany's parliamentary elections, the two parties in the current ruling coalition are set to win similar numbers of votes, according to a recent poll published by research institute INSA on Sunday, Deutsche Welle reports. The centre-right conservative bloc (CDU/CSU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) polled equally at 22 percent for the first time in an INSA poll since April 2017.

EU proposal to let Big Tech organise algorithms for the public sector is creating a dangerous but invisible injustice. Regardless, the EU proposal conceded to key industry demands on self-regulation and the promotion of AI in the public sector.

EU Commission chief said the EU executive was ready to provide funding for EU countries that helped resettle refugees and planned to raise the resettlement issue at a G7 meeting on Tuesday

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres described the humanitarian situation in parts of Ethiopia as "hellish" and said there is no military solution to the conflict in Tigray and neighbouring regions, Deutsche Welle reports. Guterres called for a ceasefire and the safe passage of humanitarian aid to devastated areas. He urged an Ethiopia-led political dialogue to find a solution to the conflict.

The EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described developments in Afghanistan as "a catastrophe" on Thursday and said there had been a failure of intelligence to anticipate the Taliban's rapid return to power. Speaking to MEPs, Borrell said that about 100 EU staff and 400 Afghans working with the EU and their families had been evacuated, but that 300 more Afghans were still trying to leave.