Euobserver.com

"This is a crime against journalism and an attack on our values of democracy and rule of law," EU Council president Charles Michel said Wednesday on the shooting, Tuesday in Amsterdam, of Dutch investigative reporter Peter R de Vries. EU Parliament president David Sassoli and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen echoed Michel. "Journalists must be able to do their important work freely," the Dutch royal family also said.

EU member states spent €273bn last year on environmental protection, according to new statistics on Wednesday from Eurostat. Such national expenditure by EU countries has been rising on average by over two-percent each year, but overall has increased by 40 percent since 2006. As percentage of GDP, however, environmental protection has remained relatively stable over the last 50 years (between 1.8 and 2.0 percent of GDP).

The EU Commission and most MEPs have called on Hungary on Wednesday (7 July) to repeal discriminatory new laws against LGBTIQ people or face legal consequences. Meanwhile, the commission is assessing Budapest's Covid-19 pandemic recovery plan.

The European Institute for Gender Equality has estimated that the annual cost of gender-based violence against women in the EU at €290bn. One-in-three women in the EU aged 15 or over has experienced physical and/or sexual violence.

In the countries worst hit by Covid-19, hydrogen and renewable gases are set to receive more money than much-needed intensive care units and new medical equipment (Italy) or the entire national health system (Spain).

The final round of food distribution will be on Friday, possibly leaving the 572 people rescued by the Ocean Viking without sustenance, as tensions begin to rise. Of those rescued, 183 are minors, including 41 aged 15 or younger.

Dutch police have detained three suspects in the attempted murder of well-known organised-crime reporter Peter de Vries, who was shot in Amsterdam on Tuesday and who is in hospital, fighting for his life, according to Dutch media. "He is a national hero to us all. A rare, courageous journalist who tirelessly sought justice," Amsterdam's mayor, Femke Halsema, said. De Vries was shot five times, including once in the head.

Ethiopia's "siege" on its restive Tigray region is creating a "man-made famine", the European Commission has warned.

A French court has ordered Twitter to explain within the next two months what the company is doing to tackle hate-speech on its platform, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Lobby groups, including UEJF French Jewish students association, SOS Racisme and SOS Homophobie, have put pressure on Twitter to do more. A UK bill, announced in May, would fine 10 percent of companies' turnover if they failed to prevent online abuse.

EU states should renovate three percent of public buildings a year to make them "nearly zero-energy buildings" by adding insulation and installing greener heating systems, the European Commission is planning to propose, Reuters reports. The EU construction industry will also have to cut energy consumption from the sector by 1.5 percent a year. The draft figures are double the current EU targets for renovation and consumption.

Germany has arrested a 75-year old politics expert on charges of spying for China. Klaus L., from the centre-right affiliated Hanns Seidel Foundation, gave China information on "current affairs" from 2010 to 2019, prosecutors said. He was also an informant for 50 years for Germany's homeland security service, the BND, German media said. He traveled widely in Asia and Russia and had reportedly been recruited at a conference in Shanghai.

Last month was the second-hottest June on record for Europe, and the hottest on record for North America - where heatwaves conditions persisted, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced on Wednesday. Arctic Siberia recorded high temperatures, while Antarctic temperatures were colder than usual. After 2016, 2019 and 2020, June 2021 joins June 2018 as the fourth-warmest on record globally.

Austria's far-right former deputy chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache went on trial Tuesday on charges of offering to change the law to secure financial favours for a party donor. He faces five years in prison. The charges came after police seized his phone and other materials when he also solicited money from a woman posing as a wealthy Russian in a sting in Ibiza, which triggered the collapse of Austria's then coalition.

Belarus has threatened to halt transit of EU goods via its territory after Europe's recent economic sanctions. "First: not a step inside the Belarusian market; second: not a step through Belarus ... the same should be done with the Germans. Let [them] supply their products to China and Russia through Finland or Ukraine," Belarus president Aleksander Lukashenko said Tuesday, Reuters reports. He also jailed a political opponent for 14 years.

The European Commission unveiled on Tuesday its Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy - with a commitment to improve the sustainability expertise of financial advisers. The EU executive also published a legislative proposal for voluntary EU green bonds' standards. Bonds can be used in long-term projects, aligned with the so-called EU taxonomy. However, NGOs have raised concern over the possibility of labelling gas and nuclear energy as "green" investments.

Dutch MEP Malik Azmani said the EU Commission should not have approved Slovenia's national Covid-19 recovery plan without prime minister Janez Janša appointing the prosecutors.

Leaked documents revealed "limited progress" in talks on revising the controversial Energy Charter Treaty - triggering renewed calls from activists to pull out of the agreement, seen as a stumbling block to a clean-energy transition.

Neither Commission nor EU leaders have reacted to the Austrian government's amorphous fight against "political Islam". Their silence is deafening over French president Emmanuel Macron's controversial draft 'separatism' bill. Or Social Democrat-led Denmark's legislation relocating asylum seekers to third countries.

Could the Green Deal, the European Climate Law, the Just Transition Fund tackle illegal deforestation, arsons, water, air and soil pollution, traffic of ozone-depleting substances and protected species, poaching, overfishing etc.? The answer is clearly 'no', we need a prosecutor.

Taxpayers rather than polluting corporations pay for clean-up operations in Europe due to lax regulation, the European Court of Auditors, an EU financial watchdog, said Monday. "Polluters need to pay for the environmental damage they cause ... Up to now, though, European taxpayers have far too often been forced to bear the costs that polluters should have paid," the court's Viorel Stefan said, after a study of 42 clean-up projects.