Euobserver.com

Continuing to classify British TV and film as "European works" under the EU's audiovisual laws, which set quotas for platforms such as Amazon and Netflix, could "result in a disproportionate presence of UK content with the European" market, according to an internal EU document seen by The Guardian. The European Commission is doing an impact assessment on "cultural diversity", which could see the British industry lose its perks, it reported.

Iran's president-elect, Ebrahim Raisi, has welcomed the negotiations with world powers aimed at reviving a 2015 nuclear deal but said they must guarantee national interests, the BBC writes. Raisi promised he would not allow the talks in Vienna to be dragged out and also insisted that Iran's ballistic missile programme was "not negotiable". The nuclear deal has been close to collapse since the US abandoned it three years ago.

A report of the European Court of Auditors revealed on Monday that agricultural spending for climate action has failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming. In the period 2014-2020, more than €100bn were earmarked for climate change, but emissions from agriculture have not decreased since 2010. EU auditors called on the European Commission to assess the impact of applying the polluter-pays principle to emissions from agricultural activities.

EU data protection authorities on Monday called for a ban on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for automated recognition of human features such as faces, fingerprints or voices, in public spaces and in any context. Under draft AI regulation, technologies such as facial recognition could be used to search for crime victims or missing children. EU watchdogs also called for an "AI body independent from any political influence".

The Article 7 sanctions procedure was initially launched against Warsaw in 2017 by the EU Commission and triggered by the European Parliament in 2018 against Budapest. Now it is back on the table, after the pandemic.

The Spanish government will grant a pardon to nine jailed Catalan leaders behind the failed independence attempt in 2017 - an issue that continues to divide Spaniards.

China has already imposed its 'wild west' approach on our daily lives: more than 50 percent of the products listed as dangerous in the EU in 2020 came from China - mostly toys, electrical appliances and clothing.

Hundreds of thousands of brave Polish women took to the streets, repeating the message "you will never walk alone". We will not rest until Polish women enjoy the same rights as French, Spanish or Belgian women.

Robert Schuman, a post-WW2 French politician who helped create the EU, is to be given the title "venerable" by the Roman Catholic church in recognition of "heroic virtues", in what constitutes the first step on the path to canonisation, the Vatican announced over the weekend. The church needs to attribute a "miracle" to Schuman for the next step - "beatification" - and a second miracle before he becomes a saint.

"We are closer to a deal, but we are not still there ... We have made progress on a number of technical issues," EU diplomat Enrique Mora said after chairing nuclear non-proliferation talks with Iran and world powers in Vienna Sunday. The "progress" came despite Iran's recent election of a hardline cleric, Ebrahim Raisi, as president. Israel said he was a threat to peace, but Russia and Turkey congratulated him.

Germany's liberal Free Democrats (FDP) will not join a coalition led by the ecologist Greens after parliamentary elections in September, the German Bild daily reported on Monday, citing party sources. The Greens are running about 8 points behind the conservatives and polling at some 20 percent. The FDP are the conservatives' preferred ruling partners, but the two parties are unlikely to win enough votes for a parliamentary majority.

Lebanese leaders could face EU visa-bans and asset-freezes for obstructing the formation of a new government and implementing reforms, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said in Beirut Saturday. "We stand ready to assist, but if there is further obstruction to solutions to the current multi-dimensional crisis in the country, we will have to consider other courses of action ... including targeted sanctions," Borrell said after meeting president Michel Aoun.

Germany has banned public displays of the green-and-white flag of Hamas, a Palestinian militant group on the EU's terrorism blacklist, after its use in antisemitic protests during Israel's recent bombardment of Gaza. The left-wing SPD party had initially objected on constitutional grounds, but gave in to the centre-right CDU party, German media said. The ban was a "clear signal [of support] to our Jewish citizens," a senior CDU MP said.

French centre-right party Les Republicans did better than the liberal La République En Marche! party of president Emmanuel Macron or the far-right Rassemblement National of Marine Le Pen in local elections Sunday, exit polls indicated. Le Pen's candidate did come top in Marseille, but will need a run-off to secure office. "Our voters didn't turn out," Le Pen said, after just 34 percent of French people overall bothered to vote.

Thousands of people marched in a pride parade in Warsaw on Saturday, amid booming dance music from a sound system in the heart of the city, in what is central Europe's largest annual pro-LGBTI rally. The march was banned last year due to coronavirus.The even was held amid heightened homophobic rhetoric by the Polish government and a new anti-LGBTI law in Hungary, with some Polish protesters also waving Hungarian flags.

Polish intelligence services and those of allied states have "unanimously" agreed that a cyberattacks against the emails of top Polish officials and politicians "originated on the territory of the Russian Federation", Polish deputy prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński said in a statement Friday. The attack was meant to harm, Polish society" and to "destabilise" the country, he added. Russia has recently been accused of similar attacks against Germany and the US.

The EU should not relax sanctions against Burundi until the regime there has stopped persecuting journalists and human rights activists, leading NGOs have said.

EU foreign relations chief Josep Borrell will announce sweeping economic sanctions on Belarus at Monday's foreign affairs meeting after Austria caved to pressure.

EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson has taken a firm stand against outsourcing asylum to other parts of the world. Her comments follow a recent Danish law that aims to stop asylum seekers from filing claims in Denmark.

Many European citizens are still exposed to illegal and dangerous levels of pollution, especially badly in Italy and Poland, new data from the European Environment Agency revealed.