Euobserver.com

US president Joe Biden told Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone Wednesday he wanted "a significant deescalation today" in the Gaza warfare, the White House said in a readout of the call. But Netanhayu said he was "determined to continue this [Gaza] operation until its objective is achieved". Israeli shelling and airstrikes have killed over 200 Palestinians, while rockets by Gaza's Hamas militant group have killed over 10 Israelis.

The US has partly lifted sanctions on a controversial gas pipeline in a bid to mend relations with Germany and Russia.

The trial of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is accused of illegally financing his failed 2012 re-election campaign, resumes after being adjourned on the opening day in March after a lawyer fell sick with Covid-19, Reuters reports. Earlier this year, Sarkozy was convicted of corruption in a separate case. Prosecutors allege that Sarkozy's conservative party splurged nearly double the €22.5 million permitted under electoral law on lavish campaign rallies.

Former Italian prime minister and current MEP Silvio Berlusconi is seriously ill and his trial on charges of bribing witnesses should be temporarily suspended, a Milan prosecutor said, Reuters reports. Berlusconi, 84, has been in and out of hospital this year after contracting COVID-19 last September, and speculation has mounted in recent days over a deterioration of his health.

European Union countries agreed to ease Covid-19 travel restrictions on non-EU visitors ahead of the summer tourist season, a move that could open the bloc's door to all Britons and to vaccinated Americans, Reuters writes. Ambassadors from the 27 EU countries also approved a European Commission proposal from 3 May to loosen the criteria to determine "safe" countries and to set a new list in the coming days.

European Commission vice-president Margaritis Schinas has told Spanish broadcaster RTVE that "nobody can intimidate or blackmail the European Union." His comment came after thousands of people from Morocco entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta this week. Spain has since returned some 5,600, posing questions over possible summary deportations. Human Rights Watch says its unlikely any individual assessments were carried out - contrary to Spanish and EU laws.

Last month, the commission published an audit into subsidies granted to the Agrofert business empire, founded by Czech PM Andrej Babiš, and still controlled by him, despite having put his assets into trust funds when he became PM.

Taking in the Western Balkans and tackling climate change to deprive Russia of oil and gas revenues were the most powerful steps the EU could take to keep order in Europe, Robert Cooper, a retired British diplomat has said.

Last week, over 2,000 people arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa. Efforts to relocate some of them to other member states is proving tricky. Meanwhile, another 400 have been stuck on a boat for the past two days.

The European Parliament has voted to spend €17.5 billion on making the EU economy more green by a majority of 615 against 35. The so-called Just Transition Fund still needs unanimous approval by EU states in a move expected in June. The Greens praised the fact it cannot be spent on fossil fuels or nuclear energy. But "it's just too small", German Green MEP Niklas Nienass said after Tuesday's vote.

Twenty six European countries, but not the EU, have urged a ceasefire on Gaza, after Hungary, once again, undermined unanimity.

Demand for summer flights to US cities Los Angeles, Miami, and New York was up 300 percent after Germany loosened coronavirus travel restrictions, German airline Lufthansa said Tuesday. It resumed flights to Orlando and Atlanta. It also saw the same three-fold rebound in flights to Greece and to the Spanish islands of Ibiza and Majorca, with its budget unit, Eurowings, to lay on 500 extra European flights.

"Although the City will remain Europe's largest financial marketplace, its Golden Age as Europe's financial capital is over," Howard Davies, the chairman of NatWest Bank, one of Britain's largest lenders, said in an op-ed in the Project Syndicate magazine Tuesday. "We're looking at financial-services regulations and seeing what we can do now [that] we're able to move on from EU arrangements," he added, on trying to make London more competitive.

Finland's parliament on Tuesday voted in favour of the EU's €800bn Covid-19 recovery plan, which required a two-thirds majority in parliament. The vote had been delayed by a week after the nationalist and eurosceptic Finns party prolonged the parliament debate by filibustering. Last month the parliament's constitutional law committee ruled the legislation required a two-thirds majority to pass - which prompted the centre-left government to seek support from opposition parties.

Spain has warned of a "serious crisis" for Europe after some 6,000 people entered Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in northern Morocco. The European Commission has voiced its support for Spain as diplomatic tensions with Rabat heat up.

The previous two efforts for a unified corporate tax framework have run into the ground, because the unanimity required by the member states to agree such a scheme was unachievable. Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Malta, Sweden and the Netherlands were opposed.

The relationship between Israel and the Palestinians is actually an oversized Stanford Prison Experiment. That 1970s experiment showed that if you give people power, they start to abuse that power very quickly.

Czech president Miloš Zeman apologised to Serb president Aleksandar Vučić for Nato's bombing of Serbia in 1999, when Zeman was in government after joining the Western alliance. "I'd like to personally ask the Serbian nation for forgiveness," Zeman told Vučić in Prague Tuesday. The Nato operation, which killed 500 civilians, stopped Serbia's attack on Kosovo. The pro-Russian Zeman also wants Prague to renege on its previous recognition of Kosovo's sovereignty.

At least 57 migrants drowned in a shipwreck off Tunis as they tried to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy, while 33 were rescued, the Tunisian Red Crescent told Reuters. "33 Bengalis were rescued [and] 57 others drowned in a boat carrying about 90 migrants that set off from Libya towards Europe," Red Crescent official Mongi Slim said.

Germany's competition authority announced on Tuesday it was investigating US giant Amazon over "anti-competitive practices," AFP reported. "We are first of all examining whether Amazon is of paramount significance for competition across markets," said watchdog chief Andreas Mundt. Under a new law, giving authorities more power to hold tech companies accountable, regulators could "take early action against and prohibit possible anti-competitive practices by Amazon," he added.