Euobserver.com

The International Energy Agency said on Tuesday that "a total transformation of the energy systems" would be needed to reach net-zero emission by 2050 - including no investment in new fossil-fuel projects from now on, Reuters reported. In a climate-neutrality compatible scenario, sales of new internal combustion engine passenger cars should be banned by 2035 and the global electricity sector must reach net-zero emissions by 2040.

The EU Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly has launched a major inquiry into how European Commission handles cases in which EU officials move on to private-sector jobs - examining 100 personnel files across several departments.

A feminist remake of the Brussels metro map pays tribute to the women who have shaped European history, from Simone Veil to Joan of Arc.

Georgia is an ideal case study to prove the effectiveness of EU policies, mainly because the EU's leverage in Georgia is the highest of all Eastern Partnership states.

German parliament speaker Wolfgang Schäuble has said people who attacked synagogues in protest at Israel's bombing of Gaza should face "the full force of the law". Israel could be "sharply criticised," he told the Bild newspaper Monday, but "there is no justification for antisemitism, hatred, and violence," he added. Germany must give "the greatest possible protection for Jewish communities and institutions," Schäuble said, after a series of protests turned violent.

French far-right politician Marine Le Pen has accused president Emmanuel Macron of leaking a police report on her embezzlement of EU funds to harm her bid in next year's French elections. The newspaper which ran it was "the official organ of Macron", she said. "So I phoned up the police to ask them to leak this story? It's a lie, it's a scandal," France's justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said Sunday.

The Covid variant first detected in India is set to be the dominant strain in the UK within days, experts have said, with the government and health teams struggling to contain cases, which have risen by more than 75% since Thursday, The Guardian reports. The rapid spread of the more transmissible Indian variant is threatening to reverse moves to ease the lockdown.

More than 5,000 migrants entered from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta on Monday, including 1,000 minors, mothers cradling children, and whole families, Spanish media reported. One reportedly died while trying to swim around Ceuta fortifications, El País said. About 100 migrants also breached Ceuta in late April. Spain has a deal with Morocco to expel them en masse without hearing asylum claims, but unaccompanied minors can stay.

Kosovo has been dangled a potential breakthrough on visa-free travel, but what does the EU really want in return?

In an open letter to the leading medical journal The Lancet, an international group of scientists has reiterated "serious concerns" over the findings in the clinical research behind Russia's Sputnik V vaccine, The Moscow Times reports. The scientists blasted Russia's interim research showing an efficacy of 91.6 percent for their coronavirus jab, blaming the vaccine's developers for "data discrepancies," "numerical inconsistencies" and "substandard reporting" of the clinical trial results.

The UK has asked the European Union for more time to deal with the post-Brexit Northern Irish border, proposing to phase in checks on food from October, the BBC reports, while the Republic of Ireland said the deal needed to be made to work. Some fear the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol, designed to prevent a hard border, could spill over into more violent protests in the coming months.

The European Commission on Monday appointed former basketball player Michaela Moua as its first-ever anti-racism coordinator. Moua, who has worked recently at the ministry of justice in Finland, will be in charge of liaising with people with a minority racial and ethnic background, reporting back to the EU executive. She will also cooperate with MEPs, member states, NGOs and academia.

The EU border agency Frontex says it detected 36,100 irregular border crossings in the first four months of 2021, a third higher when compared to the same period last year. "In April, the number of illegal border crossings reached over 7,800, a four-fold rise from the record low recorded in the same month of last year," it said.

Under the agreement reached over weeks of talks, the EU will not go ahead with increasing retaliatory tariffs, scheduled for next month.

The European Commission unveiled new rules to green economic activities at sea, which employ more than four million people in the bloc. These include tightening ship-recycling rules and new targets to restore damaged marine ecosystems.

As European foreign ministers meet to talk about Israel and Palestine, Palestinians from both sides of the Green Line will be looking to the EU, Israel's main trade partner, to take the moral, legal and political steps required.

EU speaks out against Israeli rocket attacks against media building in Gaza Strip. Refrains from commenting on calls to launch an investigation and says first priority is to stop violence.

Parallels with the Soviet era are increasingly evident in Poland - where the ruling coalition hounds judges and captures courts.

Each week, in sub-Saharan Africa, 4,500 girls and young women aged 15-24 are infected with HIV. AIDS-related illness is among the leading causes of death among women of reproductive age globally.

US-origin conspiracy theories about the pandemic are spreading on social media and pose a security risk in Europe, according to an AFP investigation. Some 30,000 people in France follow the 'DeQodeurs' conspiracy group on Telegram, another 100,000 follow German demagogues Attila Hildmann and Xavier Naidoo, and 150,000 follow UK conspiracist Charlie Ward. "People are organising in clandestine cells. Obviously it is a threat," French national intelligence coordinator Laurent Nunez said.