Euobserver.com

Any firm issuing safety certificates for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will find itself in US sanctions crosshairs, the state department has warned.

Norway scrambled two jets to challenge two Russian long-range bombers off the coast of Norway earlier this week, Nato said Thursday, while Nato fighter aircraft from Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey responded to a Russian squadron of bombers and fighter jets over the Black Sea, in a separate incident. The Black Sea squadron had turned off its transponders, devices that communicate flight paths, raising tension and the risk of accidental confrontation.

Amsterdam has overtaken London as the share-trading capital of Europe, just a month after Brexit became official, the Financial Times reported. Trading volumes at three exchanges in the Dutch capital grew fourfold to average €9.2bn per day in January, while average volumes in London fell sharply to €8.6bn last month. An estimated €6bn of European share trading shifted from London to Europe when Brexit officially took effect in January.

Foreign ministers and senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates were meeting with foreign ministers from Greece, Cyprus and Egypt in Athens on Thursday, as Greece seeks to expand alliances to counter tension with Turkey, AP reported. French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian joined online. Nato members Greece and Turkey are locked in a dispute over boundaries and offshore resource rights in the Mediterranean.

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has accused the EU of "double standards" in letting Australian, Canadian, and US traders do business in Europe, but not City of London ones after Brexit. "Now is not the time to have a regional argument," he told The Times Thursday, referring to economic fallout from the pandemic. At least €6bn of trading and 7,000 financial jobs have moved to Europe since Brexit.

Over 500 scientists called on EU to stop treating the burning of biomass as "carbon neutral" in its renewable energy standards. "In recent years there has been a misguided move to cut down whole trees or to divert large portions of stem wood for bioenergy, releasing carbon that would otherwise stay locked up in the forests," they said in a letter sent on Thursday to EU and international leaders.

French and Spanish liberal MEPs attempted to water down a resolution on Yemen and abstained on key points demanding accountability for EU states that violate arms export rules.

All non-essential travel to and from Belgium remains prohibited until 1 April, the Belgian government clarified on Thursday. On the website of the ministry of foreign affairs it had indicated the rule would last until 1 March. The measure does not apply to frontier workers and travelling for urgent family reasons. Belgium's Easter holiday this year starts on 5 April.

France's foreign ministry warned Iran on Thursday against taking further measures that could breach the 2015 nuclear accord with world powers and as a result jeopardise a diplomatic window opened with the arrival of a new US administration, Reuters reports. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN watchdog, reported on Wednesday that Tehran had carried out its plan to produce uranium metal.

European police have been working with their counterparts in Myanmar to develop a manual of crowd-control techniques as part of a wider EU-support scheme, The Guardian writes. The project, initiated in 2012, provided training and equipment. It was suspended by the EU last week after the Myanmar military staged a coup, triggering the largest protest movement in the country in more than a decade.

EU ambassadors reached a compromise on the e-Privacy reform after four years of deadlock, paving the way for trialogue negotiations. But the text was slammed for allowing "mass surveillance" under national data-retention laws, a crucial win for France.

Economic commissioner Paolo Gentiloni acknowledged that the goal of vaccinating 70 percent of EU adults by the summer is "a challenging target".

Existing loopholes provide ample opportunity for political actors to receive resources from abroad.

Lithuania has declined to extradite Denis Volkov, an exiled activist, to Russia on grounds he recently organised illegal protests via TikTok. "Using international tools for politically-motivated prosecution is ... wrong," Lithuanian interior minister Agne Bilotaite said, referring to Russia's anti-Volkov alert in the international police agency Interpol. Volkov is an associate of poisoned and jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Interpol in the past rejected several "political" Russian warrants.

A Dutch court has suspended extradition of a suspected narco-trafficker to Poland under the European Arrest Warrant on grounds Polish judges were under political control. "There is a danger the judges in Poland who have to rule ... will not be able to do so freely, partly because of the risk of disciplinary proceedings," the Amsterdam court said Wednesday. The EU Commission recently urged Poland to fold its 'disciplinary tribunal'.

Germany has extended its lockdown from 14 February to at least 7 March to stave off a third wave of corona and the risk that "mutated viruses could gain the upper hand". "There could be a third wave [of infections] ... and we can only fight that if we can really get the incidence numbers down," German chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday. Schools might reopen on 1 March, however.

Anxiety, fear, depression, and psychosomatic conditions were on the rise in one third of seven to 17-year olds in a study by University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany out Wednesday. The symptoms, linked to months-long lockdowns and school closures, hit children from poor families and migrant families even harder, the study found. Children who "felt safe and supported in the family," before the pandemic struck would fare better, it said.

Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, reportedly flew to Germany on Wednesday, the Interfax news agency reports, citing a "well-informed source." Navalnaya took a flight from Moscow's Domodedovo Airport to Frankfurt, according to the Russian news outlet. The reason for her flight to Germany, where her husband had medical treatment, was not clear. According to Der Spiegel magazine, it was a visit for private reasons.

Poland's right-wing rulers will row back on plans for a "political" tax on free press after a media blackout, the editor of one leading newspaper predicts.

"We don't accept Russian behaviour and we are certainly not intimidated by Russia. We want to coordinate closely with the US," EU Council president Charles Michel told a videoconference held by US think-tank the Atlantic Council on Wednesday, in damage-control to transatlantic relations. He spoke after EU top diplomat Josep Borrell criticised US policy on Cuba while visiting Russia last week, while Moscow expelled three European diplomats.