Euobserver.com

UN Environment Programme executive-director, Inger Andersen, warned on Wednesday that "the Carpathian region is in real and immediate danger" in a meeting with representatives from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine. Deforestation and climate change are top concerns together with illegal fishing, the poaching of large carnivores and the killing of wild birds. Andersen urged parties to strengthen rule of law to ensure environmental protection.

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny will discuss EU-Russia relations on Friday (27 November) with MEPs in the foreign affairs committee. Navalny is an outspoken critic of president Vladimir Putin and almost died after being poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok family. He recovered only after being flown to a Berlin hospital for treatment.

Poland and Hungary should ask the EU's top court to assess linking EU funds to the respect of the rule of law instead of blocking the budget and recovery package, the EU Commission chief said, most MEPs backed her up.

The European Commission will present a new agenda on counter-terrorism on 9 December. "With that agenda, we want to strengthen cooperation between security services, give border guards the modern technology they need, step up our efforts to prevent radicalisation and better protect public spaces," said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday.

Brussels presented new rules on data governance, including a provision for 'data altruism', in a bid to tap the potential of mass-volume information storage - and compete with the US, China and Asia.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday she cannot tell "if in the end there will a deal" on the UK-EU future relations, with only weeks to go until the final deadline. She said while "genuine progress" was made on several issues, the EU will not risk the integrity of its single market and insists on fair competition rules and protection of European social, tax and environmental standards.

EU Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen has urged domestic capitals to prepare for organising a massive Covid-19 vaccination effort. "Member states must get ready now. We are talking about millions of syringes, about cold chain, organising vaccination centres, about trained personnel," she said Wednesday, adding that the vaccine is "our ticket out of the pandemic". She said the first EU citizens might be vaccinated by the end of December.

The German government agreed on Wednesday on 26 September 2021 as the next national election date, which will see Angela Merkel step down after 16 years in power. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier must still give official approval. A winner in the bitter battle to lead Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party into the elections is planned to be decided in mid-January.

The Brussels rumour mill has it that the EU Commission is being pressured to put forward a weaker proposal than what civil society organisations, trade unions, and the European Economic and Social Committee say is needed.

Some in Europe are calling for re-shoring or near-shoring supply and industrial chains of such critical sectors as medicine and pharmaceuticals, to reduce dependence on China's supply chains and market. Minister Xia Xiang sets out the opposite case.

The European Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, concluded the European Commission did not adequately assess potential conflict of interests when it granted a contract to the US giant BlackRock, a global investment manager, to work on environmental rules for banks.

Dutch far-right politician Thierry Baudet is standing down as leader of his own Forum for Democracy party after antisemitic and racist comments of the party's youth section were made public in a newspaper. He is also giving up his first place on the electoral list for elections in March 2021. Other leading members of the party likewise resigned as part of the fiasco.

German state premiers have agreed on new coronavirus lockdown measures for December and probably January, while loosening the rules between 23 December and 1 January, Deutsche Welle writes. The deal still needs to be confirmed by the federal government. In the Christmas holiday period, meetings involving people from more than two households would be permitted, up to a maximum of 10 people, not counting young children.

US president-elect Joe Biden said he was against a hard border in Ireland, which could come as a fall out of failed Brexit talks. "We do not want a guarded border," he told press while visiting Wilmington, Delaware, on Tuesday. "We've worked too long to get Ireland worked out ... The idea of having a border north and south once again being closed is just not right," he said.

The European Commission has unveiled guidelines and projects it says will help integrate migrants and EU nationals with migrant backgrounds.

The EU pledged €1.2 billion to Afghanistan over the next four years at an international donor's conference Tuesday, but said its "future trajectory must preserve the democratic and human rights gains" of the past two decades, amid a recent spike in extremist violence. Germany pledged another €430 million. The virtual event, joined by almost 100 countries, was co-hosted by Finland and the UN out of Geneva and raised €10 billion.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) in Amsterdam could issue a scientific opinion on Covid-19 vaccines by the end of the year, its director, Emer Cooke, told the Irish Independent newspaper Tuesday. "Assuming everything is positive ... best case, we could have a scientific opinion by the end of the year," he said. New vaccines had been "developed very quickly, which is very promising from a scientific perspective", he said.

A study published by the European Commission on Tuesday revealed that the non-CO2 impacts of air transport contribute twice as much to global warming as aircraft CO2. The report says that nitrogen oxides, water vapour, soot and black carbon, resulting from jet engine processes, were responsible for two-thirds of aviation's climate impact in 2018. The commission is expected to present a strategy for sustainable mobility in early December.

Over 200 parliamentarians across Europe urged the European Commission to launch an infringement procedure against Poland to protect women's rights, LGBTI-rights and the rule of law, referring to the recent abortion ban and so-called "LGTBI-free" zones. "Polish citizens are EU citizens and they rightly insist that EU institutions, in particular the commission, must defend their rights," reads the letter sent to commission chief Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday.

German foreign minister Heiko Maas said the will be "able to take decisions" in the next few days on the budget and coronavirus recovery fund. Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki will travel to Budapest on Thursday.