Euobserver.com

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues in Europe. For that reason, it is the spotlight topic at the Prague European Summit 2020, which aims to provide a platform for discussion about current and future European challenges.

The Russian parliament's lower house - the Duma - has backed a bill granting Russian presidents and their families immunity from criminal prosecution after they leave office, the BBC reports. The bill increased speculation about Russian president Vladimir Putin's political future. He has been in power since 2000. Putin's fourth term ends in 2024, but recent constitutional amendments allow him to run for two more terms after that.

EU states are far from agreeing common rules for corona-testing and quarantines, auguring delays to normal free-movement inside Europe, according to a German EU presidency report, seen by Reuters. "A large number of member states made clear that discussions on common minimum standards and criteria were premature," it said, referring to the agenda of Thursday's video-link summit, adding that "approaches ... on quarantine obligations in connection with travel differ considerably".

Bulgaria has blocked the opening of North Macedonia accession talks due to a bilateral dispute on historical issues, German EU affairs minister Michael Roth confirmed Tuesday. "They [Skopje] have already done a lot and they have their claims. They want to be part of this European community. It is a long, difficult path," Roth said, referring to the fact North Macedonia earlier changed its country's name to satisfy Greek demands.

About 66 percent of people, on average, in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden have a "favourable" opinion of the EU, according to US pollster the Pew Research Center. Italians (58 percent) were the least optimistic and Germans the most (73 percent). EU approval also hit record highs in the UK (60 percent). Over 50 percent, on average, also approved the current French and German leaders.

"Without the nuclear and conventional capabilities of the US, Germany and Europe cannot protect themselves. These are the sobering facts," German defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said in an online speech Tuesday. Europe ought to boost its defence capabilities, she added, but this was "different from believing that a European army ... [could] replace America completely". French president Emmanuel Macron, on Monday, had said he "profoundly" disagreed with this view, however.

"This is no time for power games, we cannot have a political crisis on top of all this, this is the time to show EU unity," Portugal's EU affairs state minister Ana Paula Zacarias told the meeting of EU ministers.

The European Commission on Tuesday signed a contract with the European pharmaceutical company CureVac for an initial purchase of 225m million doses of its potential vaccine, with the option to request up to a further 180 million doses. The EU executive, on behalf of member states, already sealed deals with AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Johnson & Johnson and BioNtech-Pfizer for their potential vaccines, while it is also negotiating with the company Moderna.

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg warned on Tuesday Western allies of the "high prize" of pulling troops out of Afghanistan quickly or in an uncoordinated way, Reuters reported. "Afghanistan risks becoming once again a platform for international terrorists to plan and organise attacks on our homelands. And ISIS could rebuild in Afghanistan the terror caliphate it lost in Syria and Iraq," he said in a statement.

A major humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Ethiopia, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday, with more than 27,000 people now having fled heavy fighting to Sudan, Reuters reports. Ethiopia's prime minister warned on Tuesday that a deadline for rebel northern forces to lay down arms had expired, paving the way for a push on the Tigray region's capital in the two-week conflict destabilising the Horn of Africa.

French defence companies are providing training to Saudis on weapons that France's own military intelligence says puts almost 500,000 people in Yemen at risk. Meanwhile, new evidence has emerged of the French-built Mirage fighter jet being used in Libya.

Greek authorities have always denied they engaged in illegal pushbacks of migrants. But a Frontex email chain obtained by EUobserver shows for the first time ever that such orders were indeed made.

You hear voices already calling for the European Council to give in to the Hungarian and Polish demands, by coming up with supposedly 'technical' solutions allowing them to veto any corruption case or breaches of the rule of law .

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen voiced concerns about the bloc's ongoing reform of farming policy, saying some of the aspects of the European Council and Parliament's negotiating position are not aligned with the flagship Green Deal.

The EU institutions and member states have hardly more than two fully-fledged and one half-baked strategic option to solve this institutional crisis - that may have more far reaching consequences for the EU than Brexit.

Dozens of panel discussions and debates. Hundreds of prominent guests from the ranks of political representatives, state officials, representatives of interest groups, businesspeople, academics, and journalists. Countless media appearances. Urgent political challenges, bold visions. That is the Prague European Summit.

The EU aims to boost its offshore wind-farm capacity by 250 percent by 2050, according to a leaked European Commission proposal, seen by the Euractiv news agency. "The investment needed [mostly from EU states] is estimated up to €789 billion," it said, but the initiative would create 62,000 jobs, it added. "Nearly half of global offshore wind investment in 2018 took place in China," the commission paper also noted.

EU ambassadors were met with chants of "antisemites go home" by protesters led by Jerusalem deputy mayor Arieh King in a Jerusalem neighbourhood located in Israeli-occupied Palestine, on Monday, after going there to speak to press about Israel's plans to build 1,257 new housing units, Israeli daily Haaretz reports. The diplomats later spoke to press in a different location, saying the plans gravely endangered the UN-backed two-state solution.

Starting EU accession talks with Skopje was meant to be a technicality, but it is turning into a new fiasco on EU enlargement, dragging in Hitler, Stalin, and Tito.

Final results, out Monday, have confirmed that the pro-EU and anti-corruption candidate, Maia Sandu, has won presidential elections in Moldova by a landslide, with 58 percent of the vote, against 42 percent for the Russia-friendly incumbent Igor Dodon. Dodon himself, as well as Romania, Russia, and the European Commission congratulated Sandu. "The EU is ready to support Moldova," European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said.