Euobserver.com

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg has welcomed the creation of a new military hotline by Greece and Turkey designed to avoid military clashes in the eastern Mediterranean, he said while visiting Ankara on Monday, Daily Sabah reported. Stoltenberg met with Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to discuss the "deconfliction mechanism". He is also meeting Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens on Tuesday.

Armin Laschet, the state premier of Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia region, is the ruling party's current favourite to succeed chancellor Angela Merkel when she leaves politics in 2021, according to two dozen sources in the Conservative Democratic Union (CDU) interviewed by Reuters. The party will vote on its top candidate in December ahead of federal elections due by 24 October. Businessman Friedrich Merz was the CDU's second favourite, Reuters added.

The EU has called for Russian authorities to investigate the death of a journalist who set herself on fire in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, in western Russia, following alleged police harassment. The EU was "shocked about the tragic death of journalist Irina Slavina", a spokesman said Monday, adding that what happened "needs to be thoroughly investigated also in light of pressures exerted on her for her work and activities."

The European Parliament has created a "Daphne Caruana Galizia prize" for what the Green group called "outstanding journalism revolving around the principles and values of the European Union". The €20,000 annual prize will be awarded by a panel of independent journalists, for the first time in October 2021. It honours a Maltese investigative journalist who was murdered in 2017 and whose killers have still not been brought to justice.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky will meet top EU officials in Brussels on Tuesday in the first physical bilateral summit in the EU capital since the pandemic began. They will discuss the conflict with Russia in east Ukraine, amid ongoing ceasefire violations, as well as the "state of reforms" in Kiev, amid EU concern over backsliding on anti-corruption reforms, despite Ukraine's ambition to one day join the European club.

The EU has bought 15 surveillance drones for Belarusian authorities, prompting alarm they could be used against pro-democracy protesters.

Ireland's coalition leaders met public health officials on Monday to discuss their recommendation for an effective national lockdown for four weeks, which they believe is the "only opportunity" to get infection rates "back under control". However, the Irish government ruled out moving the country to Level 5 coronavirus risk, the Irish Times reported. Level 5 would also mean that only essential shops would be open.

Video and photos on social media showing dead octopuses, seals and other inert sea life revealed what seems to be a major marine pollution incident in Russia's far east Kamchatka peninsula, the BBC reported on Monday. The environmental NGO Greenpeace called it "an ecological disaster" as preliminary analysis have detected oil products and phenol in the water. Meanwhile, locals have complained of vomiting, fever, rashes and swollen eyelids after swimming.

The parliament wants €38.5bn extra for key programmes, which is less than their previous request of around €100bn. Negotiations continue on Thursday, but the budget and recovery could still get stuck on the rule-of-law issue.

The European Commission said on Monday that to date it has had 159 cases employees testing positive for Covid-19. "Up to this morning, we have had 159 positive cases within the European Commission staff," said a EU commission spokesperson. The announcement follows the self-imposed quarantine of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who has tested negative after meeting an infected person last week at a meeting in Lisbon.

The European Court of Justice is due to decide whether the Belgian data protection watchdog can pursue legal action against Facebook - after the social media network was found guilty of breaching Belgian privacy legislation some five years ago.

On current progress, closing the gender pay-gap in France will take over 1,000 years, according to new research by the Brussels-based European Trade Union Confederation.

As president of a news organisation operating across Eurasia, I witnessed the reality of non-independent media in central Asia or in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Yet this trend is now becoming more commonplace in parts of the European Union.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has tested negative for Covid-19, a commission spokesperson tweeted on Monday. However, she will continue self-isolation until the end of Tuesday, in accordance with regulations. The test came after Von der Leyen was notified late Sunday that she had attended a meeting with someone who tested positive. Von der Leyen is tested regularly on Mondays and Thursdays.

The European Trade Union Confederation on Monday found that the EU's gender pay gap will last until the next century at the current pace of change. EU official data shows the bloc's gender pay gap has closed by one percent over the last eight years, which means women in German and the Czech Republic will wait until 2121 for equal pay, while in France it could take over 1,000 years.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Monday said she will go into quarantine, after having contact with someone last week at a meeting in Lisbon who then tested positive for Covid-19. "I've been informed that I participated in a meeting last Tuesday attended by a person who yesterday tested positive for Covid-19," she said. She will have a test later on Monday, after having tested negative last Thursday.

Paris is is going back to maximum Covid-19 alert, meaning bars will have to close for two weeks from Tuesday and restaurants will have to put in place new sanitary protocols to stay open, prime minister Jean Castex has ordered. "These measures, indispensable in the fight to curb the virus' spread, will apply to Paris and the three departments immediately surrounding it, for a duration of two weeks," he said.

Between 100,000 and 120,000 people marched against Belarus president Alexander Lukashanko in Minsk on Sunday, amid now-familiar police violence and abductions, in what is the second month of protests following rigged elections in August. Belarus also instructed Lithuania and Poland to remove diplomats after the EU blacklisted 40 Belarusians. "Attempts ... to target certain EU member states will not succeed in weakening EU unity," the EU foreign service said.

Roman Catholic leader Pope Francis has denounced excessive reliance on free markets to help people hit by the economic fall-out of the pandemic. "This dogma of neo-liberal faith" relied on "the magic theories of 'spillover' or 'trickle' ... as the only solution to societal problems," he said in an open letter called an encyclical on Saturday, as EU governments pondered how to react to job losses and increasing poverty.

Some 1.4 million people from 28 countries have signed a petition to the European Commission calling for the abolition of cage farming of chickens, pigs, and other animals in Europe. EU officials will now have to consider whether to propose such a law under the European Citizens Initiative (ECI). The petition, organised by the NGO Compassion in World Farming, was the sixth to pass the ECI threshold since 2012.