Euobserver.com

The EU commission's newest pact on migration and asylum seeks to deter people from claiming asylum by speeding up procedures and sending most of them back home.

The special committee, only created in June, will start its hearings on Thursday with experts from the EU's foreign service on hybrid threats and disinformation.

Recent weeks have seen a sudden flare-up in anti-mask protests and coronavirus-denial - posing questions on how to regulate social media.

A new report details how the Covid-19 pandemic triggered bans on protests and demonstrations, censorship of free speech, denial of access to information and the weakening of democratic oversight on many of policy-making procedures.

The protests in Bulgaria clearly open the debate on whether the rule of law remains the central shared value for all Europeans.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has been sworn in for a new term in office, in a hasty and secret ceremony attended by a few hundred people at the palace of independence in Minsk after racing through the city in his motorcade to get there, the BBC reports. The opposition had previously planned a massive rally and general strike for the occasion, which had been expected in November.

The long-term economic cost of a no-deal Brexit for the UK would amount to £160bn (€174bn), compared to government estimates for the coronavirus pandemic cost of £40bn, the London School of Economics said in a study. The UK left the EU in January but a transition period still allows for normal trade with the EU until 2021, amid faltering talks between the two sides to agree a long-term trade regime.

Around 200 miners from Poland's biggest coal-producer, PGG, are protesting against the government plans to restructure the industry, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Some of the miners have been underground since the beginning of the week, when the protests started in two mines - expanding later to 10. The government and the union representatives have met twice this week to discuss the new Polish energy strategy by 2040.

Direct and indirect CO2 emissions from the EU's animal farming industry amounted to 704m tonnes in 2018, compared to 656m tonnes from cars and vans, according to a new study by environmental pressure group Greenpeace. Meat and dairy production in there bloc also rose by 9.5 percent between 2007 and 2018, the CO2 equivalent of putting 8.4m new cars on the road, in a worrying trend, it added.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been discharged from the Berlin clinic where he was being treated for poisoning with a nerve toxin, the BBC reports. "My plans are simple: [go to] the physiotherapist ... Stand on one leg. Regain complete control over my fingers. Maintain my balance", he said. He could return to Russia "at any moment", a Kremlin spokesman said. The Kremlin denies accusations that it poisoned him.

German foreign minister Heiko Maas has gone into self-quarantine after a bodyguard tested positive for coronavirus, a spokesperson told AFP on Wednesday. Maas himself tested negative in an initial test, but the ministry is tracing who he may have had contact with as a precaution. The news follows a similar case with European Council president Charles Michel and one of his security detail earlier this week.

A study published on Wednesday by the EU Fundamental Right Agency found that a quarter of Roma and Travellers in western Europe cannot afford heating or healthy food - while up to 20 percent of their children go to bed hungry. Consequently, life expectancy of these communities is 10 years below the general population. Next month, the European Commission will present a new Roma strategy for equality.

The US coronavirus death toll has passed 200,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the BBC reports. More than 6.8 million people are recorded to have been infected in the US, more than in any other country in the world. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the death toll was a "horrible thing", adding China "should have stopped" the virus.

Divisions among EU governments remain between those who want to suspend EU funds if rule of law is not respected, and those who want to narrow down conditionality.

EU countries agree on the need to better coordinate their Covid-19 measures, but the issue remains highly sensitive as health competencies belong to member states.

The EPP, S&D, and Renew Europe have all dropped their support for a Belarus dissident with homophobic views, hours after EUobserver published an expose.

Athens and Ankara have agreed to start the 61st round of exploratory contacts in Istanbul to discuss their contested maritime claims in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean, Greece's Foreign Ministry said in a brief announcement on Tuesday, Ekathimerini reports. The announcement follows a call between the leaders of Turkey, Germany and the European Union.

Energy ministers from Egypt, Israel, Greece, Cyprus, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Italy signed on Tuesday the charter of a new Middle East energy forum that will promote natural gas exports from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe and other markets, Ekathimerini writes. "The East Mediterranean Gas Forum, [...] is in fact becoming a real international organisation," said Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz. Turkey has not been invited.

Denmark, Greece, Hungary and Sweden joined Germany and Romania as host states of the medical equipment strategic reserve, the EU Commission announced on Tuesday. The stockpile, that was set up in the wake of the pandemic and is financed by the commission, is building up common European stocks of lifesaving protective and other vital medical equipment that can be distributed across Europe at times of medical emergencies.

Maltese police have arrested Keith Schembri, the former prime minister Joseph Muscat's chief of staff, in an investigation into alleged money-laundering connected to the sale of Maltese passports. A Maltese court also issued an order for all his assets and those of his family and companies to be frozen. Schrembi is friends with the person suspected of the 2017 murder of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.