Euobserver.com

Pope Francis has said he's "pained" by Turkey's decision to convert Istanbul's Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, while the leader of the Turkish community in Germany, Gökay Sofuoglu, called it a "wrong decision" and said the world would lose a symbol of harmony. Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Muslim prayers would begin on 24 July, for the first time since the Hagia Sophia became a museum in 1934.

France and the UK on Sunday signed an agreement to create a joint migrant intelligence unit to crack down on people attempting to cross the channel onto the island-nation. "It's very important that our British friends realise that if the migrants come here in Calais, it's not for the beauty of the city but it's to cross the Channel," said French interior minister Gerald Darmanin.

EU leaders will meet in Brussels on Friday and Saturday to discuss in person the EU's long-term budget and recovery plan to respond to the crisis. Meanwhile, the future of the EU-US Privacy Shield might depend on this week's ruling.

We call for applying positive discrimination to the 'Blue Book'. This would imply quotas to ensure the recruitment of people of colour including those from non-privileged backgrounds.

My group in the European Parliament, Renew Europe, has just adopted a position paper that highlights our views on SMEs.

The south-eastern EU member state has seen a week of record new coronavirus cases, plus a row in a kebab shop over masks with two MPs.

Ahead of expected tense discussions next weekend among EU leaders, European Council president Charles Michel tries to find common ground: the recovery package's size, and grants, would stay - but controls would be tougher.

A new Eurobarometer on Friday revealed that public perception of judicial independence decreased in 2020. It follows the announcement of the EU justice scoreboard. That scoreboard shows nearly all member states' courts can keep up with incoming cases while making progress on backlogs - but also demonstrates a long-standing clash over Poland's rule-of-law. Meanwhile, women still represent less than 50 percent of judges in most Supreme Courts.

Euro zone finance ministers on Thursday evening chose Irish finance minister Pascal Donohoe as the new president of their 19-member formation, the eurogroup. Pierre Gramegna of Luxembourg withdrew his candidacy after the first round of votes. Donohoe, who was supported by fiscally more conservative smaller countries, emerged as the new leader after a second round of votes, prevailing over Spain's Nadia Calvino, who was backed by Germany and France.

Italy's right-wing League party, keen to present itself as the new defender of the country's working class, will open an office this month on a highly symbolic street in Rome, Via delle Botteghe Oscure, where the once-powerful Communist Party had its headquarters, Reuters writes. "Factories, workers, teachers, agriculture, craftsmen, are now represented by the League," said Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigrant League, speaking on Italian TV.

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said on Thursday that "significant divergences" remained in its talks with Britain on their new relationship after London breaks all its ties with the bloc in 2021. Negotiations have so far failed to bridge gaps over fisheries and fair-competition guarantees, and other key hurdles. "We will continue working with patience, respect and determination," Barnier tweeted. Negotiators meet again in Brussels next week.

German state security has identified 32,080 right-wing extremists in 2019, up from 24,100 the year before, Deutsche Welle writes. It also classified 13,000 of these cases as 'prepared to use violence', 300 more than in 2018. Right-wing extremism, racism, and anti-Semitism continue to increase in Germany, the country's interior minister Horst Seehofer said, adding "these areas are the biggest threat to security in Germany".

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday launched an Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response to evaluate the world's response to Covid-19. The panel will be co-chaired by the former prime minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, and former president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. "The magnitude of this pandemic, which has touched virtually everyone in the world, clearly deserves a commensurate evaluation," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

China has accused Australia of "gross interference" after prime minister Scott Morrison granted a range of visa holders from Hong Kong a five-year extension and suspended an extradition treaty with the city, The Guardian reports. Australia would allow Hongkongers, fearing persecution under the new national security law, to stay in the country for longer and then offer them a pathway to permanent residency.

Eurozone officials are expected to let Croatia and Bulgaria into the ERM-2 mechanism, the first stage for adopting the euro as their currency in the next three years, news agencies reported. It would pave the way for the first eurozone enlargement since 2015, when Lithuania joined the club, which has 19 members. The decision needs the final backing from EU finance ministers meeting online on Thursday and Friday.

Michael Spindelegger, the former minister of foreign affairs of Austria and current director of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), reveals some of the proposals in the European Commission's upcoming pact on migration and asylum.

EU auditors concluded on Thursday that EU key policies adopted to protect and halt the decline of pollinators across the bloc have been largely inefficient and called on the European Commission to better address this issue.

MEPs adopted on Thursday the Mobility Package covering truck drivers' working conditions - rejecting amendments pushed by central and eastern member states. However, the European Commission warned that two new rules might be not align with the Green Deal.

If human rights lawyers are the linchpin for structural change in China – changes that create a positive and reinforcing effect on Europe's interests and values – what should Europe's leadership do?

Dealing with the recovery from the pandemic, the Conference on the Future of Europe seems to have disappeared from the political-media debate.