Euobserver.com

The economies of France, Italy and Spain will contract more then 10-percent this year, according to the latest forecast by the EU executive, as it urges member state governments to strike a deal on the budget and recovery package.

As with the German government – which presented its own hydrogen strategy last month – the European Commission and other EU institutions appear to be similarly intoxicated by the false promises of the gas industry.

Top British and EU negotiators will have dinner at the British prime minister's office at Number 10 Downing Street on Tuesday, kicking off the latest round of Brexit talks that have all but stalled amid differences, Reuters reported. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said on his way to London in a Twitter post: "The EU wants an agreement, and we are doing everything to succeed, but not at any price."

Russia's is free to use its own ship, the Akademik Cherskiy, to lay the last 160km of the Nord Stream gas pipeline after the Danish Environment Agency, on Monday, gave the go-ahead for a ship of its class, which uses anchors, to do the work because there were no old WW2-era chemical munitions in the area. US sanctions had previously forced Swiss pipe-laying firm Allseas to abandoned the project.

China has warned the UK not to interfere with Hong Kong following the imposition of a new national security law, as one pro-democracy campaigner begged for international support, the BBC reports. Ambassador Liu Xiaoming said the UK's offer of a path to citizenship for up to three million Hong Kongers amounted to "gross interference". The offer came after Beijing brought in the controversial and sweeping new law.

After three-and-a-half months closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Louvre museum in Paris reopened its doors for visitors on Monday, De Standaard writes. In 2018 the most-visited museum in the world received more than 10m visitors, three-quarters of which were from outside France. The Louvre does not expect the same numbers to return. During 2020 the museum has already lost more than €40m in revenue.

The UK announced Monday measures against individuals in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Myanmar and North Korea including asset freezes and travel bans to penalise individuals and organisations accused of human rights abuse, The Guardian reports. Sanctions will target those involved in the deaths of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the systemic killing of the Rohingyas in Myanmar and the use of forced labour in North Korea.

German health minister Jens Spahn, whose country holds the EU's presidency, told MEPs Monday he had discussed the Covid-19 antiviral drug remdesivir with US health secretary and drug firm Gilead to secure production in the EU. Remdesivir is the only drug which has been cleared in the EU for Covid-19 treatment, but most gobal supply has been bought by the US. Spahn said Germany has only a few hundred doses.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen recorded a video in support of Croatia's ruling party, which the EU executive said was in her "personal capacity" - and admits it was a "mistake" that this was not made clear.

Laura Codruța Kövesi, the European Public Prosecutor, has told Euronews it faces delays because European prosecutors still have not been appointed. They are needed to define the rules of procedure and regulatory framework of the office, which aims to crack down on fraud. "This procedure has been delayed because Malta did not propose enough eligible candidates. As a result, since December, the whole process has been delayed," she said.

The EU's border agency, Frontex, is in the process of training 265 new border guards, to be deployed in January next year. "They started their e-learning phase, so this is a three-month e-learning phase and then they will attend physical training," said Frontex head Fabrice Leggeri. The recruits are part of the agency's new standing corps, which may reach 10,000 personnel.

Belgrade and Pristina will resume their EU-led dialogue aiming for a "comprehensive and legally-binding agreement" on relations on Sunday, the EU Commission said Monday. Kosovo PM Avdullah Hoti will meet Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic in Brussels, following a virtual meeting this Friday with German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron. Talks were suspended in November 2018 after Kosovo imposed a 100-percent tariff on Serbian and Bosnian imports.

The European Parliament is refusing to disclose documents on an internal debate on whether to set up e-cigarette smoking booths at its premises in Strasbourg and Brussels, posing questions on how it handles transparency on relatively minor issues.

Never a free or media-friendly country, Belarus is intensifying crackdowns on reporters in the run-up to its presidential election in August. Belsat TV journalist Dzmitry Mitskevich experienced it first-hand.

It would lend credence to the idea that Washington is using the withdrawal as a threat to coerce Angela Merkel to cease ties with Russia and China, the US' main rivals.

Why should we learn to love bent cucumbers? And can the Nordic region really help improve the conditions for parental leave in the United States?

Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and All Greece expressed his belief Sunday that Turkey will not dare turn Hagia Sophia, the iconic Byzantine cathedral in Istanbul, currently a museum, back into a mosque. "They (the Turks) play whatever games are in hand. This is one more game. I believe they won't dare," Ieronymos told TV station Mesogeios TV on Sunday.

The EU should use the corona crisis to create full monetary union, German parliament speaker Wolfgang Schäuble has told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper. "We would be significantly further ahead in Europe today if the idea of ​​establishing a European monetary fund had prevailed in the 2010 Greece-crisis," he said on Sunday. "We cannot miss this chance again," Schäuble, from the ruling centre-right CDU party, said.

Greece and other southern EU countries do not want coronavirus rescue funds to come with the same kind of strict conditions, monitored by EU officials, as previous bailout funds, Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told the Financial Times on Monday. "Greeks have matured a lot [since the financial crisis] ... and we want to do our own reforms," he said, adding: "I don't think any additional strict conditionality is necessary".

The centre-right challenger, Rafał Trzaskowski, could beat nationalist-populist incumbent Andrzej Duda in the second round of presidential elections on 12 July, according to a 4 July poll by IBRiS. Trzaskowski got 47 percent in the survey, while Duda got 46 percent. The change was huge compared to the first round last weekend, when Duda beat Trzaskowski by more than 10 points. It comes despite blanket pro-Duda propaganda in state TV.