Euobserver.com

The EU is ready to go it alone with taxing digital services provided by companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook or Apple if there is no global deal on such a tax this year, economic commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said on Thursday. His comments came after the US pulled out of talks. Gentiloni said he hoped the move is only a "temporary setback" and the bloc still sought a global solution.

A Hungarian law adopted in 2017 that requires civil organisations to disclose any foreign donors breaks EU law, the European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday. "Hungary had introduced discriminatory and unjustified restrictions with regard to both the organisations at issue and the persons granting them such support," the court said. Prime minister Viktor Orban has repeatedly accused non-governmental organisations funded by US billionaire George Soros of political meddling.

It is becoming clearer that live venues are going to be the last ones to emerge from this crisis. So what now?

"We can't be an ostrich and can't pretend there isn't a Turkey problem at Nato. We have to see it, say it and handle it," a French official told the Reuters news agency Wednesday, amid complaints of Turkey's military build-up in Libya and an alleged incident in which a Turkish naval ship behaved aggressively toward a French one. The official spoke as Nato defence ministers were holding talks in Brussels.

German foreign minister Heiko Maas, on Wednesday, called on both China and India to de-escalate tensions and peacefully resolve their Himalayan border dispute, which has caused dozens of casualties on both sides, Deutsche Welle reports. "These are two large countries and I don't want to begin to think about the conflict that could happen if this results in a real military escalation," Maas told Deutsche Welle in an interview.

Oriel College in Oxford University has voted to remove a statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes amid wider European debate on history and ethics, prompted by the Black Lives Matter protests in the US. The college acted in "full awareness of the impact these decisions are likely to have in Britain and around the world", it said. Some Tory politicians, such as former MEP Daniel Hannan, attacked the move.

The number of migrants detected trying to enter the EU irregularly in May "rebounded" to new highs, after record low figures due to coronavirus lockdowns, Frontex, the EU's border control agency has said. Some 3,500 people tried to do it in May, most of them in the central and western Mediterranean (where figures quadrupled). Numbers in the Western Balkans went up ten-fold to more than 900.

The EU has threatened to cut pandemic-recovery funds to Polish regions on grounds of gay-bashing declarations, opening a new front in its clash with Kaczyński's Poland.

MEPs urged an end to structural racism and discrimination in Europe and the US, following the brutal killing of black American George Floyd by US police. Socialists and Green MEPs stressed the need to unblock the anti-discrimination directive.

An MEP from the European Parliament's largest political group, the centre-right EPP, is tabling pro-industry amendments on a bill to regulate carbon emissions on ships. The same MEP received campaign backing and support from industry lobbyists.

The EU and its member countries are worried that foreign powers, such as China and its state-owned companies will take advantage of the economic downturn and buy up European firms

The European Commission unveiled on Wednesday its first-ever report on the impact of demographic change, revealing that Europe's share of the global population keeps declining. While the population of EU-27 in 1960 made up about 12 percent of the world's population, it is predicted to account for less than four percent by 2070. The report concludes that there is a need to embed demographic considerations across all EU policy.

The European Commission announced on Wednesday the EU's strategy for Covid-19 vaccines. The commission, on behalf of the member states, will use €2.7bn to sign contracts with pharmaceutical companies working on possible vaccines. "This vaccine will be a breakthrough in the fight against the coronavirus, and a testament to what partners can achieve when we put our minds, research and resources together," said commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

Chinese prime minister Li Keqiang is to hold video-talks with EU Council president Charles Michel and other top officials on Monday, after Germany cancelled a much bigger event, involving the Chinese president and 27 EU leaders in Leipzig, due to the pandemic, without setting a new date. The talks come amid fraying relations over China's handling of Hong Kong protests, economic espionage, and military posturing in the Pacific region.

"[US] sanctions against those involved in the work of the ICC [the International Criminal Court in The Hague], its staff and their families as well as persons associated with the ICC are unacceptable and unprecedented in scope and content," EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Tuesday. He spoke after a White House order, last week, to impose ICC blacklists because they were investigating alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.

Malta's former police chief, Lawrence Cutajar, has denied allegations he tipped off a leading suspect, Melvin Theuma, on details of the investigation into a top journalist's murder, after authorities announced a formal inquiry into his actions. Cutajar's mishandling of audio files implicating suspects was because he was "panicking" that the investigation had stalled he told The Times of Malta newspaper Tuesday. The 2017 assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia remains unsolved.

Spanish foreign minister, Arancha González Laya, said on Tuesday that the government was considering a 14-day self-isolation requirement for all those coming from the UK, when Spain reopens its borders to EU and Schengen area travellers on Sunday. "We will be checking what the UK will be doing … to see whether or not we should be introducing reciprocity," she said to the BBC's Hardtalk programme.

A report published on Tuesday by the European Court of Auditors revealed that six of the eight multi-billion cross-border transport infrastructures audited are unlikely to be operating at full capacity by 2030, as initially planned. The auditors said this delay is jeopardising the effective functioning of five out of nine multinational corridors. The main reason for the delay was that projects were "poorly coordinated" between countries.

France has reversed plans to ban police chokeholds when arresting suspects. The decision came after protests from police unions, who said any such ban would put their lives at risk. France's interior minister Christophe Castaner had earlier announced the practice would be suspended following the death of George Floyd in the US. Castaner had said "the techniques known as 'the chokehold' should no longer be taught or used".

The EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told European defence ministers on Tuesday that Operation Irini had made contact with 130 suspect ships since its launch. "Operation Irini has hailed ships, since it was launched, on more than 130 occasions," he said, adding more than 100 were linked to the arms embargo and 29 to the oil embargo. Irini was set up to enforce the UN arms embargo on Libya.