Euobserver.com

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen was not guilty of awarding defence contracts without proper oversight in her time as Germany's defence minister, according to a 75-page report by Germany's three ruling parties, the CDU, CSU, and SPD, finalised Tuesday and seen by the Politico news website. Von der Leyen "hardly ever signed a decision paper on the investigated cases herself," the report said.

Poland has "crossed the rubicon" with its first political trial of a judge, in violation of an EU court injunction, Polish judges have said.

Italy and Germany, among others, opening with almost no restrictions, while Denmark, Greece, and the Baltic states, for instance, proceeding more gradually, with white-lists of who can come in.

Migrants, Brussels, and US billionaire George Soros back in Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban's firing line, as politics returns and the pandemic dwindles.

Whether it is the West, Turkey, or Russia who think they are winning in Libya, Libyan people are the losers, according to one woman, speaking from Tripoli.

The EU is not an exception. We have both been stopped on several occasions by security personnel in the European Parliament asking us what business we had on the premises. None of our white colleagues have reported such experiences.

As long as European companies continue to choose the certainty of the Chinese dictatorship over the volatility of India's fragile democracy, the threat from China not going to change soon.

The world stands on the brink of a food crisis worse than any seen for at least 50 years, the UN has warned as it urged governments to act swiftly to avoid disaster, the Guardian writes. UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Tuesday that better social protections for poor people are urgently needed as the looming recession following the coronavirus pandemic may put basic nutrition beyond their reach.

Brazil's top court waded into the controversy surrounding official reporting of coronavirus death and infection rates, as a Supreme Court justice ruled the health ministry must revert to releasing the full set of data it had previously made available, Reuters reports. Over the weekend the health ministry, reportedly under pressure of president Jair Bolsonaro decided to stop publishing coronavirus data and to take a swathe of data off its website.

Alleged bully Jacek Krawczyk is facing possible criminal charges in Belgium following serious complaints of harassment. Krawczyk is set to become president of the EESC, an EU body. BusinessEurope, a lobbyist outfit, is speaking out in his defence.

French police have been banned from using chokeholds to detain suspects in light of US events, France's interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said on Monday. "It will no longer be taught in police and gendarmerie schools. It is a method that has its dangers," he said. He also pledged "zero tolerance" for racism in the police. Castaner's announcement came amid French solidarity demonstrations with the Black Lives Matter movement in America.

EU-held debt would grow to €950bn by the end of 2024 under recent proposals for its next long-term budget, which include borrowing on capital markets, in "a radical change for the EU", US ratings agency Fitch said on Monday. "But this would be backed by additional resources from member states. As such, it would be consistent with the EU's 'AAA' rating, all else being equal," it added.

China is becoming an increasing "threat" to Europe and growing closer to Russia, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has warned.

Protests against racism and police brutality have spread across European cities despite coronavirus restrictions, following a brutal US-police killing.

Three EU states are now willing to help Malta take in some of the migrants stranded in day-trip boats off its coast, some for more than a month. The European Commission is hoping more will step come forward.

While I do live in a reality in which I do belong to an ethnic minority, and because of that reality, I am discriminated against, ethnically, I do not believe this to be absolute.

European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde on Monday defended the bank's stimulus measures to protect the eurozone economy against the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic as "temporary, targeted, and proportionate". Earlier ECB bond-buying schemes have come under fire from Germany's Constitutional Court, which ruled the measures disproportionate. Lagarde said the ECB's crisis actions had been "critical" in avoiding a financial crisis on top of the economic slump.

Vietnam on Monday ratified a trade deal with the European Union. Under the deal, the EU will lift 85 percent of its tariffs on Vietnamese goods. Human-rights defenders say the pact does little to stem abuse in the country. The deal had also courted other controversy after this website exposed conflicts of interest, provoking an MEP to resign his post as the European Parliament's chief negotiator.

The Brazilian government has been accused of totalitarianism and censorship after it stopped releasing its total numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths and wiped an official site clean of swathes of data, the Guardian writes. The move seems to be ordered by president Jair Bolsonaro himself. Brazil currently has the world's second-highest number of cases, at 672,846, according to the Johns Hopkins university site.

Large-scale lockdowns in Europe have been successful in avoiding 3.1 million deaths across Europe from Covid-19 according to a new study from Imperial College London scientists. They analysed data from Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. "This data suggests that without any interventions, such as lockdown and school closures, there could have been many more deaths from COVID-19," Dr Samir Bhatt, study author, said.