Euobserver.com

"We share concern for possible contagion [but] there is no need to panic," Italian EU financial affairs commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said at a G20 meeting in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, referring to the coronavirus outbreak in Italy. "The EU has full confidence in the Italian authorities and the decisions they are taking," he added, after Italy quarantined towns and halted high-level public events in the wake of three deaths.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that he would meet Russian president Vladimir Putin, German chancellor Angela Merkel, and French president Emmanuel Macron on 5 March to discuss the deepening crisis in Syria's Idlib region. Merkel and Macron have expressed alarm at the intensifying clashes between Turkish and Russian forces there, which have pushed 1m Syrians to move to the Turkish border.

Europe and even the Pope have voiced opposition to new Israeli settlements and potential annexation of Palestinian land.

Modelled in many respects on the same blueprint for democratic decline followed in Hungary by strongman Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party, the government in Poland has sought to fuse the ruling party and the state.

The European Commission will visit the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, for a joint meeting with the African Union, ahead of the EU-Africa strategy being unveiled. MEPs will carry out missions in the Czech Republic, Turkey and the US.

EU leaders failed to reach agreement on the EU's long-term budget, as richer states and poorer 'cohesion countries' locked horns. The impasse continues over how to fund the Brexit gap.

Cuts to innovation, space, neighbourhood and other programme-spending push down the latest budget proposal on the table of EU leaders. Rebates could stay on, to win the support of the net-payers for a deal.

Catalan police and the anti-corruption prosecutor's office are investigating Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov for alleged involvement in money laundering and organised crime, according to an investigation published by Spanish newspaper El Periodico on Friday. However, Borissov said no authority has ever contacted him to investigate the allegations. Law enforcement said that they could not give further details until the investigation is concluded.

Hungary's PM Viktor Orban appointed controversial former commissioner Guenther Oettinger to a government council in a way that might break EU rules. Oettinger claims he did not know about the appointment.

The Hanau shooting was a national wake-up call to the scale of far-right extremism in Germany, from violent individuals to political hate speech.

About 50 Greenpeace activists on Friday broke into the Tricastin nuclear plant in France, a day before the planned shutdown of the oldest nuclear reactor in the country at Fessenheim, Reuters reported. "We are protesting and drawing attention to an ageing nuclear power plant that is dangerous and should be shut down," said Greenpeace spokeswoman Cecile Genot, warning that Tricastin, like Fessanheim's main reactor, will reach its 40-year lifespan soon.

German interior minister, Horst Seehofer, announced on Friday an increased police presence all over Germany, and especially in mosques, train stations, airports and at borders, after nine people were killed by a gunman earlier this week at two predominantly Turkish bars in the western city of Hanau, the DW reported. Seehofer warned that this was the "third far-right attack in a few months".

Oxfam warned on Friday that the US and some EU countries, such as Sweden, Ireland, Denmark and Belgium, are trying to water-down global tax reform, ahead of the G20 finance ministers and central bank governments summit in Saudi Arabia this weekend. "If these countries get their way, big corporations will continue to get away without paying their fair share of tax," said Oxfam tax policy advisor, Johan Langerock.

On Friday, 8 AM local time, Iranians started voting in parliamentary elections. Some 58m people are entitled to vote, and senior leaders have called the electorate not to stay at home, fearing a low turn-out. Conservatives are likely to win as reformists are divided on how to respond to US president Donald Trump's decision to leave the nuclear deal and America's recent assassination of Iran's top general Qassem Suleimani.

The chiefs of 33 leading Belgian firms, such as Eneco and Upsi, wrote a letter on Friday to Belgian dailies L'Echo et De Tijd calling for politicians to avoid new elections, 270 days after the last vote had still failed to produce a coalition government. "There is nothing worse than the appalling uncertainty" in which the firms have begun "stagnating", they said, adding that new elections would not help.

Vigils in Hanau, Berlin, and Frankfurt for victims of the shooting in Germany by a far-right fanatic voiced anger that the government was not doing enough to combat extremism. The Kon-Med association of Kurds in Germany said it was "furious" that authorities were "not resolutely opposing right-wing networks and right-wing terrorism". Germany had the second highest number of far-right terrorism alerts (eight) after France (32) in Europol's 2019 threat report.

Individual contributions of member states to the next EU budget could soon depend on the amount of plastic not recycled. There could also be revenues from a possible carbon border tax on imports into the EU.

European Parliament president David Sassoli says the proposals put forward on the next long-term EU budget are unacceptable.

The EU could blow up the Kosovo-Serbia negotiations' reset. Should Miroslav Lajčák indeed be appointed, the two senior EU diplomats dealing with Kosovo would both come from the small minority of member states that do not recognise Kosovo.

EU leaders continued discussing the terms and sums of the next seven-year EU budget on Thursday night. The 27 leaders gave feedback on the latest proposal from EU Council president Charles Michel and shared their domestic constraints on their priorities in a session one EU official described as "therapeutic". Leaders also began bilateral meetings with Michel. A new proposal could emerge early on Friday morning for leaders to continue talks.