Euobserver.com

The Italian Senate will vote on Wednesday whether the far-right leader Matteo Salvini should be brought to court for 'kidnapping' 131 migrants last year, when as the interior minister he refused to allow them disembarking in an Italian port.

The Kosovan ambassador to the EU, and former EU integration minister for her country, warns that tweaks to the enlargement process could cause confusion and overlap with existing procedures.

According to the UN, 700,000 Syrians are currently fleeing war in the province of Idlib, in northern Syria, as clashes intensify between Syrian and Turkish troops. As the Turkish border is closed, they stay near the border in overpopulated camps in sub-zero temperatures. The rebel-controlled Idlib area is now under attack by forces of president Bashar al-Assad. The UN has warned of another humanitarian catastrophe.

The European People's Party (EPP) group has suggested setting up an EU-UK parliamentary assembly including British European lawmakers, in the European Parliament. The EU parliament has several assemblies, including with Africa, the Mediterranean and Latin America. "We want to be engaged among parliamentarians," EPP leader Manfred Weber said on Tuesday, adding that the assembly would be a place for the exchange of views. "It is for keeping friendship," he added.

Sudan's government has greenlighted sending suspects wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to the Netherlands to stand trial - including former president Omar al-Bashir, according to the BBC. Bashir is accused of genocide and war crimes dating back to the Darfur conflict in 2003, which left some 300,000 people dead. Bashir was ousted as Sudan's president in April 2019.

The Italian permanent representation to the EU will as of 1 February start publishing meetings with lobbyists, as part of a transparency drive. A spokesperson from the representation told EUobserver that it will only meet with lobbyists "who are registered in the transparency database of the European Commission. The Good Lobby, a non-profit civic start-up, said it was behind the Italian push for greater transparency.

A motion to veto the European Commission's Projects of Common Interest (PCI) list, which contains 55 new fossil-fuels projects, has been so far backed by 100 MEPs, according to NGO Friends of the Earth Europe. This list, which identifies the highest-priority energy infrastructure projects to be built in Europe, will be voted on tomorrow by MEPs - after they recently declared a "climate emergency".

Ahead of the publication of the European Commission's white paper on Artificial Intelligence (AI) next week, the liberal group Renew Europe published on Tuesday its position paper on the European approach to AI. The paper promotes a "human-centric" approach with common principles and rules to be regulated on the European level to avoid that member states take national measures that might result in a "fragmented European framework".

The Swiss government on Tuesday asked voters to reject a referendum proposed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party to stop the agreement with the European Union on the free movement of citizens, in what has been called Switzerland's 'Brexit moment'. If that referendum is approved on May 17, the country could lose its privileged access to the EU single market, Reuters reported.

EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier on Tuesday rejected the UK government's call for permanent access to financial services in the EU. "I would like to make it clear to certain people in the UK that they should not kid themselves. There will not be general, open-ended, ongoing equivalence in financial services," he told MEPs. UK chancellor Sajid Javid has said he would seek "comprehensive, permanent equivalence decisions" on financial services.

US president Donald Trump on Monday lashed out at the EU when asked about trade. "Europe has been treating us really badly. The European Union was really formed so they could treat us badly," Trump said. According to the European Commission, the EU was in fact set up in the aftermath of WWII with the aim of ending internal conflict, easing trade, and creating a community with greater freedoms.

Most EU member states are likely to miss the 2020 target on energy efficiency, since they were not legally-binding targets. "Transformative" measures are needed to reduce energy consumption while boosting efficiency, experts say.

Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would make sure Scotland stays as close to EU regulations as possible after Brexit, with the aim of rejoining the bloc, once Scotland is independent.

Just hours of publication, the EU Commission removed from the European Parliament's website a response by one of its own commissioners on the Western Sahara, a disputed territory annexed by Morocco.

New EU anti-money laundering laws came into affect last month. But they depend on 'Ultimate Beneficial Ownership' registers - the majority of which are never checked or verified.

Some 95 EU citizens were repatriated from the coronavirus epicentre of Wuhan in China over the weekend. The European Commission is coordinating and co-funding the repatriations through its EU civil protection mechanism. The commission says some 558 people, including 447 EU citizens, were already flown in from the Wuhan region on three flights co-financed by the EU. The mechanism had been activated by France in late January.

The European Commission on Monday said the rates of excise duty applied to manufactured tobacco "is no longer as effective in deterring consumption." Their report found that 29 percent of Europeans aged 15-24 are smokers, compared with 26 percent of the overall EU adult population. It also found "unintended high levels of cross-border shopping" given the average price of a pack of cigarettes can range from €2.57 to €11.37.

The European Commission on Monday said exports to the EU from developing countries using special tariff preferences reached a new high of some €69bn in 2018. In a report published every two years, it said exports to the EU from the 71 countries that benefit from reduced-to-zero export duties increased to almost €184bn. Nearly €69bn of these used the so-called generalised scheme of preferences (GSP).

The German minister of economy, Peter Altmaier, said on Monday in a letter sent to the European Commission that the car industry should be excluded from the commission's plans to reduce emissions, Germany's Zeit Online reported. According to Altmaier, the commission should not tighten car-emission limits in the context of the Green Deal, leaving the regulation for the industry as it stands until 2030.

The Pew Research Center in a recent study found that Nato's public image in France worsened sharply last year. It found that support fell from to 49% from 60% in 2017 and 71% in 2009. No figures were given for 2018. Out of all its 16 member states, Poland has the most positive view of Nato with high of 82%. Turkey was the least favourable with 21%.