Euobserver.com

The EU was ready to do "monitoring" of any potential ceasefire plan agreed by warring parties in Libya and to "control" a UN embargo on arms transfers to the country, EU foreign relations chief Josep Borrell said after meeting foreign ministers last Friday. The Libya crisis "could spiral out of control", helping Islamist terrorists, and prompting up to 700,000 foreign African nationals there to flee to Europe, Borrell added.

Iran faced new protests on Sunday night in Tehran for the second day in a row, spreading to other cities as well, after Iranian forces admitted they had accidentally shot down a commercial airliner with 176 people on board. On Sunday the UK, Germany, and France also urged Iran to stick to the nuclear deal (the 'JCPOA'), which came under pressure after the US assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani.

Thousands of people, including senior Polish and European jurists, held a march in Warsaw on Saturday in protest against government proposals to further curb the independence of the judiciary. "The situation is very serious," Jose Igreja Matos, president of the European Association of Judges, told Reuters, amid fears the proposals violated EU law. The latest reforms would "regulate the stability of the legal system" in Poland, a government spokesman said.

Robert Abela, a 42-year old millionaire lawyer and former bodybuilder is to become Malta's new prime minister, replacing Jospeh Muscat, after a vote by the ruling Labour Party amid a political crisis over the 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Abela was Muscat's legal advisor and confidante, prompting reformists to question his trustworthiness in completing the murder investigation. He beat another candidate, Chris Fearne, who had promised a clean-up.

The EU Commission will unveil the financial backbone for its Green Deal, and also debate a possible minimum wage with MEPs. Lawmakers will also hear from the Jordanian king and the EU's foreign affairs chief.

Environmentalists denounce that the EU failed to comply with the legal obligation to end overfishing by 2020, putting at risk the sustainability of fish stocks by putting the interests of the fishing industry ahead of the health of its waters.

As president of one of the largest trade union confederations in the EU, I see the need for good working conditions and decent pay in all member states - but an EU-wide minimum wage could be used to lower wages.

The Swedish transport agency has imposed a temporary ban on Iran Air flights in and out of Sweden after the unexplained crash this week of a Ukrainian passenger jet as it left Tehran airport. Seven Swedish citizens died in the incident. "The reason is the uncertainty around the accident and the security of civil aviation," the agency said in a statement reported by Reuters.

Spain's Supreme Court on Friday officially requested the European Parliament suspend the parliamentary immunity of Catalan MEP separatist leaders Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comin, after the European Court of Justice ruled in December that MEPs enjoy immunity from the moment they are elected. The Spanish court has also continued its European arrest warrant against both politicians, although previous attempts failed twice, in 2017 and 2018.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban announced on Friday that his country will provide free in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment to couples at state-run clinics, the BBC reported. "If we want Hungarian children instead of immigrants, and if the Hungarian economy can generate the necessary funding, then the only solution is to spend as much of the funds as possible on supporting families and raising children," the prime minister said.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said Friday that a globally-influential Europe is rooted in trade deals, defining standards, and diplomacy. Answering a reporter's question in Zagreb on the definition of an influential Europe, the EU executive chief said that violence can only end if talks start again, and that the EU "has very good reputation", and "dialogue channels that are time-tested and with trusted partners".

British prime minister Boris Johnson suggested late on Thursday that the Ukrainian airliner which crashed on take-off from Tehran this week may have been shot down by the Iranians. In one of the most explicit comments yet from an EU leader, Johnson said: "There is now a body of information that the flight was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile. This may well have been unintentional."

Swiss negotiators have pledged to defend Switzerland's high minimum wage from EU social dumping in a new treaty on bilateral relations, the Reuters news agency said. "We want to maintain bilateral agreements [with the EU] but in a context of defence of wages," Pierre-Yves Maillard, the head of a Swiss trade union federation said. The debate mirrors one inside the EU on east-west posted workers.

Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday that he was ready to start a new European movement if his party was kicked out of the EPP, Bloomberg reports. However, he was still trying to make the EPP "less liberal". "If [the] EPP is unable to change itself, we think in the future it will be obsolete and we need a new European initiative, which is Christian Democrat," Orban said.

The EU foreign service has underlined the bloc's position on the illegality of Israeli settlement in the West Bank, which it conquered in 1967, by saying the land was "occupied" in a statement criticising Israeli action on Thursday. Earlier drafts had used the word "disputed" land, The Jerusalem Post reports. The harder language comes after the US recently said the settlements did not "inherently violate international law."

EUobserver's revelations of how the UK violates and abuses an EU police database sparked heated debate in the European Parliament's civil liberties committee - as the European Commission refused to respond to questions given the confidentiality of the leaked document.

The president of the committee of the regions defended the "crucial role" of cohesion policy not only for the Green Deal, but also for keeping Europe united in the new challenges ahead.

Despite its pro-Europeanism, joining the euro is remarkably unpopular in Scotland. Public opinion on Nato is also mixed, and defence will be another point of debate.

The European Union presidency, led by the Croatians for the next six months, says it will start work next week on Brexit. "We are ready to start working next week on the negotiating framework for the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union," Croatia's prime minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Thursday.

Koen Lenaerts, president of the European Court of Justice, has issued a warning against Poland for having approved a draft law that would allow judges who question planned reforms to be disciplined. "You can't be a member of the European Union if you don't have independent, impartial courts operating in accordance with fair-trial rule, upholding union law," Lenaerts was quoted as saying by Reuters.