Euobserver.com

About 2,500 police officers were deployed in raids in the Italian province Calabria and have arrested 334 people on suspicion of membership of the 'Ndrangheta mafia, thel Corriere della Sera reports. The newspaper called it a "maxi-blitz" as it is the second-largest alleged mafia bust in the history of the country. One colonel, one former senator, a local mayor and one local police commander are among those detained.

The European Council called on Thursday on the European Commission to urgently develop a 2030 EU biodiversity strategy as a central element of the European Green Deal, and other relevant EU policies such as the new common agricultural policy. There are currently around one million species at risk of extinction worldwide. Additionally, member states agree that further work is needed to "eliminate subsidies harmful to biodiversity".

The European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruled on Thursday (19 December) that imprisoned Catalan leader, Oriol Junqueras, enjoys parliamentarian immunity as MEP, in a legal victory for the separatist movement which saw nine of its leaders jailed earlier this year.

The European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that the jailed Catalan leader, Oriol Junqueras, had parliamentarian immunity as an MEP "at the time of the official declaration of the results and enjoy, from that time, the immunities attached to that status". This decision will consequently affect the situation of the Catalan leaders, Carles Puigdemont and Tomi Comín, who were also elected as MEPs in the European elections.

Poland risks blundering out of the EU with a new gagging law on judges, former EU Council president Donald Tusk and others have warned.

One of two Russian diplomats expelled from Germany over the killing of a former Chechen rebel in Berlin has been identified as Yevgeny Sutsky, an officer in the GRU military intelligence agency, the Moscow Times reports. The investigation was done by the Bellingcat website. Sutsky was also trying to recruit German politicians to lobby in favour of the North Stream 2 gas pipeline, the newspaper reported.

Some members of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of the German chancellor Angela Merkel, are revealed to belong to a shadowy military network with neo-Nazi links, the Guardian writes. In the wake of the assassination of pro-migration CDU politician Walter Lübcke in November 2019, the German state security warned of the infiltration of white supremacists in security and military circles.

In an all-night meeting in Brussels, ministers at the agriculture and fisheries council failed to meet their own targets and deadlines on sustainable fishing, under pressure from their national fleets, the Guardian writes. They decided to continue overfishing despite the EU's 2020 deadline to set quotas for sustainable levels of fishing. George Eustice, the UK fisheries minister, said the EU has an "outdated method for sharing quota".

The daughter of Uygur rights advocate and academic Ilham Tohti received the 2019 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought on his behalf in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday. Tothi is serving a life sentence in jail. "This is not about fighting China, this is about human rights," Jewher Tohti said. "To the members of parliament, use your laws to hold Chinese government officials accountable," she added.

Questions about family wealth and EU values still hang over the new Croatian commissioner for democracy and demography, Dubravka Suica.

While many EU members have been arguing whether the Chinese company Huawei should be banned from their national 5G networks, EU candidate Serbia is beefing up its ties with China. Does this pose a security risk to the European bloc?

MEPs on Wednesday called on the European Commission to boost its pollinators initiative and to implement new effective measures to protect bees and other pollinators. Reducing the use of pesticides must also become a key objective of the future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), MEPs said in the plenary. In April 2018, the EU agreed to fully ban the outdoor use of imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam, known as neonicotinoids.

MEPs voted by 463 in favour against 107 to condemn Polish local authorities which had declared themselves to be zones "free from LGBTI ideology" in Strasbourg on Wednesday. "European funds must not be used for discriminatory purposes," the resolution added, in a threat to EU subsidies for the 80 Polish municipalities involved. "The European Parliament urges Polish authorities to condemn these acts [the anti-LGBTI declarations]," the European Parliament said.

The EU Commission president told MEPs in Strasbourg that time is running out in the expected 11 months available to strike a future trade deal with the UK - negotiations will have to continue into 2021 too.

MEPs urged the European Commission to "enter into dialogue with the Maltese government in the context of the Rule of Law Framework without further undue delay" by a huge majority in Strasbourg on Wednesday. The commission monitoring, which can lead to EU sanctions, was needed after revelations top Maltese officials were involved in the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017, they said.

MEPs have tasked Irish woman Emilly O'Reilly to hold EU institutions' feet to the fire for another five years.

Iceland remains the most gender-equal country in the world, followed by Norway, Finland and Sweden. But one Nordic country sticks out from its neighbours with few female lawmakers, senior officials and managers.

An investigation of the Belgian newspaper De Standaard reveals that the Europa Building, where EU summits take place, was partly built by undocumented migrants and workers without proper contracts.

The global sea-shipping sector will create a fund of at least €4.5bn in the next 10 years to support initiatives to reduce CO2 emissions of international ships, De Standaard writes. The financing should come from a mandatory tax on shipping fuel. The maritime sector is responsible for two percent of the global CO2 emissions.

French politician Laurent Pietraszewski was appointed on Wednesday to be in charge of examining the reforms to the country's pension system, which have sparked protests and strikes for 13 days across the country, Reuters writes. This decision follows the resignation over a transparency scandal of the previous pensions chief Jean-Paul Delevoye. Unions objected to the plans of French president Emmanuel Macron, claiming that millions would have to delay their retirement.