Euobserver.com

EU leaders will on Thursday extend sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea and Moscow's involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, EU officials said on Wednesday. "Very probably the European Council will confirm its support for Ukraine sovereignty and territorial integrity," a senior EU official said, adding that the economic sanctions are linked to Russia's full implementation of the Minsk agreement and expects the sanction to be extended.

The new commission is right in saying that the EU needs renewed ambition and a comprehensive strategy for Africa. But to do that, it will need to be clearer and convincing.

EU leaders are meeting on Thursday and Friday in three different formats: a regular summit to discuss the EU's long-term budget and the 2050 climate-neutrality goal, a European Council (Article 50) meeting, and a European summit.

Disagreements over the 2050 climate tagret and the next seven-year EU budget will scar the first EU summit led by former Belgian prime minister Charles Michel.

The European Commission presented the widely-trailed new Green Deal to MEPs on Wednesday, vowing to "leave no-one behind" to achieve climate neutrality by 2050.

Donald Trump wanted to buy Greenland, while the Faroe Islands have come under pressure to ditch China's Huawei for its 5G network. Both incidents reflect growing geopolitical interest for the North Atlantic countries sharing foreign and security policy with Denmark.

Most Europeans believe their country ought to stay in the EU, as British people prepare to vote in a Brexit-dominated election.

Czechs staged massive protests on Tuesday against prime minister Andrej Babis following renewed allegations of EU subsidy fraud and conflict of interest. Million Moments for Democracy, a civic group, demanded the cut in EU funds to Babis' former business Agrofert. They also demanded his resignation. The billionaire leader denies any wrongdoing but a leaked audit report by the European Commission says Babis still has control over Agrofert.

The European Commission on Tuesday announced it had disbursed €2.7bn for refugees in Turkey out of the promised €6bn in a deal cut with Ankara in 2016 to prevent people from arriving on the Greek islands. "Out of the total facility budget of €6bn, €4.3bn has now been contracted and €2.7bn disbursed," it said in a statement.

The BBC is reporting that plans are underway for EU border checks in Britain for trade bound for Northern Ireland. "The BBC has learned that freight could be diverted through ports with space for inspections such as Liverpool and Stranraer, despite the government denying checks will be necessary," reports the media outlet.

EU anti-trust regulators may take a tougher approach with tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google when it comes to competition rules. "We may design more prescriptive and possibly restorative remedies in order to ensure that conditions for effective competition will be fully restored," said Cecilio Madero Villarejo, the acting director-general at the Commission's competition division, reports Reuters.

The Chinese ambassador to Denmark, Feng Tie, threatened last month in a meeting with Faroese prime minister, Bárður Nielsen, that the islands could lose trade agreements with China if they refuse a 5G network agreement with Chinese telecom giant Huawei. Public broadcaster Kringvarp Føroy was afterwards banned from airing recordings about the meeting. US ambassador to Denmark, Carla Sands, earlier warned the Faroes and Greenland of partnering with Huawei.

Belgian socialist MEP Marie Arena is chairing the European Parliament's sub-committee on human rights. Her biggest challenge? Finding ways to reach objectives that cover an enormous spectrum of issues - from climate to child protection.

As the EU launches its flagship Green Deal, the Greens call for shipping emissions to be included in carbon targets. Ships carrying goods to and from the UK emitted more CO2 than all the cars in Britain's 15-largest cities.

Hungary attempted to defend its rules on academia, the judiciary and the media questions by EU countries, while government spokesman breached EU rules by live-tweeting from the closed doors hearing.

The Spanish King Felipe VI started 48-hours of meetings with the political leaders on Tuesday to determine whether the socialist caretaker prime minister Pedro Sánchez stands a chance of becoming the new head of government.

Finland' EU affairs ministers Tytti Tuppurainen on Tuesday asked Hungary to give a written explanation and apologise, after government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs tweeted from a closed-door meeting on Budapest's adherence to EU rules. Tuppurainen noted that it is against the council of member states' rules to share information from closed-door meetings, according to an EU official. Member states were discussing the Article 7 procedure against Hungary for breaking EU rules.

The EU Parliament's negotiating team said on Tuesday the proposal by Finland's presidency of the EU council for the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) would "condemn the European Union to failure". The Finnish presidency proposal contains no additional funding for any of the initiatives announced by the new president, such as a Just Transition Fund. MFF co-rapporteur Jan Olbrycht believes that the commission's plans "will be impossible to implement".

The constitutional affairs committee of the European Parliament agreed to support the "Conference on the Future of Europe." The committee offers to "host the conference on the premises of the European Parliament" but also stresses "the conference must go beyond an inter-institutional discussion", and should work with "a broad consultation". One of the topics should be "improving the lead candidate system and the issue of transnational lists".

A Eurobarometer survey published on Tuesday found that one-third of Europeans (32 percent) want the European Parliament to address climate change as its biggest priority, followed by social exclusion (31 percent), terrorism (24 percent) and unemployment (24 percent). However, EU citizens consider human rights (48 percent), freedom of speech (38 percent), gender equality (38 percent), and solidarity between EU countries (33 percent) as the core values of the EU.