Euobserver.com

The EU's eastern neighbourhood is in flux. The collapse of the pro-reform government in Moldova and the stagnation of anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine was recently followed yet by another political crisis in Georgia.

"I have not been a lobbyist" the Swedish woman who wants to oversee good conduct by EU institutions, Cecilia Wikström, has said.

Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, pledged on Wednesday that his country would block Ukraine's membership in Nato unless Kiev restores the rights that about 150,000 ethnic Hungarians had before a language law from 2017 put a curb on minorities' access to education in their mother tongues, Reuters writes. "We ask for no extra rights to Hungarians in Transcarpathia [Ukraine], only those rights they had before," said Szijjártó.

The new EU Commission president will tell EU leaders next week that they need to put money behind their pledges for border protection, defence policy and fighting climate change.

Czech prime Minister Andrej Babis will be investigated further for fraud in a case involving EU funds, reversing an earlier decision, the top Czech state attorney said Wednesday. Babis, a billionaire businessman, had been investigated on suspicion of illegally tapping €2m in EU subsidies before he entered politics. He has denied wrongdoing. The EU Commission had also found in an audit a conflict of interest on Babis, Czech media reported.

According to the new working methods of the EU Commission, Joseph Borrell, the EU's new foreign policy chief will brief fellow commissioners weekly, as part of commission president Ursula von der Leyen's efforts to make the executive more geopolitically aware. The new commission will also create a new preparatory body, which will coordinate between commissioners tasked with external affairs and internal matters.

The new EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday she is "concerned" about recent developments in Malta, where investigations into the 2017 murder of a journalist have shaken the government, prompting prime minister Joseph Muscat to announce that he would resign in January. "I expect thorough and independent investigation, free from any political interference. It is crucial that all those responsible are brought to justice," she said.

The EU Commission's in-house think tank, the European, will be renamed, IDEA (Inspire, Debate, Engage and Accelerate Action), the commission president Ursula von der Leyen told journalists on Wednesday. The research centre will be restructured, based on the new commission's policy guidelines, and will be used to address geopolitical challenges, the commission chief added.

Two Russian diplomats were expelled from Germany on Wednesday after the murder of a Georgian asylum seeker in Berlin, Deutsche Welle reports. German federal prosecutors say there is enough evidence that murder was ordered by either Russia or Chechnya. In August the Georgian man was shot in "an execution style" killing in Kleiner Tiergarten park. Russia called the move "unfriendly".

An open letter to EU leaders from Maltese MEP David Casa on the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case and prime minister Joseph Muscat.

A report of the European Court of Auditors published on Wednesday concludes that the EU needs to strengthen and better monitor its legal requirements for national budgetary frameworks. It highlights the risk of inconsistency between the European Commission's and independent bodies' assessment of member states compliance with EU fiscal rules. "The EU legal framework governing national budgetary frameworks leaves room for improvement," said Mihails Kozlovs, responsible of the report.

French president Emmanuel Macron clashed with US president Donald Trump and Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan over Nato, as the future of the alliance begins to fray following Ankara's invasion into north-east Syria in October.

The European Environmental Agency's latest report predicts that Europe will not achieve its 2030 climate and energy targets "without urgent action during the next 10 years". As a result, the social systems of production and consumption must be transformed.

Global CO2 emissions edged up 0.6 percent this year compared to 2018 and by 4 percent compared to 2015, when world nations signed the Paris climate accord to slow global warming, according to data from the Global Carbon Project, an academic organisation, Tuesday. EU and US coal demand was falling, but Chinese demand was rising, it said. Strong gas and oil demand, including for ever-popular SUV cars, were also factors.

After a visit to Hungary, seven press freedom organisations declared that "since 2010, the Hungarian government has achieved a degree of media control unprecedented in an EU member state." According to the organisations "the construction of a pro-government media empire serves as a vast propaganda machine for the government of prime minister Viktor Orbán." They called on the EU "to take all available measures to respond."

Almost 90 percent of EU nationals resident in the UK who appealed negative decisions on being able to stay after Brexit won their challenge, The Public Law Project, a British NGO said Tuesday. Some 3.4m EU citizens need to get temporary or permanent permits to stay after 31 January. The abnormal appeals rate indicated that British "automated data checks and initial decision-makers are getting things wrong", the NGO said.

French MPs said criticism of Israel can sometimes amount to antisemitism in a resolution passed by 154 votes against 72 Tuesday. "Criticising the very existence of Israel as a collective composed of Jewish citizens is tantamount to hatred towards the Jewish community," the preamble said. There could still be "free criticism of the Israeli government's policies and positions", it added, amid alarm it could be used to silence Palestinian voices.

Iceland's prime minister Katrin Jakobsdottir said she will focus on green and family-friendly measures and less on economic growth, the BBC reports. She is joining earlier initiatives from Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon and New Zealand's PM Jacinda Ardern to promote a "well-being" agenda. Following economists like Joseph Stiglitz, she said that environmental disasters are happening because of the world's one-sided focus on GDP growth instead of "inclusive growth".

In a joint press conference with Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic, Belarus' president Alexander Lukashenko called on Serbia to establish closer ties to the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a Russian-led economic bloc, AP reports. Lukashenko said that it will take at least 10 to 15 years before Serbia might join the EU and that Serbia "will not regret" joining the EEU - which comprises Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

One of the top priorities of the European parliament's committee on culture and education (CULT), chaired by centre-right German MEP Sabine Verheyen, is to triple the Erasmus+ budget to make it more inclusive and accessible.