Euobserver.com

The EU Council approved on Monday the deal reached with the European Parliament last week on the 2020 EU budget. If the agreement is also confirmed by MEPs on Wednesday, the budget for 2020 will be adopted (€168.7bn). The total commitment is 1.5 percent higher compared to the 2019 budget. About 21 percent of the budget will be for climate-related actions in research and development, transport and energy infrastructure.

Flying EU and Nato VIPs on part-Chinese jets could be a security risk, some have warned, but that was just a "James Bond" fantasy, the jet company said.

Demonstrations against domestic violence and other gender-based attacks were held in several European cities, such as Paris and Brussels, during the weekend ahead of the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Monday. According to the European Commission, one in three women in the EU aged 15 or over has experienced physical and/or sexual violence, while one in two women has experienced sexual harassment.

International aid groups have criticised the Greek government for adopting legislation passed this month in contravention of fundamental human rights, The Guardian writes. Under the new plans, closed installations will replace current open-air camps, land and sea borders will be reinforced with more guards and there will be extra patrol vessels. Greece is currently facing a significant increase in the number of arrivals, recalling levels last seen in 2015.

Italy allowed the Spanish rescue ship Open Arms to disembark 62 migrants who had been on board since Wednesday, NGO founder Oscar Camps said on Sunday. Italy initially refused entry for the 73 migrants rescued near Libya, suggesting that the boat should disembark them at Tripoli. However, coastguards ultimately evacuated 11 migrants who required medical attention earlier on Sunday. NGO Ocean Vikings also disembarked 213 migrants in Italy on Sunday.

According to a Eurostat study, Swedes of 15 years old will have an average working life of 41.9 years, the longest of all European Union countries. Young Italians will have to work 31.8 years, or more than 10 years less. The Netherlands closely followed Sweden, but in Iceland, not an EU country, 15-year olds face a future working life of 46 years. In Turkey that will be only 29 years.

A new European citizen's initiative (ECI) launched on Monday aims to ban synthetic pesticides by 2035, Le Soir reported. If the initiative collects 1m signatures by September 2020, the European Commission and the European Parliament will have to address the issue. The initiative calls for an 80 percent reduction in the use of pesticides in Europe in 2030, starting with the most dangerous ones, and their total elimination in 2035.

Member states have different positions towards China - on which some countries are economically dependent.

The EU's ambassador to the African Union warns the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 cannot be met due to low aid contributions by EU member states - poor countries instead need to attract their own financial flows through trade.

Fighting corruption, enforcement of the rule of law, simplifying rules and procedures on the EU budget, and an effective public prosecutor's office - this is what the chair of the budget control committee expects from the next five years.

The biggest challenge that the committee on agriculture and rural development (AGRI), chaired by German centre-right MEP Norbert Lins, will face? Making the EU's agriculture policy more efficient, green and sustainable, but with less budget.

Pro-democracy candidates have won a landslide victory in Hong Kong's district council elections, winning control of 17 of the 18 councils. The elections came amid months of pro-democracy protests and against growing Chinese control of the city. Where Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam used to claim that her policy was supported by a "silent majority", she now said she would "listen humbly" to the voice of the people.

Romania's incumbent and pro-European president Klaus Iohannis has won the presidential elections with a convincing majority. With most of the votes counted, Iohannis got 63.2 percent, while his opponent PSD leader Viorica Dancila only got 36.8 percent. Iohannis promised to fight corruption. Former PSD leader Liviu Dragnea was jailed on corruption charges in May. In October, the centre-left government fell after a no-confidence vote following street protests against corruption.

The UK was called an illegal colonial occupier on Friday by Mauritius, after it failed to meet a deadline by the United Nations to return control of Chagos Islands to the island nation, the BBC reported. The Chagos archipelago was separated from the British colony of Mauritius in 1965 in exchange for independence. Earlier this year, the UN suggested that the UK should leave the islands as soon as possible.

Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament on Friday that he approved the hiring of 400 guards at Greece's land border with Turkey and 800 more on its islands, to prevent the entry of migrants not entitled to stay in the country, Reuters writes. "We will permanently shut the door to illegal human traffickers, to those who want to enter although they are not entitled to asylum," Mitsotakis said.

Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told her annual party conference she will quit if the party does not support her. In a speech to around 1,000 CDU members she said "If you are of the opinion that the Germany I want is not the one you want... then we should end it. Here, now and today," she said, as the party debates its post-Angela Merkel future.

MEPs will decide on Wednesday whether to support the new EU commission as a whole during the plenary session. If approved, Ursula von der Leyen's team will finally take office on 1 December.

EU affairs ministers will have a second round of hearings on political and legal developments in Hungary. But the MEP in charge of the file worries that the next commission will be less vocal on Hungary's breaches of EU rules.

Serbia's president Aleksandar Vucic has confirmed that a video in which a Russian spy gives a bag of money to a retired Serbian army officer is real, after having convened the country's national security council. Vucic also said that it was not the first time this officer had received bribes from Russia. He added that this incident will not change Serbia's friendly relation with Russia.

UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab said the UK has made arrangements to repatriate orphaned children from parents who were involved in the war in Syria, including children from fighters from the so-called "Islamic State". With this the UK joins Germany, Belgium and Australia who made these arrangements earlier. "These innocent, orphaned, children should never have been subjected to the horrors of war," he said.