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Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was exhumed on Thursday morning from the Valley of the Fallen following a ruling of the supreme court in September. Franco was buried for more than 40 years in a state-run mausoleum that also contains about 34,000 victims of the Spanish civil war. In 2018, the European Parliament asked Spain "to remove all symbols and monuments that glorify the civil war and Franco's dictatorship".

The Élysée has nominated Thierry Breton, the 64-year old CEO of French tech firm Atos, to be single market commissioner. "He's man of action who knows industrial issues inside out and who ... will not have a bureaucratic approach to European issues," a French official told Reuters Thursday. France's first choice, Sylvie Goulard, was rejected on financial impropriety grounds, with Breton's corporate post posing fresh questions on conflict of interest.

The European Parliament will award its Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought in 2019 to Ilham Tohti, economics professor and advocate of the rights of China's Uyghur muslim minority, parliament president David Sassoli announced Thursday. Tohti has been serving a life sentence in China since 2014. Since 2017, over 1m Uyghurs have been detained in prison camps and forced to renounce their identity.

British overseas territories - the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Jersey, and the Bahamas - took five out of the top 10 spots in a ranking out Thursday of which states helped global firms pay the least tax by London-based NGO the Tax Justice Network. EU states The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, the UK itself, Belgium, Cyprus, and Hungary also placed in the top 20 world "tax haven" jurisdictions.

Britain will have to propose an EU commissioner if it still is a member of the EU after 31 October, European Commission president-elect Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday. The UK is likely to get an extension to the Brexit deadline, and under EU law, all member states have to propose a commissioner. The new commission will come into office with at least one month delay, on 1 December.

The EU's border agency Frontex, on Thursday, launched a recruitment campaign to set up its own standing corps of guards. Their aim is to have 10,000 under its watch, with an initial rollout at the start of the 2021. "For the first time, Frontex will have its owned uniformed service," said Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri. Critics say it helps create Fortress Europe in an effort to stem incoming migration.

The president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, said the Balkan region needs to take care of itself after the EU blocked enlargement talks with North Macedonia and Albania.

Belgium's federal prosecutor, in charge of investigating cross-border crimes, has opened an enquiry into the deaths of 39 migrants found in a lorry in Northern Ireland. The move highlights the European dimension of the tragedy, after the truck, which was carrying Bulgarian nationals, entered the UK via the Belgian port of Zeebrugge before driving across England into Wales and crossing into Northern Ireland via the port of Hollyhead.

Four in five coal plants in the European Union are unprofitable and could face combined losses of €6.6bn this year, according to a study by the think tank the Carbon Tracker Initiative, Reuters writes. Coal is facing a decrease in competitiveness as renewable energy and natural gas is becoming cheaper. The coal industry also needs expensive investments to meet the EU's stricter air quality standards.

Initial movements on currency and UK securities markets have shown investors hedged hundreds of billions on the failure of Brexit talks, the Reuters news agency reports. The pound has started to rise in value after falling by 20 percent since the Brexit referendum in 2016, but sterling demand could spike by €350bn by the end of the year if a deal is done, US investment bank Morgan Stanley said.

Five candidates have secured enough backing from MEPs to enter the final furlong of a race to be the EU's ombudsman for the next five years. Irish former journalist Emilly O'Reilly, the incumbent, Italian local ombudsman Giuseppe Fortunato, Estonian judge Julia Laffranque, Latvian-American rights activist Nils Muižnieks, and Swedish former MEP Cecilia Wikström will face grilling by the European Parliament's petitions committee on 3 December, prior to a plenary decision.

An explosive investigation by a Pulitzer-winning journalist has revealed how relatives of the Cambodian regime stashed tens of millions of dollars abroad using EU golden passports.

Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced on Wednesday (23 October) plans to kickstart the country's real estate market through tax cuts and investments in the construction sector, Greek daily Ekathimerini reports. In his speech on his "vision for the next four years," Mitsotakis announced that "all new constructions, as well as real estate built in the last 14 years and not yet sold, are exempt from value added tax".

A Russian migrant started a hunger strike to protest Latvia's refusal to give his 71-year old mother-in-law a residency permit without having passed the required language exam, the Moscow Times reports. According to the man, the woman has developed dementia since they moved to Latvia in 2014, which is being denied by the Latvian health authorities. About one third of Latvia's population are Russians, many of whom have no citizenship.

British billionaire Richard Branson said a new Brexit referendum was needed to keep the UK in the EU, Reuters writes. According to Branson, Brexit "has done enormous damage to companies, to jobs and money [consumers have] in their pockets, so if there is a second referendum and if you look at all the polls ... they would vote conclusively to stay in Europe."

BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, and their lobby firms have spent over €250m in lobbying the EU to water down climate goals since 2010, a new study shows.

Momentous changes are underway in European intelligence, propelled by new technology, but is democratic accountability keeping up?

EU lawmakers on Wednesday condemned Turkey's offensive in northeast Syria. "We demand that Turkey immediately withdraw from Syria," German center-right lawmaker Michael Gahler said, speaking on behalf of the largest political group in the EU assembly. In a draft resolution that will be adopted on Thursday, EU legislators urge "appropriate and targeted economic measures against Turkey", such as freezing Turkish agriculture exports to the EU, Reuters writes.

If EU countries cannot agree on a Brexit extension, EU leaders may meet on Friday or next Monday, Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar warned Wednesday. "If there is no [consensus], well then we will have to convene a meeting of the European Council, possibly next Monday, maybe even on Friday to discuss whether or not to grant an extension, for how long and under what conditions," he told parliament.

MEPs approved an amendment Wednesday calling on governments to end corporate sponsorships to cover costs of the rotating presidency of the EU Council. "Member states are expected to finance their own presidencies," says the text, warning that this practice may have a "possible reputational damage and the risk of loss of trust" in the EU. The current Finnish presidency has only one sponsor, carmaker BMW, a spokesperson told EUobserver.