Euobserver.com

The US has given Turkey a green light to send its forces into northern Syria, posing a threat to the West's Kurdish allies in the region.

The interim chief of HSBC bank, Noel Quinn, is drafting a plan to cut 10,000 jobs for immediate savings from across the banking group, according to the Financial Times. The plan would mainly target European employees, the most expensive. The reorganisation comes on top of a recently-announced plan to cut 4,700 jobs. HSBC has a total of 238,000 employees worldwide. Deutsche Bank announced in August a cut of 18,000 jobs.

The EU commission has asked Facebook to provide information about their new cryptocurrency Libra, including the risks to financial stability and data privacy, as well as the project's ability to comply with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing rules, according to the Financial Times. The questioning will help the EU to establish if and how Libra should be regulated. PayPal announced on Friday that it was withdrawing from Libra Association.

Portuguese prime minister António Costa's Socialist Party (PS) won Sunday's parliamentary election - increasing from 85 to 106 lawmakers in the 230-seat parliament, but short of an outright majority.

French president Emmanuel Macron has given British prime minister Boris Johnson until the end of this week to improve the UK plan on the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The UK proposed to reinstall a customs border without border checks. The EU said it was not satisfied, making an agreement on a Brexit deal at the EU summit on 17 October less probable.

Two opposition parties, the leftist-nationalist Self-Determination and the centre-right Democratic League for Kosovo, would have a respective tally of 26 and 25 percent of the votes in Kosovo's parliamentary elections of Sunday, Deutsche Welle reports. With a quarter of the votes still to be counted, it is clear that the alliance of prime minister Ramush Haradinaj lost support. He increased tensions with Serbia, imposing 100 percent tariffs on Serbian products.

Exit polls indicated on Sunday that the moderate Islamist party Ennahda would remain the largest party in parliamentary elections, despite a huge loss of votes. With 17.5 percent of the votes it would be two percent ahead of the Heart of Tunisia party of jailed media magnate and presidential candidate Nabil Karoui. He will participate in the second round of the presidential elections which will be held on 13 October.

Thousands Ukrainians protested in Kiev on Sunday against a plan that would give the Donbass region more autonomy. Envoys from both Ukraine and Russia made an initial agreement to give the region a special status in order to end the five-year stalemate in the region. New Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said elections would be organised and Ukrainian soldiers would leave the moment Russian troops left the region.

As Josep Borrell faces questions from MEPs, a report from Amnesty International finds the EU's commitment to protect and support human rights defenders in its foreign policy is not consistently upheld - not between nor even within countries.

Should lobbyists engage with far-right and extremist lawmakers?

EP hearings into EU nominees resume this week after bruisings in which two candidates were already knocked out and two put on the ropes.

Italian newspaper Avvenire published photos of notorious Libyan human trafficker Abd al-Rahman Milad, known as Bija, discussing migration at a table with Italian officials in 2017. A UN security report says Bija is responsible for shootings at sea and suspected of drowning dozens of people. Other reports say he traveled to Rome to participate in an EU-funded workshop hosted by International Organisation for Migration at a four-star hotel.

British prime minister Boris Johnson will write to the EU, asking for a Brexit extension, if no deal is possible by October 19, documents submitted to a Scottish court said Friday. However, the documents merely state the government will obey the law by asking for an extension and contradict Johnson's declaration that he will "die in a ditch" rather than not leave the bloc, with or without a deal.

Greece's prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Friday that Turkey must assume its responsibility for migration control, reported Reuters. "[Turkey] has the ability to control the flows in the Aegean. It cannot give the impression that it is exploiting this issue for its geopolitical pursuits," Mitsotakis said. Greece is recently dealing with an increase in the flow of migrants crossing the Aegean islands from Turkey.

Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney told RTE radio on Friday that if the British PM Boris Johnson does not change his position concerning Brexit, there will be no deal. "I think the prime minister's room for manoeuvre is very tight, but the truth is he boxed himself into that corner," said Coveney. EU ambassadors set October 11 as the deadline for the UK to deliver an acceptable proposal.

Croatia's European commissioner nominee, Dubravka Šuica - who has been highly-critised at home for not being fully transparent - promised during her European Parliament grilling that she will work "towards the rule of law and transparency".

National courts in EU states can order Facebook to delete content "worldwide", Europe's top tribunal has ruled, in what the US social media giant called an attack on free speech.

The Austrian politician, who has been a commissioner for the last ten years, won the support from MEPs as he pledged he would be an "honest broker" in budget talks.

The EU should pump money into its economies in slow times, Italy's nominee for financial affairs commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni, told MEPs in his hearing on Thursday. There should be "adequate use of fiscal space to face the risks of a slowdown in our economy", he said. Italy has broken EU fiscal limits, but Gentiloni also pledged to pull down public debt and to be neutral toward Italy's national interests.

A number of MEPs pressed Margaritis Schinas to drop the "Protecting the European Way of Life" title of his portfolio, which deals with migration. But Schinas refused, claiming it needs protecting from terrorists and populists. He failed to convince.