Euobserver.com

An EU decision to impose 25 percent tariffs on 23 different types of steel in retaliation against US ones had "overall worked well during the first year of implementation" the European Commission said Wednesday on the basis of a new economic study. It suggested giving developing countries more breaks from the tariff scheme, among other tweaks, which would have to be approved by the World Trade Organisation to go ahead.

An Italian judge ordered Italy to open its waters to the Spanish migrant rescue ship Open Arms, despite a new law by deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini to fine migrant rescue boats up to €1m if they entered Italian maritime zones. The Open Arms ship has 147 people on board amid a shortage of food and space. This week another ship, the Ocean Viking, rescued 356 people.

British-based banks have moved "significantly fewer activities, critical functions and staff" to the EU than the European Central Bank (ECB) had advised due to Brexit, it said in a statement Wednesday. It said banks could not continue to service EU clients outside the UK in the future and urged them to create "local risk management and governance structures" in the EU. The slow move came due to Brexit date postponements.

The UK could "unilaterally" withdraw from the EU in just 10 days' time to prevent parliament from trying to block a no-deal Brexit on 31 October, Tom Tugendhat, a Tory MP who chairs the foreign affairs committee, has said. Downing Street said the idea was not under consideration. Steve Peers, a law professor at Essex University, told The Guardian the UK would need EU assent to change the October date.

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States, said that no trade agreements between the US and the UK would pass US congress if it would put in peril the Good Friday peace agreement in Ireland. Her statement follows comments by US national security advisor John Bolton during his visit this week in London, promising sector-by-sector trade deals between the UK and US.

No EU country willing to open its ports for the Spanish rescue ship Open Arms, with France and others turning to the European Commission for help.

European Commission documents on meeting with Tony Blair describe chances of second referendum have become "credible".

PhD researcher Alexander Hoppe said street protests against the copyright directive came "way too late", because EU institutions had already found a compromise deal on the text.

The Italian senate has decided to hold a vote on prime minister Giuseppe Conte on 20 August after a day of confusion. The Democratic Party (PD) of Matteo Renzi agreed to form a transition government with the Five Star Movement (M5S) party, despite an earlier refusal by its leader Nicola Zingaretti. League party leader Matteo Salvini also said his ministers would not immediately resign from government, despite earlier threats.

Denmark is preparing an urgent national ban on food treated with the pesticide chlorpyrifos after an EU health warning, but European law could block the initiative.

Facebook hired hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe audio conversations of its users, Bloomberg reported. The contract employees were told to transcribe recorded conversations, sometimes with explicit content, without being told were the audio recordings came from. Facebook says the content came from users who agreed with the option on Messenger for their voice to be recorded. The company said it stopped the transcriptions one week ago.

Several key Tory figures are speaking out against the no-deal Brexit strategy of new prime minister Boris Johnson. Philip Hammond, former chancellor, said that a no-deal Brexit would be a betrayal of the result of the referendum and that "unelected people" from Number 10 have no mandate for that. John Bercow, speaker of the House of Commons, insisted that parliament cannot be shut down and must be heard.

Some 70 anti-Brexit MPs have asked the Court of Session in Edinburgh to rule that suspending parliament in Westminster so that the UK can leave the EU without a deal would be "unlawful and unconstitutional". British prime minister Boris Johnson has indicated parliamentary suspension was an option in order to leave the EU no matter what on 31 October. The Scottish court will hold a first hearing on Tuesday.

"Both [US] president [Donald] Trump and I were leavers before there were leavers", White House national security advisor John Bolton told press in London Tuesday. The UK could do a "sector-by-sector" free-trade deal with the US "very quickly" after it left the EU, he added. The US would ask for "individual items" in return, he also said, amid US pressure for the UK to quit the Iran nuclear arms deal.

There have been no talks so far between political parties on the federal Belgian level, Bart De Wever, leader of the Flemish nationalist NVA, the biggest party of Belgium, revealed in a TV interview on Monday evening, in which he explained his draft note for a new Flemish government. The regional Brussels government has been in place since 18 July, following the Belgian elections held on 26 May 2019.

EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker plans to stop being political active, when leaving his top-EU post. "I will not be politically active anymore. But I will stay active, write, take long walks", he told Tiroler Tageszeitung in an interview in relation to accepting the Grand Tiroler Adler Orden. Juncker admitted to some failures, including that his commission did not succeed in renewing the EU-Swiss framework agreement.

The US would support the UK in a no-deal Brexit, White House national security advisor John Bolton said in London Monday. "If that's the decision of the British government, we will support it enthusiastically," he told press after meeting senior MPs. "The fashion in the European Union: When people vote the wrong way from the way the elites want to go, it's to make the peasants vote again," he said.

Some 54 percent of Britons agreed with the statement "Boris [Johnson] needs to deliver Brexit by any means, including suspending parliament if necessary, in order to prevent MPs from stopping it" in a ComRes poll for The Telegraph newspaper on Monday. The same poll found support for Johnson's ruling Conservative party had risen by 6 points to 31 percent amid his pledge to leave on 31 October.

First-time asylum applications to the 28 EU countries, Norway, and Switzerland jumped 10 percent to 337,200 for the six months of this year compared to the same period in 2018, the European Asylum Support Office, an EU agency in Malta, has said. Most applications came from Afghanistan, Syria, and Venezuela. But EU states issued just 41,700 decisions in the first half of this year, their slowest rate in years.

The captain of a Spanish rescue boat, the Proactiva Open Arms, has asked Spain to grant asylum to 31 minors trapped on board after Italy and Malta refused to let them disembark. The boat, which has 151 people on board, has been stuck off the Italian island of Lampedusa for nine days after rescuing people off the coast of Libya, as southern EU states crack down on migrants.