Euobserver.com

The UK's attorney general ruled on Tuesday that the new overnight Brexit declaration agreed between UK prime minister Theresa May and EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker left the legal risk of the UK remaining in the customs union "unchanged." That verdict, on the highly-technical backstop document, will be a blow for May's chances of winning UK parliament approval for her Brexit deal at a vote on Tuesday night.

Meat production contributes far more to climate change than vegetables - yet a programme to promote European food allocated €71.5m in three years to pushing meat products.

Centre-right MEPs failed on Monday in Strasbourg to add the name of the late Russian anti-corruption activist, Sergei Magnitsky, to the title of a debate Tuesday discussing new EU sanctions against human rights abusers. "There are other authoritarian regimes out there besides Russia," Heidi Hautala, a Green MEP whose party voted against the change, said. The final title of the parliament's human rights resolution will be voted on Thursday.

Representatives of the European Parliament, European Commission, and national governments agreed Monday to introduce EU-wide rules protecting whistleblowers. The legal text is not yet public. According to press statements by EU institutions, those who report breaches in EU law will be protected from being fired, demoted, or sued. "This will help tackle fraud, corruption, corporate tax avoidance and damage to people's health and the environment," said commission vice-president Frans Timmermans.

The United States has warned intelligence sharing with Germany could be restricted should Berlin move ahead with plans to allow Huawei help set up its 5G mobile network, according to the Wall Street Journal. The warning comes amid US claims that Huawei, a Chinese firm, may offer a backdoor for Chinese state espionage.

Uncertainty continued to hang over Tuesday night's big vote on Brexit, as British MPs and their lawyers tried to make sense of last-minute tweaks to the exit deal.

The European Banking Authority says 3,567 UK bankers are paid more than €1m a year, taking home some €10bn when factoring in bonuses. At least 30 bankers are paid €10m each, it said in a report. The EU state with the second highest number of big banker wages was Germany, with 390 generous beneficiaries, followed by France (233), and Italy (201).

The future of the Viktor Orban's Fidesz party inside the European Parliament's centre-right EPP political group hangs in the balance. On Tuesday, Orban and EPP chief Manfred Weber meet in Budapest in a final effort to iron out differences.

Fears are mounting that more extreme militants, possibly linked to the Islamic State, will gain a foothold in the Gaza Strip as trapped youth lose all sense of hope in a conflict that is on the verge of boiling over.

Any new regime should focus on individual perpetrators, such as the prison guards and low-level administrators and officers - but it must also similarly allow the listing of individuals higher up in the command chain.

More than two years after the failed putsch, evidence is trickling out to support what the EU initially suspected - that Erdogan knew what was going to happen and let it go ahead as a pretext to create one-man rule.

Finland's centrist prime minister Juha Sipila's surprise resignation kicks off a busy political spring in the Nordic country, with national and EU elections as well as preparing to head the EU' rotating six-month presidency from 1 July.

The US is preparing to impose sanctions on EU firms that co-finance Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany and companies involved in laying the pipes in the Baltic Sea, US daily The Wall Street Journal reports, citing US unnamed sources. The sanctions risk heightening tensions amid an ongoing dispute on US tariffs on German cars. The US says the pipeline poses a strategic risk of Russian energy dependence.

Demand for German-made submarines saw it boost international arms exports by 13 percent in the 2014 to 2018 period, according to the Swedish think-tank the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The world's top five exporters - the US, Russia, France, Germany, and China - supplied 75 percent of all weapons sold abroad. The US had a 36 percent chunk of the market, with sales focused on the Middle East.

Germany's anointed new leader has echoed France in calling for EU reform to combat populism - but with a stronger role for national governments and with little prospect of sharing German wealth.

Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont is to run in the May European Parliament elections, his party Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) announced on Sunday. Puigdemont has been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium since 2017 after Madrid re-imposed direct rule on the province following a disputed independence referendum. Puigdemont said on Twitter it was "another step to internationalise the self-determination right of Catalonia from Europe's heart to all the world."

British prime minister Theresa May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker spoke by telephone on Sunday, ahead of May's crucial vote on the Brexit withdrawal agreement in the UK parliament on Tuesday. However, a mooted last-minute visit by May to Brussels on Monday appears to be on hold. May is seeking to overturn the 230-vote defeat inflicted on her Brexit deal in January ahead of the March 29 Brexit date.

Twelve times a year, MEPs relocate from Brussels to Strasbourg - and then back again. Not by choice, but because a treaty forces them to - and it is costing taxpayers more than €100m per year.

World leaders meeting in Brussels from 12-14 March must make the freeing of detainees held by Syria's Assad regime the number one priority on their agenda.

UK lawmakers will have to take the key decisions next week on Brexit - as the two-year saga finally reaches the boil. Meanwhile, the European Parliament is busy wrapping up legislation before the May elections.