Euractiv.com

Czech billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babiš yesterday (18 June) rejected the European Commission's multi-year draft budget as "completely unacceptable", lashing out at spending priorities imposed by Brussels.

The EU and China have to live up to their responsibilities on climate change and use every opportunity to support the Western Balkans and Turkey to move beyond coal. This means renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, not new coal, argue Elif Gündüzyeli and Igor Kalaba.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday (18 June) she wanted to support Italy in its efforts to reduce the number of migrants arriving on its shores, possibly handling asylum requests for Europe in non-European countries including Libya.

Leaders of South American trade bloc Mercosur pushed for trade deals with Asian and other Western Hemisphere countries during a summit on Monday (18 June), as roadblocks remained in talks with the EU despite optimism earlier this year.

Any country resisting an EU-wide objective to reduce emissions to net-zero by mid-century is essentially “in the same camp as Mr. Trump” when it comes to climate change, says Claude Turmes, the lead European Parliament negotiator on the Energy Union governance proposal.

The CO2 emissions reductions achieved by plastic recycling is very costly when compared to alternatives like wind energy and solar PV, while much energy can be extracted from burning plastic waste, argue Raymond Gradus and Henriëtte Prast.

Almost half of the 630 migrants that were rescued from the Mediterranean and arrived in Spain's port of Valencia at the weekend want to seek asylum in France, the Spanish government said yesterday (18 June).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Bavarian allies agreed to give her two weeks' breathing space yesterday (18 June) to find a European solution to a row over immigration that threatens to scupper her three-month-old coalition government.

Enough tears have been shed, egos and emotions shaken and obituaries written about the transatlantic relationship. It is time to move on. So wipe the tears, stop the whining and turn over a new page. The US has embarked on a new journey, and the EU should do the same, writes Shada Islam.

More than 3000 organisations and a group of senior MEPs have urged EU employment ministers to broker a common deal to open talks with MEPs on the Work-life Balance Directive next Thursday (21 June).

The theme of Europe and refugees is the main cause for division in the French conservative party Les Républicains. The leader of the party has dismissed its vice-president Virginie Calmels, who accused him of “defending his own ideas”. EURACTIV.fr reports.

Yet another visit by Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans to the Polish capital resulted in no breakthrough in the spat between Brussels and Warsaw over the rule of law.

The European Fiscal Board has discredited the Commission’s proposed fund to protect investment as “very modest”, “narrow” and not well designed, its chair Niels Thygesen said on Monday (18 June).

The leaders of France and Germany’ will meet in Berlin on 19 June for a preparatory summit ahead of the European Council at the end of the month. But the two countries continue to hold different views on the subject of the economy. EURACTIV.fr reports.

Five years ago, the founders of ‘Teachers on the Road’ started visiting fifty refugee homes in the German states Rhineland-Palatine and Hesse. A lot has changed since then – and not always for the better. EURACTIV Germany reports.

The 32% renewable energy target agreed by EU negotiators last week is still “much lower” than what would be needed to reach the Paris goals on climate change, argue experts at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Germany.

The Czech Communist party will withhold support from the next government if the Social Democrats stick to their nominee for the post of foreign minister, Communist leader Vojtech Filip said on Sunday (17 June).

The EU’s Energy Union Governance Regulation is not an EU-level invention or a bureaucratic imposition from Brussels. Instead, it is to a large extent an attempt to translate what several of the EU’s individual member states are already doing on climate and energy policy, writes Lola Vallejo.

French President Emmanuel Macron heads to Germany tomorrow (19 June) seeking progress with Chancellor Angela Merkel on elusive eurozone reforms, but the deepening EU rifts over migration threaten to dominate an already daunting agenda.

Most European nations are set to miss their carbon reduction pledges made as part of the Paris Agreement, according to a new ranking of “good”, “bad” and “ugly” countries published today (18 June) by Europe's leading NGO coalition on climate change.