Euobserver.com

The EU Commission says Poland still needs to enact judicial reforms in order to unlock €35bn in Covid-19 recovery money, despite threats by Warsaw.

Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou said an investigation was needed into the wiretapping scandal of a political opponent of Greece's prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. In a statement, Sakellaropoulou said that the right to privacy was a fundamental condition of a democratic and liberal society. "It requires the immediate and full clarification of the wiretapping case," she said.

Finnish and Estonian leaders want EU countries to stop issuing tourist visas to Russian citizens in protest at the war against Ukraine.

Russia's war in Ukraine is to cost Germany's economy some €260bn by 2030 according to a study by the Institute for Employment Research. Its GDP will fall by 1.7 percent by next year, putting 240,000 Germans out of work, due to high energy prices, which will hurt the chemicals and metals industries, it noted. Inflation will also see Germans spend less on leisure, hitting the hospitality industry, it added.

A dispute between Lithuania and Russia over freight-rail transit to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad risks flaring up again, after the Kaliningrad governor said EU-agreed quotas of some 500,000 tonnes/year of goods allowed to be moved despite Russia sanctions had already been reached. "We've already exhausted the limits set by Europeans for the transportation of goods by rail: for instance, certain kinds of iron, steel," Anton Alikhanov said, Reuters reports.

An EU accord to reduce gas consumption by 15 percent from August to March next year due to Russia-war linked cut-offs entered into force Tuesday, with Germany saying the move could also help stabilise prices. "If all countries in Europe save gas, this can stabilise the price so to speak, maybe even reduce it," the president of Germany's gas network regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur, Klaus Mueller said, Reuters reports.

Turkey has resumed gas exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean, in an area criss-crossed by competing Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot territorial claims. But its drillship, the Abdullhamid Han, which sailed Tuesday, will stay in Turkish-only waters, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said. "The survey and drilling work we are conducting in the Mediterranean are within our sovereign territory. We do not need to receive permission or consent from anyone," he said.

Russian oil flows via the Druzhba pipeline through Ukraine to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia stopped last Thursday, the countries said Tuesday. Russian firm Transneft blamed Ukraine and EU sanctions for the outage, saying Ukraine had returned its July gas transit-fee citing European restrictions. The EU is phasing out Russian oil purchases by the end of the year, but Hungary, an EU sanctions-critic, had a derogation from the ban.

The EU is opening a new liaison office in California's Silicon Valley to ease communication with US tech companies, as new laws are set to come into effect that will increase regulatory scrutiny of companies like Apple, Goole and Meta in Europe. The EU's executive branch and the European Commission will jointly run the new tech embassy, according to the Wall Street Journal. The office will open on 1 September.

There's unprecedented international anxiety about the safety of Ukraine's nuclear reactors, but many European countries are also turning to nuclear power to secure energy supplies.

Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has denied knowing that his own intelligence service tapped his main political opponent's telephone. "What was done may have been in accordance with the letter of the law, but it was wrong," Mitsotakis said in a special TV address Monday. "I did not know and obviously I would never have allowed it," he added, saying: "In our democracy shadows cannot be allowed to exist".

Hungary's regional development minister and ex-EU commissioner is giving "personal" guarantees to EU officials that Budapest is in compliance with EU criteria for disbursing post-pandemic aid. "We make enough institutional changes [and] because I'm the chief negotiator I can give personal safeguards for that", Tibor Navracsics told The Guardian after being sent to Brussels to negotiate a deal. The money was frozen due to Hungarian abuse of rule of law.

The US administration under president Joe Biden on Monday pledged some $1bn in additional weapons for Ukraine, its largest direct shipment to date. The new US aide includes High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 75,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition, mortar systems, 1,000 Javelin and hundreds of AT4 anti-armor systems, as well as other equipment. In total, the US has now committed approximately $9.8bn in security assistance to Ukraine.

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are to deepen military cooperation to counter Russia's vaulting aggression in the Baltic Sea region, their defence ministers said at a meeting in Malmö, Sweden, Monday. "The Sund Strait region, which is the entrance to the Baltic Sea, is strategically important for Sweden, Denmark, and Norway in case of a crisis or a war," Swedish defence minister Peter Hultqvist said. Sweden is also joining Nato.

Loss of trade with China would cost Germany six times more than Brexit, according to a study by Germany's Ifo institute. Germany's automotive sector would lose 8.47 percent of its value and its mechanical engineering segment would lose 4.34 percent. The warning comes amid a potential confrontation with Beijing over Taiwan, with the EU having promised harsh, Russia-type sanctions against China if it invaded its Western-allied neighbour.

Surging energy costs do not mean Germany is having second thoughts about Russia sanctions, chancellor Olaf Scholz' spokesman said Monday. "We face difficult months ahead, but it is clear that we stand firmly on the side of Ukraine and we stand behind the sanctions that we agreed together," he said Monday, Reuters reports. There is no intention to approve Russia's mothballed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline either, he added.

Portugal is causing distress for its British residents after failing to issue new ID cards giving them access to services in the wake of Brexit. "The seriousness [of not having the card] ... cannot be underestimated, it has paralysed and damaged UK nationals ... emotionally, physically and financially," Tig James, co-president of the British in Portugal NGO, told Reuters. Some 35,000 Brits lived in Portugal in 2019.

The EU has postponed the entry into force of a new travel-document regime for foreign visitors until November 2023, Euronews reports. The European Travel Information and Authorisation System was supposed to start life in May, seeing visitors from EU visa-waiver countries, such as the UK and the US, fill out an online form and pay €7 to get to stay in Europe for up to 90 days without a visa.

Data released by the European Drought Observatory show 60 percent of Europe and the United Kingdom is currently in a state of drought, with farming, homes and industry being affected. Drought conditions have also led to an increase in wildfires.

Russian influence in Africa has gradually grown over the past decade and poses various problems — for local populations as well as for US and European interests