Euobserver.com

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has said Moscow will reply in kind if Nato installs new military infrastructure in Finland or Sweden. "With Sweden and Finland, we don't have the problems that we have with Ukraine. They want to join Nato, go ahead," he said on state TV Wednesday. "If military contingents and infrastructure are deployed there, we will have to respond in kind and create the same threat," he added.

Increasingly, analysts — both inside and outside of Russia — are considering the possibility of the Russian Federation's collapse into a series of independent states. Who are the most likely candidates for secession in Russia's south, east, and centre?

Interpreters at the European Parliament are fed up with remote interpretation, citing auditory health issues given the poor quality of the online sessions.

Member states blame data privacy laws for lack of transparency in the bloc's biggest economic stimulus package.

Nato leaders have agreed a new wave of enlargement and to pile troops onto their Russian flank in response to its rampage in Ukraine.

The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) elected on Wednesday a socialist member of the Azores regional parliament, Vasco Alves Cordeiro, as their new president for the next two-and-a-half years years. Former president Apostolos Tzitzikostas, governor of Central Macedonia in Greece, was elected as the first vice-president. Cordeiro, who has been a CoR member since 2013, is the first Portuguese president of the committee.

Gas is flowing again from Spain towards Morocco via the Maghreb-Europe Gas pipeline (MEG), Reuters reported on Wednesday. Gas flows through the pipeline were halted by Algeria last November, after Spain favoured the Moroccan plan to offer autonomy to Western Sahara. In April, Algeria warned Spain not to re-export Algerian gas supplies to Rabat, after Madrid announced plans to reverse the gas flow of the MEG pipeline.

Germany's BioNTech, Pfizer's partner in Covid-19 vaccines, said the two companies would start tests on humans later this year of next-generation shots that protect against a wide variety of coronaviruses, Reuters reported. The shots are designed to primarily protect against severe disease if variants of the virus become more dangerous, and pan-coronavirus shots that protect against the broader family of viruses and its mutations.

Britain on Wednesday announced sanctions against oligarch Vladimir Potanin, described by London as Russia's second-richest man and who has been buying assets from firms exiting Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported. Potanin was included in the latest wave of sanctions by the UK. Potanin's net worth depends on the value of his 36-percent stake in Nornickel, the world's largest producer of palladium and refined nickel.

The European Commission has been unable to find the text messages exchanged between president Ursula von der Leyen and the boss of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

Hungary on Tuesday passed a decree allowing the government to take over the supervision of vital energy firms plus the gas pipeline network operator FGSZ in an emergency, Reuters reported. It covers key firms in the power, gas and oil industries, and mining. Hungary is about 85-percent reliant on Russian gas imports and 65-percent reliant on Russian crude oil imports, making it highly exposed to a possible energy crisis.

German infighting and divisions between Nordic EU members and the rest over the Social Climate Fund nearly scuppered a crucial set of climate laws.

The French EU presidency is set to announce next week how many asylum seekers will be relocated under a temporary solidarity proposal, billed as a major breakthrough.

Bulgaria has expelled 70 Russian diplomats on grounds of espionage, halving its personnel in the country at a stroke. "This is not an act of aggression towards the Russian people," said Bulgarian prime minister Kiril Petkov on Tuesday, Reuters reports. "When foreign governments are trying to meddle in our internal affairs, we have institutions that will respond," he said. "Their diplomatic role has been more like a cover," he added.

Turkey has agreed to let Finland and Sweden join Nato after a deal on Kurdish separatists and arms exports.

Bulgaria's target date for joining the eurozone, 1 January 2024, seems elusive. The collapse of Kiril Petkov's government, likely fresh elections, with populists trying to score cheap points against the 'diktat of the eurocrats', might well delay accession.

We realise that we are living in one of those key moments in history, with events unfolding exactly the way Swiss art historian Jacob Burckhardt describes them: a sudden crisis, rushing everything into overdrive.

The European Parliament approved last week a non-binding resolution on illegal logging, calling to extend the EU public prosecutor's mandate to also cover environmental crime. The lead MEP on the file has called for urgent implementation.

The aim of the oil-price cap is to ramp up pressure on Moscow by linking insurance and the shipping of oil to a price ceiling.

The European Commission lacks some essential data tools for assessing the implementation and design of its Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), EU auditors said in a Tuesday report. "The commission should do more to tap the potential of big data for analysing the CAP," said lead auditor Joëlle Elvinger. The CAP accounts for over a third of the budget, while agriculture is responsible for about 10 percent of EU emissions.