Euobserver.com

EU leaders have granted "candidate" status to Ukraine and Moldova at a summit marked also by Western Balkan frustration.

The Hungarian hacking allowed Russian intelligence to read 'over the shoulder' of an EU member state for an extended period of time. The difficulty for the EU is that it's not one nation, but a combination of 27 cybersecurity policies.

We now have French president Emmanuel Macron's "European Political Community", European Council president Charles Michel's "European Geopolitical Community", and former Italian PM Enrico Letta's "European Confederation" — among others.

Germany took a step closer to rationing gas after a drop in supplies from Russia. Nine days ago gas supply through the Nord Steam 1 pipeline was reduced by 60 percent, and on Thursday Germany triggered the second stage of its national gas emergency plan. "We are in a gas crisis," economy minister Robert Habeck said. "From now on, gas is a scarce commodity."

Albanian prime minister Edi Rama said Thursday that it was a "disgrace" that the bloc could not overcome Bulgaria's veto over accession talks for North Macedonia and Albania. "It's a disgrace that a Nato country, Bulgaria, kidnaps two other Nato countries, Albania and North Macedonia, in the midst of a hot war in Europe's backyard with 26 other EU countries sitting still in a scary show of impotence," he said.

North Macedonia's prime minister Dimitar Kovacevski on Thursday said "what has happened is a serious blow to the credibility [of] the European Union," referring to the lack of progress in his country's EU accession because of a veto from Bulgaria. The veto has been in place since 2020 over a dispute relating to history and language. Albania is also being held back because the EU has linked the two processes.

MEPs have renewed their calls on the EU to prepare a withdrawal from the Energy Charter Treaty, which they say threatens the bloc's climate objectives.

Finland, Sweden, and Turkey are edging toward a deal on the Nordic countries joining Nato, Helsinki has indicated.

In Brussels, both diplomats and MEPs think Hungary is opposing the tax agreement to put pressure on the EU over ongoing rule-of-law conflicts.

Frontex won't reveal how it complies with rights when it returns rejected asylum seekers from Hungary. The Warsaw-based agency had suspended other operations in Hungary after the EU court in 2020 told Budapest to stop abusing migrants.

Finland sees no sign of a Russian military build up around Kaliningrad and Lithuania in their dispute on transit of EU-sanctioned goods. "Russia has taken units from the Kaliningrad area and [nearby] Suwalki area, so they don't really have a military capability or presence. We haven't seen any changes in their posture, so we think it's highly unlikely they'd go into any military aggression," a senior Finnish diplomat said Thursday.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz told businessmen at an aviation trade fair in Berlin Wednesday Europe was ready to move to carbon-neutral air travel. "What's good for the climate can at the same time be an asset for Germany as an industrial location," he said at the opening of the ILA Berlin Air Show. The industry should first shift from kerosene to biofuels and then to hydrogen-powered engines, he said.

The EU's climate change targets remain fully in place despite renewed use of coal due to Russia's "rogue" gas cut-offs, a senior EU official has said. "The EU's 2030 and 2050 [emissions reductions] targets remain fully intact ... while we may temporarily increase our use of coal, the long term direction is clear," Elina Bardram, the commission's climate finance director told a forum in Brussels Wednesday, Reuters reports.

Karen Donfried, the US assistant secretary for Europe and Eurasian affairs, has said she was optimistic Turkey would drop its objections to Finnish and Swedish Nato membership following three-way talks this week. "We are confident that this will be resolved in a positive way. There is broad and deep support across the Nato alliance for Finnish and Swedish accession," she told a senate foreign relations committee hearing Wednesday, Reuters reports.

The European Commission said on Wednesday that consumer confidence in the eurozone has fallen to its lowest level since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, as households face soaring energy and food prices and economists warn about the heightened risk of a recession. The flash indicator used had fallen to -23.6 this month, worse than expected by economists polled by Reuters, who had predicted consumer confidence would rise to -20.5.

Ministers working on migration from Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Romania, voiced their support for a French EU presidency solidarity plan that seeks to get EU states to relocate asylum seekers arriving on European shores or offer financial support. Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland also joined.

Finnish armed forces chief general general Timo Kivinen has said his country was ready to defend itself if attacked by Russia. "Finland has maintained a high level of military preparedness since the second world war, having fought two wars in the 1940s against its eastern neighbour," he told Finnish media Wednesday. "We have systematically developed our military defence precisely for this type of warfare that is being waged [in Ukraine]".

Lithuanian president Gitanas Nauseda told Reuters on Wednesday that his country is ready to cope with repercussions from the ban on the transit of some Russian goods to the Kaliningrad exclave — including Russia cutting out a regional common power grid. Lithuania blocked the transport route last week, arguing that it is complying with EU sanctions. "We are prepared for unfriendly actions from Russia," said Nauseda.

An Eurobarometer survey from the European Parliament says 65 percent of Europeans see EU membership as a good thing, the highest result since 2007. "EU membership is seen as 'a good thing' by a relative majority of citizens in all countries except Greece and Slovakia, where more respondents view it as 'neither a good nor a bad thing'," noted the poll.

EU leaders will also discuss eurozone issues with European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, as more and more leaders are worried about voters' distress at soaring inflation.