Euobserver.com

The EU foreign service has appointed French diplomat Roland Galharague as its new ambassador to Russia amid the Ukraine war. Galharague is currently France's ambassador to Malaysia but previously ran a department dealing with Russia and Ukraine in the French foreign ministry. He replaces career German diplomat Markus Ederer, who has held the Moscow post since 2017 and who also used to be the EU's ambassador in Beijing.

EU central bankers have been under pressure to act on inflation, which hit 8.1 percent in May. At a press conference in Amsterdam on Thursday (9 June), European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde said the bank's governing council had "unanimously" decided to quit asset purchases and end negative interest rates by September — two of the main tools monetary authorities use to control prices.

EU officials are drafting a potential ban on cloud services to Russian businesses in the next round of sanctions, sources told Reuters Thursday. It was already included in a press release on the last, so-called 6th package sanctions, but then redacted from the text due to a "material error", the EU Council said. Most leading cloud computing firms come from the US not the EU, including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Bulgaria has raised hopes of lifting its veto on North Macedonia's Nato membership after prime minister Kiril Petkov met EU enlargement commissioner Olivér Várhelyi in Sofia Thursday. Bulgaria had "three conditions" and "we are working together to see if it would be possible for the EU to be a guarantor for these" said Petkov, whose government just lost its parliamentary majority, Reuters reports. The ongoing veto was "frustrating", Várhelyi said.

The French EU presidency proposal seeks to relocate 10,000 asylum seekers, arriving from the Mediterranean, over one year. But with refugees from Ukraine stretching national reception systems, it remains unclear how many EU states will commit to relocations.

Spain and Portugal will be able to use €8.4bn in state aid to ease the burden of high energy prices on consumers living in the Iberian Peninsula.

A court in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), a self-proclaimed entity in east Ukraine recognised only by Russia and controlled by Russia, has sentenced to death two British men fighting against Russian forces — Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner — as well as a Moroccan fighter, Saaudun Brahim. The DPR broke away from Ukraine in 2014 and has remained a legal black hole, amid reports of gross human rights violations.

EU efforts to fight fraud have been hampered by bugs and delays in an €29m IT system meant to help manage investigations more efficiently.

The European Union is negotiating a gas supply agreement with Egypt and Israel — as part of efforts to reduce dependence on Russian fuel in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The Commission fell hook, line, and sinker for the arguments of big business on the corporate due diligence directive — conflating rules and regulations with so-called 'red tape' and rebranding regulations as 'burdens' on business which should be scrapped.

EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton on Wednesday asked Hungarian authorities for clarifications over the dual-price of petrol in the country, urging Budapest to suspend this measure until it is ensured that it is compatible with EU law. Car owners with non-Hungarian licence plates can only purchase petrol at market prices since last week, which is seen as discriminatory and negatively affecting trade and the free movement of people.

The European Commission on Thursday urged countries to refuse purchases of stolen Ukrainian wheat being sold by Russia. Moscow is not only destroying the stockpile of Ukrainian grain and blocking ports in the Black Sea, which is causing a food crisis and an increase in prices, but also looting Ukrainian wheat and grain, the EU executive said. Egypt and Lebanon have previously refused to buy Ukraine's looted grain.

The EU is preparing to wargame a fictional crisis in a West Africa-type setting, shedding light on how Europe sees its threats and military ambitions.

MEPs voted on Wednesday to ban the sale of all combustion engines by 2035, in a vote many expected could have gone either way. A European People's Party push to ban only 90-percent of all such engines was rejected. Ahead of the vote, EU commissioner Frans Timmermans had "implored" MEPs to vote for the ban and give car-makers a clear signal battery-powered vehicles are the way forward in the EU.

A terrorist state therefore commits acts of terrorism. A state sponsor of terrorism supports terrorist groups. So, is Putin's Russia a state sponsor of terrorism and/or a terrorist state?

The Speaker of Ukraine's parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, urged EU countries to support his country's bid to join the bloc — ahead of a key debate at the next summit later this month.

The French EU presidency has circulated a draft declaration, ahead of a meeting among EU interior ministers, on getting EU states to relocate migrants and asylum seekers.

MEPs on Wednesday rejected three major pieces of climate legislation in a plenary vote in Strasbourg, amid intense pressure from industry groups.

"It is perfectly reasonable to look for ways to improve the operation of the protocol, but unfortunately what we have seen are bad-faith efforts to undermine a treaty freely entered into," Irish premier Michael Martin told MEPs.

Transparency campaigners in a report say corporate lobbyists from Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, and elsewhere weakened a European Commission bill that aims to hold the industry to account on human rights, climate change, and environmental destruction. The proposed law, known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence, was meant to hold them liable but has since been eviscerated by lobbyists with help from the European Commission, it says.