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An EU foreign-service spokesperson urged China to "act in line with its international commitments and to respect Hong Kong's rights and freedoms" on Monday, after Amnesty International said it was closing its office there due to a Chinese security law. EU states have not issued a high-level statement on Hong Kong since Hungary vetoed one in May, despite promises to do so at the EU 26-level, leaving out Hungary.

Belarus is working with a notorious organised-crime boss to terrorise opponents in EU states, a former regime insider has alleged.

The EU Commission says war rhetoric has no place between member states, following an interview by Poland's prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who warned the Brussels executive not to "start the third world war" by withholding EU funds.

Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark and six other countries have signed a letter saying they cannot back any reform of the EU gas and energy markets.

UK Brexit minister David Frost and EU Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič, charged with leading the EU's post-Brexit team, are expected to meet at the end of the week at Westminster.

UK Brexit minister David Frost and EU Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič, charged with leading the EU's post-Brexit team, are expected to meet at the end of the week at Westminster.

European commissioner Frans Timmermans will not travel to Moscow to discuss climate action ahead of the crucial COP summit in Glasgow next month, The Moscow Times writes. "Due to agenda issues which meant it was not possible to meet all the relevant counterparts on the dates available, and the coronavirus situation, it was decided to postpone Mr Timmermans' visit to Moscow until a later date," a Commission spokesperson said.

The EU foreign service is to open a mission in Kabul by the end of November, the FT reported Sunday, citing sources. The representation would not be an embassy, as the EU has not recognised the Taliban government. The EU office is also to be used by member states' diplomats. "There's only so much you can do from Doha," a source said. China, Russia, and Turkey never closed their embassies.

Bulgaria is in talks with the EU to transfer Covid patients to other member states due to a hospital-bed shortage, with hospitals and morgues in Romania also said to be at breaking point. There were currently more than 20 million people infected in eastern Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, according to a Reuters tally. "We are in a disaster situation," Romanian deputy interior minister Raed Arafat said Friday.

Afghanistan is on the edge of falling apart Sweden and Pakistan have warned, in a situation that was pregnant with migratory and security risks for Europe. "The country is on the brink of collapse and that collapse is coming faster than we thought," Swedish development minister Per Olsson Fridh told Reuters in Dubai. "The watch on this bomb is already clicking," Pakistani information minister Fawad Chaudhry also said.

German police stopped some 50 far-right vigilantes armed with pepper spray, a machete, and batons near the town of Guben, on the Polish-German border, Sunday, after the group had gone there to keep out migrants coming in via Belarus and Poland, Reuters reports. Germany recently put 800 extra police on its Polish border, while saying 6,126 people had already entered Germany using that route so far this year.

Croatia's small, right-wing, and anti-EU Hrvatski Suverenisti party began a two-week campaign Sunday to collect the 370,000 signatures it would need in a petition to try to force a referendum on whether to adopt the euro. "The decision on such an important issue must be taken by the citizens," Marijan Pavliček, an MP behind the project, told Reuters. Zagreb hopes to adopt the joint currency in early 2023.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has accused the EU and US of trying to help unseat him in next year's elections. "What matters is not what they in Brussels, in Washington, and in the media which is directed from abroad, want. It will be Hungarians deciding," he told a rally Saturday. "Brussels speaks to us and treats us, along with the Poles, as if we were an enemy," he added.

Protesters who trapped 'OSCE' international monitors in a hotel in Russia-occupied Donetsk in east Ukraine called off their week-long blockade citing coronavirus restrictions Saturday, Reuters reports. "The mission is acting based on a consensus decision by all 57 OSCE participating states and we believe that it is a key contribution to security where it operates," the Swedish foreign ministry told EUobserver, in Sweden's role as the current OSCE chairman.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ordered out the ambassadors of his top Nato allies and Western investors, in what his opponents called a reckless political stunt.

Banks based in the EU have earned a reported €401m from deforestation, out of more than €30bn worth of deals with companies linked to logging. Deal-making was dominated by big banks from the Netherlands, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy.

A new research has revealed dozens of 'revolving-door' cases at some of the biggest oil and gas companies in the EU and their lobby groups – triggering calls for stricter ethical rules, similar to those of tobacco industry.

In the European Parliament, the home affairs committee will start to work on new migration laws: providing the legal framework for the new migration policy in the EU.

Sweden and Finland are no longer embarrassed to cooperate with Nato countries, says the Nordic Council president. With Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg addressing the November meeting, it has gone from being not discussed at all - to the main topic.

Former UK ambassador to Mali and Niger, who also served in Kabul, reflects on the implications of the Taliban's victory in Afghanistan for EU policy in the Sahel.