Euobserver.com

"It is in the European Union's very own interests to drive the [enlargement] process forward here," in the Western Balkans, German chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday in a video-summit on the region. French president Emmanuel Macron said he "very clearly" supported enlargement, while EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said she wanted to "accelerate" it. Enlargement is currently stuck due to a Bulgarian veto and ongoing Kosovo-Serbia enmity, however.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is the only EU leader in a new report on 37 national heads who are "press-freedom predators", according to French NGO Reporters Without Borders. Orbán "has steadily and effectively undermined media pluralism and independence since being returned to power in 2010," the NGO noted. Belarus, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Syria's leaders also made the list, which was last updated five years ago.

Germany has lifted its ban on British tourists and said those who are fully vaccinated will not need to quarantine either. It reclassified the UK, along with Portugal, Russia, India, and Nepal, despite concern over the 'Delta variant' of coronavirus spreading there. The UK, also on Monday, said it would lift all restrictions, including mask-wearing, from 19 July, but France has voiced wariness of an EU fourth wave of infections.

EU Council president Charles Michel pledged solidarity to Lithuania in Vilnius on Monday after 560 migrants crossed the border from Belarus last weekend. "Belarus authorities are using irregular migration to try and put pressure on the EU," he said, after Minsk started flying in refugees and pushing them into Lithuania in reaction to EU sanctions. More than 1,200 migrants recently crossed, compared to fewer than 50 in a normal year.

Most EU countries, including Hungary, have voiced solidarity with LGBTIQ protesters in Georgia after a violent mob halted their Pride march on Monday.

Just eight of the 27 EU states have transposed a landmark EU law against plastic waste, which entered into force this weekend, into national legislation, according to the European Commission on Monday, Reuters reports. Even these adopted "bare-minimum requirements", green NGO Zero Waste Europe said. The law bans single-use plastics in straws, plates, cutlery, and cotton-bud tips. It also calls for 30 percent recycled plastic in drinking bottles from 2030.

French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel held a mini-summit by phone with Chinese president Xi Jinping Monday, to discuss "international trade, climate protection, and biodiversity" as well as the pandemic and "regional issues", Merkel's office said. It did not mention China's attacks on its Uighur minority or Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, which recently prompted EU sanctions and Chinese counter-sanctions, ruining prospects of a new China-EU investment treaty.

French exporters of champagne to Russia will have to change their labels, replacing "champagne" with "sparkling wine", after a new Russian law entered into force last week, allowing only Russian producers to use the term "champagne" - which EU origin-labels associate with the French region of the same name. Moët-Hennessy, one French producer, suspended sales this weekend, but promised to resume them with new labels despite the extra cost.

After she questioned if Viktor Orbán government's restrictive asylum rules were compatible with EU rules, judge Gabriella Szabó was not given an indefinite mandate. She thinks it is because her request went against the government's interests.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, for the first time European citizens consider climate change as the single most serious problem facing the world, a new Eurobarometer survey has found.

The Five Star Movment crisis has arisen from the clash between comedian Beppe Grillo, co-founder of the party, and presumed saviour Giuseppe Conte. Grillo, accuses Conte of a power-grab, while Grillo is criticised for acting like an "authoritarian father."

Only days after what some considered to be a detente between the Spanish government and pro-independence Catalans, ex-Catalan politicians and their associates tied to the independence movement have been charged millions of euros for the misuse of public funds.

Two years on from the European Parliament elections, in which the populist rightwing failed to deliver the earthquake some predicted, the parliament will likely soon become the home of a new Frankenstein far-right alliance of illiberal populists.

The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking search-and-rescue vessel saved 369 people on a boat in the middle of the night, some 80 nautical miles off Libya. EUobserver was onboard and witnessed the rescue first hand, in this exclusive by Nikolaj Nielsen.

Thousands of Europeans were keen to buy fake electronic certificates about their vaccination status and fake vaccines, according to Italian police, who broke up a cyber-crime marketplace over the weekend. Prices ranged from €110 to €130 for an "all inclusive" package of fake pass and fake vial of vaccine. "Anyone found with these fake certificates, including buyers, risks ... offences punishable by up to six years," Italian police said.

Four people were found dead on Sunday as a huge fire raged for a second day in Cyprus, razing tracts of forest and gutting dozens of homes in a blaze one official called the worst on record, Reuters reports. "Its one of the most destructive [fires] we have experienced, unfortunately, with victims," Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades told reporters from the area. The state would support all those affected, he said.

The EU is planning to tax high-polluting aviation fuels in a new package of climate-change measures due out on 14 July, Reuters writes. An aviation-fuel exemption "is not coherent with the present climate challenges and policies", the draft paper said. The minimum EU-wide tax for aircraft fuels used on trips inside Europe was to be phased in over 10 years, it added, without giving a figure for the final amount.

French health minister Olivier Veran warned Sunday that the 'Delta variant' of coronavirus was sweeping through his country. "For five days, [the infection rate] hasn't come down - it's rising again. Because of the Delta variant, which is very contagious. The British example shows that a fourth wave is possible from the end of July," he said. "We must move even faster [on vaccination]," he added.

Former Polish prime minister and EU Council president Donald Tusk has made a comeback into national politics, by taking his over his former political party, the centre-right Civic Platform opposition party. "The evil that PiS is performing is evident, shameless and permanent. It's happening every day, in almost every matter," he said in a speech in. Warsaw Saturday, referring to the ruling and nationalist-populist Law and Justice (PiS) party.

The EU will have to strike harder at Belarus' top company, Belaruskali, to influence the regime, its workers have said.