Euobserver.com

A major meeting of leaders from all over Europe will take place this week, with security and enlargement as key topics for discussion. In the Parliament, MEPs are expected to vote on the European Media Freedom Act.

The European Central Bank (ECB) recently raised interest rates to the highest point in the currency's 21-year existence — but the effects of its policies on renewables are badly understood.

The dominance of the 'realist' camp in the Brussels' bureaucracy explains the EU's past and current behaviour towards Ukraine — in which reform shortcomings and failures are rarely openly called out.

The EU is meant to become a safer place for women from Sunday (1 October), as the Istanbul Convention enters into force.

Life in Nagorno-Karabakh has become a hellscape. For the time being, Azerbaijan's calculation is that it is best off waging war to get what it wants, then signing a ceasefire deal that codifies its gains.

While Belarus has not sent its own troops to fight Russia's war in Ukraine, the Minsk dictatorship has been heavily involved. As a result, Belarus must be punished for its involvement — what can the world do to sanction Belarus?

Russia's use of diamonds in corruption schemes in Europe and Africa gives upcoming G7 ban a strategic value beyond any moral or financial one, Ukraine says.

Senior EU officials insist a majority of EU states support tougher asylum reforms after Germany decided to drop its veto despite a last minute reported backlash from Italy.

Poland in 2020 imposed a near-total ban on abortion, triggering mass protests — and today the demands for access to safe abortion continue. On International Safe Abortion Day, dozens gathered in Brussels calling for solidarity among member states.

Vasco Alves Cordeiro, president of the European Committee of the Regions, is advocating a revamp of the EU's regional policy so that it better supports all regions in addressing major challenges such as the green and digital transitions.

Germany has announced an increase in police checks on its border with Poland and the Czech Republic — in a bid to respond to irregular migration along smuggling routes.

Emily O'Reilly cited the post-pandemic recovery funds, the windfall taxes on energy companies, and the joint purchase of vaccines, as procedures which received limited scrutiny from the national parliaments — as a result of emergency decision-making powers that bypassed parliament.

The EU Commission's new magic formula for avoiding scrutiny is simple. You declare the documents in question to be "short-lived correspondence for a preliminary exchange of views" and thus exempt them from being logged in the official inventory.

Political parties facing multiple corruption charges are hoping for a grand comeback at Saturday's snap elections in Slovakia —which could also lead to a reversal of the central European country's position on Ukraine and Russia.

The EU and US have urged Azerbaijan to give aid groups more access to ethnic Armenians, as tens of thousands flee the conflict zone.

The EU is urging Big Tech platforms to act against the Kremlin's "war of ideas" ahead of the 2024 elections, as Russia's disinformation is flowering on Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) platform.

A blocking minority of member states is posing tricky questions on whether the EU can reach a deal on an overhaul of the bloc's asylum and migration laws.

International media must make clear that these are not fair, democratic elections. The flawed race should be the story at least as much as the race itself.

The International Energy Agency finds that the clean energy investment needed to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius warming saves $12 trillion [€11.3 trillion] in fuel expenditure — and creates double the amount of jobs lost in fossil fuel-related industries.

Just two years on, the sheen has slowly begun to dull on the Just Energy Transition Partnerships — which have thus far been signed by the governments of South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and, most recently, Senegal.