Euobserver.com

After an urgent surgery, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker will miss the G7 meeting in France, where he was going to speak with UK prime minister Boris Johnson. An EU spokesperson said that the surgery "went well", but that his doctors advised him not to travel. She said Juncker will discuss G7 matters with the host, French president Emmanuel Macron, and European Council president Donald Tusk, prior to the summit.

UK prime minister writes an open letter to EU council president Donald Tusk to ask for a renegotiation of the Irish border backstop. The EU remains unconvinced.

Poland's deputy minister of justice personally organised a hate campaign against selected judges,Polish media have revealed, amid long-standing EU concern on Polish rule of law.

The EU, in league with Canada, has spoken out on the Hong Kong protests after months of silence in what one expert called "a clear expression of support for the protesters".

Elena Sanchez Nicolas has joined EUobserver's team of journalists in Brussels. She is from Spain and has studied journalism and new media in Spanish and Belgian universities. She previously worked on European affairs at VoteWatch Europe, a think-tank, and at the Spanish news agency EFE.

Kurdish authorities in Syria have handed over to Germany four children whose parents were fighters of the so-called Islamic State (Isis), DPA reports. The children belonged to the ISIS families that were captured by Western-backed Kurdish forces after the defeat of Isis in Syria. Most European countries are hesitating what to do with the captured fighters and their families, amidst rumours of a comeback of Isis in the region.

The German government is working on a plan to contain a possible deep recession, according to Bloomberg. The plan contains fiscal stimuli to bolster the domestic economy and consumer spending in order to avoid a sharp increase in unemployment. On Monday, the German Central Bank warned of a coming recession as economic projections seemed to be much worse than predicted.

Salvini's attacks on Italian judges who questioned his migrant push-backs have put rule of law in Italy at risk for everybody, not just refugees.

According to a German advisory note, the EU should send a European naval mission to the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, writes the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. The German government would launch the idea at one of the informal European meetings in Helsinki at the end of August. According to the note, the mission would need five frigates, two corvettes and protection teams with planes and logistical ships.

Vera Jourova, EU's commissioner for justice, announced that she is undertaking a new attempt to create an EU blacklist of countries that are open to fraud and money laundering in October, before the end of the current European Commission's mandate, according to the Financial Times. The former list was torpedoed in February by several EU member states after pressure from Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the outgoing European Commission president, has had to cut short his holidays in Austria for medical reasons, according to an EU press statement. He was taken back to Luxembourg for a surgical removal of his gallbladder, it said. German politician Ursula von der Leyen will succeed Juncker, who has been dogged by various health problems, on 1 November this year.

The British government has tried to play down leaked warnings on the dangers to British people of a no-deal Brexit.

US president Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday plans to buy Greenland, an autonomous part of Denmark. "Strategically, for the United States, it would be nice," he said at a press conference in New Jersey. Trump said he will "certainly talk about it" with Danish officials if he visited Copenhagen as planned on 2 September. Danish PM Mette Frederiksen said Greenland was not for sale.

MPs from Greenland and Denmark Friday turned down ideas aired by US president Donald Trump of buying Greenland, part of Denmark with self-government over domestic affairs. "No thanks. I do not think it will be beneficial for Greenland's development," Aaja Chemnitz Larsen, MP for the left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit told public broadcaster DR. Danish PM Mette Frederiksen is in Greenland 18-19 August, while Trump is due to visit Copenhagen in September.

The German former secretary-general of the European Commission held some 21 meetings which were registered in the lobby register. But no documents appeared to exist summarising what was said.

Jo Swinson, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the party would back Kenneth Clarke or Harriet Harman as prime minister of an anti-no-deal Brexit coalition government. The idea of this new coalition came from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and would include Green, SNP, and rebel Tory MPs. Swinson said that Corbyn would not get sufficient support from all sides of parliament, while Clarke or Harman are unifying names.

According to the Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte, six European countries are willing to take some of the migrants that were rescued by the 'Open Arms' ship in the Mediterranean: France, Germany, Romania, Portugal, Spain, and Luxembourg. An Italian court ruled earlier that the boat could enter Italian waters at the island Lampedusa, against the decree of minister of interior Matteo Salvini to block or fine migrant rescue ships.

A court in Gibraltar has ruled that an Iranian oil tanker, the Grace 1, should be released despite a request by the US department of justice to keep it in custody. The vessel had been seized on its way to Syria in order to provide it with 2.3m barrels of Iranian oil in contravention of EU sanctions.

Three economic powerhouses, Germany, China, and the United States have seen their economic growth slow down. In the second quarter of 2019, Germany's economy shrank by 0.1 percent, which will most probably affect the economy of the entire European Union. With 4.8 percent China has the lowest industrial production growth since 2002. The US economy is equally worrying with a lower growth than expected in the last and current quarter.

During the first half of 2019, German authorities registered 8,605 far-right hate crimes. That was 900 more than in the first half of 2018. According to German newspaper Tagesshau, the actual number was even higher as some hate crimes are not categorised as such by the police. One example was the recent murder of Walter Luebcke, head of the Kassel regional government, which was clearly a hate crime, it said.