Euobserver.com

As Boris Johns is set to take over as prime minister in Britain, the Irish deputy PM warns that simply because there is another occupant at 10 Downing Street, the realities of Brexit will not change.

While the battle with the European Commission over the rule of law rages on, PiS is discreetly trying to tweak electoral law in their favour.

Germany's new defence minister and CDU leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, plans to increase military spending to the Nato target of two-percent of GDP by 2024, which is also a frequent demand of US president Donald Trump. Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition partners, the SPD said they would not allow Trump to dictate military spending, DW reported.

Police have arrested 25 people in the eastern Polish town of Bialystok Saturday after homophobic attacks on a city's first pride march, Euronews reported. Interior minister Elzbieta Witek said the "officers ensure security regardless of the ideas, values and beliefs proclaimed by citizens". LGBT rights have become an issue ahead of the October election with the ruling Law and Justice party depicting activists as a threat to traditional Polish values.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy's party scored some 42 percent in the parliamentary election, according to preliminary results on Monday. The pro-Kremlin opposition received the second-highest number of votes at 12.5 percent. The 41-year-old comedian-turned-president has appealed to voters by promising to negotiate a political solution to the eastern Ukrainian conflict, boost the economy and cracking down on corruption. It is yet unclear what sort of coalition could govern.

EU interior ministers gather in Paris on Monday to try to bridge European divisions over migration, and find a temporary solution for the relocation of asylum seekers disembarked in Italian ports. Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini is demanding equal distribution of arrivals across EU ports, but he will not attend the informal meeting.

Pressures on women to avoid terminating unwanted pregnancies have been growing in countries including Croatia, Poland and Romania.

Boris Johnson is almost certain to become the UK's next prime minister, and oversee Brexit until the 31 October deadline, as work in the EU bubble is winding down for the summer.

Only half of EU staff claim good knowledge of their workplace's ethics rules, while 82 percent of staff at the European Parliament have never attended any ethics trainings, according to a report by the European Court of Auditors.

Countries who reject non-European migrants or raise concerns on rule of law, such as Poland, can expect sympathetic ear from Ursula von der Leyen, the new EU commission chief indicated.

The new conservative Greek government on Thursday nominated the European Commission's chief spokesperson Margaritis Schinas as Greece's next European commissioner. Schinas served as an MEP from 2007 to 2009 with New Democracy. The previous premier Alexis Tsipras insisted on retaining the migration portfolio in exchange for supporting commission president-elect Ursula Von Der Leyen. The new government is believed to have set its eye on an economy-related portfolio.

Sea-Watch rescue ship's German captain, Carola Rackete, said Thursday she hoped the new EU commission would work to let boat-rescued migrants enter Europe. Rackete is under investigation in Italy for docking her boat containing migrants at risk of drowning. "I sincerely hope that the European Commission now, after the new election of the parliament, will do its very best to prevent situations like that happening [again]," she said.

Russia has indicated it could join the EU payments channel designed to circumvent US sanctions banning trade with Iran. Moscow called on the bloc to expand the mechanism to cover oil exports. "Russia is interested in close coordination with the EU on Instex [payment channel]," the Russian foreign ministry told the Financial Times. The scheme is part of an effort to salvage the Iran nuclear deal, snubbed by the US.

The Dutch rule of law top man said the new commission would be just as tough on the issue as the current one, but would not say whether he wants to hold onto the portfolio in the next executive.

EU regulators imposed a €242m fine on US chipmaker Qualcomm, the second penalty in 18 months, for breaching antitrust rules. Competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Thursday that Qualcomm, which disputes the allegation, had abused its dominant position to drive a competitor out of business in the so-called baseband chips market, which connects smartphones and tablets to cellular networks. In 2015 a British chipmaker alleged that Qualcomm used "predatory pricing".

The members of the European Parliament's employment committee elected Slovak MEP Lucia Duris Nicholsonova as chairwoman on Thursday. Nicholsonova was put forward by the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group after their Beata Szydlo, former Polish PM, was twice rejected, leading to a spat where Szydlo's PiS party initially refused to back Commission president candidate Ursula von der Leyen. Nicholsonova received 38 votes in favour and 14 against.

Britain's Brexit negotiators behaved "like idiots", a senior EU figure has said, amid both comical and "terrifying" scenes in London.

Securing a female German-elect president of the European Commission should have been a major political victory for Berlin. Wrong.

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has told the BBC that a nuclear missile treaty with Russia is at risk of falling apart. "We have to be prepared for a world...with more Russian missiles," he said. Moscow has a 2 August deadline to demonstrate compliance with the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The US threatened to scrap the treaty over allegations Russia had violated its terms on short and medium-range nuclear missiles.

EU anti-trust regulators on Wednesday launched a probe against Amazon - hours after Germany's Federal Cartel Office closed its own seven-month investigation into the US giant. "We are dropping our investigation," cartel office head Andreas Mundt said in a statement, noting Amazon had made improvements. The EU, for its part, says Amazon may have breached competition rules for its use of sensitive data from independent retailers.