Euobserver.com

Italian authorities have seized almost €84m in a VAT fraud scheme involving the marketing of technological and computer products in the Campania region, according to Eurojust, the European Union Judicial Cooperation Unit. Searches were carried out in six companies in Italy and telephone intercepts were carried out in Slovenia and Estonia - two of the countries in which the bogus companies were located - creating invoices for non-existent transactions.

A little-known diplomat and a mid-ranking official will represent the EU at the launch of a $50bn US peace plan for the Middle East this week.

Poland has lost a flagship court case over its judicial meddling brought against it by the European Commission, putting its nationalist rulers on the back foot.

Two years after the European Commission took up the issue of so-called 'dual food' standards in solidarity with eastern member states, a study has failed to find any such discrimination.

Some 290,000 people applied for asylum in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland in the first five months of this year, the European Asylum Support Office, an EU agency said Monday. The figure was 11 percent higher than in the same period in 2018, but far lower than the 1.4m people who applied in 2015. Fresh Venezuelan applications (18,400) helped to make Spain a popular destination country in 2019.

"Brazen forgeries" designed to fan sectarian violence in Northern Ireland were sown online by a "Russian operation", a US think tank has said.

Criminal allegations and leaked EU reports look unlikely to topple Czech Republic's oligarch ruler any time soon.

There will be two candidates, when the Council of Europe, with 47 member countries, elects a new secretary general on Wednesday to replace Norway's Thorbjorn Jagland from 1 October: Croatia's liberal foreign minister Marija Pejcinovic Buric and Belgium's liberal outgoing foreign minister, Didier Reynders. Meeting in Strasbourg on Monday, MPs will also decide on restrictions on the Russian delegation imposed after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. 

The European Commission is not likely to trigger an excessive budget deficit procedure against Italy when the college of commissioners meets on Tuesday, according to two EU officials cited by the Financial Times. Italy's debt burden is the second-highest in the eurozone and in breach of EU budget rules, but the budget issues could bring down the Italian government and return a much stronger League party, lead by Matteo Salvini.

Representatives of French political parties from left to right have teamed up to stop president Emmanuel Macron's privatisation plans, including selling Paris airports. In April more than 185 lawmakers in the two chambers of parliament supported a referendum on the plans and the referendum bill has been validated by the Constitutional Council. Still 10 percent ( 4.7 million) of voters must sign an online petition to hold a referendum.

In a blow to Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, opposition challenger, Ekrem Imamoglu, won a resounding victory in Sunday's repeat of Istanbul's mayoral election, securing close to 54 percent of the vote against Binali Yildirim, who stood for Erdogan's ruling AKP party (45 percent). Erdogan's party lost the original vote in March in Istanbul, the country's biggest city, then annulled the result and ordered the revote.

Italy's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini has said he will hold the Netherlands and the European Union responsible for the fate of 42 migrants rescued from a rubber boat 47 nautical miles off Libya by the Dutch-flagged Sea-Watch 3 ship two weeks ago (12 June), but denied disembarkation in Italy. "The solution is there, more than 60 cities have declared their willingness to take people," said the Sea-Watch organisation.

We have reached the point where Russia threatens to leave the Council of Europe and cease to be party to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Brussels will host yet another summit on Sunday (30 June) as leaders from across the 28 EU member states return, after Thursday's failed initial bid to nominate people to take on the presidencies of the major EU institutions.

EU leaders did not discuss the threat of US military strikes on Iran, European Council president Donald Tusk confirmed on Friday after their summit ended. "There was no reason to prepare a specific European statement on this," said Tusk. He said that the EU was "closely following" the situation in the Gulf, but that "sometimes it's better not to intervene" and that the EU's position on Iran was "responsible".

EU council chief Donald Tusk said Friday the EU was "looking forward to working together with the next UK prime minister", but that the "withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation". He added that the EU wants to avoid a disorderly Brexit and establish a close future relationship. "We will enter into talks, but we underline yet again, that the withdrawal agreement has been negotiated," German chancellor Angela Merkel said.

The European Commission "confirms that it remains committed to the right to use cash as legal tender", commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis said in response to a question from Austrian centre-right MEP Lukas Mandl. The MEP was worried about media reports "about attempts to do away with cash". Dombrovskis stressed however "the fact that cash remains the most popular payment instrument in the EU".

Talks on the EU's top posts were stalemated at the Thursday summit in Brussels due to disagreement over election of a new EU Commission president, Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters Friday. The three leading political parties focussed on promoting their own candidate, which "stalled the talks", he said. An extra summit on 30 June could "open the game" and "add new names", he said.

Luxembourg prime minister Xavier Bettel on Friday criticised the Spitzenkandidaten (lead candidate) system, saying that if Europe really wanted it to work, the name of the pan-European candidate should be on the ballot paper at the next European parliament elections in 2024. "In my country no one who voted Christian Democrat, did so for [Manfred] Weber," said a frustrated-looking Bettel, referring to the candidate of the centre-right European People's Party.

A "Europe that protects" - that is the promise EU leaders are trying to make to citizens and to themselves. But the reality shows, strategic thinking can easily fade into the background.