Euobserver.com

Europe's credibility is at risk in the Western Balkans, half its member states have warned - but EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Albania and North Macedonia unlikely to start accession talks soon.

Latvia's ruling coalition parties agreed on Tuesday to back Valdis Dombrovskis for a second term as the country's EU commissioner. "I'm honoured to be nominated," he wrote on Twitter, adding "I will work in the interest of a stronger Europe". Latvia's prime minister Krisjanis Karins is one of six PMs tasked to advise EU Council president Donald Tusk on who to appoint as the heads of the major EU institutions.

Representatives of the European political groups meet on Wednesday to formulate joint political priorities for their work in the new five-year term. The European Commission has already tabled a strategic agenda focusing on borders and migration, economy, climate and global interests. While two parties, EPP and S&D, held the majority in the previous parliament, three or four parties are needed to form a stable majority in the new assembly.

Small businesses will be hit disproportionately when the EU's Second Payment Services Directive, from September, requires all online transactions above €30 to be subject to a two-step verification procedure in order to reduce fraud. "If small firms can't comply, they can't compete and may relocate or fold," Michael Cocoman, payment platform Stripe's global head of regulatory affairs warned in Dublin on Tuesday, the Irish Times reported.

In his response, Dr Zoltan Kovacs does not even try to refute my main point about Hungary: that most Hungarian news media have been captured by the state, and that this anti-democratic trend is spreading across Eastern Europe.

EU leaders are preparing to say border security and climate change ought to be among the bloc's main concerns at a summit later in June, according to a leaked document on its "strategic agenda" for the next five years. The EU would deal "more robustly with irregular migration" and ensure "strengthened, modern management of the Union's external borders", it said. Preventing global warming was a lower priority, however.

EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Tuesday excluded, in a letter to the Swiss Federal president that Brussels would renegotiate a draft treaty from November 2018 on future relations with Switzerland. The Swiss government had asked for clarification on three points before signing it, but Juncker pointed out that signature should be completed by 18 June to maintain access to the EU market for Swiss stock exchanges.

EU ambassadors in Brussels on Tuesday are to discuss a cyber attack on the bloc's embassy in Moscow in February, following a report by US news website Buzzfeed, which said the EU external action service knew about it, but did not tell fellow European institutions. "We have observed potential signs of compromised systems connected to our unclassified network," an EU spokesperson told Buzzfeed, amid suspicion Russia was behind the hack.

Yves Bot, one of the 11 advocates general at the Court of Justice of the EU, has died, the Luxembourg-based court announced on Tuesday. Advocates general give the court advice, which they often accept. Bot (born 1947) said last January that a dispute settlement in the EU-Canada free trade deal was in line with EU law and that Poland broke EU law by logging in a primeval forest.

Ten politicians have passed the first hurdle to be Britain's next prime minister, with Brexit and threats of "no deal" dominating the race.

The EU has said it was "ready to work with the democratically legitimate government [of Moldova], on basis of mutual commitment to reforms and to the core principles enshrined in our association agreement" amid a political crisis in the EU-aspirant former Soviet country. Its appeal for restraint came after a Moldovan court suspended its president, Igor Dodon, and installed prime minister Pavel Filip in his place, who called snap elections.

A right of reply on behalf of the Hungarian government to the opinion piece "Orban-style 'media capture' is spreading across Europe" published on 6 June.

Albania currently faces a serious crisis, which it would be foolish for all actors in the international community to ignore. Yet we must ask that our partners in Europe read Federica Mogherini's report carefully and recognise accomplishments.

Details of a military deal expanding the US military presence in Poland are expected to be revealed this week as Polish president Andrzej Duda meets US president Donald Trump in the White House on Wednesday. Currently there are 4,000 US troops in Poland on a rotational system. "It's an increase both in quantity and in quality," Duda told Reuters. A landing strip for drones was also under discussion, he said.

German foreign minister Heiko Maas warned after visiting Iran on Sunday that the situation in the region is "highly explosive and extremely serious" and called it a "threat to world peace". The visit formed part of a European effort to preserve the 2015 EU-brokered nuclear deal after US president Donald Trump walked out and reimposed economic sanctions. Japan's premier Shinzo Abe visits Iran this week in another attempt to mediate.

The Swiss government has asked for clarification on three points before signing a draft treaty on future relations with the European Union. The points relate to wage and worker protection, state subsidies and citizens' rights. Berne needs to formally endorse the treaty by 17 June to maintain access to the EU market for Swiss stock exchanges. The European Commission said it would study and reply to the Swiss questions.

The EU Commission has kept results of an emissions test of a Porsche diesel vehicle secret for months, at the request of the German car company - which was fined €535m for its role in the Dieselgate scandal.

Talks on EP groups and top jobs in the wake of the EU election last month continue. Finance ministers also discuss whether to fine Italy, while EU commissioners promote Western Balkans enlargement.

The Labour party narrowly beat Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party at a byelection in the British city of Peterborough on Thursday. After coming top in last month's European elections, Farage had hoped to make a breakthrough with an MP in the Westminster parliament, but Labour scored 10,484 votes to his party's 9,801 votes, a margin of 683. The Conservatives were beaten into third place with 7,243 votes.

Cocaine dealers in Europe are increasingly using social media in what the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drugs Addiction, an EU agency in Lisbon, has called "Uber-isation" of the trade. Dealers had created "cocaine call centres" across the EU on the model of the US taxi-type firm Uber, the agency said in its annual report out Thursday, amid record seizures of increasingly pure qualities of the drug.