Euobserver.com

Major European cosmetics, food, medicine and plastic producers are breaking the EU's key chemical safety regulation, REACH, by using millions of tonnes of chemicals without completing important safety checks, according to an analysis of government files by Germany's largest environmental charity BUND, a member of the European Environmental Bureau. Two-thirds of 700 chemicals investigated were breaking the rules, it said. It also identified 654 companies in breach of rules.

Shady Facebook users have been promoting far-right views ahead of the EU elections, sometimes using graphic images of sex and violence, an investigation has found.

German chancellor Angela Merkel was lobbied by a number of EU leaders during the summit meeting in Sibiu, Romania, on 9 May trying to make her accept the EU post as president of the European Council, according to three people familiar with the lobbying, reported Bloomberg. Merkel rejected the offers. Meanwhile, Germany is pushing for Bundesbank president, Jens Weidmann, to succeed Mario Draghi as president of the European Central Bank.

MPs from across the UK's political spectrum rejected on Tuesday a 'new' Brexit deal from prime minister Theresa May, which included the option of holding a second EU referendum. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party would not back "a repackaged version of the same old deal" while many Tory MPs refused to vote for a bill leading to a second EU referendum and called for May to step down.

It's one of the biggest democratic exercises in the world with over 400 million eligible voters. National rules apply, and national parties run, but the stakes are at European level.

European voter turnout is in deep crisis. Since the early 2000s, the share of voters in national elections has fallen to 66 percent on average, which means that the birthplace of democracy now ranks below average globally.

In Finland, only 10 percent of 18-24-year-olds voted at the previous EU elections in 2014. General satisfaction with the status quo of the EU membership could explain why youngsters do not feel like they need to vote.

German MPs are preparing to debate merits of a national 'Magnitsky Act', Norbert Roettgen, a senior MP from the ruling centre-right CDU party has said. "It's fundamentally correct ... to have such a law," he told German newspaper Tagesspiegel, with Green and Liberal MPs also voicing support. Magnitsky Acts, named after late Russian activist Sergei Magnitsky, impose sanctions on human rights abusers, amid wider talks on EU-level Magnitsky-type measures.

"Human rights violations in Hungary have a negative effect on the whole protection system and the rule of law. They must be addressed as a matter of urgency," the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner Dunja Mijatovic has said. A report published Tuesday based on her visit to Hungary expresses concerns over the "systematic rejection of asylum applications", crackdown on civil society, independence of the judiciary and worsening women's rights.

Leading centre-right figures like Manfred Weber and Antonio Tajani are among the very few conservative candidates to have signed the pledge, set up by female staff at the European Parliament.

EU affairs ministers meeting on Tuesday in the Council of the EU adopted new rules that ban the use of plastics in certain throw-away items. The new directive will require producers of single-use products like straws, cutlery, and balloon sticks to use other material than plastic, which often ends up in the ocean, harming marine life. The new rules had already been agreed by EU ambassadors in January.

The EU should give up powers to national parliaments in future, Poland has said, amid a battle on EU values and sexual mores in the run-up to European elections.

Some European companies are urging people to vote in this week's European elections to prevent anti-EU forces scooping too many seats and secure their interests in a stable Europe. Swedish music-streaming company Spotify on Tuesday had over 60,000 followers to an EU-themed playlist entitled 'Get Vocal Europe!', while Germany's Volkswagen appealed to its 490,000 European employees to cast their vote, saying that a united Europe is in everybody's interests.

Ministers from Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO) resigned on Monday, throwing Austria's coalition government led by conservative Sebatian Kurz into chaos. The opposition now wants to overthrow Kurz as chancellor with a motion of no confidence in the special session in parliament. It could prevent Kurz from representing Austria at the EU summit following this week's European Parliament elections.

UK police on Monday arrested a 32-year-old man on suspicion of common assault after the Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage, had a milkshake thrown at him when campaigning in Newcastle ahead of the UK's European Parliament elections on Thursday. Farage blamed "radicalised" Remainers for the attack. The Brexit party is on course to win twice as many votes as any other party (33.4 percent), according to a recent YouGov-ECFR poll.

Ukraine's parliament will be dissolved and early elections called, new president Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Monday just minutes after he was sworn in. The former TV star won 73 percent support last month in a landslide victory and walked to the parliament in Kiev through a park for his inauguration. A faction in parliament last week pulled support from the ruling coalition, technically collapsing Petro Poroshenko's government.

Dutch historian and writer Luuk van Middelaar argues populists could be the new opposition in the next European Parliament and a better reflection of EU public opinion - thus actually reinforcing the body's status.

The opposition may not be able to defeat the rulling PiS without him, but if Donald Tusk wants to go home again, he will first have to remember where he came from.

A Sweden Democrat party MEP, and number four on the party's EU election list, Kristina Winberg, was on Sunday evicted from the party and removed from its voting list after revealing recorded proof of the party's top candidate, MEP Peter Lundgren, grabbing a woman's breasts during a party gathering last year. On Monday Lundberg admitted the incident but said no harm was intended and they had both been drunk.

Four-in-five students who benefitted from the EU's Erasmus+ exchange scheme find employment within three months of graduation, according to two new studies. The surveys, which polled nearly 77,000 students and staff and over 500 organisations, found 73 percent said their experience abroad helped them get their first job. Additionally, more than 80 percent of academics on the programme said it led them to develop a more innovative curriculum.