Euobserver.com

One can't help feeling that the race to succeed Mario Draghi as president of the European Central Bank has taken on the flavor of the upcoming final round of the Eurovision Song Contest.

The refugee from Franco's Spain, who ended up working for an arms manufacturer, is now running to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as EU Commission president. He tells EUobserver why the Left are 'idiots' for not joining forces at the May elections.

Former UK foreign minister and key Brexiteer, Boris Johnson, said on Thursday he will be standing as a candidate to replace prime minister Theresa May as Conservative party leader, Reuters reported. May has said she will step down if her Brexit deal is approved, although she has not put a date on it. "Of course I'm going to go for it," Johnson said, who resigned last July from May's cabinet.

To maximise the global impact of climate policy, Norwegian economists recommend a shift of focus - from national emissions reductions, to clean technology development and better use of international emissions-trading systems, notably EU market mechanisms.

The US policy of applying "unilateral maximum pressure" on Iran could "spark" a conflict and a broader "wildfire" in the Middle East, German foreign minister Heiko Maas told the Bundestag on Wednesday. "Maximum pressure always carries with it the threat of unintended escalation," he said. He spoke after the US threatened to use force to stop Iran from enriching uranium and moved military assets to the region to threaten Tehran.

Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini has once again blocked a charity ship carrying rescued migrants, including women and children, from seeking aid at Italy's ports. "Our ports are, and remain, closed to migrant rescue boats," he said. The Dutch-flagged German vessel, Sea Watch 3, plucked 65 people off a rubber raft 55km from the Libyan shore. Salvini's anti-migrant tactics have helped his party surge in polls ahead of EU elections.

The centre-right's Manfred Weber got most of the heat at the EU Commission presidential candidates' final debate before the European elections, while Frans Timmermans reached out to a possible coalition partners - piling more pressure on Weber's EPP.

Nathalie Loiseau, who is French president Emmanuel Macron's top candidate for the European elections, has said far-right parties such as Marine Le Pen's National Rally would be "the representatives of Putin in the European Parliament" if elected, referring to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. She spoke to the Le Monde newspaper amid a separate controversy, in which Le Pen made a white supremacist gesture while visiting far-right allies in Estonia.

The EU has condemned the show trials of four opposition leaders - Carlos Paparoni, Miguel Pizarro, Franco Casella, and Winston Flores - in Venezuela, saying "blatant violations of due process and unfair legal proceedings ... contribute to further polarisation of the situation in the country". Diplomats from eight EU states and four Latin American ones are in Caracas Thursday to try to mediate a peaceful solution to the political crisis.

Most Europeans believe it is a "realistic possibility" that the EU will collapse by 2040, according to a survey in 14 member states by British pollster YouGov for the London-based think-tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations. The numbers of pessimists was the highest in Slovakia (66 percent) and France (58 percent). Most Italians, Poles, and Germans agreed. But figures in Denmark, Sweden, and Spain were below 50 percent.

The EU should give Britain more time to decide on Brexit in the hope it will be cancelled, Poland's foreign minister Jacek Czaputowicz has told the Reuters news agency. "We should go soft on Britain, give them time, they are still in the EU, let's give them space," he said. "It's a matter of changing the rhetoric to let the Brits rethink their decision," he added.

Europe was right to let in refugees and impose economic austerity despite the populist backlash, German chancellor Angela Merkel has said.

The EU has a unique opportunity to push its labour rights agenda in the Gulf state, with the tournament throwing the country's dismal record on migrant workers firmly into the spotlight.

Candidates from EU political families clash at the closely-watched debate in the European Parliament - but the elections themselves, plus lukewarm support from heads of government, could upend previous calculations.

Membership of trade unions has dropped 13.9 percent across Europe since 2000, according to a new study from the European Trade Union Institute. Some 24 of the 32 countries surveyed showed a drop, with the biggest being Slovakia, at 43.7 percent, followed by Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, and Latvia. The biggest increases came in Iceland (10.9 percent), Italy, Norway, Malta and Belgium.

Candidates hoping to become the next president of the European Commission will debate each other at 21:00 on Wednesday night. The participants, selected by the political groups, include Nico Cue (European Left), Ska Keller (Greens), Jan Zahradil (Conservatives), Margrethe Vestager (Liberals), Manfred Weber (centre-right EPP) and Franz Timmermans (Socialists). Some 20 public service media channels from throughout Europe will broadcast the debate, which will take place at the European Parliament.

Joint EU military projects will not hurt US arms firms, Europe's top diplomat has said, following yet another American sanctions threat.

UK prime minister Theresa May will put legislation implementing the Brexit divorce agreement to parliament in the first week of June, meaning neither Labour nor the Tories are forced to walk away before European parliament elections have been held on 23 May. A series of meetings between the two parties to strike a compromise only began after May's Brexit deal was rejected three times, but have so far not succeeded.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Tuesday that companies in the EU must "set up an objective, reliable and accessible system" to record how many hours their employees work every day. It is for the member states to define the specific arrangements for implementing such a system, which is needed to secure that the EU's working time directive and the charter is respected, the court said.

Five jailed Catalan separatists, elected to be members of the Spanish parliament on 28 April, will be allowed to attend the parliament's opening session on 21 May, the country's Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday. All five would return to prison after the "extraordinary" outing, the court said. The prisoners' lawyers had argued that the MPs now enjoy parliamentary immunity and could not continue being tried unless parliament gave explicit consent.