Euobserver.com

This month's referendum will test Romanian tolerance of corruption. But will it be enough to stall the epidemic of political graft and impunity?

EU diplomacy in the former Soviet region and in west Africa will dominate events this week, as the European Parliament halts work ahead of the upcoming election.

Officials from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger are meeting EU foreign, defence, and development ministers next week in Brussels. The visit comes amid "unprecedented levels" of armed attacks, says the UN.

Sebastian Kurz's call for a new EU treaty has raised some eyebrows, as policy experts and politicians in his native Austria questioned why the chancellor had not made those reform proposals last year - during the actual Austrian EU presidency.

EU Council president Donald Tusk has said there is a 30 percent chance Brexit will not happen, in an interview with Polish media and The Guardian. He said the 2016 referendum was "at the worst possible moment" but "paradoxically, Brexit awoke in Great Britain a pro-European movement. Today the chance that Brexit will not happen is, in my opinion, 20-30 percent. That's a lot," he added.

Digital experts have advised Danish media to drop political online polls, after trolls fiddled an online vote in Ekstrabladet.dk, the country's largest online news medium, to show 24 percent support for a new anti-migrant party, Stram Kurs, lead by Rasmus Paludan. They manipulated the vote via the online forum 4chan. Digital advisor, Astrid Haug, told Danish Radio that the manipulation ought to be an "eye opener" for the media industry.

Partial resumption of EU trade should be enough to stop Iran from "escalating" a Middle East nuclear dispute, Europe has said, after the US threatened to make Iranians "eat grass".

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday said his country would "stubbornly" continue to push for European Union membership. Speaking in Ankara, he said that "Turkey proceeds on its way persistently despite those trying to exclude it from the European family". Erdogan accused the EU of leaving Turkey alone to shoulder the refugee burden. It is housing some 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Turkey first applied for EU membership in 1987.

Ireland's Fine Gael party, part of the EPP group in the European Parliament, is topping the polls ahead of the EU elections, according to an Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI opinion poll. Fianna Fail, linked to the conservative ECR group, polled second, while the leftist Sinn Fein stands to keep its three MEPs but see their vote decline. Ireland has 11 MEPs and votes in three constituencies on 24 May.

Austria's foreign minister Karin Kneissl has opposed a proposal from chancellor Sebastian Kurz to abolish the right of veto of every EU member state on foreign policy. Speaking in relation to the EU summit in Sibiu, Kneissl said that majority voting would lead to overlooking smaller European countries' interests and a "directorate" of the big countries, die Presse reported.

Eurosceptic parties are nothing new. They also had a large presence in the first directly elected European Parliament back in 1979, when the EU was known as the European Economic Community (EEC) and consisted of only nine member states.

Leaders gathered to discuss the EU's agenda and Brussels' most senior jobs after the election - and Brexit - to redefine the bloc's place in the world. And they will meet again on 28 May to assess the election results.

EU Council president Donald Tusk on Thursday called for a special EU summit of leaders on 28 May, two days after the European elections, to discuss the next top jobs in Brussels, including the presidency of the EU commission. EU leaders were keen to drive political events after the election. "If consensus proves difficult, I will not shy away from putting these decisions to a vote in June," Tusk said.

Since 1 January 2018, 47 of the 53 countries in the European region have in total reported over 100,000 measles cases and over 90 measles-related deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Thursday. "This is unacceptable and we need to be bolder and scale up our response to the next level," said Dr Dorit Nitzan, acting regional emergency director at the WHO regional office for Europe.

Lithuania's president Dalia Gyrbauskaite on Thursday described the 'Spitzenkandidat' system, whereby the European Parliament groups choose lead candidates to become European Commission president, as undemocratic. "I think it is a little bit out of democratic procedures and treaties," she said, when asked if she supported the system. The comments come ahead of a meeting in Romania among EU heads of state and government where the issue may be discussed.

Nathalie Loiseau, the lead European Parliament election candidate for French president Emmanuel Macron's party, has apologised for a series of gaffes, including her denial she had joined far-right activists when she was a student and her racist use of the word "gypsy". "They told me the campaign would be hard, and it is," she told France 2 radio Thursday. She said her gaffes were "clumsy mistakes", amid negative poll results.

Two Russian men, said to be intelligence officers, were jailed for 14 and 15 years, and two pro-Russian opposition politicians were jailed for five years, by a court in Montenegro on Thursday for their role in a failed coup in 2016 designed to stop the now Nato member from joining the Western alliance. Ten others, including several Serb nationals, a Montenegrin police chief, and an anti-Nato activist were also jailed.

The UK opposition Labour party on Thursday published its manifesto for the European Parliament elections, keeping open the possibility of a second Brexit referendum. In his speech, leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "If we can't get a sensible deal, along the lines of [Labour's] alternative plan, or a general election, Labour backs the option of a public vote." Labour backs staying in a customs union, with environmental and worker protections.

France has warned Iran not to quit even minor clauses in the EU-brokered 2015 nuclear non-proliferation deal after Tehran hinted it might do so in response to US sanctions. "There are no sanctions today from Europe because Iran has so far always respected the commitments it has taken ... If these commitments were not respected, naturally this question would be asked," French defence minister Florence Parly told BFM TV/RMC radio.

Russia and China were trying to "prevent Nato and EU expansion in the Balkans", Montenegro's president, Milo Djukanovic, has told the Reuters news agency. He said the region ought to be "the European Union's responsibility and its strategic interest" and that "unless the EU realises that, I am afraid its own future might be in jeopardy". Russia allegedly tried to assassinate Djukanovic in 2016 in a failed anti-Nato coup.