Euobserver.com

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo refused to compromise, so Arctic ministerial meeting ends with no formal agreement on climate change.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Tuesday said his two biggest mistakes were not having spoken out quickly enough on the LuxLeaks scandal, and not interfering in the Brexit referendum campaign at the request of the then prime minister David Cameron. "It was a mistake not to intervene and not interfere because we would have been the only ones to destroy the lies," he said of the Brexit campaign.

Danish voters will be asked to go to the polling stations on 5 June for general elections, prime minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen announced on Tuesday. The elections will come just 10 days after voters cast their ballot in European Parliament elections on 26 May. The liberal party leader has headed a centre-right coalition government since 2015, when he replaced social democrat Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

EU Council president Donald Tusk aims to agree on the post-election senior European jobs, such as EU Commission presidency, quickly, an EU source said ahead of the Sibiu summit. Tusk will inform EU leaders on his intentions on "how to manage nominations". In 2014, it took leaders three meetings to agree. "For Tusk, the question will be whether one can do it in less-than-three goes," the official added.

Some 210 mayors of European cities have urged EU leaders to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 carbon. In an open letter published on Tuesday ahead of the Future of Europe conference in Sibiu in Romania the mayors call on EU institutions and EU leaders to "align the next EU long-term budget with this strategy, remove fossil fuel subsidies" and make climate action "a priority across all funding programmes".

Polish police have arrested a 51-year old woman in a dawn raid on her home in the town of Plock and seized her computer on charges of blasphemy after she had distributed images of a Roman Catholic icon with a rainbow-flag aureole. The Polish interior minister, Joachim Brudzinski, also condemned her on Twitter. Protection of sexual minorities is a core EU value inscribed in its charter of fundamental rights.

The way Turkey handles the Istanbul election controversy could shape future EU relations, top officials have warned. But for some MEPs, Turkish democracy just died.

Just two million electric or hybrid electric cars were registered in the EU in 2017, less than one percent of the total 262 million registered cars in the bloc, figures from Eurostat on Tuesday showed. Five countries had more than one percent of their cars either electric or hybrid electric: Sweden (2.4 percent), Poland (1.9 percent), United Kingdom (1.5), France (1.4) and Belgium (1.2).

Four EU capitals, Nicosia (Cyprus), Sofia (Bulgaria), Riga (Latvia) and Bratislava (Slovakia) have applied to host the future European Labour Authority (ELA) that will help member states implement Union legislation relevant for 1.4 million EU citizens working in another EU state and the two million workers in the road transport sector who cross intra-EU borders on a regular basis. The European Council will pick the winner on 13 June.

Former Italian prime minister and convicted fraudster, Silvio Berlusconi (82), is set to continue his campaign for a seat in the European Parliament via the media - but not attending any election rallies - following abdominal surgery in a Milan hospital, his party said on Tuesday. Berlusconi is running for the conservative Forza Italia party and wants to see the European Union become a military world power.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo on Monday focussed on new economic opportunities as ice melts in the Arctic. Speaking at the Arctic Council in Rovaniemi, Finland, he said it houses 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil, 30 percent of its undiscovered gas, uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds and fish. He said Russia is behaving aggressively in the area and China's actions need to be watched closely.

Thousands of Czech citizens demonstrated in Prague's Old Town Square on Monday against billionaire prime minister Andrej Babis' appointment of Marie Benesova as new justice minister. The protestors fear she could try to clear Babis of charges linked to a €2m EU subsidy scam. Police charged Babis last year with fraud, and called on prosecutors to indict him last month. Babis has consistently rejected the accusations.

After 60 years of silent activity from its Luxembourg headquarters, the European Investment Bank needs to open up and become a more accessible, democratic institution.

Turkey will hold fresh elections for the mayor of Istanbul after the ruling party of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the first vote, in which an opposition MP beat Erdogan's candidate, contained errors. Markets saw it as further confirmation of the country's slide into one-man rule, with the lira dropping against the US dollar. The decision could "severely damage" Turkish voters' "trust", the Council of Europe in Strasbourg said.

Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban said on Monday his Fidesz party no longer supports Manfred Weber, the European People's Party (EPP)'s lead candidate to be the EU Commission's next president. The European People's Party and Orban agreed to suspend the Fidesz's membership last month. "Weber has said he does not want to be commission president with the votes of the Hungarians," Orban said, describing this as an "insult" to Hungarians.

China's EU ambassador Zhang Ming urged EU countries to join China's 'Belt and Road' infrastructure initiative at a Brussels event Monday. "We welcome more European countries getting involved [...], no matter if individually or as a bloc," he said, adding: "we need new and constructive approach rather than waste time on suspicion". Over 12 member states are involved so far, but the EU recently described China as a "systemic rival".

Human activities are putting one million animal and plant species at risk of extinction, according to the UN's first global assessment of the state of the world's biodiversity since 2005 launched on Monday in Paris. The study links climate change and nature loss. "Halting and reversing biodiversity loss must be a top priority on the political agenda of the next [EU] Commission," commented the World Wildlife Fund for Nature.

Portugal's socialist prime minister Antonio Costa has forced opposition parties to withdraw a proposal to boost pay for teachers, saying on Sunday that he would resign in the name of fiscal discipline if they went ahead. The centre-right CDS-PP and PSD parties put forward the €800m/year idea. But Costa said "we cannot lose again what we have accomplished" - referring to Portugal's 2014 exit from an EU bailout programme.

Relations within Italy's coalition government of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the nationalist-conservative League worsened over the weekend, as 5-Star called for the League's junior transport minister, Armando Siri, to step down after allegedly having accepted a bribe from a windfarm entrepreneur. Siri has denied wrongdoing, but 5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio urged League leader Matteo Salvini on Sunday to tell Siri to resign ahead of Wednesday's cabinet.

The EU and US have urged Turkey to stop drilling for gas in Cyprus' maritime zone, but Ankara told its allies it would do so anyway.