Euobserver.com

EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini will seek a united front on Libya at a foreign ministers' meeting Monday, as forces loyal to general Khalifa Haftar launched an attack against the UN-backed government in Tripoli over the weekend. The bloodshed could trigger a new refugee exodus towards Europe, but some in Europe believe a Haftar victory could stabilise the country, while others fear his Russia ties could be a menace.

James Watson is now secretary general of Eurogas, after more than four years at the helm of SolarPower Europe. "I don't feel there is any inconsistency with what I've done before and what I'm doing now," he tells EUobserver.

"If we are forced to remain in [the EU] we must be the most difficult member possible," Jacob Rees-Mogg, leading eurosceptic Conservative lawmaker in the UK told Sky News on Sunday. He said the UK should use the "opportunity to veto the budget and to be really very difficult". Rees-Moog also hinted that he would support Boris Johnson as a future leader of the party.

Former MEP Kaja Kallas' liberal opposition party, Reform, came top in Estonia's election last month, but a deal between the liberal Centre party, conservative EKRE and the Fatherland party has now paved the way for liberal leader Juri Ratas to continue as the Baltic state's prime minister. Under the deal EKRE would have interior, environment, rural, trade and IT portfolios, while Fatherland would control defence, justice, foreign affairs and culture.

Former Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, has confirmed that he will stand in the EU elections if the UK has not left the bloc but told Sky News that he was "not happy" about it. "I'm not going to, after 25 years of endeavour, watch British politicians roll us over," he said. Farage's new Brexit Party plans to run candidates in all UK areas apart from the three Northern Ireland seats.

Austria has announced a six-month extension of border checks with Hungary and Slovenia to at least November. In a letter, interior minister Herbert Kickl from the far-right Freedom Party cited a persistently high number of illegal migrants and a latent threat of terrorism from returning Islamic State fighters as reasons for the decision. "We will send the letter to the European Commission next week," he told Austrian media.

A letter signed by 250 medical staff is demanding the EU stop research funding for Israeli defence and security firms, in light of the some 6,500 Palestinians shot in the past year by Israeli soldiers.

Accountability and transparency are in short supply when it comes to how MEPs spend €40m every year on "office supplies". Efforts to pry open this secrecy have been met with strong resistance from many of the parliament's most powerful MEPs.

Brexit and China will dominate EU affairs this week, as leaders meet for two summits - including emergency talks two days before the UK is due to crash out of the EU with no deal in place.

Efforts to set up a better transparency register for lobbyists have collapsed after two years of talks. The impasse revolves around the European Commission's insistence that the register also become mandatory for the European Parliament and Council.

The Spitzenkandidat system has become an instrument of the promotion of MEPs (often German), and was supposed to make Europe more democratic. Reality has revealed the opposite.

Italy's far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, has tried to make friends with the French establishment, amid a possible "flop" in his plan to create an anti-EU league.

British prime minister Theresa May asks the EU to further delay Brexit, until 30 June - which means the UK will start preparations to hold European elections. Meanwhile, EU Council president Donald Tusk mulls a year-long flexible extension.

Preliminary results of Finland's two-year basic income experiment showed no impact on recipients' willingness to participate in employment services but that participants experienced less stress and fewer financial worries than a control group, social insurance institution Kela reported on Thursday. In the experiment, 2,000 randomly selected unemployed persons were paid €560 per month for two years regardless of any other income. The experiment ended on 31 December 2018.

A large majority in the European Parliament, 502 votes to 81 and 29 abstentions, backed on Thursday a draft bill exempting UK citizens from visa requirements to enter the EU for stays of up to 90 days in any 180-day period following Brexit. The visa exemption does not provide for the right to work in the EU. The bill must also formally be adopted by the council of ministries.

Croatia's supreme court in Zagreb on Thursday increased former prime minister Ivo Sanader's jail term to six years for taking more than €2m in kickbacks from a real estate deal during his time in power from 2003 to 2009. Sanader was also told to return any gains. "This is politically-motivated persecution that has lasted for nine years," he told reporters before escorted to the Remetinac prison.

17 EU countries – Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Latvia, Spain, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Greece, Portugal, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Finland, Belgium, Hungary, Slovenia – have passed temporary legislation allowing British nationals to enjoy a grace period to regularise their status following a no-deal Brexit, a file leaked to the Guardian showed. In Austria and Denmark requests to stay may be rejected on security grounds, it reported.

A ship belonging to the German migrant rescue NGO Sea-Eye was Thursday heading for the Italian island of Lampedusa with 64 migrants onboard it had rescued off Libya on Wednesday. Italy's interior minister Matteo Salvini told reporters during a G7 summit in Paris that he had written to the German government asking it "to take on the problem". The ship headed towards Lampedusa to avoid bad weather in Malta.

MEPs Thursday approved a law allowing British citizens visa-free travel to the EU's Schengen passport-free zone for 90 day trips, under a no-deal Brexit. The waiver will depend on Britain providing the same rights to EU travellers. The bill was passed after EU countries, supporting Spain, pushed the EU parliament to remove a British MEP from the file, which describes Gibraltar as a "colony of the British crown".

After three rounds of negotiations between member states and the European parliament, talks are deadlocked over the EU's new chief prosecutor position. The parliament backs Romania's anti-corruption champion, Laura Codruta Kovesi, whose nomination the Bucharest government wants to block. EU countries support a French candidate. "We cannot accept the fact the council cedes to the pressure of the Romanian government to support a much weaker candidate," MEP Inge Grassle said.