Euobserver.com

UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says he will support a second referendum as a means to stave off any no-deal Brexit. A briefing seen by the Guardian newspaper and sent to labour MPs on Monday noted that "any referendum would need to have a credible leave option and remain". It also said a no-Brexit deal would not be a poll option.

Parts of Europe where people tend to support populist parties also see many parents eschew vaccines based on conspiracy theories they harm people's health in the interest of elite groups, according to a study in the European Journal of Public Health. "Scientific populism is driven by similar feelings to political populism - profound distrust of elites and experts by disenfranchised and marginalised parts of the population," the study said.

Elizaveta Peskova, the daughter of Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, is working in the European Parliament (EP) as a "trainee" for a French far-right MEP, Aymeric Chauprade. The revelation came on Monday from Latvian MEP Sandra Kalniete, who said Peskova might be a security risk as she would have access to internal EP information. Peskova has a popular Instagram account, with some 78,000 followers.

British prime minister Theresa May and EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker agreed that work on the Brexit agreement should be concluded before a summit of European leaders beginning on March 21, a commission spokeswoman said Monday. May and Juncker met in Egypt on the margins of the EU-Arab League summit. "Good progress" is being made on the political declaration, alternative arrangements and additional guarantees on the backstop, the commission said.

Senior figures in Italy's far-right League party have interests in a mysterious Russian firm, amid wider questions on the safety of European democracy.

Senior figures in Italy's far-right League party have interests in a mysterious Russian firm, amid wider questions on the safety of European democracy.

Russia reportedly offered Italy's far-right League party €3m to help contest the EU election in May, in a deal which "shames" Rome if confirmed.

Asylum-seekers in eastern Germany are ten times more likely to be victims of hate crime as those who live in the west, a study on Sunday found. Researchers from the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) studied 1,155 incidents that took place between 2013 and 2015, Deutsche Welle reported. In the post-communist eastern region of Germany, there are traditionally fewer immigrants, contributing to the higher number of incidents.

Voters were split between the pro-Western and pro-Russian forces at Sunday's election in Moldova. The opposition Socialist Party, which favours closer ties to Moscow, was slightly ahead after the polls closed, with the ruling pro-West Democratic Party trailing behind it. An opposition bloc called ACUM, campaigning to fight corruption, was third. Complicating the post-election situation further, both pro-Russian and pro-EU forces have accused the ruling party of massive fraud.

The 55-member African Union (AU) is seeking to sink the EU's latest plan for camps in Africa to further curb migration, arguing it would breach international and EU law, the Guardian reported based on a leaked document. The AU plans to dissuade its coastal states on the Mediterranean from cooperating with Brussels on the plan. The EU's plans for "disembarkation platforms" had been already meet coolly in the region.

Thousands of Romanians took to the streets on Sunday to protest a government emergency decree that critics say undermines the rule of law. The decree prevents the country's chief state prosecutor from dismissing a probe into the former head of the national anti-corruption agency, Laura Kovesi - who is now running for the EU top prosecutor job. The commission last week said the decree was of "great concern."

British MPs will have a new vote on the Brexit deal by 12 March, prime minister Theresa May said on Sunday in Egypt. Negotiations will continue in Brussels on Tuesday on the Irish border issue, which was rejected by MPs in January. The fresh vote was planned for this week, but with more time to talk, May said leaving on 29 March with a deal was "within our grasp".

As EU leaders gather in Egypt to discuss migration with Arab leaders, UK leader Theresa May will lobby them to agree to a revised Brexit deal.

British prime minister Theresa May will hold a bilateral meeting with EU Council president Donald Tusk on Sunday (24 February) on the sidelines of an EU-Arab League summit in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. However, a senior EU official underlined that "there will be no deal in the desert" on Brexit, partly because not all 28 EU leaders, who act by consensus on Brexit, will attend the event.

Russia was preparing to help Italian far-right deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini contest the European Parliament elections in May with a clandestine €3m funding boost for his League party, Italian weekly L'Espresso reports. The money was to come via a cushy oil deal brokered by a Russian state firm and Salvini's aide, Gianluca Savoini, in Moscow last October, L'Espresso said in a teaser ahead of further revelations due Sunday.

Swedish youth activist Greta Thunberg has urged the EU to double its climate targets, amid a European Commission pledge to spend billions on the problem in the future.

German centre-right MEP Ingeborg Grassle has written to the rector of the EU-funded College of Europe to demand clarity on what she called its Saudi "lobbyist" ties.

The EU and US could "quite quickly" agree a mini-trade deal to avoid car import tariffs, trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said in Bucharest Thursday ahead of informal talks by EU trade ministers held under Romania's EU presidency. "A smaller trade agreement that would only focus on industrial goods - that, I think, would be feasible," she said. The US previously said it wanted free trade on all goods and services.

Belgium must start collecting evidence on so-called 'foreign fighters' - Belgian nationals who went to fight with jihadists in Iraq and Syria - prior to deciding whether to take back those captured by allied forces, Belgian foreign minister Didier Reynders has said. "Gathering of evidence is crucial", he said Thursday. The US last week urged EU states to take back 800 Islamist fighters captured by its troops in Syria.

Up to 30 more MPs could quit the Conservative party if it steers the UK toward a no-deal Brexit, Andrew Percy, an MP who leads the malcontent group, told the BBC Thursday. Dozens of MPs are also threatening to leave the opposition Labour party unless it backs putting the final Brexit deal to a second referendum, British daily The Times also reported, amid earlier defections to a new Independent Group.