Euobserver.com

Macedonia is on its way to join Nato next year - despite a Russian push-back in the Western Balkans and beyond.

The rift between Italy and France appears to be widening after a meeting held between 'yellow vest' leadership and Italy's deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio.

What is revelatory about the study by Corporate Europe Observatory is the sheer number of embassies, committees and advisory groups that lobbyists can target: from the Council all the way down to standing committee on plants, animals, food and feed.

Dutch MP Renske Leijten said that a year after she asked for more openness, nothing much has changed.

EU council chief Donald Tusk said he wondered if there is a 'special place in hell for those who promoted Brexit without a plan', as Brussels expects British PM Theresa May to arrive on Thursday - without a plan.

The EU blocked the merger of the makers of Germany's ICE and France's TGV trains, citing concerns of reduced competition and extra costs for consumers and taxpayers. The two countries now want to change the rules.

Commission wanted farmers' EU subsidies to be capped at €100,000, with payouts they would have received beyond that redistributed to smaller farms. But member states oppose the idea.

Macedonia is poised to become Nato's 30th member state, Nato head Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels on Wednesday after the alliance signed an accession protocol with Skopje. "It's a proud day for us all," Stoltenberg said, adding that it would join in about a year after the 29 Nato allies ratified the move. "History doesn't simply happen, you have to make it happen," Macedonian foreign minister Nikola Dimitrov said.

Advocate General Nils Wahl of the Court of Justice of the EU said on Wednesday that Germany's controversial road tax is not discriminatory, as Austria has argued. German motorists get tax relief equivalent the road tax, which foreigners do not, but Wahl said that these two groups are not comparable. Austria's claim was "premised on a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of 'discrimination'," the court said in a statement.

The EU substantially watered down its recent warning on golden passport schemes, an investigation has shown.

Italy's deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio of the anti-establishemnt Five Star Movement, on Tuesday in Paris met with 'yellow vest' protest leader, Christophe Chalencon, and European Parliament candidates on the yellow vest list headed by Ingrid Levavasseur. "The wind of change has crossed the Alps," Di Maio tweeted. Yellow vest protestors also joined ranks with a major union, CGT, in nationwide French protests on Tuesday.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Tuesday defended in a speech at the EU Industry Days the block's competition policies saying "we will never play politics or play favourites". He spoke ahead of an expected rejection on Wednesday of a high-profile rail merger between Germany's Siemens and France's Alstom, meant to compete with Chinese rival CRRC. French ministers have already called for reforms of EU competition rules.

The Danish parliament's approval of participation in wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq was based on inadequate and tailored information from the then government, lead by liberal prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, according to an investigation by researchers at University of Copenhagen published on Tuesday. The current liberal government lead by Lars Loekke Rasmussen closed an official investigation into the matter in 2016.

The former chief prosecutor of Romania's anti-corruption agency, Laura Codruta Koevesi, has been ranked first in the selection procedure to head the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), the Guardian reported. Koevesi investigated ministers, mayors and members of parliament, before Romania's justice minister dismissed her in July 2018. Twenty EU countries agreed in 2017 to set up EPPO to fight large-scale cross-border financial crime. It is set to open next year.

Russia's war in eastern Ukraine has already lasted as long as World War One - leaving civilians, including children, and their minds at risk.

Corporate Europe Observatory asked the Brussels offices of 19 member states to reveal which lobbyists have been hosted. Only two provided a complete list.

The right-wing Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD), Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), and European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) groups hold 151 out of 751 seats - even large gains are unlikely to give them a majority.

City authorities from Barcelona and Amsterdam are demanding more transparency and rules to tackle dirty money that is partly behind rent hikes. Amsterdam is now asking for help from the EU.

Italy has vetoed an EU statement on the Venezuela crisis amid political confusion in Rome.

German chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday said there are "certainly ways" to solve the Irish Brexit border problem. Speaking at a press conference in Japan, she refused to re-negotiate the Brexit deal, but suggested the follow-up deal on the future relationship could settle questions related to the Irish backstop. "You have to be creative, you have to listen to each other, and such conversations can and must be made".