Euobserver.com

Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, and the Netherlands "have not taken sufficient action to improve air quality", according to a new report. In 2015, nearly 400,000 people in the EU died prematurely due to air pollution.

British prime minister Theresa May is asking the EU to reopen negotiations on Ireland and Brexit despite Europe's refusal.

The 36-member state OECD confirmed on Tuesday that it is working on plans for a minimum corporate tax rate, as part of a global revision of tax rules for digital commerce. While the European Union is struggling to agree common tax-rules, some member states have moved ahead with their own plans while other are waiting for broader OECD rules.

Several European parties have selected more than one lead candidates for the EU elections - thereby defeating the entire notion of 'electing the European commission president'.

An Austrian businessman, Gerald Birgfellner, has taken the head of Poland's right-wing ruling PiS party Jaroslaw Kaczynski to court for allegedly failing to pay him for work on a real estate project in Warsaw. "Our client feels that he's been wronged. He hasn't been paid," Birgfellner's lawyer Jacek Dubois told AFP. Kaczynski "made the decisions and gave guarantees that the payment would be made".

Seven EU Mediterranean countries met in Cyprus on Tuesday for the fifth Med7 summit. Leaders of France, Portugal, Malta, Italy, Greece and Cyprus participated, while Spain sent its foreign minister. In a summit declaration the seven said the "Republic of Cyprus is and will remain a member of the European Union following reunification, and EU membership is the best safeguard for a reunited Cyprus".

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday said Italy must provide medical assistance, food and drink to 47 migrants aboard the NGO-operated Sea Watch 3 rescue vessel as soon as possible. The ship is currently waiting off the cost of Sicily. Germany, France, Portugal, Romania and Malta are ready to accept the migrants, Italy's prime minister Giuseppe Conte was reported saying at the Med7 summit in Cyprus.

The European Investment Bank, the EU's lending institution, cut lending by nearly 20 percent last year and plans to keep financing at a similar low level in 2019 at around €60bn, its president, Werner Hoyer, told press on Tuesday, according to Reuters. In preparation for Brexit the remaining member states are going to replace the 'callable' capital in the bank in proportion to their capital share, he said.

This decision to activate political scrutiny at EU level over the Hungarian government's reforms is a turning point for the Union after eight years of alarm bells ringing.

With only four months to go until the European elections, the EU commission is upping the pressure on US internet giants to do more on combatting disinformation.

British prime minister Theresa May told MPs Tuesday she will seek to re-open negotiations with the EU over the Northern Ireland backstop, designed to prevent border checks on the island of Ireland. May said during a parliamentary debate on Brexit strategy that she would return to Brussels to get a "significant and legally-binding change". The EU has earlier said it will not re-open the legal text agreed with London.

An adviser to the EU's top court said on Tuesday the dispute settlement contained in the free trade deal with Canada was in line with EU law. Advocate general Yves Bot said the 2016 agreement does not "adversely affect" the autonomy of EU law or question the ECJ's exclusive right to interpret EU law. Belgium's Wallonia backed the trade deal, on condition that the European Court of Justice checked it.

The so-called Juncker Plan, the EU commission's flagship fund, has been effective in raising money for investments, but "the amounts of investment mobilised may be overstated", according to a European Court of Auditors' report. The auditors found that often the Juncker Plan just replaced other financing from the EU and the European Investment Bank. The report also states that most investments went to a few larger 'old' member states.

British ignorance, dishonesty, and navel-gazing have made a no-deal Brexit "very" likely, a senior EU official has said.

Transparency International says Hungary has registered its lowest score for political rights since the fall of communism in 1989. Their new report on corruption perception also finds fault with Malta.

We propose several changes to the EU, derived from the political philosophy behind the current Polish government, and what Poles expect from the EU - this could be seen as a manifesto Poland wants the next European Commission to tackle.

The EU and its member states should make sure that public watchdogs understand the influence of automated decision-making, and the risks of bias, a report published Tuesday said. The paper 'Automating Society', published by the non-profit AlgorithmWatch, called on governments to invest in applied research. It also said the public debate about artificial intelligence (AI) should be confined to "current or imminent developments", rather than on potential super-intelligence.

Facebook has promised to step up political advertising transparency ahead of the European Parliament elections in May. In a statement on Monday, the tech giant promised "new tools to help prevent foreign interference in the upcoming elections and make political advertising on Facebook more transparent", including pre-authorisation for advertisers and a searchable advert library, revealing who was behind it, the cost, and number of readers and their demographics.

German commission recommends phasing out coal power over the next 19 years - which will provide additional arguments to build the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia, which both the European Commission and the US have reservations about.

The European Left Party at a meeting over the weekend in Brussels elected Violeta Tomic from Slovenia and Belgian Nico Cue as the party's two top candidates for the European parliament elections in May. Tomic is a member of the Slovenian parliament and spokeswoman on Palestine and LGBT rights, while Cue is a former secretary general of the metalworkers' union in Belgium.