Euobserver.com

The EU needs to get its act together as US leader Donald Trump continues to wreck the global order.

Two billionaire Saudi Arabian families - the Al-Muhaidibs and Al-Agils - bought 62 Maltese and, by default, EU passports for adult and child family members last year, according to the Maltese official gazette, the Times of Malta reports. The golden passport scheme, launched in 2014, was at the centre of corruption allegations against Maltese leader Joseph Muscat's government by murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms has disembarked 311 migrants from mostly Mali, Nigeria, and Somalia at the Spanish port of Crinavis near Gibraltar after its rescue boat was declined access to Italian and Maltese ports, AFP reports. "Good morning, Open Arms is already in the Bay of Gibraltar and is steering towards the only port available to it in the Mediterranean," the charity's head, Oscar Camps, said on Twitter.

Romania's press freedom is "in free fall" as it takes over its EU presidency, Reporters Without Borders has warned, amid wider EU concern on judicial meddling and corruption.

France's ambassador to Poland has said he was "shocked" by the Polish foreign minister's remarks that France had become the "sick man of Europe".

The EU has repeatedly called on outgoing president Joseph Kabila to hold elections. It said the expulsion was "completely unjustified".

French president Macron's former security aide, Alexandre Benalla, has allegedly been using a diplomatic passport for business trips to at least 10 African countries including Chad in December, where he met president Idriss Deby ahead of Macron's visit to the country. The foreign ministry said it had asked Benalla to return his diplomatic passport after his dismissal in summer. Benalla told Le Monde he was working as a "consultant".

Turkey's news agency Anadolu has exposed the location of French army bases in Syria, just days after French president Emmanuel Macron criticised a decision by the US to withdraw forces from Syria, leaving France's approximately 200-man strong special forces units as the largest Western troop contingent in Syria. "In four of nine military locations the French are protected by Americans," Anadolu said.

John Major's government discussed holding a referendum about the European Union already in 1994 in order to ease Eurosceptic pressure, but it could not agree what the referendum question should be, files released by the National Archives on Thursday revealed, the Guardian reports. Michael Heseltine, the then trade and industry secretary, supported the proposal, while William Waldegrave, the then chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, warned it might strengthen eurosceptics.

The European Union has condemned Israeli plans to build more than 2,000 homes in the West Bank. "All settlement activity is illegal under international law and it undermines the viability of the two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace," an EU foreign affairs spokesperson said on Thursday. After announcing new elections, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fast-tracked approval of settler homes in the West Bank.

Transparency remains an essential instrument to remedy the present crisis of trust in the institutions. Accepting its fading away will be extremely damaging.

Russia has tested a "hypersonic" missile capable of a nuclear strike anywhere in Europe, in what Russian president Vladimir Putin called "a great New Year's present for the country".

The murder of two Scandinavian backpackers in the Atlas mountains before Christmas shocked the EU. In recent years, Morocco established partnerships with many EU member states to prevent terrorism: France, Spain, Germany, and the UK in particular.

Marleen Stikker, a veteran of several EU 'expert groups', is fighting the idea that the EU's adoption of self-driving technology is inevitable. "We have no idea yet," she warns.

Eberhard Zorn, the chief of the German army, has said it might in future recruit doctors and IT specialists from other EU countries, especially eastern European ones, to fill personnel gaps. The idea was "one option", he told the Funke Mediengruppe, a German newspaper syndicate, on Wednesday. The proposal was first floated in 2016 and would need Germany to change a 1956 law on the nationality of service personnel.

The Spanish government is to publish contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit in January, focusing on aviation, citizens' rights and banks, Spanish daily El Pais reported. Spanish airline Iberia is part of British aviation group IAG, while one of Spain's top banks, Santander, has branches all over the UK, leaving them vulnerable to fallout. Some 300,000 British citizens reside in Spain, while 116,000 Spaniards live in the UK.

Bill Browder, a British campaigner for sanctions on Russia, has said Moscow had applied for an Interpol alert for his arrest in an "abuse" of the international police agency based in France. The move marks the seventh time Russia has sought his detention and extradition. Its previous requests were deleted on grounds that they were "politically motivated", but one of them led to Browder's brief arrest in Spain last year.

Germany's EU commissioner, Gunther Oettinger, has said a no-deal Brexit would cost Germany "in the mid-three digit range" of hundreds of millions of euros in EU budget top-ups to cover lost UK income, but added that he believed British MPs would endorse the withdrawal accord in January. "There is certainly no majority for a disorderly Brexit or for a new referendum," he told Germany's Funke Media Group on Wednesday.

The European Research Council, an EU agency in Brussels, has granted €1.5m to Carme Font, an academic at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, to bring to light the work of women writers between 1500 and 1780. "These were women without formal education ... There are everyday texts, about family problems, marital problems, sexual issues and abuse, and about their personal frustrations," Font told The Guardian, a British newspaper.

EU diplomats in Bosnia have voiced sympathy for protesters against lawlessness in the Serb entity ruled by Russian darling Milorad Dodik, after demonstrations in Banja Luka left one police officer injured.