Euobserver.com

Luxembourg is set to become the first country in the world to make all public transport free, in a move to prioritise the environment by the re-elected coalition government led by Xavier Bettel. Bettel was sworn in for a second term as prime minister on Wednesday. The new government is also considering legalising cannabis, and introducing two new public holidays.

Foreign ministers should endorse Dutch plans to create targeted EU sanctions for human rights abusers when they meet in Brussels Monday, 90 NGOs, including Fair Trials, Reporters Without Borders, and Transparency International, said in a letter Wednesday. An EU 'Global Magnitsky' Act would be a "critical tool to combat impunity and defend human rights," they said, referring to similar laws in the US named after Russian activist, Sergei Magnitsky.

EU ambassadors agreed Wednesday to add nine people to a Russia blacklist for their organisation of recent "elections" in Russia-occupied east Ukraine, the RFE/RFL news agency reports. The EU also aims to blacklist five others for violations of anti-chemical weapons accords in Russia's use of a nerve agent to try to assassinate a former spy in the UK in March, with EU foreign ministers to endorse the moves on Monday.

Police made at least 80 arrests on Wednesday in an international operation against the Calabrian-based Ndrangheta mafia in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Belgium. It was the largest coordinated joint action against an organised criminal group to date in Europe, Eurojust said. Italian restaurants and ice cream shops used to launder money were among the premises raided. The Ndrangheta is thought to control large parts of Europe's cocaine trade.

A Turkish former Nato official in Brussels, living in exile in Belgium, tells EUobserver what he and others went through when the Erdogan regime branded them traitors.

As the functions of Christian Democratic Union party leader and chancellor have historically always been held by the same person, the next CDU leader could take over Merkel's main job as well.

Social media platforms are told to tackle fake accounts and the spread of fake news more effectively before the European elections next May - or face regulation.

"We'll do the same," if the US deploys new medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said Wednesday, after America said it would walk away from a Cold War-era anti-missile pact, the so-called INF treaty, in 60 days. The US and Nato said Tuesday Russia was anyway violating the INF by building cruise missiles capable of hitting targets in Europe at short notice. Putin denies this.

The UK could be stuck in the EU customs union "indefinitely", pending "protracted and repeated rounds of negotiations" on a "superseding agreement", the British attorney general said in legal advice to prime minister Theresa May published Wednesday. "The resolution of such a stalemate would have to be political,", his six-page text said, fuelling anger by Brexiteers in parliament the same day, who accused May of trying to "steal" Brexit.

The euro should be the default currency for EU states' energy contracts with third countries and should be the basis for new benchmark prices on crude oil, the European Commission proposed Wednesday. Its bid to compete with the US dollar in the sector comes amid American plans to sanction EU energy firms that do business with Iran, which are liable to US penalties if they trade in dollars.

Prime minister Viorica Dancila told EUobserver that Romania's constitution guarantees freedom of expression for journalists - but insisted EU data protection rules must be respected. Her comments follow threats to impose a €20m fine on a group of investigative reporters.

The CEOs of Germany's top three car firms, Volkswagen, Daimler, and BMW, said they were optimistic on avoiding US tariffs after meeting US leader Donald Trump in Washington Tuesday. "We made a big step forward to avoid the tariffs," Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess said. The visit caused annoyance in EU circles, where trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom was meant to conduct US trade talks on behalf of the whole EU.

Spain's centre-left prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has attacked centre-right opposition parties, the People's Party and Ciudadanos, over their plans to team up with a far-right party, Vox, in a regional government in Andalusia. "Parties that call themselves pro-European cannot ... base their [regional] government on a resolutely anti-European force like Vox," Sanchez said. Ciudadanos aims to link up with French president Emmanuel Macron's pro-EU party in next year's EU elections.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has said while in Lisbon that "Chinese-Portuguese relations are entering their best period in history" and that "we will deepen [the] ... strategic partnership between China and the European Union". Chinese firms have invested heavily in Portugal's energy, banking, insurance, and healthcare sectors, in a pattern replicated in other poor EU states, such as Greece, amid European and US concern over China's growing economic power.

British prime minister Theresa May lost three Brexit votes in parliament Tuesday, auguring badly for the adoption of the UK-EU withdrawal agreement in a crunch vote on 11 December. MPs forced her to fully disclose her Brexit legal advice, to handle the legal advice issue in plenary instead of in committee, and to let parliament table alternative proposals for how to leave Europe. May called her plan an "honourable compromise".

Russia has partly lifted its blockade of Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea by letting through commercial vessels carrying agricultural products, Ukraine said Tuesday. The move came amid EU and Nato complaints, but did not address whether Ukrainian naval vessels could access the ports. Russia also continues to hold three Ukrainian ships and more than 20 sailors it captured in a skirmish in the area 10 days ago.

EU finance ministers failed to adopt a watered-down digital tax plan on Tuesday after four states opposed the measure, which required consensus. "I continue to have strong principled concerns about this policy direction," Irish minister Paschal Donohoe said. The plan, put forward by France and Germany, was to tax US online retailers like Apple and Amazon, but not advertisers, such as Facebook and Google, with talks set to continue.

A Polish anti-fraud squad, the CBSP, has arrested 22 people in dawn raids on homes and offices around the country on a group suspected of defrauding €68m from EU funds. The group allegedly obtained 118 bogus EU-funded loans for purchases of specialist IT equipment for 89 different companies between 2017 and 2018, Polish authorities said. Suspects face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Belgium's coalition government risks collapse after its far-right NV-A party broke ranks to reject a UN migration pact to be adopted in Morocco next week. It also caused a storm by posting, then removing, images of veiled Muslim women on social media and saying the UN treaty would help Islam flourish in Europe. "You can take pictures like this every day in Brussels," NV-A leader Bart de Wever said.

A pro-Brexit rally planned for Sunday in London by the eurosceptic Ukip party "may well inspire violence and thuggish behaviour" and "give the opponents of Brexit a chance to lambast Brexiteers everywhere", the party's co-founder, British MEP Nigel Farage, has warned. Farage quit the party Tuesday, launching an attack on its leader, Gerard Batten, for surrounding himself with "violent criminals", such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Daniel Thompson, two far-right activists.