Euobserver.com

The European Union issued on Saturday a statement condemning elections on Sunday (11 November) in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine as "illegal and illegitimate" and said that the bloc would "not recognise them". Russia provides military, political, and financial support for the separatist-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine.

German Greens at a party conference in Leipzig over the weekend picked Ska Keller and Sven Giegold as their top candidates in May's European Parliament elections. The party's election manifesto was adopted and includes a CO2 emission tax on power and industrial plants across Europe, a tax on plastics, a single European corporation tax and a digital tax for tech giants such as Facebook and Google.

There is a strong correlation between whether MEPs rejected tougher emissions limits, and how many jobs in their home country are in the automotive sector.

Russia is trying to foment a clash between Hungary and Ukraine over the territory of Zakarpattia in a potential crisis overlooked by EU leaders.

The now-outgoing German chancellor will outline her vision for Europe in the EU parliament, as political parties gear up for the election next May. Brexit will also dominate, even though talks have yet to yield to a breakthrough.

An award-winning journalism outlet in Romania is being threatened with fines by the country's data protection authorities - for having disclosed connections, on Facebook, of powerful politicians and a firm embroiled in scandal.

The number of MEPs who have enrolled in the European Parliament's pilot training course on how to detect and prevent harassment in the workplace is now 36, a parliament spokeswoman told EUobserver by email on Friday. On Tuesday this website had reported only 19 of 751 MEPs had signed up for the voluntary training, which is a trial run for a course to be offered to all MEPs.

The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament will on Tuesday evening endorse Czech MEP Jan Zahradil as their 'Spitzenkandidat' to become Commision president, after the result of the May 2019 European elections. The ECR, the third-largest group, joins the European People's Party (Manfred Weber) and the Socialists & Democrats (Frans Timmermans) in having named a 'lead candidate' to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as Commission president.

Benoit Coeure, a member of the European Central Bank's governing board, warned in Berlin on Thursday that "climate-related risks have been identified as being among the key risk-drivers affecting the euro area banking system" and "climate change can be expected to affect monetary policy one way or the other." The ECB could be forced to take proactive measures more often in order to stabilise economies threatened by climatic events.

The EU court went too far in ordering Poland to halt its judicial purge, the Polish president has said, as Warsaw prepares to host a neo-fascist march on Sunday.

A poll analysis by Reuters news agency predicts that the centre-right EPP will remain the biggest group in the European Parliament following the European elections in May. The analysis is based on polls in the 27 EU states. The analysis suggests Manfred Weber, the EPP's lead candidate to replace Jean-Claude Juncker, could become the next president of the European Commission.

Germans, in particular those living in the east, are demonstrating higher levels of xeonphobia and backlash against religious minorities than when compared to five years ago, according to a new study.

Canadian firm Canopy Growth Corp, is seeking to spend over €100m in the European Union in its wider plans to grow medical marijuana. The company, worth around €9bn, wants to build two new production facilities to grow hundreds of kilos of cannabis for use in treatment. The company told BNN Bloomberg news that, outside Canada, Germany and the EU has one of the most exciting regulated medical cannabis markets.

The UK is seeking EU travel bans and asset freezes on six Russian spy chiefs from the GRU military intelligence service over the attempted poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in the UK in March, British newspaper The Times reports, citing sources. The sanctions are to be imposed under a new EU mechanism for targeting individuals, rather than states, who are deemed guilty of chemical weapons violations, adopted last month.

While young people fought each other in 1918, young people in 2018 travel to study together under the Erasmus programme. But there is a risk of limiting our commemoration to representing the past through just speeches, museum exhibits and visits.

Jair Bolsonaro could render the EU's climate action meaningless, if the newly elected leader of Latin America's biggest country follows through with plans to allow massive deforestation.

Lack of transparency among airline carriers in Europe and weak enforcement of people's rights means most passengers forgo seeking claims they are entitled to, according a new report by the European Court of Auditors.

New Western sanctions on Russia should go as far as a full economic embargo, with an oil and gas for food programme to deprive Russia of funds for its war efforts.

The centre-right EPP party's congress wanted to show unity - but divisions remain after the political alliance lined up behind Germany's Manfred Weber as their 'Spitzenkandidat' ahead of next year's European election.

Germany's Manfred Weber was chosen by delegates to be the lead candidate for the European People's Party (EPP) for May 2019's European elections, at the party's congress in Helsinki on Thursday. Weber, the EPP group leader in the European Parliament, beat Finland's former prime minister Alexander Stubb by 492 votes to 127. Weber will now seek to clinch the presidency of the European Commission, if the EPP win the elections.