Euobserver.com

By a vote of 62 against 12, the Nordic Council decided on Wednesday in Oslo not to engage in a mediation of the conflict between Catalonia and Madrid over independence, as it would fall outside the scope of the council and should be considered an internal Spanish affair. Faroe Island MP Magni Arge announced he would personally visit Catalonia's former parliament speaker Carme Forcadell in jail.

Chinese investment in sensitive industries, tensions with Russia and a recent Iranian-linked terror plot push security to the top of Nordic leaders' agenda in Oslo.

The United States will not allow any international reconstruction in Syria, given the damage carried out by the Damascus regime and its allies Russia and Iran.

The European Commission said on Wednesday it regrets Austria's decision not to sign a UN global migration pact. "We regret the decision that the Austrian government has taken. We continue to believe that migration is a global challenge," said a spokeswoman. The pact was approved by 193 countries. Austria now joins Hungary and the US in refusing to back the non-binding pact, to be signed in Morocco in December.

The number of people without jobs in the EU stood at 6.7 percent in September, the lowest figure since 2000, according to the EU's statistical office, Eurostat. Eurostat also noted that the unemployment rate among the 19 EU states using the euro stood at 8.1 percent in September, the lowest since 2008.

The future employment rights of the 3.6m EU nationals living in the UK have been plunged into uncertainty by a British minister.

Poland and the Netherlands are working together to strengthen the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that apocalyptic visions of the 1960s stay in the past, write the two countries' foreign ministers.

Following the US and Hungary, Austria has decided not to sign a global UN treaty on migration agreed last July, Austrian broadcaster ORF reported Wednesday. "We have decided that we will not join the pact," said Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz. ORF said Austria will be absent at the December signing ceremony in Morroco. Austria currently holds the rotating EU presidency and is in charge of finding compromises on migration legislation.

Members of the House of Commons EU scrutiny committee said on Tuesday they expected UK citizens will not be able to benefit from the EU-wide abolition of roaming fees after Brexit: "It is probable that mobile roaming charges - abolished on an intra-EU basis - will return, and that, even where they do not, increased wholesale roaming costs incurred by UK providers may be passed on to UK consumers indirectly."

Denmark wants the EU to consider new sanctions on Iran for its supposed attempt to assassinate Iranian activists in Denmark. It recalled its ambassador from Tehran on Tuesday. "Denmark can in no way accept that people with ties to Iran's intelligence service plot attacks against people in Denmark," foreign minister Anders Samuelsen said. Prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said the alleged murder attempt was "totally unacceptable". Iran denies the allegations.

German chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday her stepping down as leader of her CDU party will not weaken her on the world stage. "I don't believe that anything will change about the negotiating position in international negotiations - one can even say I have more time to concentrate on my tasks as the head of government," she said. Dutch PM Mark Rutte agreed, saying: "I would not underestimate her."

The commission had originally planned to publish its paper on how to communicate better with its own citizens by June 2018 - now it won't come out until the second quarter of 2019.

"We take a different path than the United States," UK prime minister May told Nordic Council ministers in Oslo - offering closer cooperation on the environment after Brexit.

EU diplomacy must ensure that Trump's 'Deal of the Century' on the Arab-Israeli conflict is dead on arrival if it does not meet international parameters.

Poland's National Judicial Council (KRS) said Tuesday it would halt recruitment procedures for Supreme Court judges to replace those forced into early retirement. The move was designed to comply with an EU court injunction amid European Commission concerns the retirement scheme amounted to a political purge. "We won't call up anyone. We won't do anything. And in this way we'll comply with the EU injunction," KRS head Leszek Mazur said.

Norwegian PM Erna Solberg on Tuesday pledged to guarantee the rights of UK citizens' living in Norway post-Brexit. Following bilateral talks in Oslo with Theresa May, both leaders expressed hope for a Brexit deal but also discussed the no-deal scenario. "UK citizens living in Norway will have the same opportunities. British citizens in Norway are in fact just very welcome to stay," Solberg said. Norway is not in the EU.

Norway's conservative prime minister, Erna Solberg, has proposed tightening the country's abortion laws, in a political gambit that goes against Europe's liberal trend.

Secretariat-general of the European Commission decides that information redacted by directorate-general Communications Networks, Content and Technology should have been made public.

Bulgarian police have arrested the head of its State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad and more than 20 others for selling fake documents allowing mostly Macedonians, Moldovans, and Ukrainians to get Bulgarian passports in order to live in the EU, Bulgarian media report. The documents were being sold for €5,000 each, at the rate of some 30 a week. Bulgaria has naturalised more than 115,000 people in the past 10 years.

The European Commission pledged to spend €300m more on protecting oceans at a conference in Bali, Indonesia, on Monday. Some €100m is to go on research on tackling plastic pollution, while €82m will go on sea-floor and ecosystem mapping. The news came as the WWF, a leading NGO, said "exploding human consumption" had wiped out 60 percent of the world's animal population since 1970, with ocean life especially hard-hit.