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British CO2-polluting firms would pay a fixed fee of about £34 per tonne (€37) if the UK left the EU and its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) without a deal next year, according to new British proposals out Monday. UK firms currently pay £33, but this is expected to rise to £45 or more by 2020 because the portion of the fee generated by the ETS is forecast to almost double.

EU bank supervisory agencies ought to stigmatise bank executives and withdraw licences from lenders in serious money-laundering cases, according to draft EU proposals seen by Reuters. The European Central Bank (ECB) should also give a "clear sign" violations would be a factor in assessing banks' stability. Further legal measures would not be tabled before September 2019, however. ECB calls to create an EU financial crime-fighting agency were not mentioned.

The Netherlands is to become the EU centre for financial instruments trading post-Brexit, the Dutch financial markets authority (AFM) said Monday, while banks were moving from London to Frankfurt and Paris, and asset managers were relocating to Dublin and Luxembourg. "There is a fairly invisible shift taking place in European capital markets," the AFM said. Stocks and bonds trading firm XTX said Monday its EU hub would be Paris, however.

Greek defence minister Panos Kammenos told his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on Monday Russia was a "strategic partner" and he expected a "new era" in relations after the Greek PM, Alexis Tsipras, visits Russia in December. Shoigu complained about new US military deployments in Greece. The meetings come after Greece expelled two alleged Russian spies for trying to stir up trouble over the Macedonia name-change deal in July.

More than 50 days after the Swedish election on 9 September, caretaker prime minister Stefan Lofven announced on Monday that he cannot form a new social democrat-led government. Earlier conservative leader, Ulf Kristersson also gave up. The speaker of the Swedish parliament, Andreas Norlen, is now to negotiate four different versions of a coalition government with party leaders, excluding the far right Sweden Democrats and the Left Party from talks.

Internal EU documents, released by German digital rights blog netzpolitik.org and Reporters Without Borders Germany, show how Finland, Sweden, and the UK are watering down the European Commission's human rights safeguards when it comes the export of surveillance technology. The Commission had in 2016 proposed a new regulation for export controls of surveillance technology.

German chancellor Angela Merkel will leave politics when her current and fourth term in office ends in 2021. "I'll not be seeking any political post after my term ends," she said in Berlin Monday. Sources from her CDU party told the Reuters news agency she would not seek an EU top job after European elections next year either. Merkel also said she would stand down as CDU leader in December.

Britain is to mint a commemorative Brexit coin worth 50 pence, its treasury announced Monday. The coin is expected to bear the legend "Friendship With All Nations" and a portrait of the British queen. It is to be available from 29 March, the day the UK leaves the EU. The move comes after criticism by pro-Leave politicians of British treasury chief Philip Hammond for being too pro-European.

Fifty five percent of Israelis said they saw the EU as "more of a foe" in a survey by the Mitvim pollster for The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, an Israeli think-tank. The response came after years of EU criticism of Israeli settlement expansion and violence against Palestinians. EU-Israel relations were "excellent", despite the negative "perception", EU ambassador to Israel Emanuele Giaufret told the Jerusalem Post newspaper on Monday.

Most EU countries wanted to end winter-time clock changes but in 2021, not 2019, as the European Commission had proposed. "There was a majority of countries for ending clock changes. Three countries [Poland, Sweden, the UK] were sceptical and one was concerned that we could end up with a patchwork of different time zones," the Austrian EU presidency's transport minister Norbert Hofer said in Graz, Austria, after informal talks Monday.

People in easterly EU states were much less favourable towards Jews and Muslims than those in Nordic and northern EU countries, a survey by US pollster Pew said Monday. Just 12 percent of Czechs said they would accept Muslims into their family, while 88 percent of Dutch people said they would. Poland came out as the least favourable towards legal abortion. Lithuania was the least friendly to same-sex marriage.

A European Environment Agency report said Monday that in 2015 around 391,000 people died prematurely in the EU because of air pollution, a 2% decrease from 2014. However, premature deaths associated with emissions of nitrogen oxides (often caused by diesel vehicles) and ozone increased in 2015. "Air pollution is an invisible killer and we need to step up our efforts to address the causes," said EEA director Hans Bruyninckx.

Eurozone failures mean Iceland should stay out of the EU, its prime minister told EUobserver. She would also quit Nato if she had her say.

Poland and Greece have renewed calls for WWII reparations from Germany, testing European unity.

German chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition partner, the centre-left SPD party, has said it might quit government after another drubbing in a regional election.

The Financial Times newspaper reports that the United Kingdom has so far managed to only 'roll over' 14 out of 236 international treaties signed by the European Union. The low figure puts increasing pressure on the UK to secure a deal for its EU withdrawal next March in order to work out the remaining treaties during a transitional period. The treaties cover everything from free trade agreements to financial services.

Germany's centre-right CDU party and centre-left SPD both dropped by 10% following an election in Hesse state. The two parties are in a governing coalition under chancellor Angela Merkel. The election result is said to be a historic worst for the SPD, which went from 30.7% to 19.9%. The CDU went from 38.3% to 27.9%. The big winners were the Greens, who went from 11.1% to 19.5%.

Adil Yigit, a Turkish journalist in Germany advocating the release of imprisoned colleagues, has been ordered to leave the country by the end of January.

Nokia received a payment of $97m (€85m) of illicit money in its accounts at the Nordea Bank Abp, according to investor Bill Browder. He says the money received by Nokia came from fictitious companies with accounts at Ukio Bank, in Lithuania, reported Bloomberg. Browder has filed a complaint against Nokia with Finland's National Bureau of Investigation and the prosecutor general.

While the regional funds account for a full third of the EU budget, they are somewhat under-reported. EUobserver's latest edition of the Regions & Cities magazine looks at the EU's cohesion policy.