Euobserver.com

The European Commission on Tuesday took an unprecedented step and decided to send back Italy's budget plan for 2019 for reconsideration, as it says the proposed plan is breaking EU rules. It gave Italy's populist government three weeks to tweak its plans, although Rome has said before it would not back down. The commission is concerned that the planned spending boost would make Italy's high debt-to-GDP ratio unsustainable.

The chief of French oil firm Total attended a Saudi Arabian investment forum in Riyadh on Tuesday despite its murder of a dissident journalist. The heads of other firms - banks Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, transport firm Uber, and German engineering firm Siemens - sent lower-level delegates. Financial media Bloomberg, CNN, and the Financial Times withdrew support, but Russian and Asian CEOs and media stepped in, the BBC reports.

Polish and other populists have a new adversary - Robert Biedron, the country's first openly gay MP, whose pro-EU party aims to "change the face of Poland".

The former head of Poland's Supreme Court, Malgorzata Gersdorf, has called on all judges forced into early retirement by the Polish government since July to go back to their desks in line with Friday's (19 October) EU court injunction. She issued the appeal in her "constitutional" role, she said in an open letter, challenging the authority of her government-appointed successor, and highlighting the judicial chaos in Poland at the moment.

Spain and Sweden have not joined the group of European countries most critical of Saudi Arabia following the death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Germany, the fourth-biggest exporter of weapons to Saudi Arabia, behind the US, Britain and France, said on Sunday that it would halt arms exports. Neither France, Britain, Spain or Sweden have followed Berlin's move. Saudi Arabia is Sweden's most important export market in the Middle East.

Italy's Piedmont region and Denmark's capital Copenhagen were listed as best places to go in 2019 by Lonely Planet, the worlds largest travel guide book publisher. With 15 Michelin-starred restaurants and an extremely bike-friendly culture, Copenhagen was found the best city to visit. Serbia's Novi Sad and Croatia's Zadar were other European top-10 listed cities. Alpine walking trails, wine and truffles made Piedmont the best region to visit.

Italy's 5 Star Movement is to launch a new pro-European, but anti-establishment political group in January.

German chemical company Bayer lost a legal dispute over cancer risks in its herbicide glyphosate when a San Francisco appeal court on Monday ruled that a school gardener should be paid $78m in compensation after using Monsanto's weed killer "Roundup" and eventually contracting lymph node cancer at the age of 42. Monsanto has rejected any link between glyphosate and cancer. Bayer and Monsanto merged in 2016.

"The world doesn't need a new arms race that'd benefit no one and on the contrary would bring even more instability," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, said after US president Donald Trump announced that he was pulling out of the 1987 Reagan-era INF arms control treaty. "Thanks to the INF Treaty, almost three thousand missiles with nuclear and conventional warheads have been removed and verifiably destroyed," Mogherini added.

It is in cities that new forms of poverty and new groups of people facing vulnerability, like the working poor, are first seen.

An estimated 80 percent of Syrian refugees in the EU are unemployed - despite this, the integration of asylum seekers and migration remains outside the European Commission's policy objectives in its latest budget proposals for regional development and cohesion policy.

European Parliament secretary general Klaus Welle refuses to publish papers discussing what has been done with MEPs' requests for measures to prevent sexual harassment.

Steve Bannon's demolition derby is behind the curve of EU politics, writes Dutch liberal MEP Sophie in 't Veld.

Italy's reply to the concerns raised over its planned budget by the European Commission arrived in Brussels on Monday, a spokesman said. The EU executive will discuss the responses on Tuesday before the commission decides if it will ask for tweaks in the draft spending plan, which raised fears in Europe it could destabilise the eurozone's third largest economy in a splurge on welfare.

Germany has announced a unilateral arms ban on Saudi Arabia over its killing of a journalist, but France, the UK, and the US have not followed suit.

Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party came top in local council elections on Sunday, taking 32.3 percent of the votes, according to exit polls. The coalition of opposition parties took 24.7 percent and had its pro-EU candidate, Rafal Trzaskowski, elected mayor of capital Warsaw with 54.1 percent of the vote. PiS saw overall strong support in rural areas, while big cities backed the pro-EU Civic Platform opposition.

Italy is to answer the European Commission's doubts about its draft 2019 budget before noon on Monday. As a first step in the so-called 'semester' procedure, the commission last week described Italy's draft budget as a "significant deviation" from EU fiscal rules. It would be the first time ever, if the commission rejected a member state's national budget plan.

The South Tyrol's People's Party (SVP) dropped to a historic low 41.9 percent in elections in the Italian region on Sunday, securing 15 of the 35 seats in the Landestag. Former 5 Star Movement member Paul Kollensperge, who formed an independent list in July, took 15.2 percent ahead of the far-right League party with 11.1 percent. Known to Italians as Alto Adige, the SVP seeks full independence.

UK prime minister Theresa May will tell parliament on Monday that 95 percent of the Brexit deal has been agreed with the EU, but that the EU's proposal for the land border with Northern Ireland is still not acceptable. May is also to confirm deals have been struck on the future of Gibraltar and the UK's military base in Cyprus, according to excerpts of her speech seen by British media.

A confidante of Russian president Vladimir Putin, billionaire Boris Rotenberg, has taken four Nordic banks - Nordea, Danske Bank, Handelsbanken and Finland's OP Corporate Bank - to court for breaching service agreements as a result of US sanctions imposed on him in 2014. According to Bloomberg, he filed a suit with the Helsinki District court on 4 October. Rotenberg is not currently a target of EU sanctions.