Euobserver.com

French far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, kicks of a European tour on Monday, meeting Italy's far-right leader Matteo Salvini in Rome. The meeting is the first in a larger tour, where Le Pen aims to meet populist leaders in Europe ahead of May's European Parliament elections. "It [Italy] shows not only that we can implement our policy, but in addition that it is effective," Le Pen told Le Figaro.

Pro-Russia Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik is set to become a member of Bosnia-Herzegovina's inter-ethnic presidency, winning 56 percent in Sunday's elections, with his opponent Mladen Ivanic taking 44 percent. Once officially confirmed, Dodik will share the post with a Muslim and a Croat member. The Bosnian Muslim party SDA declared victory for their candidate, Safik Dzaferovic, while Social Democrat Zeljko Komsic won the Croat seat.

Mainstream parties lost out to new anti-establishment parties in elections on Saturday in Latvia. The left-leaning Harmony party - which has a cooperation agreement with Russia's ruling party, United Russia - and advocates the interests of Latvia's Russian-speaking citizens, became the biggest party, with 19.8 percent of the vote, according to country's central election commission. About a quarter of Latvia's 2.2 million population are Russian-speaking.

Interpol's fight against cross-border crime demands cooperation, not politics - be it from Serbia or China.

A Romanian referendum on Sunday aimed at blocking gay marriages failed to meet the necessary electoral threshold, with a 20.41 percent turnout - below the 30 percent treshold, the country's electoral bureau announced on Sunday evening. Romania holds same-sex marriages as illegal, but the constitutional change would have prevented gay couples from ever gaining this right in the future.

A possible institutional battle is looming over a proposal to give the EU's agency in charge of the Galileo satellites more powers in the field of space.

Despite Brexit and new priorities, it is important to keep EU funds for all regions - rich and poor - argues the regions commissioner. But more controls, including a link to rule of law issues, are part of the discussion.

Crunch time in Brexit talks dominate the EU's agenda as a withdrawal agreement between the EU and the UK could be within reach - after months of lack of progress in negotiations. Plus, Bono's in Brussels.

The Dutch foreign ministry has invited EU diplomats to discuss the creation of a new sanctions regime against human rights abusers worldwide.

A court in Amsterdam has questioned the independence of the Polish judiciary - turning down a Polish request for a European arrest warrant over fears that the suspect would not a get a fair trial in Poland.

Germany's slow pace in deciding on French proposals to create a separate EU budget for eurozone sates and to forcefully tax US tech giants like Apple and Google was helping anti-EU parties gain traction in Europe, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire has told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "Not making any decisions is nourishing populism," he said, adding that no eurozone budget would mean "no eurozone at all some day".

A 61-year old businessman, Andreas Ritzenhoff, and a 26-year old student, Jan-Philipp Knoop, will try to take over leadership of chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party when it holds its congress in December. The outsiders have little chance to unseat her, but started a debate that could see more serious challengers emerge, analysts told German press. "I'm worried about what's going on in Germany, Europe and the western world," Ritzenhoff said.

EU proposals to give appeals judges at the World Trade Organization (WTO) longer terms and to give their secretariats more money "means less accountability for the appellate body" in a move the US "cannot support", the US envoy to the WTO, Dennis Shea, said in Geneva Thursday. The clash comes amid a broader dispute between the EU and US on US president Donald Trump's attacks on free trade and multilateralism.

MEPs' expense allowances, worth €4,416 a month, should be open to public scrutiny, according to a new motion to be introduced in the European Parliament (EP) by two Dutch deputies, liberal Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy and socialist Dennis de Jong. "This is public spending and so it should be publicly accounted for," Gerbrandy said. The EP previously voted down the idea. The EU court blocked journalists from greater information on the issue.

The Romanian government is victimising gay people in order to distract from corruption allegations in a referendum, on Sunday, that would constitutionally define marriage as being between men and women only, rights groups have said. "The idea is to distract public attention from corruption allegations, and they're doing it at the expense of the LGBT community," Teodora Ion-Rotaru from Accept, an NGO said. The vote was fuelling homophobia, NGOs said.

The Irish parliament, on Thursday, began debating a bill to legalise abortion in the country by next January after a referendum on the issue in May. "It was a reaffirmation of the primacy of equality in our modern democracy," health minister Simon Harris said. Ireland, which used to be a staunchly Roman Catholic society, also recognised same-sex marriage in 2015. Abortion and gay marriage are still illegal in Northern Ireland.

British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt's recent comparison of the EU to the Soviet Union was "as unwise as it is insulting," EU Council president Donald Tusk said after meeting the Irish taoiseach in Brussels Thursday. "The Soviet Union was about prisons and gulags, borders and walls, violence against citizens and neighbours. The EU is about freedom and human rights," Tusk, a Pole and a former activist against Soviet oppression, said.

More people in Libya are being inducted into slavery as people-traffickers try to monetise their investment by selling them. A senior UN refugee agency official described it as an unintended side effect of the reduction of migrant boat departures.

It's the job of the European Anti-Fraud Office to investigate any corruption and embezzlement of EU-funded projects. But why are structural funds in particular so attractive to criminals?

Sunday's election - in one of the most complex political systems in the world - sees many Bosnia's worry the EU has already given up hope on them. Fears of electoral fraud are unlikely to help.