Euobserver.com

European Central Bank (ECB) chief Mario Draghi has said the eurozone was not looking to create a digital currency. "The ECB and the eurosystem currently have no plans to issue a central bank digital currency," he said in a letter to an MEP on Friday, Reuters reports. Such technologies "require substantial further development" and there was no "concrete need" for a digital euro, he added.

French leader Emmanuel Macron has come under fire for telling a young job-seeker in Paris he could find employment if only he "crossed the road" to look for it. The former investment banker has been dubbed by critics the "president of the rich". He also attracted criticism for the Elysee palace's sales of promotional Macron mugs and T-shirts with his face on for high prices of €24.90 and €55, respectively.

Italian president Sergio Mattarella has rebuked Italy's populist deputy PM, Luigi Di Maio, for threatening to cut funds to public media who criticised the government. "Freedom of the press is fundamental to democracy," Mattarella said in La Repubblica, a daily. He also criticised Italy's talk of withholding EU budget payments in a dispute on migrants. The benefits of EU integration were "never ... convertible into cash," Mattarella said in Latvia.

The EU is preparing to accept Britain's plan to use high-tech gadgets to control a "frictionless" Irish border in future, British newspaper The Times reports, citing sources. One pro-Leave MP, Michael Gove, told the BBC on Sunday that "a future [British] prime minister could always choose to alter the relationship between Britain and the EU", but added that British PM Theresa May's plan was "the right one for now".

"In a few months' time we'll be governing Europe together with [Hungary's right-wing leader] Viktor Orban", Italy's far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini said Friday after Austria's far-right vice chancellor. "Our ideas are now in government in Hungary, Austria, Poland, and Italy," French far-right chief Marine Le Pen said, separately, in a speech in France ahead of European Parliament elections next year.

Moscow stopped paying its €20m annual bill to the Council of Europe after criticisms of its human rights record. Now it appears to be waiting for the Strasbourg-based body to crumple.

Venta Maersk's voyage in the North East Passage is a message to Asian competitors, experts say, as climate change melts ice and eases sea traffic north of Russia.

Migrants should be kept on ships while EU states assessed their asylum claims, the Austrian EU presidency and Italy have said ahead of an EU summit on migration next Wednesday. "You're well looked after on a ship," Austria's far-right interior minister Herbert Kickl said alongside his Italian counterpart, Matteo Salvini, in Vienna Friday. "Once people set foot on the continent, you can only remove them with great difficulty," he said.

"Merde alors [fucking hell]!", Luxembourg foreign minister Jean Asselborn snapped at Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini in an argument on immigration in Vienna on Friday. "They [Italians] came as migrants and worked in Luxembourg so that you in Italy had money to pay for your children," he said, after Salvini said he did not want migrant "slaves" in Italy. Salvini posted the clip, from a behind-closed-doors discussion, on Facebook.

Hungarian Enfant terrible Viktor Orban will face down EU leaders at a summit in Austria on migration, while Britain's Theresa May will defend her Brexit plan.

The Polish government has said there may be "better options" to strengthen EU foreign policy than European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker's proposal to replace unanimity with majority voting. "Moving to qualified majority voting may be one of the tools to achieve this objective, but there are also other, possibly better options, which are worth considering," the Polish foreign ministry told EUobserver on Friday, following Juncker's proposal on Wednesday.

Earlier this week, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in his state of the union announced a new relationship with Africa. On Friday, his subordinates outlined the vision, promising jobs and growth by leveraging public funds for investments.

This is not about the EU doing the UN's job. But instead about the EU being an active player in the security and stability of its Southern neighbourhood.

A form of skin inflammation, which could be linked to environmental factors, now affects two to three more times people in Europe than 40 years ago.

Country of 51,000 would "go bankrupt tomorrow" if it joined EU sanctions on Russia and lost fish exports in return, Faroese foreign minister, Poul Michelsen, says.

French leader Emmanuel Macron's party LREM is polling to win 21.5 percent of votes in next year's EU election, compared to 21 percent by the far-right, the Rassemblement National (formerly called the National Front), according to a new survey by Odoxa-Dentsu Consulting. Macron said on Thursday he would plough €8bn into poverty reduction. A previous poll in May put his party on 27 percent versus the far-right's 17 percent.

Th next EU budget is the most pivotal opportunity to advance a vision for Europe rooted in human rights and that builds a Union that works for all its members.

"If we ever reach an agreement [with Kosovo], Serbia would need to get clear guarantees that it'd become an EU member in 2025," Serb president Aleksandar Vucic told Reuters on Thursday. Talks on a land-swap deal with Kosovo could take 10 years, he added. "I smile when I hear how people simplify things ... 'I will give you three villages and I will get six villages [in return]'," he said.

House prices in the UK could plunge by 35 percent in three years after a no-deal Brexit and the British economy could suffer a 2008-type financial shock, British central bank chief Mark Carney has warned. British motorists could also be forced to get international licences to drive on the continent, the British government said, while Eurostar trains from the UK might be blocked from entering France, a French minister noted.

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has said Italy's flip-flopping on whether it planned to overspend on EU debt limits had "damaged" the country by spiking interest rates and bond prices. "In the last few months words have changed many times and what we're now waiting for are facts, mainly the budget law," he said. EU financial affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici said Italy needed a "credible budget" and lower debt.