Euobserver.com

Growing problem of space debris risks putting space off-limits for future generations, says Holger Krag, head of ESA's Space Debris Office.

The Danish government will allocate almost €100m (700 million Danish kroner) to cover costs related to an eventual hard Brexit, finance minister Kristian Jensen told Danish media when presenting the country's 2019 draft budget on Thursday. He did not offer any details about what the money would be used for. "They are to be spent when we know the consequences of the Brexit negotiations", Kristian Jensen said.

US president Donald Trump rejected on Thursday an offer from EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem to reduce all car tariffs to zero if the US did the same as "not good enough". European "consumer habits are to buy their cars, not to buy our cars," Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg. The EU is "almost as bad as China, just smaller," he said.

Two Sweden Democrats have been forced out of the party after they purchased racist material online, voiced sympathy for Adolf Hitler and called Anne Frank the: "coolest jew in the shower room". "You cannot be a candidate for the Sweden Democrats if you have these types of views and share these types of materials," Sweden Democrat leader in the costal city of Oskarshamn, Michael Erlandsson, told newspaper Ostra Smaland.

Hungarian foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, summoned Sweden's ambassador in Budapest on Thursday to explain critical comments from two Swedish ministers over Hungary's strong anti-immigration policies. Foreign minister Wallstroem wrote on Twitter that Hungary and Italy want to form an alliance against "the democrats and the left' in Europe", while Swedish migration minister Helene Fritzon recalled that Sweden accepted Hungarian refugees in the 1950s.

Bavarian MEP Manfred Weber has been backed by German chancellor Angela Merkel as "spitzenkandidat" for Europe's centre-right EPP parties in next year's European Parliament elections. German media reports that Merkel's decision was reached after consultations with French EPP leader Joseph Daul in Berlin. If he wins the European elections in May, Weber could replace Jean-Claude Juncker and become the first German heading the European Commission in more than 50 years.

The EU's anti-migrant smuggler operation, Sophia, could collapse after defence ministers declined Italy's request in Vienna Thursday for a snap decision on rotating EU ports for migrant disembarkations. "If you ask me whether we'll succeed or not [to continue Sophia] ... I wouldn't say," EU foreign relations chief Mogherini said. Italian interior minister Salvini the same day threatened to can the mission "if we get the umpteenth no from Europe".

UN human rights commissioner urged EU leaders to condemn violence that recalled the 1930s, but the local situation in former East Germany does not apply to the whole country.

As chief negotiators Raab and Barnier meet again in Brussels on Friday, UK demands for guarantees on the future relationship have put chances of no-deal Brexit over 50 percent.

Italy is planning to hijack an EU meeting on the Western Balkans to talk about migrant boats instead.

Women voters were long thought to be relatively immune to policies advocated by right-wing extremist parties. That has changed, however, according a new study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation of right-wing populist voters in Germany, France, Greece, Poland, Sweden and Hungary. The proportion of women voters for most of these parties is still lower than that of men, but the gap is narrowing, the study found.

With little more than a week left to general elections, Swedish Security Service, Sapo, warned of increased online activities aimed at influencing the vote and related to news published in international media describing Sweden as a chaotic country. "We see increased activities compared with previous elections in 2014 and also compared to how it was earlier this year," Sapo's deputy department head, Linda Escar, told Swedish radio.

Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor and US president Trump's private lawyer, got paid by former FBI director Louis Freeh's global consulting group for sending a letter to Romania's president Klaus Iohannis and prime minister Viorica Dancila. Revealed last week by Mediafax, the letter criticised Romania's national anti-corruption directorate for using unfair tactics against suspects, intimidating lawyers and jailing "many innocent people".

The former first minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, resigned from the Scottish National Party (SNP) on Wednesday after Scottish government staff made sexually harassment allegations against him. Salmond, a driving force behind the 2014 push for Scotland's independence, denied the allegations. He is seeking to crowdfund money to pay legal fees as he sues the Scottish government over its handling of the sexual misconduct complaints.

The British pound rose against the euro and the dollar on Wednesday after chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier indicated that progress had been made in Brexit negotiations. "We are prepared to offer Britain a partnership such as there never has been with any other third country," he told reporters in Berlin after meeting German foreign minister Heiko Maas. The EU would not allow anything that weakened its single market, however.

Macron has said he was happy to play "main opponent" to new Hungary-Italy axis of anti-migrant politicians, as EU prepares for next year's elections.

The Liberal and Democrat group in the European Parliament has called to revoke the Sakharov prize for human rights which the parliament awarded to Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 1990, when she was a political prisoner, because of the current repression of her government against the Rohingya minority. The parliament should "send a clear message that these horrible crimes will not go without punishment," said MEP Urmas Paet.

The European Commission called on France and the UK to resolve "in an amicable way" a dispute between fishermen of the two countries over scallop fishing. A British boat has been filmed colliding with French boats while French fishermen, who have to wait until 1 October to fish scallop, tried to prevent Brits from fishing in international waters off the Normandy coast.

Thd European Commission will "soon" publish policy recommendations on whether and how to review legislation on daylight-saving time and maybe scrap summertime changes. The recommendations will follow a public consultation that ended earlier this month with a record 4.6 million answers. "It's not the only element that we will take into account", the commission spokesman said Wednesday, adding the EU executive will talk with the European Parliament and stakholders.

The EU commission, in a novel approach back in 2015, linked EU agriculture policy to humanitarian aid. Did it work?