Euobserver.com

Efforts to reform 'Dublin', a regulation that determines who is responsible for asylum applications, remain mired in controversy. But other less contentious reforms that make up EU asylum laws have already reached provisional agreements.

Romanian lawmakers approved on Monday a judicial reform package that critics say could worsen graft in one of the European Union's most corrupt countries. The reform was proposed by the ruling Social Democrats (PSD) and backed by 175 to 78 votes. Criminal investigations will be limited to one year, forcing prosecutors to press charges quickly. Opposition parties said they would try to get the laws declared unconstitutional.

German chancellor Angela Merkel hosts on Tuesday talks with French president Emmanuel Macron in preparation for next week's EU summit. They need to table new European migration policies to fend of domestic political pressure on Merkel. The two leaders of Europe's biggest economies will also seek to thrash out a compromise between Macron's vision for a common eurozone budget and Germany's more cautious financial stance.

British MPs will vote again on Wednesday on how much of a say they should have if there is no final agreement with the EU when Britain leaves the bloc in March 2019. A large 354 to 235 majority in the upper chamber House of Lords approved on Monday an amendment giving the MPs a "meaningful vote" even if the government fails to reach a Brexit deal.

Italian interior minister and far-right leader, Matteo Salvini, said on Monday that his ministry is preparing a register of Roma people in Italy to see "who, and how many" there are. "We'll have a register," he told TV station TeleLombardia. The registry would provide an overview of the situation of Roma camps, and Roma people who do not have the legal right to be in Italy would be deported.

Slovenian prime minister Miro Cerar announced on Monday that the government will take neighbouring Croatia to court because it is unwilling to implement a ruling handed down by a Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague last summer over the route of the 670km border between the two EU countries. 

Croatia's EU accession in 2013 was, at the time, made conditional on its acceptance of international arbitration.

The Baltic Sea is almost an inland European lake - it borders Norway, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Kaliningrad and Russia. It also has an EU strategy - and an action plan.

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has defied calls for the European People's Party to expel his 'illiberal' Fidesz party - instead telling the group they need to reform to fit his 'Christian democracy' stance.

After a thorough analysis in cooperation with EU countries we have identified many regulatory restrictions that hamper innovation and investment in the retail sector.

German media report that Audi CEO Rupert Stadler was arrested on Monday in relation to the investigation into the 'Dieselgate' emissions-cheating scandal. Newspaper Handelsblatt said prosecutors were worried that he would obstruct the investigation by talking to witnesses. The illegal defeat devices which parent company Volkswagen Group was revealed in September 2015 to have used in millions of diesel cars, were first developed at Audi.

Police fired tear gas against protesters in Greece and Macedonia over the weekend, as diplomats signed a name deal to unlock EU enlargement.

EU states, plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, registered 728,470 asylum applications last year, a 44 percent drop compared to 2016. Germany had the highest registrations at 222,560, followed by Italy and France.

Non-citizens from Nigeria to Afghanistan get a binding 'vote' on whatever the EU's internal debates submit to them. They will vote with their feet on whether to keep trying their luck when faced with a new system.

EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom met Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in Canberra on Monday to officially launch negotiations on a free trade deal, with the first round of negotiations to be held in Brussels in early July. The two traded goods worth €48bn and services worth €27bn last year. It "would benefit small & large companies on both sides, creating jobs & growth," tweeted Malmstrom.

Last weekend some 175,000 people in the Basque country demanded a 'right to decide'. For some, it means more autonomy from Spain, others independence. "We want to open a second front within the Spanish state," says one Basque politician.

An agreement on a eurozone reform is "within reach," said French finance minister Bruno Le Maire, according to German media, following discussions with his German counterpart Olaf Scholz (SPD) in Hamburg over the weekend. There are still two or three open points, which should be solved at the latest when German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron meet on Tuesday at Merkel's Schloss Meseberg country residence.

German chancellor Angela Merkel and the new Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte will meet in Berlin on Monday, in a series of bilateral meetings this week aiming to foster agreement on a new stricter EU migration policy ahead of next week's EU summit. French president Emmanuel Macron met Conte in Paris already on Friday, where the two called for asylum processing centres to be set up in migrant countries.

German chancellor Angela Merkel was Sunday offered more time to agree a new EU migration policy by her interior minister, Horst Seehofer, who said he did not want Germany's government to fall. Seehofer wants police stationed at borders - against EU rules - turning back migrants arriving from other EU countries. Merkel plans a series of bilateral meetings with EU leaders ahead of next week's summit to find a solution.

Payments regulation has the potential to make or break the FinTech revolution, which will have meaningful consequences for the whole financial services sector and society more broadly.

Eurozone ministers are expected to give the green light to the final disbursement of aid to Greece and agree on measures to help with its debt burden. Meanwhile, the government in Berlin is shaken by Bavarian rebels over migration.