EUobserver
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<p>Brussels' premier non-profit news media on EU affairs. Small team, big ambitions. EUobserver is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what's really going on in Europe. Our independent journalism cuts through the noise to give you the facts that matter. </p><p>Consider a membership and support our journalism that holds EU policy makers to account. </p><p><a href="https://euobserver.com/register" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">euobserver.com/register</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p>
Posts
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Post #4500498
As Russia floods the front with faster Geran drones and more Iskander missiles, Ukrainian commanders warn that this winter’s air war could overwhelm already stretched air defences and critical infrastructure. https://euobserver.com/232010/jet-powered-russian-drone-could-cause-harsh-winter-for-ukraine-ukraine-battlefield-update-day-1629/
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Post #4433137
Creating an institution that cannot, by design, reach the one man it was created for is not accountability. It is expensive symbolism — and it costs Europe exactly the credibility it is trying to project, argues former ICC judge Christine Van den Wyngaert. https://euobserver.com/231739/europe-is-creating-a-new-international-court-for-putin-one-he-may-never-face-while-in-power/
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Post #4431405
As Hungary struggles through an energy crisis, prime minister Péter Magyar is fighting off Fidesz attacks, recovering billions from an Orbán-linked era, and facing controversy over who really controls the country’s public media. https://euobserver.com/231663/hungary-faces-record-heat-nuclear-fears-and-a-public-media-scandal-ahead-of-august-presidential-vote-day-87-of-the-tisza-government/
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Post #4427941
From secret deportations and European-funded projects destroyed in Gaza to EU recovery funds and mining lobbying, these ten investigations expose the widening gap between Europe’s rhetoric and the realities of its policies and actions. https://euobserver.com/231715/10-euobserver-investigations-from-2026-so-far-you-shouldnt-miss/
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Post #4425627
After loudly demanding more oversight of the EU’s €300bn Global Gateway scheme, national ministers are now skipping its own board meetings. “It's a major part of the budget, but it's not really understood,” said the Irish liberal MEP Barry Andrews, who chairs the parliament’s development committee. https://euobserver.com/231683/eu-ministers-leave-global-gateway-board-seats-empty-despite-transparency-complaints/
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Post #4373735
With turbines winding down at Paks, bridges in darkness and freight trains halted at peak hours, Hungarians are suddenly feeling how a shrinking Danube can upend daily life and the wider economy. https://euobserver.com/231254/paks-nuclear-plant-winds-down-amid-historic-danube-low-as-far-right-urges-hungarians-to-defy-calls-for-energy-saving/
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Post #4362135
As the EU's AI act comes into force, new research warns how vulnerable our political opinions may be to AI interference. Citizens may lose the ability to identify the source of their opinions, limiting their democratic autonomy - a fundamental pillar of EU politics https://euobserver.com/231229/as-eu-ai-act-enters-into-force-study-warnschatbots-blur-voters-own-political-views/
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Post #4275523
A group of leading scholars has questioned the legality of an EU Commission options paper on restricting imports from Israeli settlements, before EU foreign ministers revisit the issue in September. https://euobserver.com/230910/eu-options-paper-on-israel-settler-imports-is-misleading-and-designed-to-justify-inaction-legal-scholars-say/
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Post #4269078
Germany has betrayed its post-war moral and legal foundations by shielding Israel from accountability for alleged violations of international law, writes former EU envoy Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff. https://euobserver.com/230839/germany-has-lost-its-moral-compass-as-it-shields-israel-from-sanctions-and-legal-scrutiny/
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Post #4211170
Among EU officials, the Brussels rationale has hardened into doctrine: “Pashinyan is taking Armenia away from Russia.” That sentence has become the whole of EU policy toward Yerevan. It is also a strategic error, one that is making Armenia less democratic and less safe at the same time without loosening Russia's grip. https://euobserver.com/230243/brussels-isnot-pulling-armenia-away-from-russia-it-is-pushing-yerevan-into-autocracy/
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Post #4137646
Preserving this Greek carve-out sends precisely the wrong signal. It tells companies that sufficiently valuable commercial interests may eventually secure exemptions. It tells member states that delaying agreement can produce favourable outcomes. And it tells Moscow that Europe's political unity remains negotiable when influential industries are affected. https://euobserver.com/230246/brussels-found-russias-lng-weak-spot-then-carved-out-an-exception-for-a-greek-billionaire/
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Post #4064748
By racing ahead of the currently stalled EU process, Sweden joins a small group of member states using national bans on 'forever chemicals'. https://euobserver.com/230085/sweden-moves-to-ban-forever-chemicals-in-consumer-products-from-2028-as-eu-wide-ban-remains-in-limbo/
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Post #4007367
With one of the EU’s last openly left-wing migration agendas and a high-profile clash with Donald Trump over the Middle East, Sánchez’s fight for survival in Madrid could reshape Europe’s political balance in 2027. https://euobserver.com/229665/listen-does-pedro-sanchez-stand-a-chance-of-being-reelected/
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Post #3980953
Behind the friendly “pizza comunista” and open-door consultations lies a party that still hails Marx, Engels and Lenin and wants Austria out of the EU, raising awkward questions for voters who back its housing fixes but ignore its revolutionary long game. https://euobserver.com/224565/i-am-elke-the-communist-mayor-who-won-austrias-second-largest-city-with-housing-fixes/
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Post #3980949
The EU has left the door open to age-estimation by behavioural profiling, and the EU's own data protection authorities have warned that this can be more intrusive than the verification it replaces, inferring age from a user's activity at scale, with weaker accuracy for the children it is meant to protect. https://euobserver.com/228652/von-der-leyen-is-right-to-reject-a-blanket-kids-social-media-ban-but-her-plan-still-lets-big-tech-off-the-hook/
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Post #3979754
With almost the entire government on the chopping block, Ukrainians could soon feel the impact in everything from frontline energy security to schooling in minority regions and already‑strained relations with Poland and Hungary. https://euobserver.com/227493/what-does-another-government-reshuffle-orchestrated-by-zelensky-mean-preparing-for-elections-and-the-need-to-swap-a-servant-for-a-creative-mind/
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Post #3962443
Sacked Ukrainian defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov warns about exhausted soldiers, chaotic command and lies to the public. https://euobserver.com/229439/zelenskys-defence-shakeup-backfires-as-ousted-minister-fedorov-denounces-army-chief-and-reveals-11-failings-in-ukraines-army/
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Post #3864863
MEPs in the European Parliament's budgetary control committee voted to shield the Patriots for Europe group from any criminal investigation into misspending EU funds. https://euobserver.com/228920/politicians-vote-to-shield-themselves-from-investigation-how-typical/
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Post #3858342
A tribunal created for one conflict — while acts of aggression in the Middle East and Latin America go unanswered — serves the court’s critics their strongest argument on a silver platter: that international criminal justice is a selective instrument of Western power, not a universal principle. https://euobserver.com/226421/the-icc-is-in-its-worst-crisis-yet-and-europes-double-standards-are-a-big-part-of-the-problem/
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Post #3855360
With France now joining just five other EU countries that permit assisted dying, millions of Europeans still face radically different choices over how they can end unbearable suffering, depending purely on which border they live behind. https://euobserver.com/228681/listen-france-legalises-assisted-dying-is-europe-following/
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Post #3824974
From Delhi to Jaipur, India is rolling out facial-recognition technology to monitor millions of its citizens. Investigate Europe has found that behind much of the software is Spanish company Herta Security – but critics argue the government promise of public safety is not the main aim. https://euobserver.com/227595/eu-banned-facial-recognition-cameras-made-in-spain-now-watch-millions-of-indians/
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Post #3782754
The alliance avoided disaster in the Turkish capital - but it is becoming increasingly irrelevant, writes Edward Lucas. https://euobserver.com/227147/natos-ankara-summit-was-a-pantomime-serious-leaders-saying-absurd-things/
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Post #3780454
A ceasefire in name only, a blocked civilian committee in Cairo, and EU threats of sanctions that may not materialise — this episode unpacks why Gaza’s path to peace keeps slipping away. https://euobserver.com/227136/listen-when-will-gaza-finally-find-peace/
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Post #3717197
Drawing on months of research and consultations with lawyers, trade experts and former and current EU officials, we propose a regulation under the EU's Common Commercial Policy. Such regulation should aim at ensuring that EU trade complies with international law and does not help sustain the illegal settlements economically. https://euobserver.com/226724/the-eu-can-ban-trade-with-illegal-israeli-settlements-heres-how/
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Post #3693092
Ahead of the key meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday (13 July), the European Commission has circulated an options paper exploring ways to restrict trade between the EU and Israeli illegal settlements in the West Bank. Here, EUobserver explains them. https://euobserver.com/226735/a-ban-on-israeli-settlement-products-here-are-the-options-the-eu-is-considering/
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Post #3691770
A Paris judicial tribunal has just ruled on a case brought against TotalEnergies by environmental groups and the City of Paris. The judgment does not halt the company's fossil-fuel expansion. But it does something the industry has spent half a century resisting: it holds TotalEnergies legally responsible not just for the emissions from its operations, but for the emissions produced when the oil and gas it sells are ultimately burned https://euobserver.com/226432/as-europe-swelters-paris-jud...
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Post #3686631
A group of leading university professors have urged the Irish EU presidency to sit out of negotiations on EU tax and digital laws, pointing to "insurmountable conflicts of interest". https://euobserver.com/226563/irish-eu-presidency-should-sit-out-talks-on-tax-and-digital-files-over-over-conflicts-of-interest-academics-say/
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Post #3667409
The far-right are increasingly taking the lead in EU migration policies as the mainstream centrist parties continue to be lured by their ideas. https://euobserver.com/226168/how-did-nine-sd-meps-two-greens-and-half-renew-europe-end-up-voting-for-the-eus-new-far-right-inspired-deportation-law/
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Post #3649016
What the Socialists, Liberals and Greens can no longer do is denounce the hard-right while sustaining the parliamentary machinery that gives it influence. Yet that is precisely what they have been doing since 2024, and the renewal of the European Parliament presidency is about to expose the contradiction. https://euobserver.com/226109/europes-grand-coalition-is-over-its-time-for-mainstream-parties-to-break-with-the-european-peoples-party/
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Post #3529563
Bulgaria, once quietly funnelling Soviet-calibre shells that kept Ukraine from collapse, is now invoking war fatigue and religious loyalty to justify slamming the brakes on further aid and sanctions. https://euobserver.com/222996/at-the-start-of-the-war-it-helped-save-ukraine-now-bulgaria-says-it-has-done-enough/