Euobserver.com

Sweden is bringing home 150 special-forces soldiers from Europe's 'Takuba' counterterrorism mission in Mali, in line with previous plans, but might also pull 250 from a UN mission, called Minusma, in the region due to the arrival of Russian mercenaries in Mali, Swedish foreign minister Anna Lind said Friday. "We now know [there] is the [Russian] Wagner group ... the question is what do we do with Minusma," she said.

The new German government will not support French plans to label nuclear energy as 'green', foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said in Paris on Thursday.

French president Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that member states need an emergency mechanism to respond to threats at the bloc's external borders, Reuters reported. "A sovereign Europe is for me above all a Europe capable of controlling its borders," he said, arguing the EU countries are often "too slow to react". Macron said that the emergency mechanism would have to rely on cooperation with the EU border agency Frontex.

Former Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi has started campaigning to run for Italian president in early 2022, MPs in his Forza Italia party told The Guardian on Thursday. "I've met him twice in the last two weeks and he was totally fired up," one MP said. The 85-year old Berlusconi has been convicted of tax fraud and is still on trial for alleging bringing witnesses in a sex-party scandal years ago.

Britain is sending a further 140 military engineers to help Nato ally Poland secure its border with Belarus after Minsk began flying in asylum seekers and forcing them to storm barbed-wire fences. "Our commitment to European security is unwavering and we'll always offer support to our allies. This non-combat support will assist Polish efforts to protect their border and pass on vital engineering expertise," UK defence secretary Ben Wallace said.

EU governments agreed that Croatia was ready to join the passport-free 'Schengen' travel zone, in a move set to extend membership from 26 to 27 European states. "Croatia is ready," home-affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson said after meeting with EU interior ministers Thursday. Croatia joined the EU in 2013 and the EU Commission recommended its Schengen accession in 2019, but it was not yet clear when the formalities would be completed.

Shareholders of Shell are expected to approve on Friday a plan to move the company's tax residency to London, from the Hague. The oil and gas giant announced the move in November, arguing that it was necessary to simplify the company's structure. Nevertheless, critics say Shell's decision was motivated by a Dutch court ruling that ordered the company to reduce its carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030

The EU has launched a €1.5bn programme aimed at promoting human rights and democracy during 2021–2027, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday. The priorities include promoting equality, inclusion and respect for diversity, working towards the universal abolition of the death penalty, as well as supporting pluralist, participatory and representative democracies. EU funds will also support the UN high commissioner for human rights.

The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) on Thursday welcomed an agreement reached on extending and updating roaming rules – an initiative widely-regarded as an EU success. But BEUC regrets that the final agreement does not include cheaper calls or messaging to another EU country. "Consumers still face disproportionate surcharges" for the so called intra-EU calls, they say. The current rules were due to expire at the end of June 2022.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday warned rich countries against hoarding vaccines, following the emergence of the new Omicron variant. Experts argue that this is inefficient from the epidemiological and transmission perspective, Reuters reported. "There is risk that the global supply is again going to revert to high-income countries hoarding vaccine," WHO's vaccine director Kate O'Brien said. Just 7.5 percent of people living in Africa have been fully vaccinated.

The initiative is particularly aimed at protecting women and the LGBTIQ community as EU member states are already required to criminalise crimes committed with a racist or xenophobic motivation.

Resistance is emerging among some EU states to proposals to help distribute people saved in search-and-rescue operations as part of its pact on migration and asylum.

"Russia is not planning any attack on anybody," Russia's veteran EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov, has pledged.

The European Commission has unveiled a proposal aimed at improving employment conditions for gig workers, such as Uber drivers or Deliveroo riders. But industry players claim new rules would lead to the loss of thousands of jobs in the EU.

The first two chapters of the EU's sustainable taxonomy have passed - but the future of the ambitious labelling system for green investment is far from certain.

As the European Parliament's internal market and consumer protection committee prepares to vote on its opinion on the Digital Services Act next week, the fate of targeted ads will become clearer.

The Greens and the FDP disagree on major political issues. While they both support the climate battle, their ways of ushering change are vastly different: the Greens advocate tougher environmental laws and regulations, and the FDP calls for market-based solutions.

One of the challenges for the French EU presidency is to convince its European counterparts that Paris's demand for harmonised standards covering agricultural imports is inseparable from the EU's flagship Green Deal, and the core concept of European sovereignty.

US soldiers in Ukraine were "not on the table", US president Joe Biden has said after recently speaking with Russian president Vladimir Putin by phone, while promising spectacular economic sanctions if Russia again attacked Ukraine. "If in fact he [Putin] invades Ukraine, there will be severe [...] economic consequences like none he's ever seen or ever have been seen," Biden told press outside the White House on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

British prime minister Boris Johnson apologised and his aide Allegra Stratton resigned on Wednesday after a video emerged of senior advisors joking about a Christmas party at Downing Street last year, when social events were banned under Covid-19 restrictions. Johnson said he did not know of the party and apologised for the "offence it has caused". Later on Wednesday, he announced tighter Covid-19 measures amid a surge of Omicron cases.