Euobserver.com

In this week's Euroscopic podcast; antisemitism and confusion in France and Germany, Sweden joins NATO, Novaya Gazeta Europe editor Mikhail Komin on Ukraine and EU and a chat with DiEM25, an EP election hopeful campaigning in Berlin.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen urged "a new European defence mindset" to strengthen the bloc's defence capabilities. But will her latest proposal, to use Russian assets for Ukraine's military needs, stir up controversy?

Member states failed on Wednesday to agree to the EU's long-awaited Corporate Sustainable Due Diligence Directive, after 13 EU ambassadors declared abstention and one, Sweden, expressed opposition (there was no formal vote), EUobserver has learned.

Disputes between member states, notably Germany, highlight the lack of coordination among national industrial capabilities for a European Defence Industrial Strategy — which may include the EU's first ever defence commissioner.

Macron's tabu-shattering words on Western troops in Ukraine likely meant more special forces on the ground, but were also a new alarm-call on Russia's growing threat.

Amazon lobbyists will officially be banned from the European Parliament until further notice after an internal body decided to withdraw their badges.

MEPs have adopted new rules on transparency and targeting of political advertising, but they won't kick in before the EU elections.

Hailed with loud applause by the 329 MEPs that approved the text, the final compromise approved on Tuesday is actually much weaker than the original EU Commission proposal first tabled in 2022.

If we pretend that states are democratic because they are in the EU's geopolitical tent, we betray democracy. Conversely, functioning democracies can make geopolitical choices that the EU does not like.

The EU Commission's 2022 CSDDD proposal did not include provisions incorporating "conflict due diligence", they were added, after the Russian invasion, by the European Parliament and Council into the final directive text — for Ukraine's sake, vote for it.

All of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán's MPs voted in favour of Sweden's entry into Nato on Monday, in an anticlimactic end to his veto drama.

India raised its first formal complaints about the EU's suite of new environmental laws on Monday, warning against protectionism in the name of environmental protection.

Following weeks of demonstrations across Europe, farmers returned to Brussels to protest over unfair competition in prices, as EU agriculture ministers met just a few metres away to discuss a response. The police used water cannon and tear gas.

Luxembourg has given some 4,000 potentially risky people the all-clear to read Nato and EU secret documents in the past eight years.

EU banks pledge to return €120bn to shareholders as commercial banks earn record profits on central bank deposits. A main reason cited in bank earning calls is interest rates.

By refusing to disclose the correspondence that led to the partial unblocking of Hungary's EU funds, the European Commission calls into question its own credibility.

In a fractious parliamentary vote, the level of party discipline often decides the fate of legislation. Party discipline among nationalists and far-right MEPs is the weakest, something potentially significant after the June elections. Data by Novaya Gazeta Europe and EUobserver.

EU agriculture ministers meet in Brussels amid new farmers' protests. MEPs will hear from Alexei Navalny's widow and give the final green light to the €50bn Ukraine facility, while the CBAM proposal faces a formal challenge at a WTO meeting.

The EU is to reward Poland's new government with €137bn for undoing the rule-of-law misdemeanours of its predecessor, in a lesson for Hungary.

British and EU officials have formally signed an agreement between the UK and Frontex, the EU's border agency, that, if not a genuine deal on migration co-operation, can at least be sold as such.