Euobserver.com

Next summer's EU elections could see voters targeted by very personal ads and EU parties more free to take foreign money, as talks on new laws build momentum.

Hundreds of Belgian workers laid off last year are set to benefit from an EU job funding scheme after TNT, a logistics firm, made Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport their primary hub of operations.

In the spirit of ongoing experimentation, EUobserver presents our very first themed week. It's about work.

For France's over three million 'precarious workers' the retirement age has long been 67 — if they ever do retire.

Coming to Europe to work from outside the EU is hard. Despite dramatic labour shortages across sectors and EU countries, work permits for non-EU workers are few and those that exist often leave workers at the mercy of exploitative employers.

Meanwhile, in Brussels and Berlin talks are expected to intensify after Germany threw a spanner in the works last week on a bill to ban the sale of new combustion-engine cars and vans in the EU from 2035.

Belarus' jailing of a Nobel-prize winning activist was a "fake" verdict in a "sham trial", the EU's top diplomat has said, amid threats of further sanctions against the regime in Minsk.

Pro-transparency MEPs are asking probing questions into possible conflict of interest between a senior EU commission official and Qatar, following revelations his business class trips were paid by Doha while negotiating a market access deal for its national airline.

Corporate profits have been the dominant driver of inflation since the Covid-19 pandemic, yet the ECB consistently is more concerned about labour costs spiralling out of control.

Failure to urgently reconsider its support for Russia's war will further damage China's relations with the West and the global community, which would ultimately be disastrous for its economy and international standing. However, China could still choose another path.

Who defends Putin's interests in Brussels, how, and why: An investigation into four years' of data by Novaya-Europe names MEPs who loyally vote along pro-Russian lines.

The European Parliament's environment committee voted to end so-called 'super greenhouse gases' — used in cooling systems power transmission stations.

As the body count continues to rise from the Crotone shipwreck off the Calabria coast, authorities in Italy are looking for who to blame. At least 68 people are now confirmed dead, including children, after a 20-metre boat sank.

The pandemic, war, and inflation have only worsened a situation that already required urgent action. MEPs and NGOs fear that the lack of binding rules for member states will not ensure that those most in need are actually covered.

Belgium is weighing up concern for lost jobs at home with lost lives in Ukraine as it ponders relations with Russia's royal-friendly richest man.

Bulgaria goes to the polls again in April — the fifth election in less than two years. That's the most on the European continent in more than a century.

Europe's top prosecutor Laura Kovesi wants to create an elite corps of highly-specialised financial fraud investigators. The demand came in Kovesi's introduction to the annual report published by the Luxembourg-based European Public Prosector's Office.

Back in 2014, at Nato's summit in Wales, five trust funds were created intended to help Ukraine modernise its defence capabilities — including on cyber-defence.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán's MPs are going to Finland and Sweden on a mission to claw back EU money in return for Nato favours.

The Strasbourg-based human rights watchdog Council of Europe wants Russia to pay for its crimes in Ukraine. Its secretary general Marija Pejčinović Burić says this includes setting up a new claims register to gather evidence for eventual prosecution and reparations.