Euobserver.com

Greece is planning to move some 2,000 asylum-seekers from the overcrowded Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos by the end of September, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos announced - ahead of migration talks at an informal EU summit in Austria. The Moria camp currently houses 9,000 people in a facility built for 3,100. Those being moved will be sent to the mainland to have their asylum claims examined.

US sales of soybeans to the EU grew 133 percent in the 12 weeks to mid-September, compared with the same period last year, EU data seen by Reuters showed. The change in trade patterns follows Beijing tariffs on US soybeans introduced in retaliation for US tariffs on Chinese goods and a July pledge by Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker of Europe buying more US soy to avoid tariffs on EU cars.

Animals sometimes have to wait inside hot trucks for six hours at the Bulgarian-Turkish border.

The EU Commission presented on Wednesday a plan to improve transport, energy and digital infrastructure links with Asia, seen as a European response to China's Belt and Road Initiative. Asia requires an estimated €1.3 trillion per year for infrastructure investment in the coming decades while the Trans-European network for transport is estimated to require €1.5 trillion in the period 2021-2030, providing significant opportunities for EU companies, the commission said.

Bulgaria will support Hungary in its rule of law battle with the European Union, defence minister Krasimir Karakachanov told reporters on Wednesday after a cabinet meeting unanimously agreed to oppose any sanctions against Hungary. "Today it is Hungary, tomorrow it could be Poland, and one day it could be Bulgaria in the dock. Central and eastern European countries should act in solidarity and help each other," he said.

Spanish foreign minister Josep Borrell told attendees at a lunch in Madrid this week that US president Donald Trump seriously suggested the Spanish government build a wall across the Sahara desert to stop migration to Europe. Trump is thought to have made his comment when Borrell accompanied King Felipe and Queen Letizia to the White House in June.

The European Commission's rationale for reforming Frontex is flawed.

Denmark, the EU's cleanest country on paper, just got confirmation that its top bank perpetrated Europe's biggest-ever money-laundering scandal.

European Council president Donald Tusk on Wednesday in Salzburg, Austria announced that the EU aims to hold an summit with Arab League states in February 2019 in Egypt. The announcement follows a joint visit with Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz to Cairo where they held discussions with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Tusk wants to deepen relations with Egypt, including in the area of migration.

EU Council president Donald Tusk on Wednesday warned EU leaders ahead of the Salzburg summit to stop the blame-game over migration. "We can no longer be divided between into those who want to solve the problem and those who want to use it for political gain," he said, pointing out this year fewer than 100,000 migrants arrived in the EU, less than in the years before the 2015 migration crisis.

McDonald's tax deal with Luxembourg did not breach EU state aid rules, competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Wednesday. The EU executive's regulators said the reason the US fast food chain did not pay some of its taxes was due to the mismatch between US and Luxembourg laws. The decision comes after a three-year-long investigation, part of a wider crackdown against illegal sweetheart deals between EU governments and multinational companies.

Thomas Borgen, the Norwegian CEO of Danske Bank, Denmark's biggest lender, resigned Wednesday over allegations it laundered billions of illicit Russian money. "I really regret it ... I have lived up to legal obligations, [but] I think it is best for all parties that I stop," he said in a stock exchange notice. The bank published the "unpleasant" results of its internal probe into the affair on Wednesday.

Germany wants to join the Three Seas Initiative, an economic forum dominated by eastern EU states, as part of what its foreign minister Heiko Maas called "a new Ostpolitik" on Tuesday, referring to Berlin's policy on Russia. The forum focuses on reducing energy dependence on Russia at a time when Germany is building a new gas pipeline to Russia. The club's leading members are the increasingly illiberal Hungary and Poland.

Britain's Cambridge (3rd) and Oxford (7th) universities were the only European ones to make the top 10 in a ranking by Shanghai's Jiao Tong university Tuesday. US colleges filled the other top 10 spots. British schools UCL and Imperial College also made the 17th and 24th spots. The next best EU school was Copenhagen university (29th), followed by two other British universities (Edinburgh and Manchester), then France's Sorbonne (36th).

Polish president Andrzej Duda has asked US president Donald Trump to create an American military base in Poland called "Fort Trump". Trump told him in Washington Tuesday "we're looking at it very seriously" and said Russia had "acted aggressively" in the region. Trump also said he would help Poland stop a Russian gas pipeline to Germany, Nord Stream 2, and consider a visa waiver for Polish visitors to the US.

The European Commission plans to drop court action against Ireland after Dublin recovered €13.1bn of unpaid taxes from US tech giant Apple. "Good. So we can close the court action on recovery," EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager tweeted. The sum arose from an Irish sweetheart deal with Apple, which has its EU headquarters there, and which the EU said amounted to illegal state aid.

EU energy ministers agreed on Tuesday to accelerate use of hydrogen in transport and power generation to meet targets of 40 percent CO2 cuts by 2030. The bloc is considering moving to 45 percent, but Business Europe, an industry lobby, plans to torpedo that, according to an internal documents seen by German daily Sueddeutsche, which says lobbyists should argue it would make EU firms less competitive and question EU statistics.

Germany's government has fired its domestic spy chief, Hans-Georg Maassen, after he claimed chancellor Angela Merkel's views on recent anti-migrant riots in Chemnitz may have been based on a fake video clip and amid allegations of improper ties to the far-right AfD party. Maassen will become an official in the interior ministry instead, enjoying a higher pay grade than he does now, despite his defenestration.

People's Vote, a group seeking a second Brexit referendum, said Tuesday there were six scenarios to another plebiscite, including parliament's rejection of the deal, or snap elections. "MPs ... could yet reject it [Brexit]," they said. A study by Oxford Economics the same day said if EU migrants were forced out in a no-deal Brexit, the UK would need a five percent income tax increase to offset their tax contributions.

EU negotiator warned that UK and EU needed to agree on how to avoid a hard border in Ireland, as talk swirls on a possible Brexit summit in November.