Euobserver.com

The UK government published Thursday its contentious white paper on Britain's future relationship with the EU . It proposes a free trade area for goods with "a new facilitated-customs arrangement" to ensure "no tariffs on any goods", as well as a dispute-resolution mechanism. It wants the UK to stay free "to chart its own path in the areas that matter most for its economy," mainly services and digital.

US president Donald Trump said Nato member states agreed to further increase defence spending after reportedly threatening to pull out of the alliance. "I let them know that I was extremely unhappy," he told journalists on Thursday. Trump had said earlier that he wanted allies to spend 4 percent of GDP on defence. French president Emmanuel Macron later denied that allies agreed to go beyond the current 2-percent target.

The EU has been slow to react to the collapse of Cambodian democracy - but if it ever chooses to use it, Brussels has substantial influence and leverage over Cambodia.

Growth in the EU is slowing down, the European Commission said in its summer forecasts published Thursday. Growth is expected to be 2.1 percent this year and 2 percent next year - compared to the 2.3 percent and 2.0 percent forecasted in May. Finance commissioner Pierre Moscovici pointed out at "the impact on confidence of trade tensions and policy uncertainty, as well as rising energy prices."

The regional court of Schleswig-Holstein, in Germany, ruled on Thursday that Catalan former separatist leader Carles Puigdemont can be extradited to Spain. Judges said however that he could be sent back only for embezzlement charges, not for 'rebellion', another charge put on him by Spain's prosecutor. The final decision to extradite Puigdemont, who remains free, will be taken by the German federal prosecutor.

Nato has asked Macedonia to join the Western bloc, with US leader Donald Trump giving Russia little to smile about so far.

German interior minister Horst Seehofer said on Wednesday that he remains optimistic about reaching a deal with his Italian counterpart Matteo Salvini to return migrants to Italy by the end of July. Salvini, however, said that a broader strategy to protect Europe's borders was needed first, when the two met in Austria ahead of an EU interior ministers meeting in Innsbruck on Thursday and Friday.

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has linked a spike in Irish property prices to "the search for yield by international investors", Irish Times reported, based on answers to Sinn Fein MEP Matt Carthy in the European Parliament. Irish house prices rose 12.3 percent in the first quarter of 2018 compared to first qarter of 2017. On average EU property prices grew 4.7 percent, according to Eurostat. .

The Czech parliament on Thursday gave its backing to a new minority government headed by billionaire prime minister Andrej Babis, becoming the first Czech government since the 1989 to rely on votes from the communist party. The vote ended a nearly nine-month struggle to secure a parliamentary majority behind the new government, which is composed of Babis' ANO party and the Social Democrats.

EU's anti-fraud office concluded its probe last month into Karel Pinxten, a former member of the Luxembourg-based European Court of Auditors.

Nordic countries are moving focus from saving energy to changing diets in order to achieve the UN's sustainable development goals.

US leader Donald Trump, backed by Poland, has begun the Nato summit with a tirade against Germany's plan to build a pipeline with Russia.

"Germany is totally controlled by Russia because they'll be getting from 60 to 70% of their energy from Russia, and a new pipeline, and you tell me if that's appropriate because I think it's not and I think it's a very bad thing for Nato," US leader Donald Trump said at a Nato summit in Brussels Wednesday, referring to Germany's plan to build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline with Russia.

An estimated 512.6 million people lived in the European Union on 1 January 2018, which is 1.1 million more than the year before, according to Eurostat. More deaths (5.3m) than births (5.1m) were recorded in the EU in the period, meaning the population grew due to net migration. With 82.9 million, Germany remained the largest country followed by France (67.2m) and the UK (66.2m).

House prices in the European Union on average climbed 11 percent between 2010 and 2017, but with a huge difference from country to country, Eurostat figures out on Tuesday showed. The highest increases were recorded in Estonia (+73 percent), Sweden (+56 percent), Austria (+49 percent), Latvia (+47 percent) and Luxembourg (+40 percent), while the largest decreases were recorded in Spain (-17 percent), Italy (-15 percent) and Cyprus (-9 percent).

Russian internet company Mail.ru was among 61 app-developing firms to which Facebook gave a 6-month extension allowing them to keep collecting data on users despite a policy change stopping such collection in 2014, reports CNN. The admission came in a list of written answers Facebook provided to a US Congress committee. State-funded Russian billionaire and Mail.ru founder, Yuri Milner, was also a major investor in Facebook.

EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday that 80 percent of a Brexit deal has been agreed. "We have coloured in green today more or less 80 percent of the context with the Brits. That means that we agreed on many key issues of this draft treaty," he said. How to avoid a hard border in Ireland remains unsolved.

German interior minister and CSU leader, Horst Seehofer, launched on Monday his so-called migration masterplan, claiming credit for an increase in the pace of deportations of rejected asylum-seekers. "Just on my 69th birthday - and I didn't request it - 69 people were sent back to Afghanistan," he joked. "That's way above earlier levels." Of the 69 migrants, 51 were deported from Bavaria, Seehofer's home state.

The EU court will rule next year whether a €2.4tn 'quantitative easing' programme was in line with the eurozone central bank's mandate.

The White House has signed Nato's draft declaration ahead of this week's summit, but no one knows what Donald Trump has up his sleeve.