Euobserver.com

Thousands of people attended a protest on Sunday in the western German city of Dusseldorf against government restrictions imposed to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, Deutsche Welle reports. The organisers had expected as many as 50,000 people would attend, but only a few thousand joined the protest. There were banners with slogans such as "End to panic, coronavirus is a lie."

British banks Barclays, Coutts, and Lloyds are to stop serving UK customers resident in the EU at the end of the year because it will become illegal to do so in the absence of a new post-Brexit deal on financial services, The Sunday Times reports. Lloyds told 13,000 customers in Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Slovakia they will terminate accounts by the end of the year.

Some 12 out of 37 areas of Madrid to undergo new lockdowns on grounds of rising infection rates have held protests saying they were unfair because they targeted mostly areas with a lower per capita income and higher migrant populations, the BBC reports. "No to a class-based lockdown" banners said in the suburb of Vallecas. A regional health chief said he would shut down the whole city if need be.

EU foreign ministers will have nothing to show Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya when they meet her in Brussels on Monday, after Cyprus blocked sanctions.

The European Commission sealed a second Covid-19 vaccine deal, amid fears over the fair distribution of supplies worldwide. So far Brussels has secured, or is negotiating, a stock of nearly two billion doses.

A German court just heard crucial witness testimony about Syria's state torture programme - in the first such trial of its kind in the world.

Migration and foreign policy will take centre stage next week, as the EU tries to come to a common position on Turkey, China, Russia and the sanctions on Belarus.

Mark Rutte's comment is the first time the leader of an EU country has publicly considered the possibility of the EU integration project continuing without recalcitrant states.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday troops would be pulled from the street to guard its borders with EU countries, Deutsche Welle writes. "We are compelled to withdraw our troops from the streets, have half our army on guard and close our state border with the West, first of all with Lithuania and Poland," said Lukashenko. Polish officials said Lukashenko's threat was propaganda, as the borders were already closed.

Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has stored caches of ammonium nitrate, the chemical in the recent Beirut blast, in Europe with a view to future attacks ordered out of Iran, US counterterrorism coordinator Nathan Sales said Thursday, The Guardian reports. "I can reveal that such [Hezbollah] caches have been moved through Belgium to France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland," he said. "This activity is still under way," he added.

The EU's top court has ruled that Europe acted legally when imposing sanctions on Russian energy firms and banks over its invasion of Ukraine in 2014. "The companies in question could not reasonably have been unaware of the reasons why the targeted restrictions at issue were imposed on them," it said Thursday. The verdict overturned an earlier, lower court ruling which had gone in Russia's favour.

Britain would renege on Brexit withdrawal treaty provisions only if the EU "engaged in a material breach of its duties of good faith or other obligations ... thereby undermining the fundamental purpose of the Northern Ireland Protocol", the British government said in new guidelines out Thursday. The UK would also "activate appropriate formal [withdrawal treaty-based] dispute settlement mechanisms with the aim of finding a solution through this route," it added.

France recorded 10,593 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours on Thursday, with a surge among young people and the over-75s. The rate of infections to people tested stayed stable at 5.4%, however. Authorities, the same day, said the crowd to welcome the finale of the Tour de France bicycle race in the Champs-Élysées boulevard in Paris this coming Sunday would be limited to 5,000 people.

Greek police launched an operation early on Thursday to relocate the more than 10,000 people without shelter following the fire which destroyed the overcrowded Moria refugee camp, the Guardian reported. Asylum seekers have been transferred into a temporary facility outside the port town of Mytilene on the Greek island. Earlier this week, five former residents of Moria camp were arrested in connection with the fire.

The World Health Organization's European director, Hans Kluge, warned national governments against reducing the 14-day quarantine period, especially given the "alarming rates of transmission" in Europe this month, the BBC reported. Last week, France reduced its quarantine for people possibly exposed to someone with Covid-19 from 14 to seven days. "The September case numbers should serve as a wake-up call for all of us," Kluge said.

MEPs adopted a resolution on Thursday calling on the European Council to "finally act" in light of "overwhelming evidence" of breaches of EU law regarding the legislative and electoral system, the independence of the judiciary, and fundamental rights in Poland. MEPs expressed concerns about how the situation has deteriorated since the Article 7 procedure was initiated in 2017, calling on member states to use this system to its full potential.

EU focus has moved to returning failed asylum seekers, and a "negative asylum decision will come together with a return decision", Ylva Johansson said. "No more Morias", she pledged.

Buying an EU passport does not give you impunity from visa-bans or asset-freezes, officials have said, as citizenship sales multiply.

The European Parliament has adopted a report calling on the European Commission to propose the first-ever EU law to boost the inclusion of Romani people.

The European Commission has secured at least 300 million doses of AstraZeneca's potential Covid-19 vaccine, as member states seem to be facing the much-feared second wave of the pandemic.