Euobserver.com

The parliamentary elections set for 17-19 September could be an opportunity for democracy in Russia - amidst voter dissatisfaction over economic recession, growing inflation, environmental problems and an unfolding health crisis.

Social Democrat Olaf Scholz won a televised debate on Sunday between the three leading candidates to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor after Germany's federal election on 26 September, a survey by pollster Forsa showed, Reuters writes. The snap poll showed 36 percent of voters believed Scholz won, ahead of 30 percent for Greens candidate Annalena Baerbock and 25 percent for Armin Laschet, the candidate of Merkel's centre-right CDU/CSU.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are working on a United Nations proposal aimed at establishing a safe zone in Kabul to allow passage for people trying to leave Afghanistan, French president Emmanuel Macron said, Reuters reports. Macron, who said France had begun discussions with the Taliban on further evacuations, said the resolution would be brought on Monday to an emergency UN Security Council meeting of veto-wielding members.

The Italian coastguard picked up 539 people from a fishing boat drifting near the small Mediterranean island of Lampedusa on Sunday in one of the largest single rescue operations on record, the BBC reports. The asylum seekers, who had come from Libya, included women and children, and many of them showed signs of having been physically abused prior to embarking, according to charity MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

UK carrier British Airways is to launch a low-cost airline in Europe by the summer of 2022 to compete with rivals Easyjet and Ryanair, according to a leaked internal memo, CNN reports. The firm confirmed it was working "on proposals for a short-haul operation at Gatwick", but declined to comment further. It made a loss of €2.3bn last year, but expects the short-haul market to quickly recover after the pandemic.

EU banks have done little to adapt to new environmental, social, and governance-related (ESG) risks, according to US asset-management firm BlackRock in a report tasked by the European Commission, Reuters reports. Implementation of new ESG measures "needs to be accelerated", it said. Awareness of ESG risks in lending policy and stress testing was sometimes "superficially" applied, "limited ... in scope", and "at an early stage", it added.

The messy US pull-out from Afghanistan has shown Europe must build up its own army, EU internal-market commissioner, Thierry Breton, a close ally of French president Emmanuel Macron, has said. Europe needed "a military projection force" capable of "intervening militarily outside our border", he wrote in a blog on Friday, adding: "Europe has always exercised its global influence through its soft power ... this is no longer sufficient".

The former leader of Austria's far-right FPÖ party, Heinz-Christian Strache, was found guilty of corruption by a regional court in Vienna on Saturday and given a suspended 15-month jail sentence. The court said he changed a law to help a friend secure public-health contracts back when he was part of a ruling coalition which collapsed in 2019, but Strache denies wrongdoing and can appeal the verdict in a higher tribunal.

German police detained over 100 people and four officers were injured at an anti-coronavirus rules rally in Berlin Saturday, in which thousands marched through the city centre and some tried to storm barricades near parliament, Reuters reports. Most candidates for federal elections September have promised no new lockdown despite a fourth wave of infections. But some regions, such as Baden-Wuerttemberg, are tightening restrictions on unvaccinated people's access to public places.

US travellers coming to the EU face higher chances of being asked to quarantine upon arrival due to an increase in coronavirus infections in America.

To reject any humanitarian, military intervention is not only problematic from an ethical point of view. It also shows a lack of long-term thinking about European self-interest.

Some MEPs described the commission chief's letter as a "provocation" and "hair-splitting" on a rule-of-law mechanism that was meant to stop democratic backsliding in EU states.

A number of countries say there is a high threat of a terrorist attack at Kabul airport and have warned their citizens not to travel there, the BBC reports. Australia, the US, and UK have issued alerts to their citizens. Those already outside the airport are advised to leave the area immediately. More than 82,000 people have been airlifted from Kabul, which fell to the Taliban 10 days ago.

Europe experienced its hottest year on record last year with the average temperature almost 2°C higher than the period from 1981 to 2010, The Times writes. The UK Meteorological Office said last year was about 0.5°C warmer than the continent's previous warmest year, 2015. Europe's five warmest years on record have all occurred since 2014. Many countries reported their highest annual average temperatures, including France, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

The European Court of Human Rights has requested that Poland and Latvia provide aid for dozens of Afghan and Iraqi migrants stranded on the EU border with Belarus, Deutsche Welle writes. A group of migrants has been stuck on the borders of the two EU countries for around 14 days, with security forces preventing them from entering and making asylum claims.

Russia will have to split up control of its new gas pipeline to Germany under EU anti-trust rules, in a court ruling seen as a victory by Ukraine.

The former EU trade commissioner, now an economics professor, Cecilia Malmström, has warned Australia is becoming "more and more isolated" on climate action, The Guardian reports. Malmström told a webinar hosted by the Australia Institute that climate change was "the most urgent global crisis we are finding ourselves." "Australia is a big economy, a big emitter, you need to do more – we all need to do more," she added.

The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed a complaint by French firefighters against mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations, Euronews writes. More than 670 professional and volunteer firefighters had complained about compulsory vaccines and said the measures violated their privacy rights. The Court said that the complaint fell outside its scope, but did not rule out future cases on the matter if mandatory vaccinations cause "a real risk of irreparable damage."

Ukraine's future lies in the hands of its citizens - the vast majority of whom believe a stronger democracy and a better future are best ensured by greater EU integration.

The EU and the US have sounded the alarm over the recent deployment of troops from Eritrea to the Ethiopian region of Tigray, where nine months of war have killed thousands of people and unleashed an increasingly serious humanitarian crisis, Reuters reports. Forces from the Ethiopian Tigray rebels recaptured much of the territory in June. But the new Eritrean deployments raises the prospect of an escalation in fighting.