Euobserver.com

This year's 10 worst weather disasters around the world cost 3,500 lives and caused insured damages worth $150bn (€123bn), international charity Christian Aid has said, raising the alarm on global warming. Just 4 percent of damages in poor countries were insured, aggravating humanitarian problems. "Whether floods in Asia, locusts in Africa, or storms in Europe and the Americas, climate change continued to rage in 2020," Christian Aid's Kat Kramer said.

"I was a very regular girl, working in sales and marketing. No one in my family was politically active. There was no justice anywhere, but we all kept silent. For some reason, I started to feel angry about it."

EU diplomacy has changed from a man with a phone to "a very large ship", but growth in bulk came with loss of agility, French former diplomat, Pierre Vimont, said.

The financial crisis eventually went to the core of the institutional infrastructure of the euro - whose reform is still ongoing a decade later.

Russia announced on Tuesday that it is expanding the list of European officials banned from entering Russia, in response to sanctions imposed by the bloc over the poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny. The Russian foreign ministry described EU sanctions as "a confrontational political decision," saying that their list will include "those who are responsible for promoting anti-Russian sanctions initiatives" in the 27-member bloc.

The European Commission on Tuesday banned the export of plastic waste from the EU to non-OECD countries, except for clean plastic waste sent for recycling. This is part of the new rules applying on the export, import and intra-EU shipment of plastic waste. Last year, the EU exported 1.5m tonnes of plastic waste, mostly to Turkey and Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and China.

A new study has found microplastics in the placentas of unborn babies for the first time, with scientists concluding that the particles are likely to have been ingested or breathed in by the mothers, The Guardian reported on Tuesday. "Due to the crucial role of [the] placenta in supporting the foetus's development, the presence of potentially harmful plastic particles is a matter of great concern," researchers said.

France has resumed transport links with the UK, on condition travellers get a negative test result, as the EU tries to contain a new type of Covid-19.

France's top administrative court, the Council of State, ruled on Tuesday that there was "serious doubt over the legality" of police drones surveillance of demonstrations urging Paris police to halt the practice "without delay", the BBC reported. The ruling comes amid parliamentary discussions over a controversial security bill that includes police use of drones. Privacy groups argue that the use of drones to police protests violates freedom of expression.

The European Union's Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, told EU ambassadors in Brussels on Tuesday that divisions over fisheries in the Brexit negotiations remain, Reuters reported. Barrier described the latest offer on sharing out fish catches from 2021 as "totally unacceptable". The EU is willing to cut the value of fish caught in UK waters by around 25 percent, while Britain is demanding a 30-35 percent cut, said a diplomat.

UN humanitarian affairs coordinator Mark Lowcock said on Tuesday that European countries would be dealing with Covid-19 in 2022 and beyond, as low-income countries are only expected to gain access to vaccines late next year, The Guardian reported. "It is highly likely the places where the virus finds it is easier to survive longest will be fragile, conflict-affected states with weak institutions, but the virus can get everywhere," Lowcock said.

Jose Manuel Barroso was European Commission president before and after the Lisbon Treaty entered into force in December 2009. He discusses how it impacted his work and the broader implications for an expanding European Union.

"Both referenda weren't about the constitution," Guy Verhofstadt says. "In France, it became a referendum on Jacques Chirac. In the Netherlands, it was about whether they paid too much - something some Dutch politicians have been repeating for 10 years."

It might have made sense economically, but the infamous Bolkestein Directive directly foreshadowed later tensions over migrant workers and highlighted social anxieties that became more dominant after the 2009 economic crisis.

Unfortunately, enforced disappearances are continuing to occur around the world and there is an additional risk of states using the pandemic and associated states of emergency as cover for enforced disappearances.

Member states can start vaccination programmes in the next few days, after EU approved the use of Pfizer and BioTech's Covid-19 drug.

Immigration police in France are monitoring networks of safe houses and believe an estimated 100 sophisticated people-smuggling gangs are targeting the UK, The Times writes. The dismantling of the UK network, thought to have made €1m a month facilitating a "VIP" service, shed light on the inner workings of one of these organisations. There could be about 100 similar gangs offering Channel crossings, the report said.

Several Covid-19 infections have been found in a Chilean military base in Antartica, the only continent that had not been touched by the pandemic so far, the Chilean army announced on Monday, Le Soir reports. "Thirty six men have tested positive, of whom 26 are soldiers and 10 civilians who are working on a maintenance programme on the Antarctic base," a spokesperson of the Chilean army said in a statement.

French, German, and UK foreign ministers have agreed not to set preconditions to a revival of the Iran nuclear deal, amid hopes Tehran and Washington would come back into compliance with the existing accord, instead of trying to amend it, The Guardian reports. The European position emerged amid the first high-level talks by signatories of the non-proliferation deal - France, Germany, the UK, Iran, China, and Russia - since 2018.

Details of last week's new EU sanctions on Belarus expose how the regime is trying to crush a peaceful uprising.