Euobserver.com

Economy commissioner Paolo Gentoloni said the real challenge is whether member states can stick to their national plans and timelines. However, more than a dozen EU countries still need to ratify legislation to start the funding.

Italian media have reported some 1,400 migrants arrived on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Sunday. EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson is asking EU states to help relocate some in a bid to help Italy.

The EU-Mercosur trade agreement, as it stands, would exacerbate the 'boomerang effect' of pesticides banned in the EU re-entering the bloc on food imports.

The question remains whether the EU can take advantage of the latest talks, and other shifts in the Middle East, to reverse its own diplomatic marginalisation.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has signed a decree allowing the transfer of presidential power to the security council if he is murdered or otherwise unable to perform his duties, Reuters reports. Lukashenko said in April he was planning to change the way power in Belarus was set up. Previously, if the president's position became vacant, power would be transferred to the prime minister until a new president took oath.

German finance minister Olaf Scholz is to be the centre-left SPD party's candidate for chancellor in September's elections, after more 96 percent of 600 party delegates backed him Sunday. The former Hamburg mayor has campaigned on climate neutrality, a €12/hour minimum wage, and more investment in the healthcare sector. The SPD is currently on 16 percent in polls, behind the Greens (26 percent) and the centre-right CDU/CSU bloc (23 percent).

The European Union has not made any new orders for AstraZeneca vaccines beyond June when their contract ends, European internal market commissioner Thierry Breton said, after the EU signed a deal with Pfizer-BioNTech, the Irish Times reports. The Commission last month launched legal action against AstraZeneca for not respecting its contract for the supply of Covid-19 vaccines and for not having a "reliable" plan to ensure timely deliveries.

EU institutions needed to take more powers from national capitals, for instance, in the health sector, the pandemic has showed, according to French president Emmanuel Macron, speaking on Sunday. "We need to learn the lessons given this major shock of the pandemic; we need to beef up our common capacity," he said. "We've noted, oftentimes, that Europe wasn't moving forward quickly enough, was lacking ambition," he added.

Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon has vowed to hold a second independence referendum after the pandemic, after her Scottish Nationalist Party won a fourth consecutive term in power and increased its number of seats in elections last weekend. Only a court ruling could stop the referendum, she noted. But talk of "ripping our country apart" would be "irresponsible and reckless", British prime minister Boris Johnson said.

Voting on Syria at the world's chemical-weapons watchdog has shed light on its friends - and the geopolitics of its 10-year old conflict.

Chinese, Russian, and Saudi millionaires bought EU passports from Malta using loopholes to avoid having a "genuine link" to the country, according to leaked documents from Henley & Partners, a London-based firm which designed Malta's golden-passport industry. Many passport-buyers spent less than three weeks in Malta and left letterbox-type residences empty most of the time, the leaked files, exposed by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, an NGO, showed.

India has set a world record of new cases, with 314,835 being recorded on Wednesday, and 1m cases in just four days, The Guardian writes. It surpassed the previous record of just under 300,000 set by the US in January. It comes as fears mount over oxygen supplies and hospital beds in some areas of India, as the surge of cases puts enormous pressure on the health system.

US president Joe Biden is expected to formally recognise the killing of Armenians by Turkey in 1915 as "genocide", US officials have told the AP news agency, in a potential rift with Nato ally and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who denies it. Biden might do it in a speech on Armenia's Day of Remembrance on 24 April, AP said, after over 100 congressmen urged him to "tell the truth".

Russia should pay "costs" for its 2014 bomb attack in the Czech Republic, the US has said, as Nato and the EU face a "crucial test" of diplomacy.

The West would face an "asymmetrical, rapid, and harsh" strike if it crossed a "red line", Russian president Vladimir Putin said in a speech Wednesday, which focused on coronavirus and the economy. "We'll decide for ourselves ... where the red line is," he said. He accused Western powers of plotting a coup in Belarus. His Cold-War rhetoric came amid a military build-up around Ukraine and redoubled opposition protests in Russia.

Japan is poised to declare a state of emergency in the capital, Tokyo, plus two other regions, amid a fourth coronavirus wave, just three months before the start of the Olympic Games, The Guardian reports. Domestic media said the government was considering tougher measures for Tokyo, Osaka prefecture and neighbouring Hyogo prefecture, as experts warned that mutant strains of the virus were driving new outbreaks and straining health services.

UN human rights experts called on Russia to allow jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny to be medically evacuated and treated abroad, saying they believed his life was at risk, Reuters reports. The UN experts said: "We believe Navalny's life is in serious danger," adding "We are deeply troubled that Navalny is being kept in conditions that could amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Syria's voting rights in an international anti-chemical weapons body were suspended Wednesday, after 87 member states voted in favour of the sanctions, 15 against, and 34 abstained at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. Proof Syria has been gassing its own people was "irrefutable", Luis Vassy, France's OPCW ambassador, who introduced the motion, said. The suspension was the first-ever in the OPCW's 24-year history.

Hungary's government plans to tweak laws that underpinned its attacks on foreign-funded universities and civil society organisations, which the EU's top court struck down for breaking EU rules, Bloomberg reported. One draft amendment would scrap provisions that the European Court of Justice said placed "discriminatory and unjustified restrictions" on foreign donations to NGOs. Another would amend rules that effectively forced the George Soros-funded Central European University to move to Vienna.

Germany's Constitutional Court gave the green light to approve legislation ratifying the European Union's recovery fund, as it dismissed legal challenges against the debt-financed investment plan, Deutsche Welle writes. The decision is key to launching the bloc's €750bn recovery spending to mitigate the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the ruling does not mark final approval in the case, as the court still has to make a definitive judgment.