Euobserver.com

Egypt and Sudan called for international mediation on Tuesday to reach a legally binding agreement with Ethiopia on the filling and operating the of Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram writes. This mediation should involve the UN, the African Union, the EU, and the US. The EU stated that it was ready to play a bigger role on condition that all parties involved agreed to it.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told EU ambassadors in Ankara Tuesday he would "strengthen the rule of law based on human rights" in Turkey with new judicial appeals and electoral laws. He told French president Emmanuel Macron by video-link the same day that as "two strong Nato allies" they had "serious potential" to cooperate on Middle East security and counter-terrorism. The pro-EU overtures come after recent EU mini-sanctions on Turkey.

America has sanctioned Russia for the attempted murder and jailing of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, in a show of return to transatlantic unity.

Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz said his country and Denmark plan to stop relying solely on the European Union for coronavirus jabs, Deutsche Welle reports. Kurz said both countries plan to work with Israel to produce second-generation vaccines. While Israel has vaccinated a large part of its population, the EU has faced criticism for its slow vaccine rollout and slow approval of the vaccines themselves.

Judges applying to join Poland's Supreme Court should have the right to appeal against the opinions of a body reviewing candidates, the EU's top court said Tuesday, part of an ongoing rift between the EU and Warsaw. The EU court also said that amendments to the law on the National Council of the Judiciary, which in effect remove judicial review of its decisions, including judges' appointments, could infringe EU law.

The European Commission on Tuesday launched an investigation into whether German plans to compensate lignite-fired power plants for being phased out earlier than foreseen are aligned with EU state aid rules. Under the German coal phase-out law, coal will have to end by 2038. But Germany has agreed to pay €4.35bn to the main producers of lignite-fired electricity for the early closure of power plants.

France will allow people under 75 with existing health problems to get the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, the health minister said, changing the country's earlier stance that the vaccine should be for the under-65s only, Reuters reports. France hopes to speed up its vaccination campaign. As of Saturday, 4.55 million people had received at least one shot of vaccine, compared to 6.17 million in Germany and up to 20.9 million in Britain.

Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and other high-ranking Saudi officials have been accused of committing crimes against humanity in a criminal complaint filed in Germany by Reporters without Borders (RSF), the press freedom group, The Guardian writes. The complaint focusses on the "widespread and systematic" persecution of journalists in Saudi Arabia, including the arbitrary detention of 34 journalists there and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

The special committee on foreign interference was created in June with the aim of assessing the foreign threat to European democracy - and identify possible tools to fight it.

Earlier this month the European Parliament set up a permanent probe into the EU's border agency Frontex. Now that the Frontex boss is set for his first grilling, MEPs have decided to keep the public in the dark.

The Nordic electricity market is an example of successful market integration plus climate action, as the share of sustainable energy keeps growing, the European Commission said. However, the decarbonisation of the transport sector remains a challenge.

The EU is driving a hard "EU-first" policy on vaccines and almost nobody talks about it. Maybe because there is a lot of sugar-coating put on a hard and ruthless policy.

These are dark times in Belarus, with the government tightening the screws like never before. They are preparing for spring just as much as the opponents of the regime are.

EU foreign relations chief Josep Borrell told MEPs on Monday that his service did not have the resources to counter Chinese and Russian disinformation on the same, huge scale that it is being used against Europe. "We don't have the capacity to produce massively information presenting our views," he said. The foreign service has a small debunking unit, called East Stratcom, but its mandate covers Russian propaganda only.

Financial services firms moved some €1.5 trillion of assets and 7,600 jobs from the City of London to Europe due to Brexit, according to a survey by auditing company EY. "The days of significant swathes of asset and job relocation announcements appear to have passed and will likely be replaced by the slower yet ongoing movement of people and assets to Europe for compliance purposes," EY noted in its report.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) in Amsterdam is certifying a vaccine-making facility in India, the Serum Institute of India (SII), enabling it to make extra doses of British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca's drugs there for export to Europe, Reuters reports, citing anonymous sources. The EMA audit is to be finished in March. AstraZeneca failed to deliver its EU vaccine orders on time. SII said it was prioritising production for India's domestic use.

Some 400 MEPs and national MPs have signed an open letter to EU leaders and foreign ministers saying they should urge the new US administration to stop what they called Israel's "rapidly progressing de facto annexation [of Palestine's Israeli-occupied West Bank], especially through accelerated settlement expansion and demolitions of Palestinian structures." They also said the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip "remains at risk of violent escalation at any moment".

Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš has tightened lockdown measures, saying hospitals were nearing collapse as the number of patients in intensive care jumped to record levels, Reuters reports. The country of 10.7 million has the highest-per-capita infection rate in the world over the past week, according to the Our World in Data website, 11 times higher than Germany.

MEPs are scheduled to vote on Wednesday to change the rules of procedure of the centre-right European People's Party parliamentary group to allow the suspension of a member party.

The debate about the much-delayed Conference on the Future of Europe so far has been locked in endless institutional infighting over who should lead the event - lowering the expectations about what can be achieved in the coming months.