Euobserver.com

EU ministers face a race against time to decide on whether to work with a new UN authority on international tax policy. But France and Germany have been leading European opposition to the new tax body.

Belgian prime minister will outline his country's presidency programme while MEPs discuss neo-fascism, media freedom, and Hungary's veto of Ukraine at the first plenary of 2024. The World Economic Forum in Davos will also take place this week.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, according to a new report that highlights the reasons behind worrying figures — such as the fact that global poverty will not be eradicated for another 229 years.

The European Medicines Agency's office bills were back in the headlines this week, less than five years after the bitter Brexit battle.

The European Commission says it discussed with Cypriot authorities the 5 January bombing of an NGO fighting racism in Nicosia. "The bomb attack ... and the authorities' reluctance to even acknowledge it, are a wake-up call for Europe," said Kisa.

No province in Italy seems to be richer and luckier than South Tyrol, but clouds seem to be gathering over this dreamland. Tourism is fueling a housing crisis and creating new social divides — while far-right alliances loom.

In some ways, EU governments' inability to take a fresh look at the Middle East through the colonial and anti-racist lens reflects their own uneasy relationship with European Muslims.

The EU cannot afford to underestimate Russia's ability to interfere in Moldova's internal affairs, particularly in light of autumn's pivotal presidential elections.

Without more joint borrowing, member states will miss green and digital investment targets, economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told MEPs.

As the coastline of Galicia in northern Spain wakes up to another day with hundreds of volunteers cleaning microplastics from the beach, the EU has sounded the alarm about the impacts of plastic pellets on the environment and human health.

In the run-up to the European Parliament elections, French president Emmanuel Macron reshuffled his government with the intent of curbing the far-right's rise and his own party's decline. Will it work?

Germany has pledged to resettle more UN-screened refugees than any other EU member state, with around 13,000 — spread out over a two-year period.

MEPs have proposed a free disability card, but they also want to go further than the Commission's original proposal, which focused on short-term stays rather than living situations, creating some financial barriers to the right to free movement.

The EU is aiming to send at least three warships to the Red Sea by March to help stop Houthi attacks on commercial vessels.

Some farmers showed up with far-right stickers or symbols, such as the plough-and-sword flag of the Landvolkbewegung (Rural People's Movement) — an extremist group dating to the 1920s, when it helped pave the way for the Nazis in rural areas.

The upcoming European Parliament elections will be a make-or-break moment this year, when decisions (or the lack thereof) will significantly shape the trajectory of the EU. These are the 10 key questions that the EU is facing this year.

The next EU elections will take place in June 2024, and the Commission is already expecting a surge in youth voting, which was a major contributor to the unprecedented turnout in the 2019 elections.

2023 saw encouraging figures in the labour market, says a new report from the International Labour Organisation. However, low productivity and falling living standards project a cloudy outlook for 2024.

With parties across Europe in the throes of confirming their candidates for the 2024 elections, now is the moment to secure more youth voices in the next parliament.

Debates over a new EU's compulsory licencing system offer hope for a unified approach to medicine production across the EU. But including the possibility of exports under an EU compulsory license is crucial to show global cooperation.