Saturday
17th Apr 2021
Frontex is invoking EU interception rules, plus a European Court of Human Rights case against Spain, as precedents to allow authorities to turn back migrants in boats in the Aegean Sea. But legal analysis by the EU Commission says otherwise.
The Kamiano food distribution centre in Brussels is expecting 20 people every half hour on Christmas Day. For many, Kamiano is also more than that - a support system for those made homeless or impoverished.
EU tribunal said Hungary's legislation made it "virtually impossible" to make an asylum application. Restricting access to international protection procedure is a violation of EU rules.
The Belgian and Bulgarian prosecutors who were appointed had also not been the experts' first choice. Belgian prosecutor Jean-Michel Verelst has challenged the council's decision at the European Court of Justice.
Frontex has pledged to create a searchable central document management system by the end of the year, while Europol has agreed to be more proactive.
Leading centre-right and liberal MEPs have called on Lisbon to clarify the appointment of José Guerra as its EU public prosecutor, amid efforts to depoliticise the new anti-fraud body.
Out of the seven serious incident reports shared with this website, five deal with allegations against Greek authorities, while the remainder describe separate incidents in Germany and Hungary.
MEPs probing the EU's border agency Frontex cross-examined the agency's director. They also spoke to EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson, who made it clear she had little sway over the agency.
A management board at Frontex is tasked to make sure its operations stick to the rules. An internal probe, known as the working group, will soon deliver its final report on the Warsaw-based agency.
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 Hungarian legislation, dubbed 'Stop Soros', was a 2018 amendment to Hungary's criminal code and threatened aid workers and human rights advocates working with asylum-seekers with up to a year in prison.
Some 14 MEPs have created a group to probe allegations of rights abuse by the EU's border agency Frontex. Its head, Fabrice Leggeri, welcomed its creation and said it "is about time".
Romania's ministry of internal affairs wrote to Frontex claiming it did not engage in any illegal pushbacks of people on rubber boats into Turkish territorial waters. The country says it followed EU engagement rules and Greek orders.
A letter sent to the European Economic and Social Committee by a group of cross-party MEPs fighting for LGBTi rights expresses fears that a recently-appointed Polish member may try to undermine those rights.
Slovenia's populist prime minister Janez Janša attempted to discredit a Brussels reporter after she published a critical article about the state of media freedoms in the country. The European Commission condemned the PM's language - but refrained from naming him.
OLAF said fraudsters may offer to sell large quantities of vaccines, deliver a sample in order to pocket the first advance payment - and then vanish with the money, or deliver fake vaccines.
Poland's right-wing rulers will row back on plans for a "political" tax on free press after a media blackout, the editor of one leading newspaper predicts.
Poland is bringing a divisive anti-abortion law into force, amid escalating EU doubt on the legality of its court system.
Portuguese justice minister Francisca Van Dunem, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, argued that the Lisbon government was only following the advice of the country's magistrates when pushing for its candidate.
The European Commission has not ruled out allowing police access to encrypted services. Instead, it says a balance needs to be found to protect rights while at the same time offering some leeway to law enforcement.
With Brexit talks intensifying, MEPs are pressing negotiators to cut UK access to the EU's Schengen Information System, a database used by police and border guards.
"How well I'm screwed," was the then Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat's first thought on 16 October 2017, when he found out his country's best-known journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, had just been murdered by a car bomb.
Belgium revoked residency rights of 16,563 EU nationals between 2008 and 2019, according to Liège University migration scholar Jean-Michel Lafleur.
More than 60 NGOs and media, including EUobserver, have signed a call for an EU-wide law to stop the rich and powerful from silencing critics with malicious litigation.
The EU border agency Frontex's annual budget for 2020 is €460m. Now they are launching court proceedings against two pro-transparency campaigners for not paying them €24,000 in legal fees after losing a case last year.
The EU recently signed a huge contract for a US anti-corona drug which, the WHO says, might not work, but there's little transparency on how the deal was made.
The European Commission has urged Poland not to abandon a treaty against domestic violence, as Warsaw continues to drift further from EU norms.
The European Commission exchanged 24 letters with Bulgaria, Cyprus and Malta over their 'Golden Passports' schemes between October 2019 and October 2020. Malta took 67 days to respond to the commission's first letter, followed by Cyprus (42) then Bulgaria.
You hear voices already calling for the European Council to give in to the Hungarian and Polish demands, by coming up with supposedly 'technical' solutions allowing them to veto any corruption case or breaches of the rule of law .
The fate of Jonathan Taylor, a British whistleblower stuck in legal limbo in Croatia, is a test of European laws designed to protect those who put themselves at risk for the common good.
At the very moment when an incumbent president across the Atlantic was carrying out staggering attacks on the foundations of democracy, the European Parliament obtained a historic agreement to protect the rule of law in Europe.
Migrants ought to learn EU languages and "integrate" their children, while encrypted messaging apps should give keys to authorities to combat terrorism, EU ministers are preparing to say.
Plans to reform the EU free-travel zone were already announced in September by the European Commission. On Friday, it re-stated those intentions following demands by the French president for a major overhaul.
