EU leaders will open talks with car industry leaders on Friday (12 September) on how to build a cheap European-made ‘e-car’ as they seek to kick-start the ailing sector. 

The main intrigue of the joint Belarus-Russia “Zapad-2025” military exercise, which ends on Tuesday, is the attempt of the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko to exploit it to start the process of de-escalation of relations with the West.

Ursula von der Leyen's State of the Union speech announced a clever plan on paying for Ukraine's reconstruction with seized Russian assets — it avoids the thorniest legal problem of expropriating sovereign assets, it mitigates some financial stability risks, and it delivers liquidity to Ukraine at greater scale. But will it work, asks Judith Arnal?

Legal scholars have dubbed it a "sleeping beauty" — a potent yet practically unused EU Parliament instrument akin to the EU's own Article 7, designed to safeguard the rule of law and the integrity of its institutions.

Today, we kick off an anniversary campaign to convince new supporting members to join EUobserver's mission of providing the information citizens need to safeguard EU democracy.

Russian spies are still active in the EU capital and have a "higher risk appetite" than before the Ukraine war — despite Belgium's efforts to push back against their plots.