EU data protection chief launches Frontex investigation

Three far-right French MEPs are to stay on a European Parliament blacklist after losing a legal challenge.

Every year, neo-Nazis come together to pay tribute to Nazi war criminals and their collaborators, from Benito Mussolini to Rudolf Hess, Ante Pavelić, Hristo Lukov, and of course Adolf Hitler, in events that have become rituals on the extreme-right calendar.

We're trying out a new format, in which we publish an op-ed and a counter-op-ed. This week, we have the S&D group president responding to EPP chairman Manfred Weber's call for stricter financial screening of NGOs to combat corruption.

Frustration over the lack of cooperation from member states and the European Commission has left MEPs probing spyware in the EU upset and demanding answers.

Jailed Greek neo-Nazi MEP Ioannis Lagos, who continues to draw a European Parliament salary, had his immunity lifted for a second time.

Sweden has launched new EU talks on combatting racism and antisemitism — but not Islamophobia, prompting accusations of a rightwing approach.

Press-freedom groups from Paris to New York have voiced dismay at Sweden's proposal to weaken a landmark EU law against corporate and political bullies.

Next summer's EU elections could see voters targeted by very personal ads and EU parties more free to take foreign money, as talks on new laws build momentum.

Europe's top prosecutor Laura Kovesi wants to create an elite corps of highly-specialised financial fraud investigators. The demand came in Kovesi's introduction to the annual report published by the Luxembourg-based European Public Prosector's Office.

The Strasbourg-based human rights watchdog Council of Europe wants Russia to pay for its crimes in Ukraine. Its secretary general Marija Pejčinović Burić says this includes setting up a new claims register to gather evidence for eventual prosecution and reparations.

The EU's legitimacy and credibility has also suffered recently due to the Qatargate scandal engulfing the European Parliament, which undermines the EU's ability to protect the rule of law in member states.

EU ambassadors signed off — with qualified majority — on two decisions that would give the green light on EU ratification of the convention in areas where the EU has exclusive legal competence.

Levits also criticised western European countries for having a provincial understanding of Europe and for naively developing a dependency on Russian energy.

Israel is still a functional democracy and no sanctions are foreseen, the EU has said, amid mounting concern on its new rightwing government's abuse of rule of law.