EU governments seek more fiscal flexibility for defence and energy, as calls grow for Eurobonds. But integrating fragmented AAA issuers to deepen the euro safe-asset market might be a more credible first step, says EUobserver columnist Judith Arnal.

https://euobserver.com/218367/why-eurobonds-will-never-fly-without-credible-fiscal-enforcement/

Delivering help to Palestinian refugees is harder than ever due to fragile relations with host countries, a volatile conflict, and funding cuts, said veteran German humanitarian Dorothée Klaus, who is director of the UN relief agency in Lebanon.

https://euobserver.com/218159/interview-palestinians-in-lebanon-limbo-need-a-state-un-refugee-chief-tells-eu/

In 2003, the EU promised the Western Balkans that they would one day become members. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Montenegro are all candidates for EU membership. Why are they still waiting after more than two decades?

https://euobserver.com/218352/listen-will-the-western-balkans-ever-join-the-eu/

The two candidates most likely to be the UK's next prime minister say they want to reverse Brexit. But it's likely to be a slow process rather than a grand event.

https://euobserver.com/218299/a-process-not-an-event-but-brejoin-is-in-the-air/

As Putin personally stages an “exceptional” three‑hour missile barrage on Kyiv billed as vengeance for a deadly dorm attack, his own pro‑war bloggers seethe that Russia burned an ultra‑expensive nuclear‑capable weapon for little visible gain.

https://euobserver.com/218328/nuclear-capable-oreshnik-missile-used-on-ukraine-and-pro-war-russians-are-disappointed-and-furious-with-the-results-ukraine-battlefield-update-day-1551/

The EU Commission is now aiming a series of blows at China's trade surplus - pulling out the 'overcapacity instrument' instrument from its armoury, which would cap imports of certain Chinese products to the EU.

https://euobserver.com/218160/eu-china-trade-war-edges-closer-as-brussels-lines-up-emergency-import-safeguards/

Next time you hear an EU commissioner say the AI Act needs to be 'simplified', the honest translation is: a company asked them to do that, and they said yes.

https://euobserver.com/217590/simplifying-the-ai-act-thats-code-for-how-big-tech-captured-brussels/

The depopulation situation in Ukraine is particularly acute. The country faces a dual crisis: its population has been declining for over 30 years, and the Russian invasion has only accelerated this trend. Safeguarding a country’s demographics and its future during wartime is a dilemma with no easy solutions – and EU accession might not suffice to reverse the trend.

https://euobserver.com/217278/war-is-draining-ukraine-of-people-and-even-eu-membership-wont-stop-the-population-collapse/

Most of Europe has seen antisemitism re-emerge dramatically and in explicit and violent forms. Yet alongside it, a more insidious trend is also taking hold: the growing normalisation of Holocaust distortion through fabricated imagery, misleading historical narratives and manipulated content.

https://euobserver.com/217251/the-auschwitz-violinist-who-never-existed-europes-new-wave-of-holocaust-distorting-fakes/

From concerns over Israel to getting negotiations right with "our American friends," data protection has been no walk in the park for veteran EU supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski.

https://euobserver.com/216609/interview-europes-data-chief-on-sharing-info-with-us-the-concerns-are-really-big/