The UK local authorities are concerned over the delivery of public services after Brexit amid the uncertainty of UK-EU and are preparing for social unrest after the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, the SkyNews broadcaster reported, citing the Brexit impact studies, conducted by local councils.

In their studies local authorities are trying to measure Brexit's impact on social care, border control and access to food products and medicines under the conditions of uncertain Brexit talks both with Brussels and within the government, the SkyNews broadcaster reported.

The news outlet, in particular, released a report of the Pembrokeshire County Council, in which the local authorities assessed the Brexit impact on 19 criteria. According to the report, Brexit will have a negative effect on all indicators, except for one.

US lawmakers are calling upon the Department of Defense to cut reliance on Russian energy at military bases in Europe, and to introduce sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 project.

Police sources are warning that 50,000 illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa are waiting in Morocco to invade Spain.

As we reported yesterday, boatloads of migrants are already washing up on Spanish beaches in scenes that have shocked observers.

Now according to a report in Spanish newspaper El Mundo, North Africa is becoming a “pressure cooker,” with at least 50,000 African migrants desperate to cross into the European country via the Strait of Gibraltar.

The report explains how criminal people smugglers are helping the migrants circumvent border controls in Morocco while telling them that Spain is their “paradise”.

The number of migrants waiting to storm Spain is currently at 50,000 and “continues to grow,” with the men becoming more “violent” in their efforts to reach Europe.

Spain is the new center of Europe's migrant crisis – and the conservative Popular Party leader Pablo Casado has blamed the socialist government after they accepted migrant rescue boat 'Aquarius,' which Italy had turned away.
The rescue boat, which carried 630 migrants, has been operated since February 2016 by SOS Mediterranee and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). Italy and Malta rejected the rescue boat in June, sparking a bitter row within the European Union, with the two countries demanding another member of the bloc take in the migrants on board. The ship ended up docking in Valencia; a move that Casado warned may be seen as a welcome sign for more arrivals.

A column in China’s Communist Party People’s Daily newspaper commended President Donald Trump on Monday for allegedly exhibiting “disdain” for NATO, calling for the eradication of the military coalition entirely.

The People’s Daily lamented that NATO continues to exist, demanding the group “should be relegated to the dustbin of history.” In particular, the publication appeared disappointed that American foreign policy experts condemned Trump for criticizing the current state of NATO rather than urging him to dismantle it entirely.

The newspaper compared NATO unfavorably to global agreements that the Chinese regime prefers, like the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Agreement on climate change, suggesting these were worth keeping but the agreements that bind NATO together are not.

The blaze that reduced the area to the east of Greece’s capital to resemble a post-apocalyptic landscape has killed 91 people, the Greek officials confirmed. The death toll is likely to rise.

According to authorities, most of these people died as a result of the fire, while some drowned in the sea after fleeing the disaster.

Countries of the NATO military alliance have been ordered by President Trump to increase their spending on weapons, and the reasons for his insistence they do so are becoming clearer.

It’s got nothing to do with any defence rationale, because, after all, the Secretary General of the US-NATO military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, has admitted that “we don’t see any imminent threat against any NATO ally” and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recorded in its 2018 World Report that “at $66.3 billion, Russia’s military spending in 2017 was 20 per cent lower than in 2016.”

Even Radio Free Europe, the US government's anti-Russia broadcaster, records that Russia has reduced its defence spending.

There is demonstrably no threat whatever to any NATO country by Russia, but this is considered irrelevant in the context of US arms’ sales, which are flourishing and being encouraged to increase and multiply.

The European Union extended the sanction list related to reunification of Crimea with Russia and construction of the bridge across the Kerch Strait. Six more Russian companies are hit by sanctions, according to the Official Journal of the EU.

Sanctions are introduced against Institute Giprostroimost, Mostotrest, VAD, Stroigazmontazh, Stroigazmontazh-Most and Zaliv Shipyard.

Restrictive measures come into force from July 31. They comprise assets freeze in the territory of the European Union. Furthermore, EU-registered individuals and entities cannot provide money to companies exposed to sanctions.

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s right-wing interior minister and leader of anti-immigrant Lega Nord, has claimed that Brussels is trying to “swindle” London in their Brexit negotiations, telling Theresa May to walk away without a deal.

Salvini, an outspoken EU critic, told the Sunday Times that the British prime minister should adopt a tougher stance while dealing with Brussels. “My experience in the European parliament tells me you either impose yourself or they swindle you,” he maintained.

Salvini urged May to be ready to pull out of the talks without a deal “because on some principles there is no need to be flexible and you should not go backwards.” He also lashed out at the 27-member bloc, saying: “There is no objectivity or good faith [for Brexit talks] from the European side.”

A parliamentary oversight body says the Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) ignored regulations and badly managed a Swiss man they employed to spy on German tax authorities.

The spy agent, known as “Daniel M.”, was arrested and sentenced last November by a German court for spying on German tax officials in a case that also raised questions about the role of the FISexternal link.

In a report published on Monday, the Parliamentary Control Committeeexternal link accused the FIS of having broken the law, which prohibits the gathering of data abroad in this case. "Active information gathering abroad should not have been permitted," it stated.

The FIS collected largely worthless information in the investigation, managed the spy badly and disobeyed the law, the report said.

Spain’s Interior Ministry, headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has approved several emergency contracts to establish a unit based in the Bay of Algeciras (Cádiz) to assist illegal immigrants upon arrival.

The total cost of these measures, for a period of only 3 months, amounts to almost €3.5 million, of which a total of €350,000 for translators and interpreters stands out.

The resolution, as reported by OKDIARIO, refers to the “emergency” caused by the “unexpected and massive arrival of vessels with immigrants to the Spanish coasts.”

A planned ID scheme for EU citizens after Brexit should be rolled out nationwide, a UK think tank has said, citing the Windrush* scandal as justification.

In a report on border controls (PDF), the right-leaning Policy Exchange raised the spectre of nationwide identity cards – an idea mooted back in the mid-2000s that collapsed due to the public's distaste for surveillance.

The report looked broadly at what it describes as a "smarter border" for the UK after Brexit, saying that technological change will allow for smooth passage of people and goods.

The European Commission, in its official war on cash, admitted that physical cash is perhaps not quite the source of all evil that many EU institutions, including the Commission itself, had made it out to be. And it has abandoned its war on cash.

In a report to the European Parliament and Council on the viability of EU-wide cash payment restrictions, the Commission made three crucial observations.

1. Cash restrictions would have little effect on terrorist financing

2. Cash restrictions could be useful in combating money laundering but are of limited help against tax fraud.

3. There is no appetite among the European public for EU-wide cash limits.

Ministers planning Brexit told media the Army is on standby to deliver key supplies like food, fuel and medicines in the eventuality of a no-deal scenario. Remainers have likened the revelation to “self-immolation.”

The possibility of a no-deal Brexit made the Ministry of Defence “dust off” blueprints to use of army trucks and helicopters to deliver key supplies to far flung parts of the UK – something usually reserved for civil emergencies, like severe weather.

Steve Bannon plans to lead a populist revolt throughout Europe which, if successful, will crush George Soros and his network of open-border NGO's to smithereens, according to the Daily Beast.

And just how does the former White House chief strategist and Goldman Sachs alum plan to do this?

Bannon will set up a Brussels-based non-profit NGO called "The Movement" which will go head to head with Soros - with the goal of uniting like-minded European parties and various conservative think tanks along with other support structures.

Italy’s right wing Interior Minister has told the Sunday Times that the European Union is deceiving Britain with regards to Brexit.

He stated in an interview that "There is no objectivity or good faith on the European side" and encouraged British Prime Minister Theresa May to take a tougher stance in negotiations with the EU now that she has apparently decided to take the lead role in the divorce, leaving newly appointed Brexit minister Dominic Raab on the side lines.

Mr Salvini, long known to be a critic of the EU blames a lot of Italy’s problems on the euro and also believes that the Union is ineffective with regards to the resolution of the non-stop flow of illegal migrants who initially targeted Greece and Italy but are now arriving in Spain in far greater numbers.

Nearly half of Swedes and Danes said they’d rather be in a 'Nordic Union' with their neighbors from Norway, Finland and Iceland than in the EU, a fresh poll revealed.

Research conducted by pollster Sentio for Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen showed 47 percent support the hypothetical Nordic Union in Sweden and 45 percent in Denmark.

32 percent of Swedes and 36 percent of Danes were happy to remain in the European Union, while the rest said they were undecided on the issue.

The 17 Austrian Identitarian Movement activists accused of forming a criminal hate speech organisation under the country’s mafia laws have been found innocent of all major charges, with two defendants forced to pay minor fines by a judge in Graz.

The conclusion of the case sees all 17 “hipster-right” anti-mass migration activists cleared of the charges that were brought against them earlier this month by Graz prosecutors who used the country’s anti-mafia law in an attempt to claim the activists were engaging in promoting hate speech, Kronen Zeitung reports.

The intervention of former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon in European politics could help rightwing parties become the biggest bloc in the European parliament next year, according to Nigel Farage.

The former Ukip leader predicted sweeping advances for anti-EU parties during next May’s European elections, aided by the new project announced by Bannon . Bannon, one of the architects of Donald Trump’s US election triumph in 2016 and the former head of the rightwing Breitbart News, aims to establish a pan-European populist foundation .

Farage told the Observer that, Eurosceptics could become the largest political grouping on the continent and predicted that anti-EU MEPs could secure between 176 and 235 seats in the European parliament elections next May. “My view is that somewhere between a quarter and a third of seats in the European parliament are going to be Eurosceptic and Euro-critical,” he said.

Europe needs its own special counsel, similar to Robert Mueller in the United States, to look into the alleged Russian disinformation campaign, president of the European parliament's Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Guy Verhofstadt said Monday.

On Sunday, the Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee issued a report in which the panel members said they had heard some evidence pointing to a campaign to influence UK election and referenda, allegedly led by Moscow.

Vienna has vowed not to accept any agreements which come at Austria's expense amid a deal on migrant policy reached in neighboring Germany between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. Cloppenburg regional parliament MP Michael Klitzing says migration is just part of a much wider, possibly irresolvable problem for Merkel.

Illiberal “Christian democracy” will replace multiculturalism after the European Parliament vote in 2019, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has predicted, adding that the EU elite have failed the people and should step down.

The European Parliamentary elections in May 2019 will decide the fate of the European “elite” and they’re “visibly nervous” about it, Orban told a crowd of ethnic Hungarians in the Romanian town of Baile Tusnad on Saturday.

It’s time for the current Western leadership of the EU to go, as it has failed to protect the bloc from immigration, he said.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini announced on Twitter that he is working on a zero tolerance policy for criminal migrants.

“I am working on an administrative order (#decretosicurezza) which will make it possible to refuse asylum requests if the person seeking it has committed a crime, because nowadays the law, except in certain cases, permits that criminal foreigners stay in the country and receive “protection” at the expense of the Italian people.

Just as was extremely evident prior to the actual vote in 2016, scaremongering around Brexit (deal or no deal) is escalating among the cognoscenti or desperate Remain 'told you so'-ers.

Britain's Sunday Times reports that UK ministers have drawn up plans to send in the army to deliver food, medicines and fuel in the event of shortages if Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal.

Blueprints for the armed forces to assist the civilian authorities, usually used only in civil emergencies, have been dusted down as part of the "no deal" planning, with helicopters and army trucks used to ferry supplies to vulnerable people outside the southeast who were struggling to obtain the medicines they needed.

However, as ominous as this sounds, The Sunday Times admits - a number of paragraphs into their "Army on standby for no-deal Brexit emergency" story - that a source inside the Ministry of Defense said they have not yet received "a formal request" to assist the civilian authorities.

This has been a difficult month for Jean- Claude Juncker. Film footage of the European Commission president staggering around the Nato summit was followed by an excoriating personal attack on him by a doyen of the Brussels Press corps, amid claims of morning gin sessions, befuddled judgment and rampant cronyism.

This week, Juncker managed to get through a White House session with Donald Trump without any embarrassing incidents — apart from kissing the President — and emerged with a temporary ceasefire in the latest transatlantic trade war.

Yet, as he heads off on holiday ahead of his final months in the job, there is already an inescapable sense of power draining away from the man in charge of 32,000 of Europe's highest-paid bureaucrats.

As dark descends on Amsterdam, the Dutch tourist hotspot turns into an “urban jungle” where the police are powerless to handle crime, violence and drug trade, Arre Zuurmond, the city's ombudsman, warned.

"The city center becomes an urban jungle at night," Zuurmond told Dutch paper, Trouw. "Criminal money flourishes, there is no authority and the police can no longer handle the situation."

Drugs are being sold openly in the streets, pedestrian areas are used for car and bike races, there’s widespread theft and other offenses, the ombudsman said, using the world “mayhem” to describe what’s happening in the city.

GREECE wildfires continue to devastate towns on the Greek coast as authorities battle to contain the blazes. Over 80 people are now dead, and terror police have been called in.

Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont returned to Belgium Saturday to drum up support for Catalonia's separatist movement after Spain's bid to extradite him on rebellion charges from Germany failed.

On arriving to Brussels, Puigdemont shook hands with other former members of his Cabinet who also fled Spain and the current regional president of Catalonia, Quim Torra, who had traveled from Spain to meet his predecessor.

Puigdemont said he will continue to travel around Europe in an attempt to explain the separatist position in wealthy Catalonia, which has so far failed to garner any support from European governments or major political parties.

HUNGARY'S Viktor Orban has fired a warning shot at the EU executive reminding Brussels bosses that its days are "numbered" as his ongoing row with the bloc over migration continues to rage.

Michel Barnier’s pincer is about to close on Theresa May — with the help of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s band of hard-line Brexiteers.

As U.K. MPs prepare to break for the summer, there is growing sense in Westminster that the only realistic option likely to be left open by the time they return in September will be total surrender to Brussels.

That would mean staying in the EU’s single market for the softest of Brexits to avoid either a “no-deal” scenario, likely to be impossible to get through the House of Commons, or a customs border being erected between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. — the only other option the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator has said he will accept.

A girl will receive around 2,000 euros in damages after being exposed to gross harassment by other students at the Johannes school in Malmö, Swedish news outlet Fria Tider reports.

Other incidents included having her trousers pulled down and threatened with rape because she was not “Muslim enough”, the girl’s father said.

According to an article in Sydsvenskan from November 2016, parents tell of how children at the Johannes school in Malmö – some as young as six-years-old – were beaten and sexually harassed during school hours.

Outcasts in a party disoriented by Trump Derangement Syndrome (under which “down to you is up,” as Lou Reed once sang), the peace wing of the Democratic Party has been reduced to a corporal’s guard in the House of Representatives, its eminence the admirably nonconformist surfing Hawaiian Tulsi Gabbard.

Peace Democrats are even scarcer in the U.S. Senate. (Where have you gone, Frank Church? Harold Hughes? George McGovern?) Anticipating the Tweeter-in-Chief’s recent blunderbuss European tour, the Senate approved by a near-Soviet margin of 97-2 a resolution expressing what sponsor Jack Reed (D-RI) called “ironclad” support for NATO.

A group of 10 Republicans senators have issued a joint letter to the ambassadors from Britain, France and Germany saying they are “troubled” by European efforts to evade newly imposed US sanctions against Iran.

President Trump withdrew the US out of the P5+1 nuclear deal, of which all three of those European nations are still party to. The US thus considers the deal over, and wants all the pre-deal sanctions back in place. The European nations, and the EU in general, are trying to save the deal, irrespective of US opposition.

The letter demands that the European nations “comply with all American sanctions,” and warns that continued attempts to avoid doing so could be met by “congressional action” against the Europeans for resisting them.

The new chief of staff of the Austrian army, the Bundesheer, Major General Robert Brieger has warned that the greatest threat the central European country faces is from uncontrolled mass migration.

Major General Brieger said that due to a lack of concrete border protection on the external borders of the European Union, all member states faced a threat from mass migration including the possibility of future terrorist attacks, Kronen Zeitung reports.

“The migration problem has developed in such a way that all member states of the European Union are affected. Until external border protection is fully guaranteed, there is a need to act at a national level,” Brieger said.

Ex-Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary Boris Johnson has laid into Theresa May’s ultra-soft Brexit plan yet again, describing it in florid terms as “vassalage, satrapy, colony status for the UK”.

“Imagine you leave some stifling desk job and decide to get out into the big wide world — make new contacts in America, that kind of thing,” wrote the former Mayor of London, who resigned from Theresa May’s government shortly after Brexit Secretary David Davis, having argued the deal she wanted was “a big turd” and that any minister defending it would be “polishing a turd” at Chequers.

“How would you feel if your former company still treated you like an employee? What would you do if you had to obey all the organisation’s rules, and do exactly what they told you?” he asked rhetorically.

“What if you got regular emails saying do this, do that, make me a cup of coffee, your skirt’s too short, please cough up for the company car park — even when you had left? You’d go nuts.”

Brexit was supposed to be the French language’s chance at a comeback.

For a brief moment after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, Francophones in Paris and Brussels allowed themselves to believe that French would regain its historical standing as Europe’s language of diplomacy.

Instead, perhaps paradoxically, the opposite is taking place. Once Britain leaves the EU, only two, relatively small, EU member countries — Ireland and Malta — will still list English as an official language (alongside Irish and Maltese). It would be everyone else’s second language and thus neutral territory. Officials from non-French speaking countries like Poland, Italy or the Czech Republic are particularly eager to see the global lingua franca become the primary means of communication in the EU.

The European Commission has proposed giving member states cash incentives for countries which agree to set up reception centres for migrants picked up in the Mediterranean sea.

The Commission has announced plans to give member states which take in Mediterranean migrants as much as £5,300 ($7,000) per migrant, Austrian newspaper Der Standard reports.

The new move comes after populist Interior Minister of Italy Matteo Salvini has closed the country’s borders and ports to both pro-migrant NGOs and other vessels bringing in individuals from the North African coast.

Britain could be trapped in the European Union (EU) for even longer than the four years and nine months since the vote to leave that has already been agreed, it has emerged Wednesday.

The UK voted to leave the bloc in June 2016, but it took nine months to trigger Article 50, a two-year leaving process, which is then to be followed by a two-year “implementation period” agreed by the Prime Minister.

And on Wednesday, the Irish deputy prime minister (pictured, left) suggested extending the Article 50 period past the eight months remaining.

“If Britain asks for more time, and if that is necessary to get to a sensible agreement, well then we would support that, of course we would,” Simon Coveney said.

In a meeting with Russia’s ambassadors and permanent representatives on July 19, President Vladimir Putin said that “the principles of competition and openness in global trade are increasingly being replaced by protectionism, while economic gain and expediency are being swapped for partisan agendas and political pressure. Economic ties and entrepreneurial freedom are being politicized.” He feels that Russia must counter this trend. There is ample evidence to prove his point.

There is a large group of US lawmakers chomping at the bit to support anything that would bring Europe to heel and hurt Russia.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that in the Western Military District since 2016, more than 70 formations and military units have been formed. He said this at a meeting of the collegium of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

“The situation developing in the western strategic direction requires us to continuously improve the combat strength of the troops and the system of their basing. To this end, since 2016, more than 70 formations and military units have been formed, including two divisions and three brigades, “he said.

Some 800 sub-Saharan migrants attempted to cross the border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta at 6:45am through a high fence. While 602 of them succeeded, 15 law enforcement officers were injured in the clashes and later taken to a hospital, the Spanish Civil Guard reported.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday Moscow would respond if Sweden and Finland were drawn into the NATO alliance and that such expansion would undermine global security, the Interfax news agency reported.

The number of illegal migrants crossing into Greece has surged by 122 percent compared to the same period last year, with the Turkish land border under increasing pressure.

Migrants had turned first to Italy and now Spain as their preferred entry point to the European Union after the bloc began paying the Turkish government billions of euros to curb the number of sea crossings to Greece following a massive influx in 2015.

But arrivals are now increasing dramatically as people-smugglers exploit the Greco-Turkish land border marked by the River Evros — which is not covered by the EU deal — with 24,000 total arrivals recorded by July 8th, according to Gerald Tatzgern, of Austria’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).

With Jean-Claude Juncker probably in the air right now, flying to his White House meeting on Wednesday, President Trump threw a wrench in the prepared script when on Tuesday evening he appealed for a return to (truly) free trade and urged Europe to "drop all Tariffs, Barriers and Subsidies" shortly after his administration imposed tariffs on EU imports, and Europe retaliated.

"That would finally be called Free Market and Fair Trade! Hope they do it, we are ready - but they won’t!" Trump tweeted.

ichel Barnier, the European Union’s Chief Brexit negotiator, never tires of warning Britain that “the clock is ticking” but could the UK ever convince the EU to extend the Article 50 deadline beyond 29 March 2019?

Brussels sources have told The Telegraph that it is theoretically possible but would be very difficult. They revealed that an extension request, were it ever to be made by Theresa May, would only be accepted to accommodate a second Brexit referendum or a general election

Steve Bannon’s idea to set up a Soros-styled NGO to prop up Europe’s right-wing parties has caused quite a stir among liberals and the left, who rushed to accuse the former Trump advisor of planning an “attack on democracy.”
Bannon’s new non-profit organization, blandly dubbed ‘The Movement’ is set to establish itself in Brussels and would bring together right-wing parties from across Europe. The former chief advisor of Donald Trump unveiled the plan last week, seeking to provide like-minded parties with the support of think tanks, the organization of polls and valuable insights on data-targeting.

Member of the European Parliament from Germany and center-left politician Udo Bullmann branded Bannon’s idea “an attack on freedom and democracy in Europe,” vowing a “response’ to his initiative. Renata Alt from Germany’s Free Democrats Party, for her part, described the plan to establish The Movement as a “frontal attack on the EU and European values.”

Tony Blair fueled rumours of cross-party Remainer plotting today by urging a 'new political coalition' to fight Brexit.

The former prime minister said the UK was 'in a pretty bad place' because voters were being offered 'two visions of the past' in a clash of left-wing and right-wing populisms.

And he warned that the right was likely to win any such struggle, sending the country down 'a very dark path'.

A messy, no-deal Brexit could throw 48 million insurance contracts and £26 trillion ($34 trillion) of derivatives deals into confusion. Nausicaa Delfas, head of international strategy at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), told delegates at a CityUK and Bloomberg event that there were “cliff-edge” risks due to uncertainty over the legality of financial contracts extending beyond the planned Brexit date, in March.

The UK government has already passed regulations that would allow European banks and insurers to maintain their UK operations under current rules after Brexit. So far, the EU has refused to reciprocate, even on a temporary basis.

Multiple wildfires across Greece’s Attica region have claimed the lives of at least 74 people, firefighters say. With dozens of others injured, authorities have warned of further casualties and pleaded for an EU-wide response.

Around half of the victims are from the village of Mati, a holiday resort on the east coast of the Attica region, just 30km from Athens, the local fire brigade said. Local media also report that some 187 people were injured across the country.

“Some settlements have disappeared from the map,” Mayor of Rafina Pikermiou, Vangelis Bournos told local newspapers.

The Swedish government is in the process of developing a website for teaching African and Middle Eastern migrant about consensual sex.

“The government is now pushing SEK 5 million to the Ministry of Youth and Civil Affairs (MUCF),” says Swedish site Friatider. “The money will include the further development of youmo.se, the government’s sex information site in Dari, Arabic and Somali.”

Lessons on the site include teaching the definition of rape.

“To do something sexually with someone who does not want it is a sexual abuse”, it says.

NATO's obsession with pulling in as many small, unstable and potentially extremist countries in Eastern Europe as possible makes a world war inevitable rather than deterring one.

The reason for this could not be more simple or clear: Small countries start world wars and destroy the empires and great nations that go to war to defend them.

Belgium doomed England and Serbia doomed Russia in 1914.

The Russian Empire, the largest nation in the world in terms of area and the third largest after the British Empire and China in terms of population at the time, went to war to defend Serbia from invasion by Austria-Hungary.

The European Commission has launched an infringement procedure against Hungary over its recently passed “Stop Soros” package of laws.

EC spokesperson Mina Andreeva told a press briefing on Thursday that the commission has sent the Hungarian government a letter of formal notice concerning the “Stop Soros” laws and related constitutional amendments. The EC gave the Hungarian authorities two months to respond to its concerns.

The Hungarian parliament passed the contested laws in June, aimed at penalising the “promotion or organisation of illegal migration”.

It seems, they add, that during the one-on-one talks Orban was even more firm than in public and migration wasn’t the only topic. Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko approached Merkel before her meeting with Orban, to lobby ahead of the upcoming NATO summit. Hungary’s has been consequently blocking Ukraine’s NATO ambitions because of its language law that is – according to Budapest – discriminating ethnic Hungarians. Orban told Merkel that Hungary’s standpoint is principled, and Merkel “noted” it. Orban also informed Merkel about his policies regarding CEU and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Deep in a vault in the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) lie #TheGreekFiles, a legal opinion about the ECB’s actions towards Greece in 2015 that could send shockwaves across Europe.

As a European taxpayer, you paid for these documents. But the ECB’s boss, ex-Goldman Sachs head Mario Draghi, says you can’t see them.

So former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and MEP Fabio de Masi, together with a broad alliance of politicians and academics (below), have announced they will file a mass freedom of information request to the ECB to uncover #TheGreekFiles once and for all.

If Mario says no, they’ll take the campaign to the next level, and consider all options – including legal action – to make this vital information public.

A leading member of the Belgian right-wing party, Vlaams Belang, said we could be close to a civil war in Europe. “Lynching, violence and vandalism, the urban guerrilla is portentous,” Filip Dewinter writes on Twitter.

The leading member of Vlaams Belang, reacted on twitter to the French World Cup riots, during which shops were looted, police were attacked and hundreds were injured.

In his tweet he added footage of a white man being ambushed by several migrants.

Hysteria is at fever pitch. After the NATO summit in Brussels, the definitive Decline of the West has been declared a done deal as President Trump gets ready to meet President Putin in Helsinki.

It was Trump himself who stipulated that he wants to talk to Putin behind closed doors, face-to-face, without any aides and, in theory, spontaneously, after the preparatory meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was canceled. The summit will take place at the early 19th century Presidential Palace in Helsinki, a former residence of Russian emperors.

Military Unification has been on the European Union's policy agenda for decades. In the past twelve months, the pressure to complete the task has accelerated the process, particularly since the Bratislava Summit of September 2016.

There, the 27 leaders of the EU decided to "give a new impetus" to European external security and defence.

They set as a target the December 2016 European Council to formalise an implementation plan.

To quote one commentator, "European Union Defence plans are associated with the eventual formation of a European Federal State. Under the current system of unaccountable governance, this means they will be run by an unelected oligarchy. A nation state that contracts out its defence has ceased to be."

The EU Council President is an alcoholic who binges on gin and leaves his ambitious but unelected deputy to govern, according to explosive new claims.

Jean-Claude Juncker - one of the most powerful men in Brussels - has been spotted stumbling around and unable to walk at the recent NATO summit.

He has repeatedly denied claims that he is an alcoholic and insisted that his sometimes shambolic appearance is down to chronic back pain known as sciatica.

But in an explosive new account, a Brussels insider says that he had heard the EU politician is 'a little too fond of the bottle'.

And Mr Juncker has left his ambitious and unelected chief civil servant Martin Selmayr - dubbed 'the monster' - to run the Commission, it is claimed.

Writing in The Spectator, Jean Quatremer - a French journalist who has covered the EU for years - says Brussels is awash with talk of the President's out-of-control drinking.