Jean-Claude Juncker

He added that this agreement would undermine Bulgarian national interests.

"The position of the Bulgarian government is not to join UN's global pact on migration," the deputy head of the GERB said after a meeting of coalition heads, Reuters reports. The agency says the juior coalition partner of GERB, the United Patrioty, strongly opposes the UN pact.

It is an election campaign intended to catapult the winner into one of the EU's top jobs, but 445 million voters could be forgiven for not noticing.

Europe's largest political group, the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), will on Thursday choose their candidate to run the European Commission, the powerful executive that drafts and enforces EU law.

Conservative New Democracy party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis was in Helsinki on Wednesday for the congress of the European People's Party (EEP) which will on Thursday elect its candidate to lead the European Commission.

Greece's main opposition leader will have a series of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the congress.

Emmanuel Macron has called for the creation of a "true European army" to allow the EU defend itself from threats ranging from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin, according to independent.co.uk

The French president has pushed for closer EU defence union since coming to power last year but has been so far met with limited success amid foot-dragging by other member states.

Prime Minister Viorica Dancila said on Tuesday that Romania should follow the example of the other EU member states and seek consensus for the time it holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of 2019, stressing that political disputes should be secondary to that.

European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, welcomes the swift and intensive efforts by Prime Minister Borissov and the Bulgarian authorities who in close cooperation with law enforcement agencies from other EU Member States successfully arrested the suspected murderer of journalist Victoria Marinova, reports BNT. 

AFP - As doubts grow over China's vast "Belt and Road" trade infrastructure project, the EU is launching an alternative plan for Asia that it says will not saddle countries with debt they cannot repay.

As concerns grow about worsening conditions at reception facilities on the Aegean islands, European Union leaders meeting in Salzburg, Austria, on Thursday discussed migration pressure on the bloc's external borders, but divisions remained over how to tackle the problem. 

The name deal with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is gaining increasing international interest, so any handling of the issue by Athens that is motivated by narrow partisan interests or last-minute power plays will only hurt the country. There is a lot at stake.

The list of priority interconnection projects presented within the Summit of the Three Seas Initiative is "a top level political signal", on Tuesday stated Klaus Iohannis, in a news conference at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace.