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Extremely low water levels on the exposed bed of the Rialb reservoir during a drought in La Baronia De Rialb, Spain, on Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022.

Angel Garcia | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Europe is experiencing its worst drought in at least 500 years, with hot and dry conditions fueling wildfires, reducing crop yields and reducing electricity generation, according to a preliminary analysis from the European Union's Joint Research Center.

The report from the European Drought Observatory said that 47% of Europe is under warning conditions, with a clear deficit of soil moisture, and 17% of the continent is under a state of alert,in which vegetation is impacted.

Record-breaking temperatures in Europe this summer have disrupted transportation, displaced thousands of people,and resulted in hundreds of heat-related deaths. The heat has also exacerbated wildfires, which have grown more destructive in recent years.

"The combination of a severe drought and heatwaves has created an unprecedented stress on water levels in the entire EU," European Innovation Commissioner Mariya Gabriel said in a statement. "We are currently noticing a wildfires season sensibly above the average and an important impact on crops production."

Wreckage of a World War Two German warship is seen in the Danube in Prahovo, Serbia August 18, 2022.

Fedja Grulovic | Reuters

The Western Europe-Mediterranean regionwill likely see warmer and drier than usual conditions until November, the report said.

Climate change has made high temperatures and droughts more intense and widespread. And lower nighttime temperatures that typically provide critical relief from the hot daysare disappearing as the planet warms.

Water and heat stress have slashed Europe's 2022 crop yields, with forecasts for grain maize, soybean and sunflowers expected to be 16%, 15% and 12% below the average of the previous five years, respectively.

An aerial view shows boats in the dry bed of Brenets Lake (Lac des Brenets), part of the Doubs River, a natural border between eastern France and western Switzerland, in Les Brenets on July 18, 2022.

Fabrice Coffrini | AFP | Getty Images

A lack of rainfall has also affected river discharges widely across Europe. Reduced water volume has hit the energy sector for hydropower generation and cooling systems of other power plants.

Drought hazard has been rising most notably in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, northern Serbia, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Ukraine and the U.K, the report said.

This photo taken on August 3, 2022, shows the dried "Lac de l'Entonnoir" known as "Lac du Bouverans" in Bouverans, eastern France.

Sebastien Bozon | AFP | Getty Images

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Europe is experiencing its worst drought in at least 500 years - CNBC

The ripples of war spread fast. Over the course of the past six months, those ripples have travelled from Ukraine and affected politics around the world - but no more so than in Europe.

Some of those impacts are obvious. War, inevitably, led to a flood of people fleeing Ukraine and seeking refuge in other countries.

Poland immediately threw its doors open to refugees and now plays home to one and a quarter million Ukrainians. Just under a million are now living in Germany.

Ukraine war live updates

Six months on from the start of the war, there have been nearly nine million border crossings out of Ukraine. But, notably, there have been more than 4.75 million crossings going the other way.

Some of these are workers, journalists, or fighters. But most are Ukrainians, who have decided to return home.

And that reinforces one of the abiding lessons from this conflict - that Ukrainians have an extraordinary level of resilience. I remember being in the west of the country after the war had started, and watching the huge queues forming at recruitment centres. Around the corner, we met young men who were driving through the night to take supplies to soldiers.

I remember, too, meeting a young mother who had fled with her children and chatted to us about her pride in her country and her husband, who had stayed at home in Kharkiv to fight. She was exhausted, but bristled when we offered to buy her a drink. She could buy her own food, she said, and would be going home just as soon as she could.

The war delivered a sense of unity to the European Union. It rushed through new rules, giving Ukrainian refugees the right to take residency in the EU for three years. It sent weapons and money, flexed diplomatic muscles and seemed to discover a sense of concerted purpose that has long proved elusive.

And, mostly, that sense of united purpose has endured. Europe, by standing with Ukraine, exuded a pride that it hasn't shown for years.

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There have been problems - Germany was slow to supply useful military supplies and has had to accept criticism for its previous reliance on Russian energy. Emmanuel Macron's attempts to negotiate personally with Vladimir Putin looked naive, at times. But the Franco-German axis, around which the EU now spins, has been resolute in its determination to back Ukraine.

But there are cracks and, over the past six months, they may expand. Take Hungary, for example, a member state of the EU, but also a country led by a nationalist prime minister who has long cultivated a close relationship with Russia.

Hungary lobbied for sanctions to be watered down, arguing that curbs on Russian energy imports harm the buyer more than the seller. It's a call that's being taken up by other populist politicians, from Marine Le Pen in France, who described sanctions as "useless", to Matteo Salvini in Italy - a politician who once entered the European Parliament wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Mr Putin's face.

Next month, Italy holds a general election and it's very likely that Mr Salvini will end up as part of the winning coalition. The Kremlin has been linked with a campaign of misinformation in the country, and it may be working. Polling suggests that, of all Europeans, Italians are the most likely to blame someone other than Russia for the war.

The odds are that the biggest party in the Italian election will turn out to be the Brothers of Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni. So far, she has said she will maintain her nation's support for action in Ukraine and opposition to Mr Putin.

Read more: Rape video shared by Italy PM hopeful Giorgia Meloni removed by Twitter

But if that stance changes, even slightly, in favour of Russia, then alarm bells will ring. There are those advocating, for instance, a ceasefire deal that surrenders Ukrainian land to Russia. Unpalatable to many, not least in Ukraine, but balm to those in Hungary, Italy and beyond who want to be on decent terms with Mr Putin when the dust settles.

The truth is that nobody is advocating some kind of cosy friendship with Russia. But there are those - Viktor Orban, Ms Le Pen, Mr Salvini - who insist that the pain isn't worth it. And these are politicians with hefty support.

Beyond the boundaries of the EU, the war seems to be setting off other problems - Serbia, a close ally of Russia, is inflaming tensions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. Countries in the Western Balkans grumble that they have been patiently pursuing EU membership for more than a decade, but now worry that Ukraine has jumped ahead of them in the queue.

Read more: Gas price spike threatens big trouble for Europe

And, of course, the soaring cost of energy affects economies everywhere. The harder life gets, the more traction there is in the idea that sanctions do more harm than good.

"Every time someone mentions fatigue or weariness over sanctions, Putin does something atrocious and the questions go away," one senior source told me this week. But what if that doesn't happen? What if the question of fatigue is allowed to linger.

Europe has been resolute for six months, but so has Mr Putin. As the weather gets colder, the bills go up and the war goes on, Europe's sense of resolution and camaraderie will come under threat. The question is whether it will hold.

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Europe has stood firmly with Ukraine since the war began - but Italy's election and a tough winter could change things quickly - Sky News

Delegates attend the Indo-Pacific Ministerial Cooperation Forum as part of the French Presidency of the EU Council in Paris, France, February 22, 2022. Christophe Archambault/Pool via REUTERS

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WELLINGTON, Aug 16 (Reuters) - The European Union is working to boost its presence in the Pacific through economic ties and new security commitments as geostrategic competition in the region intensifies, the bloc's ambassador to Pacific Island nations said on Tuesday.

Ambassador Sujiro Seam told Reuters in an interview during a visit to New Zealand the EU had long been seen as a development partner in the Pacific and that it wanted to be perceived as an economic and strategic partner as well.

The EU's push comes as major powers are vying for influence in the region, with the United States and Australia ramping up engagement in the Pacific after China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands this year. read more

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"The geostrategic importance of the Pacific is recognised by everyone, including the European Union," Seam said.

The European Union has long had a presence in the Pacific, mostly via France's ties to French Polynesia.

In 2021, the European Union set out a formal Indo-Pacific strategy and announced a 300 billion euro ($305 billion) global infrastructure fund that Seam said was helping to boost ties. read more

The EU has several development projects underway in the region and is looking at more, he said, noting it is finalising plans to spend 5 million euros on a feasibility study for a wharf on Kiritimati Island in Kiribati.

"We've always said our position in the region is not against anybody. We're not here to contain China," Seam said.

However, when countries make decisions on who to partner with it is important they assess the consequences such as whether they are being offered development aid or loans.

"Most of the assistance from China actually ... it's loans. So that increases the debt vulnerability of these countries."

Part of the strategy to boost the EU's presence in the Pacific is to provide economic opportunities, Seam said, and it has signed a number of trade partnerships with Pacific governments and is negotiating a similar agreement with Tonga to allow it better access to European markets.

He said the EU also planned to step up its footprint in maritime surveillance in the Indo-Pacific. The French military, which often has assets in the region, has been used to provide EU support in the past.

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Reporting by Lucy Craymer; Editing by Tom Hogue

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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European Union working to increase economic, security ties in Pacific - Reuters

Lando Kirchmair is a professor of national and international public law with a focus on the protection of cultural heritage at Bundeswehr University, Munich.

The rule of law is in decline, worldwide, and Europe is no exception. Democracy isnt faring any better, and the question mark lingering behind political economist Francis Fukuyamas concept of the end of history is growing.

Recently, it seems, the European Union has even been willing to sell out the last vestiges of the rule of law in Poland, in response to the countrys undisputedly brave stance in helping Ukrainian refugees and facing the imminent threat of the war on its borders. But if simply complying with the law is labelled a milestone for which immense sums of money from the EUs recovery plan are being sent as a reward, it isnt helpful for restoring the rule of law.

Criticism of the blocs measures to improve the rule of law and democracy in Europe is commonplace in EU law scholarship nowadays. And faced with the hybrid regimes within the EU, expectations for a strong commitment to the blocs core values, enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty of the EU, have been met with disappointment all too often, especially by the European Commission.

But the most important and, so far, largely overlooked reason why the EUs performance in restoring and protecting core European values has fallen short is that the EU itself suffers from severe deficits precisely on these same points.

The EUs democratic shortcomings were a major point of discussion in the 1990s, until the Treaty of Lisbon secured some important improvements to this end, by strengthening the role of the European Parliament, for instance.

Yet, the most recent round of elections to the Parliament which were very much presented as though the Spitzenkandidaten system were to be implemented and the process by which the current president of the European Commission was finally selected, were a major disappointment for democracy at the EU level.

The most important political figure in the EU was promoted almost out of the blue. She was crowned by the governments or rather some of the governments of the member countries in the Council (at high cost), and the Parliament did not have much say.

The point here isnt that the Spitzenkandidaten system a rather specific way of designing political accountability is the miracle solution to all the problems of democracy in Europe. However, the profound lack of directly attributable democratic political accountability for a key European institution the European Commission is an important problem.

And the rule of law isnt doing much better these days either.

The Commission has failed to take adequate steps to confront opponents of the rule of law on countless occasions in recent years. And a consequence of the EUs tremendous lack of democratic accountability is that other actors have had to step in to mitigate the most serious consequences of weakened, or missing, rule of law in specific member countries.

So far, this role has singularly fallen to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) maybe due to the advantage of understanding the importance of the rule of law for a liberal constitutional democracy which had to step in on multiple occasions.

The price for these interventions is high, however. In order to safeguard the rule of law in certain member countries, the CJEU, quite paradoxically, has had to put the rule of law at the EU level at risk, as it had to stretch its own mandate quite considerably, to say the least, so that it could protect judicial independence of its individual members.

While the consequences of these decisions are, in some ways, to be welcomed lets just imagine for a second what the situation would look like if the Court hadnt protected judicial independence at all it still endangers the rule of law at the EU level. And with every progressive step taken by the CJEU, patience is, unfortunately, wearing thin in other EU members, which now have to accept a stronger CJEU position, even if they are well behaved.

The rule of law and democracy are mutually dependent; therefore, they can only be protected and fixed together. And fixing them is crucial in enabling the bloc to master the hybrid regime challenge it currently faces from its member countries, as the examples mentioned above are no solitary events.

At risk of repetition, its also vital to clearly spell out that the erosion of the rule of law and democracy doesnt only concern member countries, but also the EU itself. Such examples range from disregarding the Spitzenkandidaten system in Parliament elections for the Commission presidency and the removal of General Advocate Eleanor Sharpston, to the fact that the Commission didnt apply the rule of law conditionality mechanism to Hungary (and is still reluctant to do so regarding Poland) and has been wary of initiating infringement procedures against members that clearly violate EU law.

This is unfortunate because, as we have witnessed for years now, when democracy and the rule of law are in decline, nothing improves by itself. Burying ones head in the sand, averting ones gaze, crossing ones fingers or waiting until the storm might pass arent very promising tactics. If nothing is done to prevent attacks on the rule of law and democracy, the situation will simply get worse.

At the EU level and the national level, rule of law and democracy are deeply intertwined in many ways. This is the consequence of decades of European integration. Hence, their decline in specific EU member countries is poisonous for others, and the EU itself.

Just consider one simple example: If the elections in a member country are not free and fair, the political actors voted into power will be acting on the EU level too in the Parliament and the Commission alike.

The EU must ensure the rule of law and democracy for itself. Only then will it be powerful enough to restore them in all its members.

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The EU and its hybrid regimes are poisoning each other - POLITICO Europe

European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell speaks on the tensions between the neighbouring Western Balkan nations in Brussels, Belgium, August 18, 2022. REUTERS/ Johanna Geron

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MADRID, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The European Union's foreign policy chief said on Monday he hoped the United States would respond positively as early as this week to an EU proposal that aims to save a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

Josep Borrell also said that Iran had given a "reasonable" response to the proposal, which follows 16 months of fitful, indirect U.S.-Iranian talks with the EU shuttling between the parties. The contents of the proposal have not been made public.

"There was a proposal from me as coordinator of the negotiations saying 'this is the equilibrium we reached, I don't think we can improve it on one side or the other'... and there was a response from Iran that I considered reasonable," Borrell told a university event in the Spanish city of Santander.

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"It was transmitted to the United States which has not yet responded formally... I hope the response will put an end to the negotiations," he added.

An EU official has previously said the proposal is the bloc's "final offer" to revive a pact suspended in 2018 by the administration of then-U.S. President Donald Trump.

The stakes are high, since failure in the nuclear talks would carry the risk of a fresh regional war, with Israel threatening military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapons capability.

Iran, which has long denied having such ambitions, has warned of a "crushing" response to any Israeli attack.

Earlier on Monday, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani accused the United States of "procrastinating" in the negotiations.

"The world would be a much safer place if we can make this agreement work," Borrell said.

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Reporting by Christina Thykjaer and Inti LandauroEditing by Gareth Jones

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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EU's Borrell hopes for U.S. response on Iran nuclear deal proposal this week - Reuters