As of next year, Ukraine will lift a moratorium on the sale of agricultural land, a move seen as an important step in opening up the country to potential foreign buyers. But legislation that would establish a truly modern land market is still lacking.

The parliament in Kyiv recently refused to prolong a moratorium which has prohibited land sales since 1992.

On 16 August, a parliamentary hearing took place on a new 'law on land', with the participation of scientists, civil society and foreign donors.

According to observers, Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich and his team are seriously intending to open up the land market within the next year or so.

The move could herald new opportunities for foreign investors. Ukraine has 42 million hectares of farmland and dwarfs the EU's largest agricultural nation, France, and its 29 million hectares.

It could also help Europe's drive to lower food prices, as Ukraine harbours huge potential to increase farm yields by adapting to modern agricultural techniques. Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov admitted that the productivity of Ukrainian agriculture is three to five times lower than in most EU countries.

However, experts warn that the move may backfire politically and may pose significant challenges, as there is no official cadastre or legal base for the sale of agricultural land.

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich hit back forcefully against a draft plan to give the European Commission more say on when member states can reintroduce border controls in the passport-free Schengen travel area.

Under the draft EU legislation obtained by AFP, a country in the passport-free zone would be able to resume border patrols without asking for permission, but only for five days.

Beyond that, the country would have to ask the European Commission in Brussels for permission.

But Friedrich slammed the proposals, saying: "Security questions are a core competence of member states and we will not accept a transfer of this task to others or an undermining of this competence."

"We will not allow Brussels to dictate when we introduce controls. We control the borders if the security situation requires," Friedrich told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Copyright protection for performers and producers to go up from 50 to 70 years.

The European Union has adopted new rules to extend copyright protection for music performers and producers.

In a move praised by the recording industry, the new directive will offer protection for 70 years, rather than 50 years as is the case at present.

A majority of member states agreed that the current timescale left many performers with several years without income at the end of their lives.

European criticism of the trial over Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko is groundless, incumbent Prime Minister Mykola Azarov told Le Figaro.

Tymoshenko, 50, was arrested on August 5 on charges of signing "unfair" gas supply deals with Russia and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. She could be imprisoned for 10 years if found guilty of forcing Ukraine's state gas firm Naftogaz to sign an unfavorable deal with Russia while she was serving as prime minister. Tymoshenko has repeatedly denied all the charges against her, saying they are politically motivated.

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski - who holds the rotating EU presidency - told Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych that plans to finalize a free-trade deal this year between Ukraine and the EU could be derailed by Tymoshenko's legal travails.

"The Ukrainian authorities need to find a solution that removes any doubts that this trial is an act of political revenge against the opposition," Komorowski said.

When Robert Bourgi was presented with the Legion of Honour - France's highest civilian decoration - in September 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was grateful for the opportunity to reward one of France's most loyal servants. However, less flattering words have been used to describe the man who has since admitted to handing former president Jacques Chirac millions in cash from African presidents. In an August 2009 profile in the daily Le Monde, unnamed diplomats accused Bourgi of willingly sowing conflict between French and African leaders only to later come to the rescue and reconcile the two sides.

Chirac and his former prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, who was also named in the payoff affair, have denied wrongdoing and said they would sue Bourgi for defamation. But before the startling allegations of illegal cash donations, Bourgi was already a controversial figure in France's shady parallel diplomacy in Africa. His close relationships with the Bongo presidential dynasty in Gabon, as well as with ousted Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, have made him an all-too-easy target for French journalists.

Every time you buy a Billy bookcase at one IKEA's Danish warehouses, DKK 10 ends up in a secret fund in Liechtenstein which is personally controlled by the furniture company's wealthy Swedish founder Ingvar Kamprad. And the money is in all probably not taxed.

Internal IKEA accounts that Politiken has obtained show how the company's Danish subsidiary has channelled vast sums to Liechtenstein through a system of shell companies in the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

Overall more than DKK 750 million has been sent from the Danish storehouses to the tiny principality. Last year alone, the figure was DKK 86 million.

In all, Danish state coffers have probably been cheated out of DKK 187.5 million.

See Windpower Monthly

"Germany is already well advanced in the installation of an integrated HVDC network that will allow clusters of offshore wind farms to be developed," said Macknocker. "It is likely that this groundwork will allow Germany to surpass the UK as the world leader in installed offshore wind capacity sometime between 2015 and 2020."

Apart from Germany and the UK, the remaining 11% of the offshore cable market, which is dominated by market leader ABB, is taken up by Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Three French banks lose more than 10% of their market value, facing an erosion of their equity base; investors are concerned about the effects of an increasingly probable Greek default, and lack of G7 policy action; French stock market is now down to the depth of the 2009 recession; US money market funds have cut their holdings of CDs issued by French banks by 40%

Germany's economics minister says Greece will default, triggering Angela Merkel's scorn; Alexander Hagelüken says official talk of a Greek default was irresponsible; the Greek government adopted a partial payment freeze, that excludes salaries and pensions; the ECB bought €14bn in bonds last week, bringing the total programme to €143bn; Francois Baroin cautiously endorses eurobonds; only four EU countries will have deficits of below 3% in 2012; IMF releases second tranche of the loan to Portugal; Wolfgang Proissl calls on the Bundesbank to give up its dissident role; eurozone finance ministers will finalise the EFSF guidelines at the informal meeting this week; Germany borrows at rates close to zero, while Spain is fretting about another high-interest rate bond auction; Giulio Tremonti, meanwhile, is holding talks with Chinese officials about strategic investments to stabilise the country's position in the eurozone.

The leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party has demanded that Israel apologize for its part in the capture of the PKK's imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan in 1999 after a report that Israel was planning to use the PKK against Turkey, the Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman reported on Monday.

The Maastricht Treaty established a monetary union, but the political union that is an indispensable precondition for the common currency's success remained a mere promise. The euro, and the countries that adopted it, are now paying the price. The eurozone now rests on the shaky basis of a confederation of states that are committed both to a monetary union and to retaining their fiscal sovereignty. At a time of crisis, that cannot work.

...

Throughout history, confederations have never really worked, because the question of sovereignty (and thus of power and legitimacy) remains unresolved. The United States is a case in point. After winning independence, the American colonies united loosely under the Articles of Confederation. But that arrangement failed financially and economically, and the US soon moved towards a full federation.

...

Financial-market pressure has now reached France, and poses a danger that is far from over. If France is brought to its knees and Germany doesn't stand by its partner unwaveringly and with everything that it has to offer, the European catastrophe will be complete. And that could happen sooner rather than later: France cannot and will not give up on the Mediterranean region, so the exit fantasies entertained by rich northern Europeans (Germans, above all) endanger the Franco-German pillar of European peace.

In Deutschland und anderen wohlhabenderen Euro-Staaten herrscht jedoch das blanke Misstrauen. Wenn China europäische Anleihen kaufe, sinnierte jüngst EU-Kommissar Günther Oettinger, sei das keine karitative Tat: "China übernimmt die EU, und wir Europäer verkaufen unsere Seele."