WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE EU - euobserver - The Friday Five - Friday 28 August 2026.

 

The Friday Five Editor-in-chief picks her favourite stories of the week. On Norway’s Oslo fjord, activists battle Chemring Nobel’s plan for Europe’s biggest explosives plant Chemring Nobel, one of Europe’s largest arms manufacturers, is hoping to build the continent’s largest explosives factory near Oslo’s fjord. Besides environmental destruction, the project will fuel Europe’s escalating militarisation. EUobserver talks to the activists occupying the site. By rejecting a racist ‘remigration’ petition, the EU may have finally awakened its sleeping democracy experiment A remigration campaign has become the first European Citizens’ Initiative ever refused for breaching the Union’s core values. Yet the fight it has triggered could force Brussels to take its neglected experiment in transnational democracy seriously. Brussels veteran Dan Luca joins EUobserver as new European Affairs director From 1 September Dan Luca will take up the newly-created position of European Affairs director at EUobserver. He is a European media and strategic communications expert with nearly three decades of professional experience in Brussels and across European capitals. Last year’s output from Norway’s fossil-fuel giant ‘will kill up to 58,000 people’ A remigration campaign has become the first European Citizens’ Initiative ever refused for breaching the Union’s core values. Yet the fight it has triggered could force Brussels to take its neglected experiment in transnational democracy seriously. [Interview] Europe’s labs are chronically underfunded and sovereignty is at stake, says French Academy chief Françoise Combes Françoise Combes explains why, even as AI accelerates discovery and SpaceX dominates the skies, the real battle for our future is being fought in underfunded European labs.   Copyright © 2026 EUobserver.com. All rights reserved.