At the Global Education Summit, held in London on Thursday, the European Union and its Member States, as Team Europe, pledged €1.7bn to the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) to help transform education systems for more than one billion girls and boys in up to 90 countries and territories. This represents the biggest contribution to the GPE. The EU had already announced its €700 million pledge for 2021-2027 in June.

Brussels immediately rejected UK’s demand for changes in the deal overseeing problematic post-Brexit trade involving Northern Ireland, Reuters reported. The Northern Ireland protocol was part of the Brexit settlement, backed by PM Boris Johnson, that finally sealed Britain's divorce from the EU four years after voters backed leaving in a referendum.

Britain on Wednesday demanded a new deal to oversee post-Brexit trade involving Northern Ireland and warned the EU that London would be justified in unilaterally deviating from a deal it struck with the bloc just last year, news wires reported.

The UK will pay France €62.7m to prevent migrants from crossing the English Channel, under a deal hammered out on Tuesday. The plan includes also doubling the number of French officers deployed along the coast and improving intelligence sharing, news wires reported.

Turkish Cypriot authorities announced on Tuesday a partial reopening of an abandoned town for potential resettlement, drawing a strong rebuke from rival Greek Cypriots and global powers as well, news wires reported.

The Commission adopted today a recommendation for a Council decision authorising the opening of negotiations for an EU-UK agreement on Gibraltar. The Commission also presented its proposal for negotiating guidelines. It is now for the Council to adopt this draft mandate.

With a pair of binoculars, a German police officer working for the EU border agency Frontex scans an empty field crossed by the Belarus-Lithuania border on the lookout for migrants, AFP reported. "I arrived on 1 July and the situation has been interesting from the start because it is very tense," said the guard. He has found 80 migrants on his first night patrol.

A meeting on Monday between Serbia and Kosovo that is part of the European Union-brokered negotiations aimed at resolving a long-lasting dispute that remains a source of tensions in the volatile Balkans produced no progress, AP reported. The negotiations were headed by the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who urged Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo PM Albin Kurti before the meeting in Brussels to achieve a “comprehensive legally-binding agreement.”

The EU and Ukraine launched today a strategic partnership on raw materials, with the aim of achieving a closer integration of raw materials and batteries value chains, the EU press service reported. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed by VP Maroš Šefčovič and Ukraine PM Denys Shmyhal during the dedicated high level conference.

The European Union tried on Tuesday to reassure Bosnians of its readiness to admit their country one day, after an unofficial EU diplomatic note raised doubts about Brussels' commitment, Reuters reported. That note, circulated among EU officials in April, proposed redrawing borders along ethnic lines in the Western Balkans in an attempt to unblock stalled reforms in the region. It caused anxiety in Bosnia, which aspires to join both the EU and NATO.