Britain’s Brexit supremo Michael Gove said on Wednesday that he was confident of securing a trade deal with the European Union, while the bloc’s chief negotiator said he was determined to clinch an agreement

Тhe so-called ‘inauguration’ of 23 September and the new mandate claimed by Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko lack any democratic legitimacy, the EU said in a statement, issued on Thursday by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell.

European Union efforts to put pressure on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko are on hold, as a separate crisis in the bloc’s backyard lays bare its struggles to reconcile competing national interests, Bloomberg reported.

The presidents of Lithuania, Poland and Romania will ask EU leaders at a summit later this week to offer a support package for Belarus if the country holds a democratic election, news wires reported. It would include a favourable trade regime, visa-free travel and support in negotiations to enter the WTO, according to the statement from the three presidents seen by Reuters.

Greece is close to resuming talks with Turkey over maritime zones, government spokesman Stelios Petsas said on Monday. The two countries are on loggerheads over maritime jurisdiction and energy exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean.

The 27 EU foreign ministers are set to agree on sanctions for breaches of the Libyan arms embargo at a meeting in Brussels on Monday, where they will also try to break gridlock on the adoption of separate sanctions against Belarus, dpa reported.

The EU is right to continue talking to Britain for now, and should not overreact to British tactics that could be aimed at pushing Brussels to break off negotiations over a trade deal, France’s European affairs minister said on Thursday cited by Reuters.

Greece is ready to sit down for exploratory talks with Turkey on the delimitation of maritime zones, on the condition that it sees “tangible evidence” of de-escalation from Ankara, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis told a press conference on Tuesday during a visit to Athens by Council President Charles Michel.

The German government announced on Monday that laboratories in France and Sweden have confirmed its own findings that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. Berlin was still waiting for the outcome of a separate evaluation by the OPCW global chemical weapons watchdog.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to break international law by breaching parts of the Brexit divorce treaty with the European Union faces a vote in parliament on Monday amid growing opposition from within his own party.