BUENOS DIAS from Madrid, where European commissioners are meeting the government today to mark the start of Spain’s presidency of the Council of the EU. The visit comes as the Spanish government and opposition are in full campaign mode ahead of a general election on July 23.

Center-right opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo on Saturday promised “loyalty” to the government during the campaign, so as not to undermine the EU presidency, and has expressed openness to a grand coalition with the center left. But he still has not ruled out a coalition with the far right, which wants to undo many of Brussels’ flagship policies, including the Green Deal, and is seeking to team up with Poland and Hungary on rule of law issues.

FRANCE RIOTS UPDATE       

SIGNS OF DEESCALATION: After six nights of looting and violent clashes, French authorities appear to be deescalating riots that broke out across the country after a police officer killed Nahel, a 17-year-old of North African descent, during a traffic stop in Paris last week.

The latest: Tens of thousands of additional police were sent out on patrol seeking to deter further rioting on Sunday night, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said. That came after the home of the mayor of Paris suburb L’Haÿ-les-Roses, Vincent Jeanbrun, was ram-raided and set alight while his wife and children, aged 5 and 7, were sleeping inside it. Jeanbrun, who was not at home at the time of the attack, said his wife and one of their children were injured. More here from France24.

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CURFEWS: Many municipalities over the weekend declared overnight curfews, scheduled to last into this week. The protests have left locals dazed and angry, having been kept awake at night by fireworks and police sirens, in social housing and fancier homes alike, my colleague Marion Solletty reports from the suburban town Colombes.

FAMILY CALLS FOR CALM: Nahel’s grandmother, identified as “Nadia,” on Sunday called on protestors to cease rioting, in an interview with BMF TV. “The people who are breaking things, I say to them ‘stop.’ They used Nahel as a pretext,” she said. “They should not break windows, buses, schools.” Speaking on behalf of Nahel’s family, she added: “We want to calm things down. We don’t want them to break things.”

MACRON STAYS HOME: President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday postponed a state visit to Germany, planned for July 2-4, to deal with the riots. EU Affairs Secretary Laurence Boone will fill in for Macron for some events with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier today, including a panel discussion planned with young people and a dinner at Bellevue Palace in Berlin.

WHAT NEXT FOR FRANCE? The riots are fueling a “spiral of suspicion, misunderstanding, rejection and fear,” writes John Lichfield in commentary for POLITICO. “A new generation of young people has grown up in the last 18 years in the suspicion, or belief, that much of the rest of France will never accept them as French. Many of those French people will look at the events of the last week and their prejudices and fears will be confirmed or deepened.”

POLAND’S PM CHIMES IN: Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki seized on the riots to post a video comparing a burning Paris to peaceful Warsaw, adding he wanted a “Europe of Secure Borders.”

PROTESTS IN BELGIUM: Police arrested around 100 people in Brussels and 30 in Liège on Friday, and another 35 in Brussels on Saturday amid protests over the police shooting in France.

DRIVING THE WEEK: THE SUPER-PLANTS ARE COMING       

BRUSSELS TO LEGALIZE GENE-EDITED CROPS: Brussels is finalizing a law to legalize new gene-editing technologies for crops across the Union.

The problem: The EU’s ultra-restrictive GMO regulation, which predates newer technologies, sets extremely high barriers for growing genetically engineered crops and allows EU countries to ban them even after they have been proven to be safe.

The solution: The new law, previewed by Playbook, aims to cut red tape and allow easier market access for plants grown with “new genomic techniques” (NGTs), such as CRISPR-Cas, which target specific genes without necessarily introducing genetic material from outside the breeders’ gene-pool.

Scientists and farmers win: It’s been a decades-long fight for scientists and farmers who have seen the EU fall behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to using new crops with special traits that can make them more nutritious, efficient and better adapted to a changing climate.

Both groups have often pointed to the paradox that the EU allows “traditional,” less-efficient breeding techniques, but is absurdly restrictive when it comes to targeted breeding methods that have little risk.

Fight time: Get ready for opposition from certain environmentalist groups, which have built up a lot of influence (and money) by stoking fears of technologies that don’t fit their definition of what is “natural.”

WHAT’S IN THE LAW: According to the draft, the authenticity of which was confirmed by senior officials, EU countries will no longer be able to ban the cultivation of NGT crops.

No labeling obligation: The law simplifies rules even more for a sub-group of NGT crops that are are deemed equivalent to crops obtained by traditional breeding techniques. The obligation to label foods as “GMO” will no longer apply to these “conventional-like” plants.

No different treatment for pesticide-resistant crops: An earlier draft of the law had a carve-out for crops engineered to tolerate pesticides — which would still have been subject to the stricter GMO rules. However, the newest draft no longer makes such a distinction.

EAT YOUR GREENS … PLEASE: The NGT law is part of a broader Green Deal package on biodiversity and food expected from the Commission today. But, as Playbook and my colleague Zia Weise reported last week, appetites may be waning for Green Deal legislation — particularly among Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s own European People’s Party.

RUSSIAN WAR FALLOUT       

NO MOBILIZATION IN WAKE OF WAGNER MUTINY … YET: Russia doesn’t need to call up more troops via another round of mobilizations, despite the loss of mercenaries from the Wagner Group from the front lines, according to Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the Duma’s defense committee.

Prigozhin latest: Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s operation to strip Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin of money and influence continues in the wake of his ill-fated mutiny. Over the weekend, Prigozhin’s Patriot Media announced it would be shutting up shop, while Concord, the catering company that earned him the “Putin’s chef” moniker, reportedly lost its contract with the Russian defense ministry.

Poland reinforces its border: Poland will strengthen security efforts on its border with Belarus, after Wagner forces relocated to the country in the wake of their failed mutiny. More here.

OMINOUS GRAIN DEAL NEWS: Russia’s Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, said in an interview with state-run Izvestia out this morning that there was no reason to renew the Black Sea grain deal, which allows Ukraine to export foodstuffs in the midst of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The deal is set to expire on July 18. “What we are now witnessing does not give us grounds to agree to maintaining the status quo,” Gatilov said.

STOLEN CHILDREN: Russia has taken some 700,000 children from Ukraine in the past few years, Russian politician Grigory Karasin claimed on Sunday. Reuters has a write-up. ICYMI, POLITICO’s Veronika Melkozerova had a story last month on the operation to return Ukraine’s abducted children home.

UKRAINE’S SOCIAL MEDIA ARMY DOES IT AGAIN: Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defense forces on Sunday posted a video that’s now going viral, warning Russians not to holiday in Crimea, predicting “stormy weather” — with images of explosions going off on beaches set to Madonna’s 1983 hit “Holiday.”

IN OTHER NEWS       

BIDEN’S EUROPEAN ITINERARY: U.S. President Joe Biden will travel to the U.K., Lithuania and Finland this month, the White House said on Sunday. Biden is set to travel to London on July 9, then head to Vilnius for the July 11-12 summit of NATO leaders, followed by a visit to Helsinki on July 13. More here.

YELLEN’S CHINA ITINERARY: Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel to Beijing later this week for meetings with senior Chinese officials. More here.

PEACE ENVOY STRIKES DOWN BOSNIAN SERB LAWS: Bosnian Serbs cannot ignore rulings by the country’s constitutional court, according to a decision announced Saturday by Christian Schmidt, Bosnia’s international peace overseer.

Peace deal at work: The decision comes after the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (the Serbian-majority federal entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina) passed two laws defying the constitution and the peace deal that ended the Balkan country’s war in the 1990s. Schmidt, exercising veto powers enshrined under the peace deal, annuled the two laws. He also changed the criminal code so that people who try to undermine the constitutional order can be criminally prosecuted — a warning to Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik. Reuters has more.

EU BOOSTS VACCINE CAPACITY: The European Commission has signed a contract with a group of four vaccine producers to reserve vaccine manufacturing capacity in case of future outbreaks of disease, the EU executive announced Sunday. POLITICO’s Carlo Martuscelli has more.

Now read this: Carlo also has this top read on how Europe’s COVID inquiry went dark.

EUROPE AWASH IN DRUGS: Rule of law in European democracies is at risk of being undermined unless EU leaders significantly ramp up their response to a boom in drug-related crime, Europol chief Catherine De Bolle told my colleague Nick Vinocur in an interview. Read his story in full here.

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AGENDA       

— Launch of the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine in The Hague. Press conference at 11:15 a.m. by Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders, President of Eurojust Ladislav Hamran, Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andriy Kostin, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Ahmad Khan and U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite. Watch.

— Visit of the European Commission College to the Spanish presidency in Madrid. Arrival of the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at 11:15 a.m. … roundtable prior to the plenary session at 1 p.m. … press conference by Sánchez and von der Leyen at 2:45 p.m. Watch.

— EU-U.K. Parliamentary Partnership Assembly at 2 p.m. Watch. Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič and U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly are expected to make remarks.

— Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans is in China. Meets China’s Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua … meets Tsinghua University Vice President Bin Yang … delivers a speech on climate change and biodiversity loss … holds a bilateral meeting with Minister for Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu.

— Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager is in Copenhagen. Delivers a keynote speech at the International Union of Architects World Congress.

— Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton is in Tokyo. Meets Minister for Digital Transformation Taro Kono … meets with members of the European Business Council in Japan … meets Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Takeaki Matsumoto to sign a Memorandum of Understanding on Arctic Connectivity … co-chairs the Japan-EU Digital Partnership Council meeting … meets with President and CEO of Fujitsu Takahito Tokita.

— Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski is also in Tokyo. Meets with Japanese Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Tetsuro Nomura … meets with representatives of the Agricultural Committee of the House of Representatives of Japan, led by Chairman of the committee Hiroyoshi Sasagawa.

— Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius receives Minister for Environment and Physical Planning of North Macedonia Kaya Shukova, followed by the association agreement of North Macedonia to the LIFE program.

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BRUSSELS CORNER       

NEW JOBS: Lucie Šestáková has taken on the role of Czech Coreper I ambassador, replacing Jaroslav Zajíček, who left in March. Also, Alice Krutilová is the new spokesperson for the Czech permanent representative. Congrats both.

SUMMER WORKS: Some city bus routes will be diverted as of today due to roadworks, including buses 54 and 71 (until August 27) and 87 (until July 31). Starting next Monday, bus 50 and tram 82 will take alternative routes. More information here.

PARKING RULES FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES: Brussels is changing parking rules for people with disabilities on July 8. If you use parking spaces for those with reduced mobility, your vehicle must be registered on the Parking Brussels website here.

MAGRITTE STREET ART: To mark 125 years since the birth of Belgian artist René Magritte, Brussels has asked street artist Julien de Casabianca to draw Magritte’s famous hats on buildings around town. You can follow the route of “men in bowler hats” from Place de Brouckère to Place Royale. More.

BIRTHDAYS: Former European Parliament Secretary General Klaus Welle; MEPs Mathilde Androuët, Leszek Miller and Jerzy Buzek; Former MEPs Esther Herranz García, Bernard Monot and Lieve Wierinck; CEFIC’s Director General Marco Mensink; European Commission’s Luiza Nita; WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

THANKS to: Clea Caulcutt, Playbook reporter Ketrin Jochecová, editor Jack Lahart, and our producer Dato Parulava.

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