European Union News - 29 September 2008

Making Europe more secure for its citizens while maintaining civil rights and liberties is the goal of European Security Research. By co-operating and coordinating efforts on a Europe-wide scale, the EU can better understand and adequately respond to risks in a constantly changing world and enhance its competitiveness at the same time. This is the aim of the a new common research project, called EU-SEC II, which will involve 23 European security administrations and one United Nations agency.

The European Commission has approved a proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers on a new programme for the period 2010–15 under the name “Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations” (ISA). The program responds to the need of cooperation and communication in order to establish and promote commonly agreed solutions to avoid e-barriers at national borders.

The European Commission has outlined in a report, the main steps that Europe has to take to respond to the next wave of the Information Revolution that will intensify in the coming years due to trends such as social networking, the decisive shift to on-line business services, nomadic services based on GPS and mobile TV and the growth of smart tags. In order to assess the possibilities of leadership in this trend, the Commission has launched a public consultation on the policy and private sector responses to these opportunities.

The European Commission has published in the Official Journal of the European Union on September 29th, 2008, a Call for Proposals to support the transnational distribution of European films by Agents for the international sale of European cinema films, based on the decision of the European Parliament and of the Council  establishing a single pluriannual programme for Community actions in the audiovisual field for the period 2007-2013.

The Council of the European Union published in the OJEU on September 29th, a Council Joint Action appointing Mr. Pierre Morel, as the European Union Special Representative (EUSR) for the crisis in Georgia for the period from September 25tth, 2008, to February 28th 2009. The EUSR will enhance the effectiveness and visibility of the EU in helping to resolve the conflict in Georgia.