European Union News - 19 May 2011

When Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted in 2010, air transport officials launched a no-fly zone. Thus, researchers from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the University of Iceland have created a protocol to give traffic authorities the help they need to quickly determine if planes should be grounded when ash threatens airspace safety.

The European Commission has requested Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain to apply the Third Capital Requirements Directive or CRD III and notify measures within two months to implement important rules concerning the capital adequacy and the remuneration policies of financial institutions.

The European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, Androulla Vassiliou welcomed the “European Heritage Label” because according to her, it highlights sites that celebrate the history and development of the European Union. The first sites to receive the new Label will be announced in 2013.

The ELI ('Extreme light infrastructure') project, with European funds, aims to build a laser of intensity sufficient to rip photons into electron-positron pairs. This type of super laser could play a crucial role in the development of new cancer diagnosis and treatments, and could help fuel our understanding of molecular biology and nanoscience. It could also be used to resolve myriad issues that weigh heavily on the minds of environmentalists, like how to handle nuclear waste.

During the trilateral inter-institutional conciliatory negotiations over the package of six legislative proposals, which is aimed at strengthening the economic governance, the Council meeting authorised the Presidency to make a compromise proposal in the European Parliament.