European Union News - 17 November 2011

EU Member State representatives reached an agreement on a draft law that will ensure defendants’ right to information in criminal proceedings wherever they are in the EU. Under the new law, suspects of a criminal offence will have to be informed of their rights in a language they understand. The proposed Directive will now pass to the European Parliament for adoption in the coming weeks, before final adoption by ministers meeting in the Council.

The European Commission published two reports which recommends to policy-makers to do more in order to help schools tackle low achievement in mathematics and science. The reports conclude that although much has been achieved in updating mathematics and science curricula, support for the teachers responsible for implementing the changes is still lacking.

The European Union, the United States and Japan decided to to get a further boost to the introduction of electrical cars with an international agreement. In particular, the partners agreed to closely cooperate on convergence of regulatory obligations related to electric vehicles in the global context.

The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction published its 2011 annual report in which draws conclusions such as that there are over 1.3 million regular opioid users in the EU and Norway. Furthermore, the report highlights that the use of inject drugs – heroin - is declining.

The European Commission will adopt on the 29 November an Open Data Strategy which means a set of measures aimed at increasing government transparency and creating a €32 billion a year market for public data. The measures include a modification of the existing Directive on the re-use of public sector information and the deployment measures such as a creation of open data portals at European level.

Staff teams from the European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visited Lisbon during November 7-16 for the second quarterly review of Portugal’s economic program. Among the conclusions raised by them, overall the program is off to a good start. However, its success crucially depends on continued implementation of a wide range of structural reforms.