European Union News - 15 February 2012

From 1 June of 2012, organic products certified in Europe or in the United States may be sold as organic in either region. The new agreement announced by the European Commission implies the creation of a strong foundation from which to promote organic agriculture, benefiting the growing organic industry and supporting jobs and businesses on a global scale.

The European Commission has proposed to help 1,138 redundant construction workers back into employment in Spain, with €1.6m from the European Globalisation adjustment Fund (EGF). The proposal now goes to the European Parliament and the EU's Council of Ministers for their approval.

The plan for the EU presented by the Commission seeks to reverse its relative decline in High-Performance Computing (HPC) use and capabilities. Thus, the EU will double its investment in HPC and become home to computers that can perform 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (i.e. 1018) operations per second before 2020. Half of the investment would be for development and training and for new centres of excellence, creating thousands of jobs.

MEPs adopted the single Euro payments area (SEPA) regulation which lays down common rules and standards for euro credit and direct debit transactions among banks. According to them, thanks to this new regulation cross-border bank transfers should become faster, cheaper and safer for EU citizens.

The Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council meeting discussed on the 14 of February two aspects of the Commission's proposal on the draft regulation on trans-European energy infrastructure: regional groups and regulatory measures. In addition, Ministers also held a debate on the main obstacles to the achievement of the Europe 2020 energy objectives.

The first Alert Mechanism Report published by the Commission on the EU's new rules on economic governance considers that the macroeconomic situation in the following countries needs to be investigated further: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.