European Union News

The unemployment rate increased in the euro area and in the EU in February 2012 compared with January 2012. In particular, the EU unemployment rate was 10,2% and the euro area seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 10.8%. The lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany, and the highest in Spain and Greece.

Eurostat published its figures which show that on January 2011, 41% of the population of the EU lived in urban regions, 35% in intermediate regions and 23% in rural regions. In addition, in the EU in 2010, the population of urban regions grew by 5.2 per 1000 inhabitants and intermediate regions by 2.2‰, while rural regions decreased by 0.8‰.

The European Commission launched a public consultation with the aim at gathering views with regard to the priority objectives that the EU has to follow the EU until 2020 on the environmental action policy.

According to the Danish Minister for Economic Affairs and the Interior, Margrethe Vestager, who hosted the latest meeting held by the ECOFIN, most of Member States agreed that banks must pay a fair share of the bill of the crisis, but there are many ways of taxing the banks. Some countries therefore support a financial transaction tax, others don’t and would rather explore alternatives. In addition, ministers also held a discussion on the EU multiannual budgetary framework.

Throughout the promotion and information measures for European agricultural products, the European Commission intends to make the agriculture and agri‑food sector more dynamic and more competitive and to promote sustainable, intelligent and inclusive growth.

The Eurogroup decided among other things, to make the paid-in capital of the ESM available more quickly than initially foreseen in the ESM Treaty, in respect of national procedures. In addition, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) will be the main instrument to finance new programmes as from July 2012. The EFSF will only remain active in financing programmes that have started before that date.

The new regulation which establishes the functionalities of the European Citizens' Initiative takes effect on 1 of April. From this date, citizens will be empowered to work together across borders to gather at least one million signatures in support of an idea that will be able to ask the European Commission to propose legislation to enact it.

The Committee of the Regions and the European Parliament call on the Council to start talks on the Commission's proposal for a revised regulation for European Grouping for Territorial Cooperation. According to the CoR's President, Mercedes Bresso, by correcting a set of restrictive and confusing provision on the current legislation, the law will be at the service of the territorial development.

The European Economic and Social Committee approved in plenary session several opinions regarding EU consumer rights. The opinions concerned alternative dispute resolution and online dispute resolution for consumer disputes. According to the EESC, thanks to these opinions, the EU will establish a common framework for solving disputes resulting from buying abroad.

The European Commission published the figures on the progress in cutting EU road deaths and they show that the very promising EU-wide reduction throughout the last decade (-6%) was in 2011 reduced to -2%. The Commission also warned that the tend is reversing in countries who used to have very strong safety records, such as Germany and Sweden.

The European Commission presented the winners projects of the the European Commission's 'eTwinning' competition 2012. Among the winners, there are schools from Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland, France, Turkey, Spain, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Greece, Romania, Portugal and Slovenia, that developed cross-border educational projects using information and communication technologies (ICT).

The General Court confirms the fine of more than €151 million imposed by the European Commission on Telefónica for having abused its dominant position in the Spanish wholesale market for regional and national access to broadband Internet.