European Union News

The European Parliament adopted the draft legislation on OTC derivatives previously agreed by Parliament and Council negotiators. Under the new rules, OTC derivative contracts would have to be cleared through central counterparties (CCPs), thus reducing counterparty credit risk, i.e. the risk that one party to the contract may default.

The European Commission announced the projects selected to receive grants with the aim at improving transport infrastructure across the EU. The 26 selected projects will use the EU's financial support to speed up the implementation of important priorities of the TEN-T Programme.

The Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States endorsed the compromise text previously agreed by the Council and the Parliament to tighten the requirements of the Seveso directive in order to prevent accidents with hazardous chemicals such as fireworks. This decision paves the way towards its formal adoption by the Council.

The Commission's proposal still needs to be adopted by the budgetary authority of Europol, the European Police Office in The Hague, with the aim to establish the Centre to be the European focal point in fighting cybercrime. Once approved, it will mainly focus on illegal online activities carried out by organised crime groups.

The Council and the European Parliament reached an agreement for the adoption of the draft regulation on roaming on public mobile communications networks within the EU. These rules will lead to a structural and durable solution to the high cost of using mobile phones and other smart devices whilst travelling in the EU. The European Parliament is expected to approve this agreement in May 2012 and the Council in June.

The Commission's Vice President Antonio Tajani announced new European Commission's projects to support clusters of SMEs in the sectors of clean technologies, renewable energy, bio-technology, and sports goods so SMEs can take full advantage of the strong growth in these sectors in Asia, Latin America, North America and Russia.

Eurostat published figures on the amount of municipal waste generated by Member States which show that 486 kg of municipal waste was treated person while 502 kg of municipal waste was generated per person in the EU. The municipal waste was treated in 2010 in different ways, being landfilled, the most commonly used way.

The report published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) shows that EU development aid for food security in sub-Saharan Africa is mostly effective and makes an important contribution to achieving food security. Still, only half of the interventions have reasonable prospects of being sustainable and makes a number of recommendations to the European Commission to improve development aid.

Civil Liberties Committee backed the draft law which proposes to punish by at least two years in prison the cyber attacks on IT systems. In addition, possession or distributing hacking software and tools would be an offences, as well as illegal access, interference or interception of data. However, no criminal sanctions should apply to "minor cases", i.e. when the damage caused by the offence is insignificant.

The latest Eurobarometer survey published by the European Commission pointed out that SMEs are creating green jobs. In 2012, almost 13% of all SME jobs were green jobs while in large firms it was only 1 in 33 equivalent to 3% of all large company jobs. Nonetheless, the findings from this survey also reveal that less than a quarter of SMEs take advantage of the single market for green products or services.

The agreement signed by the European Investment Bank and Gas Natural Fenosa is the second instalment of a total €500 million loan. With this agreement, the company will develop actions to spread its distribution network across 11 Spanish regions, with 59% located in convergence regions.

MEPs at the Civil Liberties Committee adopted the EU-US PNR deal which sets out the legal conditions for the transfer of the air passengers' data and covers issues such as storage periods, purpose of the data use, data protection safeguards and administrative and judicial redress. The deal was approved with 31 votes in favour, 23 against and one abstention. Some MEPs who voted against stressed that data protection safeguards foreseen in the agreement do not meet EU standards.