European Union News

The Commission presented within its EU Budget 2014-2020 project, the proposals for the new Health for Growth and Consumer Programmes which include €446 million and €197 million respectively. With these two new proposals, the Commission intends to foster a Europe of healthy, active, informed and empowered citizens, who can contribute to economic growth.

The European Commission presented in a Communication its strategy for helping the European small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to better profit from fast growing emerging markets, such as in China, India or Russia. The Commission proposes to reinforce business support services, improving the coordination and use of existing resources including the Enterprise Europe Network.

According to the latest statistics published by Eurostat on agricultural diversity, almost half of total harvested EU cereal production came from France, Germany and Poland and Germany, Spain and France the largest producers of pig meat in the EU. In addition, Germany, France and Italy are the largest cheese producers in the EU.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) published a report in which it finds that air quality in Europe has improved between 1990 and 2009, as emissions of most pollutants have fallen, but there is still a lot of room for improvement, as many EU countries are expected to exceed the emissions ceilings in 2010 for at least one pollutant.

EU Finance Ministers adopted officially and without further discussion the "six-pack" of measures on economic governance. The package was already adopted in October and now Ministers gave their final and official approval. In addition, the Council adopted conclusions on the design of the so-called "scoreboard" of economic indicators to be used, as part of those new arrangements, in detecting macroeconomic imbalances.

Farm policy reform plans were debated at a unique meeting of EP Agriculture Committee MEPs, Member States' farm ministers and the European Commission. This was the first time in the EU's history that legislative proposals for farm policy reform were discussed in the one room by the two co-deciding bodies - the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.

The European Commission has awarded grants ranging from €125,000 to €200,000 to support initiatives aimed at tackling violence and intolerance in sport. In particular, twelve trans-national projects have received these grants as part of a package of 'preparatory actions' intended to pave the way for the launch of an EU sub-programme for sport.

The Council adopted a directive amending the financial conglomerate directive (FICOD) in order to close loopholes and ensure appropriate supplementary supervision of financial entities in a financial conglomerate. In addition, at the Council meeting, Ministers also adopted a regulation approving the revised text of the OECD arrangement on officially supported export credits in order to ensure its application in EU law.

Budgets Committee at the European Parliament approved the transfer of €714 million from 46 budget lines with surpluses to 57 budget lines that lack adequate funding. According to this Committee, EU 2011 budget needs an extra €550 million despite the housekeeping transfers.

In order to improve basic education in over 46 developing countries, the EU will provide €31.8 million to the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Fund between 2011 and 2013. This new support to education in developing countries is based in the EU's intention of achieving one of the objectives of the new "Agenda for Change".

The Steering Group of the pilot European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing reached an agreement to design an implementation plan towards the following objective: to ensure that the average European citizen has two more active and healthy years to live by 2020. The plan focuses on three main areas of life events: prevention, care and cure, and independent living.

A British team of researchers with EU funding from the European Research Council (ERC) has discovered more than 100 fortified farms and villages with castle-like structures and several towns, most dating from AD 1-500 in Libya’s south-western desert using satellites and air-photographs.