European Union News

The European Future Technologies Conference (FET) will take place next 4-6 of May in Budapest and its registration is still open until 28 of April. The conference, as well as an exhibition, it is aimed to be an European forum which facilitates international cross-disciplinary dialogue and discussion on visions and challenges for frontier research in future and emerging information technologies.

The European Commission has approved the creation of the business travel joint venture BCD Travel Viajes Iberia by Orizonia and BCD Travel Business Spain the EU Merger Regulation.

The European Commission adopted a Decision on how free emission allowances should be allocated from 2013 but a proportion of free allowances will still be given to industry until 2020. This is aimed to reduce costs for installations in sectors deemed to be exposed to significant competition from outside the EU.

The Hungarian EU Presidency is hosting the coming ICT Proposer's Day 2011. The event will take place in Budapest from 19 to 20 of May and is dedicated to networking and partnership building for ICT Calls 8 and 9 of the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission (FP7), offering more than one billion Euros of EU funding.

Johan Richard, a 31-year-old French researcher and his team, has discovered a galaxy 13 billion light years away from Earth. Richard started his research in 2008 whilst a Marie Curie fellow at Durham University in the UK. The discovery of the galaxy was made at the Dark Cosmology Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark, using the Hubble Space Telescope, a joint project between the European Space Agency and NASA.

The EP Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee and Council reached an agreement on a new EU regulation on textile labelling. This new deal includes the clause that on garment labels will be stated that any use of animal-derived material has been used. 

EU Agency ENISA has issued the final report and video clip on on the first Pan-European cyber security exercise for public bodies, ‘Cyber Europe 2010’. The report stressed the need for more cyber security exercises in the future, a increased collaboration between the Member States and the importance of the private sector in ensuring security.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) celebrates its 20th anniversary on 15 April 2011. Since it began its work in 1991, the Bank has played a key role in the economic transformation of a region that spreads from the Baltics to Mongolia, through central and eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union and most recently to Turkey.

The Eurostat office published the first notification with a Government debt at 85.1% and 80.0%. In 2010, the government deficit of both the euro area (EA17) and the EU27 decreased compared with 2009, while the government debt and GDP increased. In the euro area the government deficit to GDP ratio decreased from 6.3% in 2009 to 6.0% in 2010, and in the EU27 from 6.8% to 6.4%. In the euro area the government debt to GDP ratio increased from 79.3% at the end of 2009 to 85.1% at the end of 2010, and in the EU27 from 74.4% to 80.0%.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) adopted an opinion on the Commission's proposal aimed at revising the financial rules applicable to the annual budget of the European Union ("EU Financial Regulation"). The EDPS believes, among other conclusions, that the proposal does not meet the requirements of data protection law.

At a high-level conference on the future of the European audio-visual industry, Zsolt Nyitrai, Hungarian Minister for Info-communication of the Ministry of National Development stated that, EU needs to discover and introduce new business models for the audio-visual industry, but authors and consumers must not be confronted.

The Joint Research Centre has developed a new Tsunami Alerting Device (TAD) which  alert directly people at risk in the event of an incoming tsunami wave. The testing of the prototype device begun on 20 April in Setubal (Portugal).