European Union News

The public hearing of the Single Market Observatory (SMO) of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in Budapest provided Hungarian civil society organisations a unique opportunity to express their views on how to best relaunch the European Single Market and to debate the Single Market Act with their counterparts at European level.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published an overview of its first Comprehensive Food Consumption Database, a new source of information on food consumption in the European Union, containing detailed data for a number of EU countries. The new database will play a key role in the evaluation of the risks related to possible hazards in food in the EU and will allow more precise estimates of consumers’ exposure to such hazards, a fundamental step in EFSA’s risk assessment work.

The European Union has fixed 5 March 2011 as the date to celebrate the first European Equal Pay Day. This initiative aims to bring attention to the rest of the days that women must work to match the amount of money earned by men, given that according to recent figures women in the European Union earn on average 17.5% less than men during their lifetimes.

Dialogue between workers' and employers' representatives and between governments has been crucial in helping to shape Europe's response to the crisis. The involvement of social partners, workers and employers, in negotiation and consultation has helped companies and workers to adapt to change and their contribution has, in particular, helped to minimise job losses in Europe according to a new report published by the European Commission.

Energy Commissioner Oettinger and Prime Minister of Slovenia Borut Pahor inaugurated on 3 March the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The Agency will help removing technical obstacles to cross-border energy trade, and will coordinate activities of national energy regulators helping to solve possible conflicts between them. The opening of the agency coincides with the coming into force of the third energy package on internal market.

The European Commission has set up a European Expert Network on Culture (EENC) to get advice and support in its policy development. The Network will support the Commission in the analysis of culture policies and their implications at national, regional and European levels.

Registering a car in another Member State should be an easy procedure which quite often turns into a bureaucratic nightmare, with cumbersome re-registration formalities and paperwork. In order to facilitate this procedure, the European Commission has launched a public consultation aiming to identify the main difficulties encountered by EU citizens and companies when moving a car bought and registered in one Member State to another. The results of this consultation will feed into actions  to remove one more barrier within the single market.

The European Commission launched on 2 March the EGNOS “Safety-of-Life” service for aviation which will enable precision approaches and make air navigation safer while reducing delays, diversions and cancellations of flights. This free-to-use technology will also allow airports to increase their overall capacity and cut operating costs.

At the weekly meeting of the Commission College on 2 March, Commissioners held a deep debate over the situation in the Southern Mediterranean and the events unfolding Europe's southern neighbourhood. They described them as a “rendezvous with history” and assured that Europe will be ready to take the challenge and support the current transformation processes.

The European Commission confirmed that on 1 March 2011 some officials initiated unannounced inspections at the premises of companies that are active in the e-book (electronic or digital books) publishing sector in several Member States. These inspections are based on Commission's belief that the companies concerned may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and other restrictive business practices.

Between 2 and 4 March 2011, European Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, and Pacific Islands partners will welcome a joint Action Plan on Climate Change during a High-Level Regional Conference on Climate Change in the Pacific in Vanuatu. Commissioner Piebalgs will call for an increase of international support for the Small Islands, notably to Pacific Islands, an will also launch projects worth 50.4 million euro and will announce new ones for 39 million euro for adaptation to climate change effects and poverty.

To coincide with the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), the European Commission is launching the EU-ACP support programme for the ACP cultural sector totalling 30 million euro. The new programme will ensure that the achievements of the current film and cultural support programmes have a lasting legacy. These programmes have, for instance, made possible the Chad film "Un homme qui crie" by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, and "The last flight of the flamingo" by the Mozambique director, João Ribeiro, which won the award for best feature film at the 3rd International Film Festival of Luanda (Angola).