European Union News

One of the most significant priority areas of the EU is language learning. The European Commission and its officials have set their sights on enabling EU citizens to communicate in at least two foreign languages, to provide migrants with opportunities to learn the language of their host country, and to promote language teaching. Contributing to the success of this effort is LINGUASIGN, a new animated resource that supports the teaching of foreign languages in primary schools.

These have been the quite clear words stated by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission, Catherine Ashton, following the first part of her visit to Egypt. This first part of the visit, has been the occasion for High Representative Ashton to meet Egypt Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit, as well as with Secretary General of Arab League Amre Moussa.

According to Europe's 9th e-Government Benchmark Report released by the European Commission, more people across the EU now have access to public services online. The average availability of online public services in the EU went up from 69% to 82% from 2009 to 2010, helping to cut costs for public administrations and also reducing red tape for businesses and citizens. However, although Europe's national public administrations are moving in the right direction, the report shows that there is still disparity between countries as well as room for improvement in take up of eProcurement.

According to the last results released by the European Investment Bank (EIB), in 2010 the total lending provided by the bank reached 72 billion euro, from which 63 billion euro were spent inside the EU and 9 billion euro in projects outside. This funds were allocated to support over 460 large-scale projects, which marks a gradual return to pre-crisis levels as the Bank adapts its activity to the economic environment.

In order to help citizens and businesses to fully benefit from the opportunities offered by the Single Market, the European Commission published on 21 February a strategy to improve governance of the single market. To achieve this general objective, the strategy provides for the expansion of the Internal Market Information (IMI) system to other areas of EU law such as, potentially, gambling and e-commerce will help to achieve this.

EU Foreign Affairs ministers meeting in Brussels on 21 February in a Council meeting chaired by High Representative Catherine Ashton, took an in-depth discussion on the situation in the EU's Southern neighbourhood and expressed its support for the legitimate hopes and aspirations for democratic change, social justice and economic development of peoples of the South Mediterranean. In particular, the Council condemned the ongoing repression against demonstrators in Libya and deplored the violence and the death of civilians.

Species are disappearing at an alarming rate, threatening nature's ability to provide human beings with essential goods and services like clean air and water, food, fuel, materials, climate regulation and flood prevention, to name just a few. In order to tackle such issues, EU-funded project BIODIVERSA is working to create a single biodiversity research community in Europe.

According to the last data released by the European Commission regarding the functioning of the services Your Europe Advice and SOLVIT, social security stand as the issues which European citizens and business are most concerned and have requested information about to both services. In 2010 Your Europe Advice reached an all-time high of 12.000 questions, and SOLVIT helped 1.363 citizens and businesses in their difficulties regarding the implementation of Single Market rights.

The European Commission announced on 21 February the projects which have been awarded funding under the Trans-European transport network (TEN-T) calls for proposals published in 2010.  A total amount of 170 million euro has been awarded to 51 projects that will help Member States to build missing transport links, remove bottlenecks and increase the safety and security of transport, with a special focus on making transport more sustainable, multimodal as well as promoting public–private partnerships PPPs).

In a recent report, the European Ombudsman has commended the European Commission for the progress it has made in recent years in reducing its late payment problems. These are some of the results following an investigation and a public consultation that the Ombudsman conducted on this issue, which show that although there has been significant improvements, problems still persist.

The Member States recovered in 2010 a total of 530 million euro in State aid granted to businesses before they were notified to the Commission and later found to be incompatible with EU State aid rules. Although figures show progress on recovering these funds, this improvement mostly relates to new cases and not to the resolution of old ones. In 10 years, the total amount of aid recovered is estimated to 10.9 billion euro.

In an extraordinary meeting of EU Foreign Affairs ministers held in Brussels on 20 February, the European Union expressed its extreme concern about the event unfolding in Libya. Although not referring to Libya's threat regarding its support to EU's migratory policy, the EU has condemned the repression the violent reaction against peaceful protesters and deplored the death of civilians.