European Union News

More than 200 events will are held across the European Union on 24 September as part of the sixth annual 'European Researchers' Night'. Around 500,000 people are expected to attend this event which aims to promote careers in science and research.

According to figures in a report covering the period 2007-2008 published by the European Commission, EU television broadcasters are devoting an average of 63% of their air time to programmes made in the EU and 35% to independent works created by European producers. These data indicate a considerable degree of fulfilment of the objectives set by the Directive on audiovisual media services.

The European Parliament has tabled nine nominations for the 2010 Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought have been tabled. The nominees are the "Access" movement, Haytham Al-Maleh, Israeli NGO "Breaking the Silence", Guillermo Fariñas, Aminatou Haidar, Dawit Isaak, Birtukan Mideksa, Father Thadeus (Nguyën Van Ly) and the Christian mission "Open Doors".

Researchers from Europe and China warn that little can be done to stop dangerous increases in the global sea level, as it will rise between 30 to 70 centimetres (cm) by 2100 even if all but the most aggressive geo-engineering schemes are undertaken to mitigate the effects of global warming and stringently control greenhouse gas emissions.

With its 23 official languages and over 40 regional and minority languages, the EU forms a unique multilingual community of countries and people. However, much of the potential brought by internal market to SMEs is lost because of the lack of necessary languages expertise. This potential will be the focus for this year European Day of Languages, to be held on 26 September.

The Internal Market Scoreboard presented by the European Commission on 23 September shows, among other things, that although the average transposition level of internal market rules in Member States is close to the 1% objective, the positive trend of recent years has stalled . For the first time, this Scoreboard also includes an enforcement table which provides an overview of Member state's compliance with internal market rules.

The European Parliament wants to play a more active role in negotiating new rules governing EU  budget. This is one of the elements within a resolution adopted at the plenary session on 22 September where MEPs called for more flexibility in budgetary rules in order to bring a better response to new challenges facing the Union.

200 delegates from over 27 countries taking part at the ECEI10 meeting held in Brussels, came to the conclusion that the role of the librarian will not longer be a mere book collector, but instead a guide through Internet. They also suggest that public libraries communicate more about the added value they can offer.

European researchers are attempting to unravel the causes of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders by examining the role that genes and different environments play in the onset of these conditions. Epidemiologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, pharmacologists, biostatisticians, and geneticists will all play a role in this unique large-scale project.

After a year of negotiations, the European Parliament has given on 22 September its final approval to a series of legislative measures in order to reform EU financial supervision system. This package of reforms will make a fundamental change in the way banks, stock markets and insurance companies are policed as of 2011.

Over the last decade, the Grundtvig Programme has helped European adults to boost their skills and employability by providing financial support for training courses and learning mobility. In these ten years, the programme has invested 370 million Euro in the adult education sector and provided 17,000 grants for organisations involving an estimated 500,000 participants.

During the European Parliament plenary session, the chamber approved a resolution stressing the need for adequate financial resources as well as adequate measures for disaster prevention. The plan includes legislation to establish a Community policy on water scarcity, stronger punishment of arson, an EU-wide disaster insurance scheme and more flexible mobilization of the Solidarity Fund.