European Union News

As part of its broader financial support for innovation and promotion of long-term investment in low emission and fuel efficient engine technology across Europe, the European Investment Bank has agreed to support research and development at John Deere plants in Germany and France. The support granted through this loan will include initiatives to lower emissions from agricultural equipment.

The Official Journal of the European Union publishes in its issue of 3 August 2010, Council Decision of 30 July 2010, establishing the High Level Forum for a Better Functioning Food Supply Chain. The Forum will assist the Commission with the development of industrial policy in the agro-food sector, and the provisions of this Decision will be applicable until 31 December 2012.

The Official Journal of the European Union publishes in its issue of 3 August 2010, Council Decision of 26 July 2010, establishing the organisation and functioning of the European External Action Service, which sets up its functions and actions in matters such as external action instruments and programming or security issues. On the same date, OJEU also publishes the legal instrument for the adoption of such Decision.

The Directorate-General for Regional Policy has launched a tender to study the relevance and the effectiveness of ERDF and Cohesion Fund support to regions with specific geographical features.

On 1 August 2010,  the Convention on Cluster Munitions entered into force being ratified by 37 of the 107 signatory States. With this occasion, the European Union highlighted that universalisation and full implementation of the Treaties and Conventions in the multilateral system are at the heart of its actions in the area of non proliferation and disarmament.

Experts and computer scientists from Europe and Israel have begun to work on a project that seeks to resolve the problems of interoperation between electronic services. The ACSI ('Artifact-centric service interoperation') will examine the viability of interoperation hubs and dynamic artefacts as ways to improve the process whereby e-services are merged into one dynamic system.

EFSA’s Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) Panel has adopted a scientific opinion on strategies for assessing the risk of allergenicity of GM plants and microorganisms and derived food and feed. This opinion takes into account the results coming from the a consultation opened gather interested parties points of view.

According to data released by the European Commission the Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) edged up in July to 102.2 (by 1.9 points) in the European Union as a whole, and to 101.3 (by 2.3 points) in the Euro area. These results, as well as positive data also in consumer confidence indicators, are highly influenced by positive readings in Germany.

The European Research Council has now funded over 1000 innovative ideas within its three years of activity. Among the package of funded projects, ERC covers a vast range of scientific disciplines, public policy areas and commercial sectors. There is currently a further 661 M € envelope still available for early-career researchers which has been launched within the FP7 Calls for proposals in 20 July 2010. These grants will be awarded over the next 14 months and are expected to create more than 165.000 jobs.
 

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) has reviewed the risk control measures in the framework for assets eligible for use as collateral in Eurosystem market operations. The resulting changes stem from the biennial review of the Eurosystem risk control measures and the Governing Council’s decision of 8 April 2010 to introduce graduated valuation haircuts for lower-rated assets.

According to data provided by the statistical office of the European Union (Eurostat), the population of the European Union amounted to 501 million on 1 January 2010. This data show that an important part of this increase comes from net migration rate which was of 0.9 million people, as well as natural increase of 0.5 million. 

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) addressed on 27 July a letter to the Internal Market and Services Directorate General of the Commission, in which he took stock of what has been achieved and what further progress needs to be made on the issues raised in the Commission Report on the state of data protection in the Internal Market Information System (IMI).