European Union News

The Ministers of Sport of the European Union unanimously agreed to design a common policy to boost the social role and values of sport and the fight against racism, violence and doping in the first Council of Ministers of Sport

European Sports Ministers are to hold their first ever formal meeting on Monday in Brussels, as part of the Council of Education, Youth and Culture, chaired by Spain's Secretary of State for Sport, Jaime Lissavetzky.

Companies, experts and skateholders in FP7 will meet on June 3rd in Brussels to attend an event organized by ACC1Ó, the catalan agency for the support of competitiveness and innovation of the companies.

The European Parliament has adopted a report by the Budgetary Control Committee which asks the Commission and Member States to improve their efforts in the supervision of the use of European funds

After a meeting in Brussels lasting more than eleven hours, which finished in the early hours of Monday morning, the Economy and Finance Council (Ecofin) reached an agreement on a loan package of more than 500,000 million euros allocated to cover the needs of members with solvency problems and to defend the euro.

European Parliament has voted to allow 18 new Members of the European Parliament to take their seats during the current legislature. MEPs approved an amendment to the Lisbon Treaty that would enable this change, but they did not deem it necessary to call a Convention to discuss the treaty amendment.

Concluding the process and deciding on the schedule for releasing the funds agreed on for Greece, as well as examining and learning lessons from the crisis for the governance of the eurozone, will be the focus of the discussions of the heads of state and government at the meeting in Brussels this Friday.

Androulla Vassiliou, the Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, will discuss progress by Member States in setting national targets to reduce the number of early school leavers and to increase the proportion of young people in tertiary or equivalent education when she joins Ministers at the Education, Youth and Culture Council in Brussels on 10-11 May 2010. The Council will deal with sport for the first time.

Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the European Investment Bank (EIB) and European Development Finance Institutions (EDFI) will establish a joint climate change fund after the signing of a memorandum of understanding for the Interact Climate Change

A new EU-funded project is developing a system that will save lives and mitigate damage to property and the environment in the aftermath of disasters. The two-year project is called GEO-PICTURES, and EUR 2.4 million of its EUR 3.2 million budget comes from the Space Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

The European Commission adopted today an Action Plan to increase the protection of unaccompanied minors entering the EU, encompassing common standards for guardianship and legal representation. The aim of the Plan is to create a common European approach to make sure that a decision on the future of each unaccompanied minor is taken by the competent authorities as soon as possible, preferably within six months.

The Commission has released the the results of an opinion poll looking at how citizens perceive the quality of life in 75 major European cities.  Although responses reveal wide disparities overall, transport, heath and education services generally score well, opposite to availability of jobs and housing costs, which remain as dominant concerns