European Union News

Budapest and Vienna will host on 11 and 12 March a ministerial conference and a forum on the Bologna Declaration and the new structures of European higher education. This is the second conference on this issue organized by the European Unnion.

For the fourth year in a row, the European Commission has organized an international drawing competition on Gender Equality, which has been launched on the International Women's Day – 8 March 2010. This year's theme proposes to reflect on how girls and boys, women and men, can together make the world a better place.

The nominees for the European Inventor Award 2010 include inventors of pioneering innovations in a wide range of fields, from the conservation of drinking water to the synthesis of football-shaped carbon molecules or "fullerenes", and from cancer treatments to digital data encryption. The award honours individual inventors, or teams of inventors, who, through their pioneering work, respond to the challenges of our time, thereby contributing to progress and prosperity.

This Monday, International Women's Day, the ministers of employment and social affairs of the European Union (EU) are defining the instruments and the main lines of action in Europe's strategy against gender-based violence.

EU Employment and Social Affairs Ministers have agreed on a new facility to provide loans to people who have lost their jobs and want to start or further develop their own small business. The European Microfinance Facility will have a starting budget of €100 million which could leverage more than €500 million in cooperation with international financial institutions such as the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group. The initiative is part of the EU's response to the crisis and is especially targeted at people who cannot normally obtain credit because of the economic crisis and the current lack of credit supply .

The EU counts nearly half a billion citizens: their impact on the environment, and on energy consumption in particular, is huge. Europeans must act to curb this impact and manage resources wisely in order to protect the environment. Enter the ENERSIP project which will design a graphic interface to provide key services helping consumers save energy but also maintaining their comfort levels. The upshot is efficient energy production and consumption based on user demand.

This conference aims to promote a connected community of stakeholders and identify possible joint actions to support innovation through public procurement. To start building a European critical mass in this field, there is a need to facilitate the networking and exchanging of best practice among public procurers, policy makers and relevant stakeholders.

The European Commission plans to use a series of measures aimed at sig nificantly reducing the pay gap between men and women over the next five years. The average gender pay gap in the EU currently stands at 18%. To lower this rate, the Commission plans to raise awareness among employers, encourage initiatives to promote gender equality and support the development of tools to measure the gender pay gap

An exchange of views was held on the new 2020 Strategy for jobs and growth at the latest meeting of the Competitiveness Council on 1 and 2 March in Brussels, Belgium. The debate focused on the new strategy from the perspective of the internal market and will help contribute to the general framework of the new strategy.

Without enough money, the EU 2020 strategy risks turning into "another vague scoreboard for the Member States", the EP Budgets Committee warned on Thursday when adopting its priorities for the 2011 budget. According to the committee, next year's budget should focus on youth, research and recovery from the economic crisis.

The European Commission has launched a consultation on strategic priorities for an EU radio spectrum policy programme for 2011-2015. Industry, consumers and other stakeholders are invited to respond to the consultation by 9 April. A "Spectrum Summit" held jointly by the Commission and the European Parliament will take place on 22/23 March to discuss Europe's spectrum priorities.

The European Commission has selected 43 major energy projects, which will significantly contribute to the economic recovery in the EU, while increasing our security of energy supply by creating cross-border infrastructure. With this decision, the Commission grants € 2.3 billion to 31 gas and 12 electricity projects. This is the second financial decision under the Economic Recovery Package which amounts to almost 4 billion Euros. It is the largest amount the EU has ever spent on energy infrastructure.