European Union News

Due to the situation caused by the interruption of gas supplies from Russia via Ukraine, an extraordinary meeting of the Energy Council took place in Brussels on January, 12th 2009, under the Presidency of the Czech Minister of Industry and Trade. At this meeting EU Ministers welcomed the steps taken by  Czech Presidency to tackle the crisis.

The Commission will fund with more that 1.1 M€ Transatlantic Exchange Partnerships within the EU-Canada  programme for co-operation in higher education, training and youth. Applications may be submitted until April, 1st 2009.

The Commission has set up, by Decision 2009/17/CE, published in the Official Journal of the European Union, the Committee of Experts on Posting of Workers. This Committee will engage with the public bodies responsible for control, such as labour inspectorates. It will also, at appropriate levels and in accordance with national law and practice, formally and regularly involve the social partners, in particular representatives of the social partners in sectors with a high incidence of recourse to posted workers.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) adopted on January, 9th 2009, an Opinion on the review of the Directive on Privacy and electronic communications, usually referred to as the ePrivacy Directive. The recommendations presented in this Opinion aim at streamlining some of the provisions of the Directive, while at the same time ensuring an adequate level of data protection and privacy.

The European Commission has decided to open formal proceedings with respect to Standard & Poor's (S&P) behaviour towards end users of International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs), for possible breaches of the EC Treaty's rules on abuse of a dominant market position. The Commission believes that S&P may abuse its monopoly position as the US national numbering agency by forcing financial institutions (such as banks and investment funds) to pay licensing fees for the use of US ISIN codes in their own databases.

The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of the two Spanish low-cost airlines Vueling and Clickair by the Spanish flag-carrier Iberia on condition that commitments to safeguard competition and passenger choice are implemented. The Spanish competition authority submitted a request for the concentration to be referred to them for consideration but subsequently withdrew their request.

EU reforms in the postal sector are well on track, but some Member States need to speed up their transition towards full market opening and to remove remaining barriers to competition. These are the conclusions of the European Commission's latest periodical application report on the EU postal sector. The creation of an Internal Postal Market is included in the Lisbon Strategy as a crucial element of the EU's single market policy.

Greece, Spain, Hungary and Portugal have lifted restrictions on access to their labour markets for Bulgarian and Romanian workers from the 1st . The four countries join ten other EU Member States which had already opened their labour markets for workers from Bulgaria and Romania. Restrictions remain in eleven Member States.

The Czech Presidency of the EU and European Commission launched the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009 on Wednesday, 7 January with the slogan “Imagine. Create. Innovate”.

The Official Journal of the European Union has published the Council Regulation (EC) No 13/2009 of 18 December 2008 amending Regulations (EC) No 1290/2005 on the financing of the common agricultural policy and (EC) No 1234/2007 establishing a common organisation of agricultural markets and on specific provisions for certain agricultural products (Single CMO Regulation) in order to set up a School Fruit Scheme.

Research activities carried out at the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM), aim to deliver new testing methods which will avoid unnecessary tests using animals for the validation of chemical substances safety.

Compared with the same date for November 2007, thirteen Member States recorded a fall in their unemployment rate, and fourteen an increase. The largest falls were observed in Poland (8.5% to 6.5%) and Slovakia (10.5% to 9.1%), and the highest increases in Spain (8.6% to 13.4%) and Estonia (4.1% to 8.3%)