European Union News

The new list of CPV Codes which classifies the Calls for Tenders published by the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, entered into force on September 17th, 2008. All the Calls for Tenders published in the S Series of the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) are already available in Euroalert.net adapted to this new codification.

On September 15th the Commission presented a Proposal for a Decision of the European Parliament on the mobilisation of the EU Solidarity Fund on the basis of application for assistance from the Fund made by France, after the hurricane "Dean", which affected Martinique and Guadeloupe in August 2007. The Interinstitutional Agreement of May 17th 2006 allows the mobilisation of the Fund within the annual ceiling of 1 billion Euro.

The European Commission has published a new “Practical Guide to EU funding opportunities for Research and Innovation”, which will help to all interested stakeholders to find the right funding programme for their projects in a user-friendly and comprehensive way.

On September 17th, 2008, the European Parliament launched on the Internet its own webTV channel: Europarltv. From that date, anyone in the world with Internet access will be able to watch a regularly changing set of programmes based around the life of the Parliament. This a modern and creative format to bring the EP day-to-day work closer to EU citizens.

European Court of Justice (ECJ) has established rules on the supply quotas for pharmaceuticals on the Greek wholesale market (Joined Cases C-468/06, C-469/06, C-470/06, C-471/06, C-472/06, C-473/06, C-474/06, C-475/06, C-476/06, C-477/06, C-478/06 Sot. Lélos kai Sia). The ECJ decided that a dominant company's refusal to supply wholesalers with a view to impeding parallel trade constitutes an abuse of a dominant market position under Article 82 of the EC Treaty unless it is justified by objective reasons.

The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of the UK bank Alliance & Leicester by the Spanish bank Banco Santander. After examination, the Commission concluded that the proposed operation would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or in a substantial part of it

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), the EU's flagship initiative for boosting innovation in Europe, marks the launch of its activities with the first meeting of its recently appointed Governing Board. The meeting, which took place September 15th in the Institute's host city of Budapest, counted upon the presence of Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, Commission President José Manuel Barroso, and Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, Ján Figel', among others.

The first beam of protons was successfully made on the morning of September 10th, paving the way for a new era of discoveries in the field of particle physics. Among other things, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) should help scientists answer some key questions about the universe, including the nature of dark matter, what happened right after the big bang, and how many dimensions there are.

The decision adopted by the Industry Committee of the European Parliament on a vote held September 11th, 2008, would contribute to the EU's overall goal of ensuring that by 2020, renewables account for at least 20% of its total energy consumption.

The Directorate-General for Research has published last 13th September a call for tender for the development of a study to assess fund-raising from philanthropy for research funding in European universities with a maximum budget of 0,3 meuros.

Aiming to prepare the establishment of a network of projects to demonstrate the use of CCS technology in power plants, the Commission launched a call for tender for an external service provider to assist in establishing and running this network. The Call for Tender will be opened until October 6th, 2008.

The European Commission has presented on the 11th September a Report about the European Space policy progress COM(2008)561 final. The Report provides an overview on the main progress achieved in the first year of the implementation of the European Space Policy (ESP), as elaborated jointly by the European Commission and the Director General of the European Space Agency.