European Union News - European Union

European heads of state and government had a working dinner in Brussels on 19 November to appoint the new EU's key posts: High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and President of the European Council.

The European Commission’s Directorate General for Enlargement has announced the European Young Journalist Award. The competition will reward Europe‘s best young journalists, focusing on EU Enlargement, for the third year running.

At the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Sharm El Sheikh (Egypt), the European Commission today has welcomed a landmark step towards a truly global (and local) internet: the announcement that "Internationalised Domain Names" will be introduced at the top level. Until now, internet domain names were either fully or partly in the Latin "a to z" alphabet. ICANN has announced that a fast track process would be launched today to open up country code top level domains (like ".eu" of europa.eu) to non Latin characters.

Ahead of the entry into force of the treaty of Lisbon, European heads of state and government will  have a working dinner in Brussels on 19 November to appoint the new EU's key posts.

Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina must catch up on the reforms needed to qualify for a short-stay visa waiver like those of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, said MEPs on Thursday. The European Commission should report on the two countries' progress early in 2010, and also start a dialogue on visas with Kosovo, they added.

Parliament has given its annual verdict on the work done by the European Ombudsman over the previous year. In a report adopted on Thursday, MEPs call for more visibility for the Ombudsman's activities and point to the high number of complaints about a lack of transparency within the EU institutions.

The European Commission is launching a wide public consultation to help to define the practical details of the Citizens' Initiative foreseen in the Lisbon Treaty. The Citizens' Initiative will enable one million citizens to request the Commission to bring forward a particular policy proposal.

The Commission has adopted a Green Paper with a view to taking further action to improve cooperation between Member States on obtaining evidence in criminal matters. The Commission considers replacing the currently fragmented legal regime on obtaining evidence in criminal matters by a single instrument based on the principle of mutual recognition covering all types of evidence and introducing common standards with a view to secure its admissibility before the Courts.

The Presidents of the European Commission and the European Parliament, Heads of State and Government as well as hundreds of thousands of citizens join together to celebrate the 20 th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a unique event in contemporary history and a landmark for European integration.

European Parliament will celebrate a formal sitting to commemorates the 20th anniversary of democratic change in central and in central and eastern Europe. Eighty-nine young people born in November 1989, when the Berlin wall fell, will come to Brussels to celebrate the anniversary of a new Europe.