European Union News - European Union

The European Commission has selected 50 Masters Courses and 13 Joint Doctorates to be added to the courses available under the EU's Erasmus Mundus programme for stronger European co-operation and international ties in higher education. The new courses involve 296 universities from Europe and 70 partner universities from a range of countries around the world.

The European Union says that the environment is seriously damaged by the hundreds of merchant ships thet are dismantled each year, leaving out large quantities of hazardous waste such as asbestos, PCB and oil sludges. Moreover, in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, where the majority of the dismantling industry is set, working conditions are so poor that each year hundreds of workers suffer serious accidents. Nearly a quarter of the ships dismantled come from Europe.

Brussels has decided to extend the deadline for the applications for the call for proposals 2009 for financial support to European consumer organisations until September 25th.

Eurofound has issued a report which looks at working time agreements set by collective bargaining. It has found that the average paid annual leave entitlement for workers in Europe was 25.2 days across the EU in 2008; however, some countries had up to three weeks’ more holidays than others.

Europe will come to 500 million, thanks in part to migration and an increase in the number of births while the rate of deaths has remained stable. All EU countries except Germany, have seen their birth rate increase, particularly Lithuania, Poland and Ireland.

The journal Science published a study by researchers from United Kingdom and Spain and financed from EU funds concludes that ecological restoration in areas of high environmental degradation can help stop the loss of global biodiversity. Also showed that the conservation work that are most effective when the restoration is intended to ensure the quality of "ecosystem services" such as drinking water, food production and carbon storage.

The European Commission has published several calls for proposals in various thematic areas of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), under three of the specific programmes that develop it: Cooperation, Capacities and Ideas. 

In the framework of the ESPON 2013 programme, calls for proposals and expression of interest will be launched on 16 September 2009. ESPON is an initiative that aims to study the conditions for the development of several areas in the EU. The calls will reflect priorities 1 to 4 of the programme.
 

According to new figures, the EU’s Erasmus programme for mobility and co-operation in higher education, continued its successful course in the academic year 2007/2008 by enabling more than 162.000 European students and 27.000 academics to go abroad to study or teach. Student exchanges with Erasmus grew by 5.2 % compared to 2006/07, so it can be assumed that by mid 2009 Erasmus has exceeded the mark of 2 million students.
 

The Council for General Affairs and External Relations met on 27 July. The Ministers discussed EU enlargement and agreed to pass on Iceland's application for membership to the Commission. The ministers were also given a presentation of the Commission's proposal for a Baltic Sea Strategy, and discussed about other external issues. 

The Member States have adopted a modernised and simplified version of the EU rules on coordination of social security systems, unther the Swedish Presidency. The decision of the Council was unanimous and without debate.

The Council of Ministers has followed the European Parliament in approving a proposal from the European Commission to modernise European legislation – the so-called GSM Directive – on the use of the radio spectrum needed for mobile services. The GSM Directive of 1987 reserves the use of part of the 900MHz spectrum band to GSM (Global System for Mobile or originally Groupe Spécial Mobile) access technologies such as mobile phones. The updated Directive now allows the 900 MHz frequency band to be used to provide faster, pan-European services such as mobile internet while ensuring the continuation of GSM services. This new flexibility will foster stronger competition on Europe's telecoms market and contribute to a more rapid and more widespread roll-out of wireless broadband services, one of the drivers of economic recovery.