European Union News - European Union

The European Commission has decided to pursue infringement procedures against 12 Member States for failure to implement certain Internal Market Directives into national law. Under the Treaties, the Commission is responsible for ensuring that EU law is correctly applied, and consequently, it has powers of its own (action for non-compliance) to try to bring the infringement to an end and, where necessary, may refer the case to the European Court of Justice.

The European Commission decided on September 18th, to refer to the Court of Justice the matter of proceedings against Estonia and the United Kingdom for failing to transpose the European legislation on enhancing port security into national law within the set time limit.

More than 70 representatives of Spanish entities and institutions attended the briefing on the Call 2009-2012 to select Europe Direct information centres. The meeting took place on September 18th at the headquarters of the European Commission Representation in Spain, in Madrid.

On 25-26 September 2008, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) will organise the 1st Baltic Organised Civil Society Forum, which will take place in Riga (Latvia) in the Golden Hall of the Latvian Society. This conference will offer to civil society organisations from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia an opportunity to analyse and exchange best practices with their counterparts from other EU member states.

The General Affairs and External Relations Council meeting, held in Brussels on September 15th and chaired by the French Minister for Foreign and European Affairs, Bernard Kouchner, led to the decision to send an independent civilian observer mission to Georgia, under the European Security and Defence Policy.

The European Court of Auditors (ECA) informed in the OJEU on September 17th about the publication of Special Report No 5/2008 “The European Union's agencies: Getting results”. The aim of the audit was to consider whether the analysed agencies had introduced the procedures and tools needed to provide reasonable assurance that their activities were performed in such a way as to achieve the results expected.

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 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.

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.

The European Commission published, in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), on September 10th, 2008 a new Call for Proposals under the ‘Europe for Citizens’ programme, to promote structural support for European public policy research organisations and for civil society organisations at European level. The total budget for the co-financing of operating grants is around 600,000 Euro in 2009.

The new CPV codes describing the Calls for Tenders published by the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities will start working on September 17, 2008.

In his Annual Report for 2007, the Ombudsman already promised to explore ways to make his decisions more reader-friendly, aiming to provide a better service to complainants and to offer clearer guidance, to both citizens and officials. After carefully examining various options for change, the Ombudsman has decided to adopt a new style of decision as from September 2008.