European Union News - Internal Market

MEPs, in a surprise vote, decided to postpone their scrutiny on a draft EU patent law scheduled for July 2012. The reason behind this decision is the Council's last-minute wish to delete three key articles to the draft law. The European Council, however, welcomed the agreement reached by Member States on 29 June to move forward the EU patent law.

The General Affairs Council meeting ended with an agreement on the draft regulation on bilateral investment treaties with third countries. The agreed text will be sent to the Parliament to be adopted it at second reading. Thanks to the new draft regulation, the bilateral investment treaties (BITs) will be negotiated by the Commission.

A new report from the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) calls for kick-start in cyber insurance market. According to ENISA, if the cyber insurance market can be kick started, Europe’s citizens and businesses could benefit from better protection for their computer systems and data.

The European Commission is gathering views on its first draft of a revised communication on the application of EU state aid rules to short-term export credit insurance. In light of the comments received, the Commission will adopt a reviewed communication in December 2012.

The European Commission adopted the detailed rules aimed at reducing the risk of settlement failures linked to naked short selling, as well as the means by which market participants should disclose significant short positions to the market. Also, the new rules also detail how ESMA is to determine the shares which are exempt from the Short Selling Regulation by virtue of their principal trading venue being outside the Union.

According to Eurostat, in 2011, EU residents made 1.2 billion trips for both leisure and business. In addition, as for total trips, holiday trips made by EU residents rose strongly between 2006 and 2008 and then remained nearly stable between 2008 and 2011.

Herman Van Rompuy President of the European Council, announced among other things, that the Council agreed that Member States will boost the financing of the economy by mobilising around €120 billion for immediate growth measures. In addition, Member States from the euro area asked to the Council to consider the possibility of recapitalizing banks directly under certain conditions.

The European Commission reminds that from 1 of July 2012, the using mobile internet to access maps, videos, photos, social networks and email will be much cheaper while travelling in other EU Member States. It will also be cheaper the voice and SMS prices.

The EU will contribute with €35.9 million of a total of €70.7 million to 20 programmes to promote agricultural products in the European Union and in third countries. The selected programmes cover fresh and processed fruit and vegetables, milk and milk products, PDOs (Protected Designations of Origin), PGIs (Protected Geographical Indications) and TSGs (Traditional Specialities Guaranteed), seed oil, wine and meat.

With the aim at strengthening current measures and sets out possible new initiatives for eliminating fraud and evasion in Europe, the European Commission presents a Communication that adopts a holistic approach to tackle this problem. This holistic approach sets out a 3 tier approach aimed at attacking evasion and fraud from every possible angle.

The European Commission has temporarily approved a conversion of existing state owned preference shares of €4,465 billion into equity and a liquidity guarantee amounting to €19 billion in favour of the Spanish BFA group and its subsidiary Bankia. With the now approved conversion of preference shares into equity, FROB holds 100% of BFA.