European Union News - Internal Market

The First Smart Mobility Challenge on European multi-modal journey planners has already its winners. Particularly, in the category of 'operational journey planners' the two winners are Idos and Trenitalia, and in the category of 'innovative ideas' the winners are Penelope Ventures GmbH and SNCF. With this initiative, the Commission intends to promote the development of all-in-one journey planners.

Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the Eurogroup, welcomed in a statement the significant progress achieved in the preparation of the second Greek adjustment programme, but it urges the Greek authorities to continue demonstrating strong commitment and to keep up the implementation momentum by rigorously pursuing the adjustment effort, strictly in line with the new programme. The Eurogroup considers that the necessary conditions are in place to launch the relevant national procedures required for the final approval of the euro area's contribution to the financing of the second Greek adjustment programme.

The Annual Accounts approved by the European Central Bank (ECB) for 2011 shows that the Governing Council decided to transfer an amount of €1,166 million to the risk provision, which increased the risk provision to the level of its present ceiling of €6,363 million. As a result of the transfer to the risk provision, the ECB’s net profit for 2011 was €728 million in comparison with the €171 million of 2010.

The European Commission launched its edition 2012 of the European Enterprise Promotion Awards, which focuses in 2012 edition on SME funding for those entrepreneurs that want to extend their business and enter new markets. The best measure proposed will be awarded during the 2012 SME Assembly.

The Commission's proposal to set up a European common regulatory framework for the institutions responsible for securities settlement, called Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) is part of the part of its ongoing efforts to create a sounder financial system.

The European Commission adopted a report on the European Savings Taxation Directive. The report states that the common EU rules on automatic exchange of information has helped to improve the quality and usability of data which Member States transmit to each other. The report also includes recommendations to Member States' tax administrations on how to make the current system even more transparent in the future.

Eurostat has released the second estimates which forecast a decrease of the GDP in the euro area and in the EU for the fourth quarter of 2011. In particular, euro area and EU GDP were down by 0.3% according to the estimations. Compared with the fourth quarter of 2010, seasonally adjusted GDP rose by 0.7% in the euro area and by 0.9% in the EU.

The European Commission has pointed out that at this pace, it would still take more than 40 years to reach a significant gender balance (at least 40% of both sexes) on company boards. For this reason, the European Commission has launched a public consultation on possible action at EU level, including legislative measures, to redress the gender imbalance on company boards.

Eurostat published its latest figures on unemployment which highlight a slightly increase of the rates in January in comparison with December 2011. The euro area unemployment rate was 10.7% in January 2012, compared with 10.6% in December 2011, and the EU27 unemployment rate was 10.1%, compared with 10.0% in December 2011.

A report highlights that the number of flights in Europe will fall by 1.3% this year compared to 2011. David Marsh, Head of Forecast and Traffic Analysis at Eurocontrol blames of this fall to the weakness of the European economy and the fuel price.

The European Commission, within the Europe 2020 flagship Innovation Union, has presented three new Innovation Partnerships which have as main aim to address weaknesses, bottlenecks and obstacles in the European research and innovation system that prevent or slow down good ideas being developed and brought to market. In particular, new proposals will work on raw materials, agriculture and healthy ageing.

The European Commission has launched a public consultation in order to know how to tackle double taxation. According to the Commission, the aim of the consultation is to gauge the full scale of the problem and see where the main weaknesses lie. The main problem lies to the fact that double non-taxation deprives Member States of significant revenues and creates unfair competition between businesses in the Single Market.