European Union News - Internal Market

The 2010 Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) funded 42 eco-innovation projects under the 2010 call for proposals. The CIP Eco-innovation funds are designed to support new products, services and processes that use fewer natural resources and produce less waste, emissions and pollutants.

The EU-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) will apply as of 1 July 2011. It is unprecedented in terms of the scope and speed of tariff liberalisation and breaks new ground in tackling significant non-tariff barriers across all sectors. Several studies shown that thanks to this agreement the EU exports to South Korea will increase significantly.

At the public hearing held on 28 June in the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) on the "Review of the Small Business Act for Europe (SBA, Europe’s policy framework for SMEs)", participants called for cutting red tape, strengthening governance instruments and drawing up a genuine road map for progress. In this hearing, other EU Institutions and major stakeholders were present and met Members of the EESC.

According to Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU, household electricity prices rose by 5.1% between the second half of 2009 and the second half of 2010, after a fall of 2.3% between the second half of 2008 and 2009. On the household gas prices, there were increased by 7.7% in the EU between the second half of 2009 and 2010, after a fall of 15.5% between the second half of 2008 and 2009.

The report published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) on the application of the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) found that this mechanism contributes to the achievement of the two of the main objectives of the common agricultural policy, which are supporting farmers’ income and to maintaining agricultural land in good agricultural and environmental condition (GAEC). However, the report also found that the implementation of the scheme resulted in a number of questionable features, such as cases where the system encouraged investments by operators who have little interest in farming as an activity but who exploit the guaranteed returns that SPS provides.

The Eurobarometer survey on "Europeans and the crisis" is an opinion poll carried out by the European Parliament covering views on the economic crisis. The results shows a strong support for a tax on financial transactions. In addition, a majority of Europeans believe that overall the euro has not mitigated the effects of the crisis.

The Council agreed on general approaches on two draft regulations implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of unitary patent protection. The Council use the enhanced cooperation to launch the procedure. It was requested by 25 out of 27 EU member states with the aim of establishing a unitary patent that will be valid across the territory of the participating member states. All member states except Italy and Spain were in favour of the use of enhanced cooperation.

The European Commission is determined to push the fight against fraud a step further. Thus, the new Strategy will cover the whole "anti-fraud cycle" with specific strategies adopted in order to cover the work of Commission's project officers, finance staff and auditors in charge of dealing with EU funds, such as Structural Funds or the European Fisheries Funds.

The EP plenary adopted some amendments on the economic governance six-pack. With these measures added to the original Commission proposal, the EP intends to get more transparency, stronger automatic warnings and sanctions as well as new fines are all part of Parliament's position, although left-of-centre groups argued that this represents too much austerity. Negotiations with the Council will continue with the aim of settling everything by July.

According to some European projects, governmental trust would help to encourage people to continue eating fresh products. This conclusion was revealed among others at the recent Nutrevent conference held in France, where A variety of innovative approaches concerning the food were presented. Other project presented there found that people are highly concerned about the recent outbreak of the deadly enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) bacteria. In addition, the experts who met at the conference noted that nutritionists must pay particular attention to functional food innovations with natural compounds to help meet the growing concerns consumers have over healthy food.

The Green Paper presented by the European Commission aims to gather stakeholders’ views on the modernisation of the Professional Qualifications Directive (Directive 2005/36/EC). In the light of the results published in the paper, the Commission has decided to update the Directive with the possible ways forward that build on past achievements while developing new approaches to enhance mobility.