European Union News - Social Affairs

The INCLUD-ED project final conference will present and discuss the successful actions, mainly in education which are contributing to overcoming social exclusion in Europe and promoting social cohesion. In addition, key messages will be provided at the conference in order to develop more efficient educational and social policies in Europe.

The European Commission published two reports which recommends to policy-makers to do more in order to help schools tackle low achievement in mathematics and science. The reports conclude that although much has been achieved in updating mathematics and science curricula, support for the teachers responsible for implementing the changes is still lacking.

The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction published its 2011 annual report in which draws conclusions such as that there are over 1.3 million regular opioid users in the EU and Norway. Furthermore, the report highlights that the use of inject drugs – heroin - is declining.

The winner of the 2011 LUX film Prize is "Les neiges du Kilimandjaro" by Robert Guédiguian. The award has been granted by the European Parliament to this film that questions the injustices of today's societies and their political and trade union conflicts, and makes a plea for tolerance.

ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, presented a report in which published 18 protective recommendations. The report identifies the top emerging risks regarding children cyber activities and makes 18 non-technical recommendations for their mitigation.

The Steering Group of the pilot European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing reached an agreement to design an implementation plan towards the following objective: to ensure that the average European citizen has two more active and healthy years to live by 2020. The plan focuses on three main areas of life events: prevention, care and cure, and independent living.

The EU-GRAD project, funded under the European Union Lifelong Learning Programme, is celebrating its international seminar next 15 November 2011 in Madrid, Spain. This seminar will serve to present the results of the National Case Studies (France, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain) and Conclusion Report carried out by the EU-GRAD consortium in the first semester of 2011. It will also be an open forum where participants will have the opportunity to debate about current mobility trends in Europe.

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) awarded its third Healthy Workplaces Film Award on work-related topics to Carmen Losmann of Germany for her film Work Hard - Play Hard. The award was presented at the 54th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film.

According to Eurostat, 74% of children in the EU lived with two married parents, while 14% lived in a single-parent household in 2008. In general, the most common living arrangement for children aged less than 18 years was to live in a household with married parents. In addition, statistics also shows that living alone was the most common living arrangement for women aged 65 and over in the majority of Member States.

The European Parliament adopted the directive which sets out minimum penalties for about 20 criminal offences. The directive approved tougher penalties across the EU, especially in cases of abuse by persons in a position of trust, authority or influence over the child or abuse of particularly vulnerable children. The directive will also require EU countries to remove child porn web sites and it will introduce EU-wide requirements on prevention, prosecution of offenders and protection for victims.

The European Commission announced an overhaul of the EU rules to fight illicit drugs, particularly new psychoactive substances, which imitate the effects of dangerous drugs like ecstasy or cocaine and are a growing problem. The EU identified a record number of 41 such substances in 2010, up from 24 the previous year.