European Union

Lithuania is currently debating the removal of a commemorative plaque for Jonas Noreika, who fought in the resistance against the Soviet regime and who is venerated in the country as General Vėtra (storm). As a district leader during the Nazi occupation, Noreika signed orders on setting up ghettos and confiscating Jewish property. Such acts preclude veneration, commentators believe.

The German EU Commission president-elect hopes to bridge divisions within the EU, as she meets with EU leaders setting up her team of commissioners.

Romanian interior minister Nicolae Moga on Tuesday resigned, after massive public outrage over the police's handling the suspected kidnapping, rape, and murder of a teenage girl. The move comes after thousands protested in Bucharest at the police's slow response to the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl, who had called the emergency dispatcher three times before being murdered. The national police chief had been sacked last week.

The French agriculture minister has called US president Donald Trump's threat to tax French wine "completely moronic". Trump threatened last week to retaliate after French plans to tax US firms such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, boasting on Twitter that American wine is better. "It's absurd, in terms of having a political and economic debate," Didier Guillaume said Tuesday. "American wine is not better than French wine," he added.

German prosecutors have opened a murder investigation into an Eritrean man, suspected of pushing a mother and child onto the tracks at Frankfurt's train station, killing the eight-year-old son. The motives of the 40-year-old, who is married with three children, and had been living in Switzerland since 2006 where he was granted asylum in 2008, remain unclear, according to police. Prosecutors were planning a psychiatric test for the suspect.

Wildfires have burned in some 3.2m hectares of Russia's Siberia region, roughly the size of Belgium, while the country's third-largest city, Novosibirsk has been engulfed in smoke. A state of emergency had been declared in southern Siberia where 25 people have been killed. Greenpeace said the fires have "become an environmental disaster throughout the country."

American lovers of fine French wine are likely to keep stocking their cellars and uncorking bottles despite US President Donald Trump's threat to impose a tax in a potential new trade war. But makers of cheaper French vintages are concerned.

The power of the European Parliament

The only directly elected European Union (EU) institution; the European Parliament’s (EP) power and influence in pursuit of citizens’ interests have evolved significantly, transforming it into a full-fledged legislative body and forum of discussion and engagement at the heart of representative democracy, whose influence is felt in virtually all areas of EU activity.
What are then the European Parliament’s main powers?

What difference does the Parliament’s work make to how Europeans live their lives? This series highlights some practical examples of EP impact during the 2014-2019 legislative term.

Erasmus+ is the European Union’s programme dedicated to education, training, youth and sport. It is one of the best-known EU initiatives, but many think Erasmus+ is only for university students who go to study for a few months in another European university. In fact, other learners and educators participate as well. It is also open to vocational education students, teachers, professors, entrepreneurs, apprentices and grassroots sports people, for example.

One of its special features is that Erasmus+ equips young people with soft skills that they do not necessarily develop in a classroom. These skills, such as adjusting to a different way of life and using a foreign language in day-to-day conversations, can make it easier for them to find a job, start their own business and take an active interest in society later on.

Erasmus+ also creates networks of education institutions, businesses and local authorities.

The European Parliament has monitored how Erasmus+ is put into action on the ground. In its October 2017 mid-term implementation resolution it recommended making the programme more accessible, especially to small organisations, by reducing bureaucratic obstacles’ and reintroducing school exchanges. It also called on the European Commission to recognise that mobility involving people with special needs and people from disadvantaged backgrounds needs additional facilitation.

A bigger budget is necessary given the benefits of this programme. When the Commission published its mid-term evaluation of the programme (2014-2020) in January 2018, it clearly reflected comments made by Parliament. Most notably, it identified simplification as an area that needed continued efforts. It also proposed stepping up mobility among school pupils, vocational education and training participants and young people. It also acknowledged that the programme needed to reach out to more vulnerable learners and smaller organisations with a view to making it more inclusive.

Crucially, the European Parliament secured an extra €240 million for the Erasmus+ budget in 2019, meaning that the programme can be made available to more people and make a bigger difference in helping young people to get an improved start in life.

In its May 2018 proposal for the new Erasmus programme (2021-2027), the European Commission incorporated the recommendations of the European Parliament to reach out more to people with fewer opportunities, including people with disabilities. It intends to become more inclusive, tripling the number of participants and making mobility for school pupils and vocational learners more mainstream. It will also simplify procedures further in order to be accessible to small organisations such as those active in grassroots sports. In its position adopted at first reading on 28 March 2019, the European Parliament proposes that the Commission draws up a strategy with guidelines, measures and indicators to ensure that inclusion is practised. The amendments adopted also seek to promote the excellence of the projects, to make sure that other EU programmes work with Erasmus and to introduce a way to help Parliament systematically monitor the implementation of the programme. While the European Commission had proposed a budget of just €30 billion in current prices for the whole period, the European Parliament proposes an increased envelope of €46.758 billion in current prices to ensure better inclusion. It allocates 83 % to education and training, 10.3 % to youth actions, and 2 % to sport.

Law-making powers

Together with the Council, the Parliament participates in the shaping of European laws in what may be seen as a bicameral legislature at EU level. The nature of the Parliament’s involvement depends on the area in question and may mean Parliament being consulted (consultation procedure), giving its consent (consent procedure), or legislating on an equal footing with the Council (the ordinary legislative procedure, or co-decision).

The latter procedure consists of the joint adoption of an act by the European Parliament and the Council on the basis of a proposal by the Commission. Here, both legislators need to agree on an identical text before it becomes law, which may take up to three readings in each of the two institutions. On average, it takes about 22 months for legislators to agree on a legislative file, starting from the Commission proposal until the signature of the final act.

The number of areas in which the Parliament co-legislates has expanded greatly over time and now includes the EU internal market, environment, consumer protection, food safety, regional development, agriculture, transport, energy and many others. Indeed, most legislative acts are now adopted following the ordinary legislative procedure.

Besides the power of consent with regard to legislative acts, the Parliament’s consent is required in many other instances not related to legislative acts in the strict sense. For example, it is needed before any new country joins the EU (Article 49, Treaty on European Union, TEU), but also before any withdrawal treaty can be concluded when a country decides to leave it (Article 50 TEU). The Parliament’s consent is also required before concluding agreements with third countries, for example association agreements, as well as before the Council determines that an EU Member State is breaching – or is about to breach – EU values (Article 7 TEU).

Read the complete study on ‘The power of the European Parliament: Examples of EP impact during the 2014-19 legislative term‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Portugal's huge auction of solar energy broke a world record, with one of the 24 licences on offer selling for 14.76 euros per megawatt hour (Mwh), the secretary of state for energy Joao Galamba said on Tuesday (30 July).

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will on Wednesday (31 July) meet leaders in Northern Ireland, the key battleground in Britain's fight to leave the European Union and the focus of increasingly tense rhetoric on both sides of the Irish Sea.

If you plan to travel to Russia or China for the holidays, you may be surprised by the countries' visa application processes, both of which request a substantial quantity of personal data.

Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar and British prime minister Boris Johnson have held their first conversation since Johnson took power last week. In a phone call between Dublin and London, Varadkar told Johnson that the EU was "united" that the withdrawal agreement could not be reopened, and that there were "no satisfactory options" for a technological fix for the Irish border, which will become a new UK/EU border on 31 October.

The Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei is ‘preparing for the worst but hoping for the best’ in the run up to 19 August, the expiration date for the temporary reprieve on the US trade ban of Huawei equipment, according to the company’s Vice-President for Europe, Abraham Liu.

Pan-European strategy "encouraged" member states to publish national artificial intelligence strategies by mid-2019. Germany, France and the UK have already done so - others are lagging behind.

So-called Power-to-X (PtX) technologies are seen as a good way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions because their potential for storing energy could stabilise the electricity grid. However, German environmental groups BUND and the Öko-Institut have criticised the technology. EURACTIV Germany reports.

There is a “historic” opportunity for Greece and Cyprus to take the lead in the rollout of 5G technology in southeastern Europe, a Huawei official has told EURACTIV.com.

By the start of this week humans had already used up all the Earth's resources for this year, the NGO Global Footprint Network has stressed in its Earth Overshoot Day report. Reserves such as water, land, timber and clean air were calculated to have been used up by 29 July because they can no longer be regenerated in the current year. The date prompts urgent warnings in the media.