Kristina Dimova, a 22 year-old from Bulgaria, was proclaimed a winner of this year’s SME Week Youth Essay Competition during the European Commission’s SME Assembly. Kristina was asked to answer the question: “What do SMEs need to become sustainable and resilient in the context of COVID-19 and other global challenges? Think about the competences and…
The situation at the Belarus border and the gas crisis are very much on the EU agenda. German MEP Reinhard Bütikofer, AFET coordinator for the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament, has commented on the crisis. “The European leaders at their summit are challenged to deal with two blackmailing efforts against the EU which they must…
The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) held an event promoting the European year dedicated to rail and explaining its potential to become a fully sustainable and competitive transport option, thereby helping to achieve the Green Deal targets. Rail can make a huge contribution to sustainable and smart mobility but a lot still needs to be…
Klubrádió, one of Hungary’s few remaining independent radio stations, says that it has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg after being forced off the airwaves in Hungary. Klubrádió is arguing that the Hungarian state violated the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression and the right to information….
Europe needs to focus on the cause of the problem – Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s desire to strike back at the EU, write Luigi Scazzieri, Camino Mortera-Martinez and Ian Bond. It is wrong to call what is happening at the border between Poland and Belarus a migration crisis, or to compare it to Europe’s situation in 2015 and 2016….
The European Greens say they welcome the progress made at the UN Climate Conference COP26 in Glasgow. Improved emission commitments from some countries, new international initiatives on phasing out oil and gas production as well as finalising the Paris Agreement rulebook bring the world a couple of desperately needed steps closer to tackling the climate…
The European Commission’s reporting on how EU spending programmes perform shows mixed results in different funding areas, and the indicators which measure progress towards targets do not focus enough on results. These are some of the conclusions of the European Court of Auditors, which has published its 2020 report on the performance of a selection…
Commission head Ursula von der Leyen says that COP26 is “a step in the right direction.” She said, “1.5 degrees Celsius remains within reach; but the work is far from done. The least we can do now is implement the promises of Glasgow as rapidly as possible and then aim higher.” “I would like to…
An environmental group says that while the EU and European countries helped to secure some advancements on emissions reductions at COP26, it failed to step up and secure a comprehensive package to support climate vulnerable countries. It says the EU now needs to get behind solutions on finance to address loss and damage, scale up…
A year after the Polish Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling, MEPs are calling on the government to lift the ban on abortion that puts women’s lives at risk. Last September, a 30-year-old Polish woman died of septic shock because her doctors did not perform a life-saving abortion, waiting instead for the foetus to die because of the…
