Health MEPs quizzed the EMA’s Executive Director on Tuesday on the current situation around COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics, as well as the Agency’s future role. In light of increasing COVID-19 cases across the EU and concerns raised by a new variant members of the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee focused the debate vaccines, recent developments…
The European Commission has presented its capital markets package. The package includes changes to the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR), the rules for alternative investments such as hedge funds (AIFMD), the European Long-Term Investment Funds framework (ELTIF) and the creation of a single European data hub for company data (ESAP). The proposals are mainly…
The Socialists and Democrats have called on the European Commission to keep its word and finally present a strong directive to prevent and combat all forms of violence against women and girls. The S&Ds demand that the European Union recognise violence against women and girls as a serious crime in the treaty’s catalogue of crimes with…
The Commission has published its legislative proposal on reducing the risks of deforestation and forest degradation associated with all products on the EU market. The proposal is part of the package on soil, waste shipment and deforestation and it will require companies to ensure that their products sold in the EU do not come from areas…
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 EPP group says that the outcome of COP26 “has shown that the world must fight climate change with more ambition.” A statement on Monday said, “We can only avoid a climate catastrophe if the whole world works together.” “In the last 30 years, Europe has reduced its emissions by 25 percent, about 1 percent…
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…
The EPP Group has called on the Georgian authorities to provide Georgian ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili an adequate medical treatment in an appropriately equipped hospital. “We remain seriously worried about Mr Saakashvili’s health and security conditions as well as his rights as a prisoner, including in terms of privacy and dignity and as a person standing a…
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…
