The European Commission has disbursed €24.9 billion to Italy in pre-financing, equivalent to 13% of the country’s grant and loan allocation for the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) under NextGenerationEU. Italy is one of the first countries receiving a pre-financing payment under the RRF. The pre-financing will help to kick-start the implementation of the crucial…
German Greens MEP Sven Giegold has called on the EU to offer protection for locally employed civilians in Afghanistan. He said, “The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan has also put the local personnel of EU missions in the country at imminent risk. At least 600 local staff and their close family members of the EU Police…
The European Commission has approved its seventh Advanced Purchase Agreement (APA) with a pharmaceutical company to ensure access to a potential vaccine against COVID-19 in Q4 of 2021 and in 2022. Under this contract, Member States will be able to purchase up to 100 million doses of the Novavax vaccine, with an option for 100…
Ensuring access to safe and affordable COVID-19 vaccines around the world, and notably for low and middle-income countries, is a priority for the bloc, says the EU. At the health summit in Rome, on 21 May 2021, President von der Leyen announced that ‘Team Europe’ would share with low and middle-income countries at least 100 million doses…
The European Commission has signed a third contract with the pharmaceutical companies BioNTech and Pfizer. It reserves an additional 1.8 billion doses on behalf of all EU Member States, between end 2021 to 2023. It will allow for the purchase of 900 million doses of the current vaccine and of a vaccine adapted to variants,…
“I was glad to speak to President Biden this afternoon – the first of many exchanges and the start of a good personal partnership.” “As a symbol of this fresh start, President Biden and I agreed to suspend all our tariffs imposed in the context of the Airbus-Boeing disputes, both on aircraft and non-aircraft products,…
If the coronavirus pandemic has had a shocking impact on the health of citizens, their daily life and local economies, the EU’s recovery plan constitutes an historic act of solidarity for our continent and a turning point for our Union, writes Stefano Bonaccini. Without this new financial windfall, we will not be able to overcome…
Ahead of this week’s presentation of the European Commission’s Action Plan on how to implement the 2017 European Pillar of Social Rights, the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament issued a strong call for making social rights a reality for all Europeans by introducing binding targets. Iratxe García, S&D Group leader, said:“9 out of…
The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has issued the following statement following the arrest of Alexei Navalny at Moscow Airport yesterday:- “I condemn the detention of Alexei Navalny yesterday by the Russian authorities, upon his return to Russia. The Russian authorities must immediately release him and ensure his safety.” “Detention of…
Despite a spectacular economic reaction to the pandemic crisis, the authors of the 2020 edition of the European “Bilan social’’, express concerns about the so-called ‘social affairs players’ being sidelined in the new Recovery and Resilience Facility, the “fuzzy” EU commitment to gender issues, the EU response to rising in-work poverty and the setting a new…
