Overview   News

Euro Area Finance Ministers will meet in Brussels on Monday 20 February. The agenda will be available shortly on the link below.

Euro Area Finance Ministers will meet in Brussels on Monday 20 February. The agenda will be available shortly on the link below.

The Eurogroup will look into the environment for doing business in the euro area, which includes the administrative and regulatory burden, quality of public services and tax administration. They will also look at the economic forecast for the euro area for 2017-2018 and take stock of the on-going implementation of Greece's macroeconomic adjustment programme.

The agenda for this session of the European Parliament is available on the link below.

The agenda for this session of the European Parliament is available on the link below.

The agenda for this session of the European Parliament is available on the link below.

The Council will start preparations for the European Council on 9 and 10 March 2017 by discussing an annotated draft agenda. At that meeting EU leaders will look at a number of the most pressing issues, including economy, security and external relations. Further information is available on the link below.

On Tuesday 7 February, the Creative Europe Desk Ireland will host the launch of the new Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP) website in Europe House, 12-14 Lower Mount Street, Dublin 2. The Collaborative Arts Partnership Project is led by the Irish organisation Create. The project received a grant from the EU in 2014 of just over €1.4 million and represents the largest Creative Europe grant to an Irish-led project.

Two innovative Irish SMEs are to receive Horizon 2020 Fast Track to Innovation (FTI) funding to help bring their innovative projects to market more quickly. Schwundgrad Energie Ltd is the coordinator of the AdD HyStor project (renewable energy project - Adaptive-flywheel/battery Hybrid energy Storage system in Ireland and UK). The project, which also has partners in Germany and the UK, will receive a total EU grant of €2,944,001.25. The second company is Statistica Medica Ltd who is a partner in the UK-led BreathSpec project (a device that analyses one's breath to quickly diagnose whether infections are bacterial or viral). The project, which also has other partners in the UK and in Germany, will receive a total grant of €2,367,647.50. In total the Commission awarded almost €33.5 million to 17 innovative projects involving 80 partners in 19 EU countries under the sixth and last round of the €200 million FTI pilot scheme.

The EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager this week addressed the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform. In her address the Commissioner spoke about State Aid rules and the Apple case: "Our investigation into the Irish tax ruling began in 2013, after Apple told a US Senate hearing about what it called a “tax incentive arrangement” with Ireland. Since then, our work on tax rulings has gone far beyond that case, and beyond Ireland. We have asked every EU Member State for information on tax rulings. And we have followed up with in-depth investigations in the most serious cases. Those investigations have been carried out with the full involvement of the companies and governments concerned. They have led to four decisions so far, involving aid to Fiat in Luxembourg, to Starbucks in the Netherlands, to a number of large companies in Belgium and to Apple here in Ireland."

The European Commission wants to update and clarify the rules on the initial qualification and periodic training of truck and bus drivers. The objective of this proposal is to contribute to higher road safety standards and to facilitate the mobility of professional drivers. The main novelties include the modernisation of the training, highlighting for example the protection of vulnerable road users and the optimisation of fuel consumption, as well as better recognition of training undergone in another Member State. The proposal will now be examined by the European Parliament and the 28 EU Member States in accordance with the EU ordinary legislative

EU negotiators have agreed on how to regulate wholesale roaming markets (the prices operators charge each other when their customers use other networks when roaming in the EU). This means that "roam like at home" can take effect on 15 June 2017. EU negotiators agreed on the following wholesale caps: 3.2 cents per minute of voice call, as of 15 June 2017; 1 cent per SMS, as of 15 June 2017; and a step by step reduction over 5 years for data caps decreasing from €7.7 per GB (as of 15 June 2017) to €6 per GB (as of 1 January 2018), €4.5 per GB (as of 1 January 2019), €3.5 per GB (as of 1 January 2020), €3 per GB (as of 1 January 2021) and €2.5 per GB (as of 1 January 2022).

Thirty-one researchers in Ireland are to receive almost €5 million in EU grants. The grants are being accorded under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie programme, which helps post-doctoral researchers get their careers up and running. In total grants were approved for almost 1,200 post-doctoral researchers across Europe amounting to €218.71 million in total. EU Education Commissioner Tibor Navracsics, said: "I am delighted that today we are recognising the potential of hundreds of excellent, internationally mobile researchers. The projects they will work on will help tackle the biggest challenges facing our societies. And the new Seal of Excellence further strengthens the most popular EU programme supporting researchers."

An informal summit of EU heads of state or government will take place this week in Malta. The main items on the agenda are migration and, in particular the Central Mediterranean route and Libya, as well as the upcoming 60th anniversary of the Rome Treaties on 25 March 2017. In a letter sent by EU Council President Donald Tusk ahead of the summit, he said: "The challenges currently facing the European Union are more dangerous than ever before in the time since the signature of the Treaty of Rome. Today we are dealing with three threats, which have previously not occurred, at least not on such a scale." He added: "In a world full of tension and confrontation, what is needed is courage, determination and political solidarity of Europeans. Without them we will not survive. If we do not believe in ourselves, in the deeper purpose of integration, why should anyone else?"

The European Court of Justice has ruled that an application for asylum can be rejected if the asylum seeker has participated in the activities of a terrorist network. It is not necessary for the asylum seeker to have personally committed terrorist acts, or instigated such acts, or participated in their commission. The Court states that the final assessment of an application for international protection is the task of the competent national authorities, subject to review by the national courts.

The objective of the consultation is to collect information from a wide audience on different aspects of the design and implementation of the Art.185 Initiatives operating under Horizon 2020 or FP7. The consultation is open until 30 April 2017.

The consultation aims to gather comments and perspectives on the relevance of the Creative Europe programme's objectives, the effectiveness of the measures taken to achieve them and the efficiency of their implementation. The consultation is open until 16 April 2017.

An EU-funded project has looked at ways to make Europe's reinforced concrete buildings more energy efficient. The EASEE project has developed a type of insulating wallpaper that is thin and easy to install. Households use around a quarter of Europe’s energy, and most of that goes to heating and warm water. Making homes more energy efficient is one of the biggest ways that countries can cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and help keep global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius as compared with pre-industrial times.

Ahead of the meeting of Heads of State and Government in Malta on 3 February 2017, the Commission and the High Representative have set out their contribution to the discussion on how to better manage migration and save lives along the Central Mediterranean route.

In the framework of the Presidency of the Council of the EU, in January the Commission's First Vice-President Frans Timmermans and Commissioners Dimitris Avramopoulos and Věra Jourová visited Malta for a series of high-level meetings.