News

The European Commission has stepped up funding for refugees, migrants and asylum seekers in Greece, with €115 million for humanitarian organisations operating in the country. It brings total funding under the Emergency Support Instrument to €198 million. The new emergency support comes on top of the €83 million already provided earlier this year to international organisations and NGOs in Greece, including shelter, primary health care, psycho-social support, improved hygiene conditions as well as informal education and safe spaces for children and women. Overall, the European Union is reaching over €1 billion of support to Greece in tackling current migration challenges.

The European Commission has launched the EU Prize for Women Innovators 2017 competition, which awards four female entrepreneurs who have successfully brought an innovation to market. This year's edition is open to women of any nationality living in an EU Member State that have founded or co-founded a company with a turnover of at least €100,000. The 2017 edition will also feature a Rising Innovator award worth €20,000 for a female entrepreneur under 35 years old. The winners of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize will receive €100,000, €50,000 and €30,000 respectively. Last year, Dr Sarah Bourke, CEO and co-founder of Skytek Ltd, won the third prize in the competition. Skytek is a successful, global software development company serving the world’s most complex and demanding industries.

New Eurostat figures out this week show that Ireland (+2.9%) saw the joint largest increase (with Luxembourg) in employment in the second quarter of 2016 compared to the second quarter of 2015. Employment was up by 1.4% in the Euro Area and 1.5% in the EU over the same period. Ireland also saw the second largest quarterly rise in employment (+1.1%) in the second quarter of 2016 compared to the first (after Estonia at +1.7%). Eurostat estimates that, in the second quarter of 2016, 232.1 million men and women were employed in the EU28 (highest level ever recorded); of which 153.3 million were in the euro area (highest level since the fourth quarter of 2008).

On 16 September, the heads of state or government of the 27 will meet in Bratislava. They will continue a political reflection to give an impulse to further reforms and to the development of the EU with 27 Member States.

Live on Facebook and Speech to Oireachtas: EU Commission Vice-President Andrus Ansip said Ireland is well-placed to reap the benefits of the EU's Digital Single Market – including better access to goods and services on-line and an end to price discrimination based on your location in the EU. The full text of his speech to the Joint Oireachtas Committee for Communications, Climate Change and Natural Resources today is below. While in Dublin, Vice President Ansip also held meetings with some of Ireland's big tech companies. During a visit to Facebook's European Headquarters in Dublin, the Vice President went Live on Facebook to take questions from the public on Europe's Digital Single Market.

New figures out this week from Eurostat show 93% of people living in Dublin are happy with life in the capital, up 3 percentage points since 2012 and 7th highest in the EU. People in Vilnius (98%) were the most satisfied of all, closely followed by Stockholm and Copenhagen (97% each) while Athens (71%) and Rome had the lowest satisfaction levels. There's a lot more about Urban Life in Eurostat's new publication "Urban Europe: statistics on cities, towns and suburbs".

Statement by Vice-President Ansip and Commissioner Oettinger: Announcing the effective end of roaming charges, Vice-President Ansip and Commissioner Oettinger said: "Getting rid of roaming charges is one of the best achievements of the EU in the last few years, and a cornerstone for building the Digital Single Market. For more than a decade, the Commission has been working to reduce the huge surcharges that telecoms operators imposed on their customers each time they crossed a border while using their mobile device on holiday, at the week-end or during business trips (…) We are now at the final hurdle: the complete abolition of roaming charges for European travellers in the EU. This will enter into effect as of 15 June 2017. Those of us who travel do so on average for 12 days per year. But the Commission goes much further by abolishing roaming charges for at least 90 days per year, much more than the average time that a European is roaming with their phone."

Two Dublin-based researchers are to receive European Research Council (ERC) starting grants; Tomas Ryan of TCD for his project titled: Memory Engram Maintenance and Expression, and Dieter Franz Kogler of UCD for his project titled: Technology Evolution in Regional Economies. ERC starting grants of up to €1.5 million each are awarded to early-career researchers throughout Europe to help them set up their own research teams and pursue ground-breaking ideas.

The EU has signed its largest ever humanitarian programme of €348 million using direct cash-transfers to cover the everyday needs of the most vulnerable refugee families in Turkey. As of October 2016, monthly cash-transfers to electronic cards will be given to refugees in need across Turkey. The cash card is an efficient way to support families to purchase what they most need, providing them the dignity of choice. Refugees will be enabled to feed and house their families and to send their children to school. As the money will be spent in local markets, the new system will also boost the local economy. The much needed humanitarian aid will reach one million refugees countrywide by the first quarter of 2017.

The Commission wants a single EU certification procedure for aviation security screening equipment. An EU certificate will allow security equipment approved in one Member State to also be put on the market in others. This will help overcome market fragmentation, strengthen the competitiveness of the EU security industry, and boost employment in the sector.

This consultation is aimed at providing the wider public and stakeholders with an opportunity to express their views on all elements relevant for the assessment of the functioning of the social rules in road transport, as well as to express their positions on the possible/desirable changes to the regulatory framework. It is also aimed at gathering specialised input (data and factual information, expert views) on specific aspects of the legislation (e.g. working and business conditions, enforcement methods and tools, etc.) from the enforcement community and from the industry, with the aim of filling the data and information gaps in view of finalizing the ex-post evaluation and preparing the impact assessment and the legislative proposal.

The 4th edition of Code Week EU will take place from 15 to 23 October. Millions of children, young adults, adults, parents, teachers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers will again come together at events, in classrooms and libraries across Europe and beyond to learn to create with code. Events are already planned for a number of locations around Ireland.

"I believe that the Declaration will feed into our deliberations on the future of the CAP”. So said EU Commissioner Phil Hogan welcoming "A Better Life In Rural Europe" Declaration presented to him by the Cork 2.0 Conference on Rural Development this week. This Declaration comes 20 years after the original Cork Declaration of 1996 that established the basis for the EU's rural development policy. It centres on investing in the potential of rural areas and better integration into other policies. With 85% of the EU territory managed by farmers and foresters, they are the guardians of the countryside and have a key role in providing important public goods in terms of protecting the rural environment.

"The roll-out of high-speed rural broadband is a priority for me and the European Commission." said EU Commissioner Phil Hogan in Skibbereen this week. "It's essential if we are going to provide citizens with the opportunity to fulfil their desire to live and work in rural areas and to provide opportunities for rural communities throughout Europe." Commissioner Hogan visited the Ludgate Hub in Skibbereen last Monday (5 September), before opening a major EU conference on the future of European Rural Development policy. Commissioner Hogan went on: "today's visit to the Ludgate Hub is a perfect illustration of how a group of forward-thinking people can come together to foster local innovation and enterprise."

A staggering €159.5 billion in Value Added Tax (VAT) revenues was lost across the EU in 2014 according to a new EU report. Ireland had the 8th lowest VAT Gap at 9.42% in 2014, down from 12.94% in 2013. In real terms this amounted to a €1.195 billion loss in 2014. The overall difference between expected VAT revenue and the amount actually collected (the 'VAT Gap') ranged from a high of 37.9% of uncollected VAT in Romania to a low of only 1.2% in Sweden. In absolute terms, the highest VAT Gap of €36.9 billion was recorded in Italy while Luxembourg had the lowest at €147 million. The Commission has called on Member States to agree on a definitive VAT regime for cross-border trade in the Union.

There are a number of events taking place in Ireland to mark European Mobility Week from 16 to 22 September.

The European Commission Representation in Ireland and the European Movement Ireland are hosting a half-day conference on Investing in Ireland's Infrastructure. The conference will take place on Friday 30 September in the Chartered Accountants House, 47-49 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, from 9 am to 1 pm. The keynote speaker will be the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe TD, and Ireland's new vice-president at the EIB, Andrew McDowell will also speak. The event is free to attend. Register in advance at: rsvp@europeanmovement.ie.

New Eurostat figures show that the share of the world's population living in the EU almost halved between 1960 and 2015. In 1960, 13.5% of the world's population of 3 billion people lived in the EU. By 2015, the share had dropped to 6.9% of the world population of almost 7.4 billion and is expected to fall further in the coming decades. The EU, however, continues to account for the largest share of world GDP at 23.8% in 2014. Eurostat's "EU in the world" publication further shows that the average EU birth rate is 1.5 children per woman compared to a world average of 2.5. Furthermore the old age dependency ratio (i.e. the ratio of the number of older persons to the number of persons of working age) in the EU is now over twice the world average.

Andrew McDowell joined the European Investment Bank as Vice-President on 1st September, 2016. He is the first Irish member of the bank’s Management Committee for 12 years. Prior to joining the European Investment Bank Andrew McDowell was Economic Advisor to the Taoiseach since 2011 and has 20 years of experience in economic policy and public service management. Prior to working for the Taoiseach Andrew was Chief Economist at the Irish business development agency, Forfas, and European Deputy Editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit. EIB Vice Presidents are appointed by the Board of Governors, on a proposal from the Board of Directors. The EIB President and eight Vice Presidents constitute the Management Committee, the Bank’s permanent collegiate executive body. Under the authority of the President and the supervision of the Board of Directors, the Management Committee oversees the day-to-day running of the EIB, prepares decisions for Directors and ensures that these are implemented.

This year Juvenes Translatores is celebrating its 10th Anniversary and registration is open on line from today until the 20 October. Since 2007 Juvenes Translatores has been inspiring young people around language learning and translation. A random draw will be held to select schools to take part in the contest. Each selected school can choose between two and five students and they must enter their names and language pairs by November 21. Each student can choose to translate from any official EU language into any other official EU language. The competition takes place on the 24th November. DGT Translation will evaluate the translations and choose one winning translation from each EU Member State. The winners will be announced in early February 2017. The winners together with one accompanying adult and one teacher will be invited to an award ceremony in Brussels.