This week, 27 EU leaders informally discussed the implications of 'Brexit'. Here's a few things they said afterwards: "We deeply regret the outcome of the UK's referendum but we respect the will expressed by a majority of the British people. Until the UK leaves the EU, EU law continues to apply to and within the UK when it comes to rights and obligations." They also said: "There will be no negotiations of any kind until the UK formally notifies its intention to withdraw." Art. 50 of the Treaty on the European Union is the legal means to withdraw from the EU. A Member State government needs to notify the EU institutions by formal letter in order to start its implementation. After this, negotiations can begin, with a cut-off point two years after that. The final deal goes to Council for a qualified majority vote and then to Parliament for a simple majority vote. The UK then becomes a "third country". The UK has not yet given formal notification of its intention to activate Art. 50.
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The next meeting of EU finance ministers will take place in Brussels on Tuesday 12 July.
Eurozone finance ministers will meet in Brussels on Monday 11 July.
On 8-9 July, Poland will host the NATO summit meeting. European Council President, Donald Tusk, European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, and High Representative Federica Mogherini will represent the European Union at the summit. In the margins of the summit, President Donald Tusk and President Jean-Claude Juncker will meet US President Barack Obama for an EU-US leaders meeting.
The next plenary session of the European Parliament will take place in Strasbourg from 4 to 7 July.
On Monday 4 July, Matthias Ruete, Director General for Migration and Home Affairs at the European Commission will address the Institute of International and European Affairs on Challenges for the European Agenda on Migration, in Dublin.
Slovakia takes over the six-month rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union from the Netherlands on Friday 1 July.
According to new Eurostat figures published this week, only 15% of Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction graduates in Ireland were women in 2014 figures. This is the lowest share in the EU where the average was 27%, rising to just under 39% in Poland. Science, mathematics and computing is another male dominated field in most Member States and even more so in Ireland where 63.5% of graduates were male compared to an EU average of 57.6%. The opposite was true for health and welfare where three-quarters of graduates (both in Ireland and the EU) were women and in humanities and art where 60.3% of graduates in Ireland and 67.2% in the EU were women). Women also dominated in education with 71.4% of graduates in Ireland and 80.3% in the EU in 2014 being women.
The European Commission and the European Investment Fund (EIF) have launched a €121 million guarantee initiative to support SMEs in the cultural and creative sectors via financial institutions. The scheme will allow the EIF to provide guarantees and counter-guarantees, free of charge, to selected financial intermediaries in order to enable them to provide more debt finance to entrepreneurs in the cultural and creative arena. The creative and cultural sectors employ more than 7 million people in the EU and account for 4.2% of the EU's GDP. The €121 million is expected to leverage more than €600 million worth of bank loans over the next 6 years.
EU Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Phil Hogan was in Dublin last week to launch a new research project that will look into ways of reducing and reusing agri-food waste. The AgroCycle project, which will receive approximately €7 million in EU funding over three years, is being led by the UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering. There are two other Irish partners in the project which has 26 partners in 10 countries: NUI Maynooth and Carton Bros. in Co Meath. Approximately 700 million tonnes of agricultural waste is generated in the EU every year.
EU Agriculture Ministers meeting this week set out a series of initiatives to reduce food waste and losses in the future. These measures include calls on member states and the Commission to improve monitoring and data collection to better understand the problem, to focus on preventing food waste and losses and enhancing the use of biomass in future EU legislation, and to facilitate the donation of unsold food products to charities. Every year nearly a third of all the food is lost or wasted.
Trinity College Dublin is a partner in an EU-funded project that has developed a system capable of exploiting the widespread use of mobile electronic devices and social media to improve the official response to emergencies and other crises. The EU-funded iSAR+ project has shown that mobile devices and online systems can be integrated with existing emergency response systems for the two-way flow of information between emergency teams and the public, for the benefit of both. By sharing messages, emergency teams can get valuable information from people on the ground at incidents, while the public can receive advice, such as on what to do to make themselves safe and how to help fellow citizens or the emergency services.
We note the media reports stating that in the event of a UK withdrawal from the EU, English would cease to be an official language of the EU. This is incorrect. The Council of Ministers, acting unanimously, decide on the rules governing the use of languages by the European institutions. In other words, any change to the EU Institutions' language regime is subject to a unanimous vote of the Council, including Ireland.
EU Finance Ministers have agreed a new set of proposals to tackle corporate tax avoidance. Under new measures agreed in Brussels earlier this week, each EU Member State will have to impose greater transparency to ensure that corporate companies pay their fair share. The new measures, which are expected to take effect next year, are designed to prevent "profit shifting" to no-tax or low-tax countries. Pierre Moscovici, Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, said: "Today's agreement strikes a serious blow against those engaged in corporate tax avoidance. For too long, some companies have been able to take advantage of the mismatches between different Member States tax systems to avoid billions of euros in tax."
The European Personnel Selection Office has launched a competition to recruit Irish language translators to work in Brussels and Luxembourg. To apply you must hold EU citizenship and have fluency in English, as well as French or German, in addition to Irish. The deadline to apply is 12 July 2016.
The consultation aims to allow all European citizens to express an opinion on the way in which levels of fishing effort and quotas are set according to the new Common Fisheries Policy and in relation to scientific advice about sustainable fishing. The consultation is open until 1 September 2016.
The purpose is to evaluate the implementation of the LIFE Programme for the Environment and Climate Action, with a view to taking a decision on the renewal, modification or suspension of the measures, as well as taking into account evaluation results on the long term impact of LIFE+. The consultation runs until 9 September 2016.
Matthias Ruete, Director General for Migration and Home Affairs at the European Commission to address the Institute of International and European Affairs on Challenges for the European Agenda on Migration, Dublin
Slovakia will take over the six-month rotating Presidency of the European Council from The Netherlands on 1 July.
This event is organised by the Irish Centre for European Law.