Main news from Brussels this week
date: 10/02/2017
Refugee crisis: relocation and resettlement
On 8 February, the Commission adopted its ninth progress report on the EU's emergency relocation and resettlement schemes for refugees, assessing actions taken since 8 December 2016. Relocation refers to the organised transfer of refugees from Greece and Italy – both of which have received a disproportionate number of people, as they are the most common first points of arrival – to other member states. Resettlement means member states accepting refugees directly from third countries, refugee camps and transit facilities outside the EU. Member states have continued to increase their efforts on resettlement, offering legal and safe pathways to 13,968 people so far. Regarding relocation, the overall positive trend has also been maintained with an additional 3,813 relocations taking place during the reporting period, and December seeing the highest monthly number so far (1,926). The total number of relocations now stands at 11,966. However, further efforts are still needed from member states to sustain the progress made and reach the monthly targets set by the Commission of 1,000 relocations from Italy and 2,000 from Greece.
New rules allowing Europeans to travel and enjoy online content services across borders
Europeans will soon be able to fully use their online subscriptions to films, sports events, e-books, video games or music services when travelling within the EU, according to the agreement reached on 7 February by negotiators of the European Parliament, the member states and the European Commission. This is the first agreement related to the modernisation of EU copyright rules as proposed by the Commission in the Digital Single Market strategy.
All this week's key European Commission announcements can be found here