European Union

Some EU rules could be ‘disobeyed’, according to the electoral agreement between the French Socialist Party and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left party due to be ratified by the Socialist Party’s National Council Thursday evening. The main left-wing parties, including Jean-Luc...

Romania supports the European Commission’s decision to phase out oil and petroleum products imports from Russia, Energy Minister Virgil Popescu has said. Romania will not be caught by surprise by the elimination of Russian oil, which accounts for roughly 30%...

Poland’s largest majority-state-owned oil company PKN Orlen says it can replace Russia as the main oil supplier for Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as it has the infrastructure, the right suppliers, and enough fuel to ensure a continuous supply of...

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi recalled the importance of boosting the industrial partnership between Italy and Japan, particularly in the renewable energies sector, at a press conference at Palazzo Chigi after a bilateral meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio...

Danish broadcaster TV2 published a bilingual title to reassure the 25,000 Ukrainian refugees about the annual siren tests in Denmark. In Denmark, emergency sirens are tested every year on the first Wednesday in May. This year, there is a special...

Political leaders in Dublin have expressed outrage after simulations of nuclear attacks on Ireland and the UK were shown on Russian TV over the weekend. Environment Minister Eamon Ryan described the broadcast on Wednesday (4 May), which depicted the destruction...

Germany’s main industry associations have voiced clear support for the EU’s plans to impose a gradual Russian oil embargo, even though they said it would be a challenge. “The German industry supports this step,” Siegfried Russwurm, president of Germany’s biggest...

A Russian-announced ceasefire was due to begin Thursday (5 May) at the besieged steel plant in the devastated Ukrainian city of Mariupol, to allow civilians to flee even as its defenders vowed to fight to the end.

India and France on Wednesday (4 May) called for "an immediate cessation of hostilities" in Ukraine, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi again stopping short of condemning Russia's invasion of its neighbour.

True energy independence means a complete phase out of natural gas from the energy system and its replacement with renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency, write Martin Dimitrov and Kostantsa Rangelov.

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday (4 May) said he would speak with other leaders from the Group of Seven advanced economies this week about potential additional sanctions against Russia over its continuing and intensifying war in Ukraine.

Germany will work for an extension of the EU's peacekeeping mission in Bosnia as concerns mount about instability spilling over from the Ukraine war, but has not yet decided whether to provide troops, Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht said.

The EU is to blacklist Russia's most senior cleric, Patriarch Kirill, as well as going after Kremlin oil revenue in its latest sanctions.

Political ad providers in the European Union will have 48 hours to address notifications and provide information about political ads in the month leading up to votes, under the compromise text on the EU directive regulating political ads. 

Stricter antitrust measures can be taken against US giant Meta, Germany's Bundeskartellamt announced on Wednesday (4 May), after similar measures were taken toward Google. Meanwhile, Germany is lobbying for stricter EU competition rules.

Written by Nikolina Šajn.

The amount of clothes bought per person in the European Union (EU) has increased by 40 % in just a few decades, driven by a fall in prices and the increased speed with which fashion is delivered to consumers. Clothing has the fourth highest impact on the environment of all categories of EU consumption. This impact is often felt in non-EU countries, where most production takes place. The production of raw materials, spinning them into fibres, weaving fabrics and dyeing require enormous amounts of water and chemicals, including pesticides for growing raw materials such as cotton. Consumer use also has a large environmental footprint, owing to the water, energy and chemicals used in washing, tumble-drying and ironing, and microplastics shed into the environment. Less than half of used clothes are collected for reuse or recycling when they are no longer needed, and only 1 % are recycled into new clothes, since technologies that would enable clothes to be recycled into virgin fibres are only now starting to emerge.

Various ways to address these issues have been proposed, including developing new business models for clothing rental, designing products in a way that would make re-use and recycling easier (circular fashion), convincing consumers to buy fewer clothes of better quality (slow fashion), and generally steering consumer behaviour towards choosing more sustainable options.

The European Commission laid out its vision for the textiles sector for 2030 in the March 2022 EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles. The Commission has proposed a regulation on ecodesign requirements for sustainable products and a directive on empowering consumers for the green transition. The package will aim to make all products on the internal market more sustainable, while providing consumers with information on sustainability. The application of these rules to textiles will be specified in delegated acts, largely planned for 2024.

This briefing expands on and updates a 2019 EPRS briefing Environmental impact of the textile and clothing industry: What consumers need to know.

Read the complete briefing on ‘Textiles and the environment‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

EU lawmakers revisited on Wednesday (4 May) new revelations of spying on European officials by the Pegasus software, criticising the lack of action by the European Commission, which prefers to leave the affair to the member states to handle.

In past weeks, the European Commission has been making a series of presentations, obtained by EURACTIV, to EU countries that have requested further clarity on how the new data law will apply and how it will interact with other legislation....

Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein is expected to emerge as the largest party in the 90-seat Northern Ireland Assembly after Thursday's election in a historic breakthrough. It Is leading the polls after support fell for the loyalist Democratic Unionist Party, which has been the largest party for the last two decades. It would give Sinn Fein the post of first minister in the Belfast government for the first time.

The Russian rouble jumped Wednesday to around a two-year high against both the dollar and the euro, Reuters reported. The rouble was 3.6 percent stronger against the dollar and had gained 3.7 percent versus the euro during the day. The rouble is being propped up by capital controls, while stocks are trading with a ban on short selling and foreign players barred from ditching shares in Russian companies without permission.