European Union

In this Over a Coffee, Alberto Mazzola, Executive Director of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER), speaks about the industry’s emergence from the pandemic, efforts to promote train travel as part of the European Year of Rail, the need for infrastructure upgrades to make rail more competitive, and what the future of train travel in Europe might look like.

The European Commission will use a long-planned reform of EU gas market rules, due in December, to address the current supply crunch on the market. This is according to the EU’s energy chief who added there are sufficient reserves to last the winter.

The European Commission chose to delay for half a year the publication of its controversial report on the potential effects of the EU’s flagship food policy, the Farm to Fork strategy, opting instead for a quiet mid-summer publication, according to documents seen by EURACTIV.

France's flagship security and defence company Thales announced a new partnership with Google on Wednesday (6 October). Its objective is to obtain the so-called "trusted cloud" label from the French government, propose a sovereign cloud service, and be operational by 2023. EURACTIV France reports.

Written by Angelos Delivorias (1st edition).

Consumer credit is a type of loan allowing consumers to purchase consumer goods and services for which they do not have the funds. It is regulated at national and EU level. The Consumer Credit Directive (CCD), in force since 2008, is the relevant EU-level legislation.

The CCD has undergone several revisions over the past decade, yet growing digitalisation, insufficient harmonisation and issues affecting consumer protection, among other things, have prompted the Commission to publish a proposal for a new directive. This proposal brings crowdfunding into the scope of the CCD, expands and clarifies the definitions, and adds new articles relative to, among other things, new obligations for creditors, tying and bundling practices, ancillary services, advisory services, unsolicited credit sale, conduct of business obligations for creditors and requirements for their staff.

The proposal is part of the Commission’s New Consumer Agenda aimed at updating the overall strategic framework of EU consumer policy. The proposal is currently examined by the co-legislators. Within the European Parliament, the file has been assigned to the IMCO committee. At the moment, no date has been announced for the publication of a draft report.

Versions

• Consumer Credit Directive (1st edition)

Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on consumer credits Committee responsible:Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO)COM(2021) 347
30.6.2021Rapporteur:Kateřina Konečná (The Left, Czechia)2021/0171(COD)Shadow rapporteurs:Tomislav Sokol (EPP, Croatia)
Maria-Manuel Leitão-Marques (S&D, Portugal)
Stéphanie Yon-Courtin (Renew, France)
Rasmus Andresen (Greens/EFA, Germany)Ordinary legislative procedure (COD) (Parliament and Council on equal footing – formerly ‘co-decision’) Next steps expected: Publication of draft report

Germany’s Greens and the liberal FDP, two kingmakers after the inconclusive federal election, have announced they want to launch talks about a potential coalition with the Social Democrat SPD, rather than with outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU. The first discussions are planned for Thursday (7 October).

Despite coming a long way in becoming more energy independent, the Baltics still heavily rely on imported crude oil for their military and civil fuel demand. This could prove to be a challenge in the event of a regional crisis as seaborne oil shipments might face disruptions, argues Lukas Trakimavičius and Christophe Nave.

Three EU-based firms are suspected of trying to smuggle arms to Belarus and Russia via Moldova in what might be just the tip of a larger black market.

Over the past 70 years roughly 330,000 children have been victims of sexual abuse within the French Catholic Church, according to a report compiled by an independent commission of inquiry over two and a half years. Europe's media discuss what changes are needed after the shocking revelations.

Things are not looking good for tech giant Facebook. Several of the company's service were offline for hours on Monday evening due to a massive outage. Instagram and WhatsApp were also affected. Then on Tuesday, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen made serious accusations against the company before the US Congress. Europe's media stress the need to review security on the Internet.

Representatives of the European Union and the Western Balkan states are meeting in Slovenia today to discuss, among other issues, EU enlargement. But since the member states have not been able to agree on a concrete accession date for Serbia, Albania or northern Macedonia and have only pledged investment aid amounting to nine billion euros there is a lot of frustration and disappointment in the media.