European Union

Consorzio Italian Management e Catania Multiservizi and Catania Multiservizi
Law governing the institutions
The Court clarifies its case-law in Cilfit concerning the situations in which national courts or tribunals of last instance are not subject to the obligation to make a reference for a preliminary ruling

LU
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
L’application du principe de reconnaissance mutuelle aux sanctions pécuniaires s’oppose à ce que l’autorité d’exécution remette en cause la qualification juridique donnée par l’autorité d’émission à l’agissement sanctionné

W. Ż. () and des affaires publiques de la Cour suprême - nomination)
Principles of Community law
Transfers without consent of a judge from one court to another or between two divisions of the same court are liable to undermine the principles of the irremovability of judges and judicial independence

The Treaties do not prohibit the Council from waiting, before adopting the decision concluding the Istanbul Convention on behalf of the European Union, for the ‘common accord’ of the Member States, but the Council cannot alter the procedure for concluding that convention by making that conclusion contingent on the prior establishment of such a ‘common accord’

“Playing around with the emissions trading scheme” would only have a “very small” impact on the current energy price crunch, EU climate chief Frans Timmermans said on Wednesday (6 October) as he walked into a meeting of EU environment ministers in Luxembourg.

With the ongoing surge in energy prices, EU governments have scrambled to implement emergency measures to protect vulnerable consumers. Yet in doing so, they’re indirectly subsidising fossil fuels and undermining the green transition just weeks before the UN climate summit opens in Glasgow.

Citizens often turn to the European Parliament to ask what the European Union does to support mental health. Policies and services addressing mental health are the responsibility of individual EU countries. However, the need to include support for good mental health remains among the priorities on the public health agenda at EU level.

Action taken by Parliament

Members of the European Parliament have posted numerous parliamentary questions to the European Commission on this subject.

In a question of April 2020, a Member asked when the Commission intends to put an EU Mental Health Strategy in place. The Commission replied, inter alia, that good mental health is a priority topic for the Steering Group on Health Promotion, Disease Prevention and Management of Non-Communicable Diseases. As a reply to a follow-up question in August 2020, the Commission added that it acknowledges the high importance of mental health, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and ‘has taken additional steps to strengthen mental health in all policies approach, both via creating synergies within the Commission as well as through its support for stakeholders’.

Some Members have joined together to form platforms promoting mental health. Examples include the Coalition for Mental Health and Wellbeing in the European Parliament, a group amplifying the voices of people with mental health problems and advocating for a coordinated response on the determinants of mental health, or the MEP Alliance for Mental Health, a platform bringing together Members and stakeholders to promote EU policies in the field of mental illness.

Mental health during the coronavirus pandemic

EU4Health is the EU’s response to coronavirus. It will provide funding to EU countries, health organisations and NGOs. Funding will be open for applications in 2021. The programme describes mental health as one of the challenges in health security and health systems.

The Commission has created an interactive tool, the EU Health Policy Platform, to facilitate knowledge exchange and develop guidance on public health. The tool addresses many of the concerns related to mental health and specifically consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a resolution of July 2020 on the EU’s public health strategy post-coronavirus, the European Parliament calls for a 2021‑2027 EU action plan on mental health, with equal attention being paid to the biomedical and psychosocial factors of poor mental health.

Another July 2020 resolution brings up the rights of persons with intellectual disabilities and their families during the coronavirus crisis. It recalls, inter alia, that a lockdown is a serious problem for persons with intellectual disabilities, as well as for every person with a mental illness, since isolation can aggravate problems.

Further information

• Mental health, European Commission website
• Mental health and the pandemic, Briefing, European Parliament Research Service (EPRS), July 2021
• People living with depression, What Europe does for me (EPRS)
• Spotlight on mental health in Europe, At a glance, European Parliament Research Service (EPRS), October 2016

Keep sending your questions to the Citizens’ Enquiries Unit (Ask EP)! We reply in the EU language that you use to write to us.

Faced with rising energy prices, the only thing Europe can quickly do to prevent a potentially difficult winter is to actively promote energy conservation in both the residential and industrial sectors, write Simone Tagliapietra and Georg Zachmann.

In today's edition of the Capitals, find out more about French protesters urging the government to preserve their spending power, Croatia backing a proposal to tax multinational companies, and so much more.

Campaigners are calling on the government in London to take tougher action against tax havens, after the Pandora Papers shone a light on British overseas territories in a global tax-dodging network.

European Union leaders will discuss later in October the idea of setting up an EU strategic gas reserve and the decoupling of electricity prices from gas prices, the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday (5 October).

Greece has proposed an EU-wide mechanism for hedging against steep gas price fluctuations to help households tackle rising energy prices across the bloc.

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday (5 October) that he has spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about Taiwan and they agreed to abide by the Taiwan agreement, as tensions have ratcheted up between Taipei and Beijing. “I’ve spoken...

Once the dust of the COVID-19 crisis settles, it will be time to build a new foundation for Europe-Africa relations. As the EU searches for allies in a post-COVID world, a group of seven European think tank leaders looks at how to build a stronger Europe-Africa axis in the multilateral system.

Germany's energy regulator said the Nord Stream 2 pipeline must show it would not break competition rules by limiting which suppliers used it and could face a fine if it started pumping Russian gas to Germany without securing necessary approvals.

Amid disunity over the way forward on European defence, EU leaders discussed on Tuesday night (5 October) whether the bloc should enhance its capacity to act independently while strengthening its partnership with NATO.

Ann Linde, Sweden’s foreign minister and OSCE’s chairperson-in-office, has voiced her support for Albania’s accession to the EU, during her visit to Tirana on Tuesday. During a press conference with Albanian Foreign Minister Olta Xhacka, she said, “Sweden supports Albania’s...

The Administrative Court has sided with the two prosecutors picked to represent Slovenia in the European Public Prosecutor’s Office as it overturned a government decision to annul the selection procedure. The decision, released on Tuesday, means that the government must...

The political leadership of Croats in Serbia have condemned the denial of the Croatian language in grammar books for eighth-graders. According to the local Croat-language weekly Hrvatska riječ, a grammar book for eighth-graders says that Serbian, Slovenian, Macedonian and Bulgarian languages...

Croatia supports the current proposal to tax multinational companies to achieve greater tax fairness, Finance Minister Zdravko Marić has said. Marić said Croatia had from the start been in favour of a global solution that would be incorporated into European...