European Union

MEPs will vote on the EU’s new agricultural policy, discuss reinforcing its pharmaceutical strategy and suggest new avenues for legal migration to the EU 22-25 November.

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

MEPs will vote on the EU’s new agricultural policy, discuss reinforcing its pharmaceutical strategy and suggest new avenues for legal migration to the EU 22-25 November.

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

The European Union already has 27 members and other countries want to join, but how does a country join the EU?

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

The European Union already has 27 members and other countries want to join, but how does a country join the EU?

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Written by Anna Caprile.

The culmination of two years’ preparatory work and worldwide mobilisation events, the United Nations Food Systems Summit took place on 23 September 2021. The idea behind the summit, initiated by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, was to start a process of transforming the way the world produces, consumes and thinks about food – as a crucial step in progressing on all 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The summit was announced in October 2019 – before the Covid‑19 pandemic became a hunger crisis in many parts of the world – and the stakes have since risen acutely, bringing a new sense of urgency and creating an opportunity to boost the level of reform ambition for global food systems.

More than 150 countries took part in the event, which took place entirely on line, wrapping up a process that has generated a remarkable level of mobilisation and public debate through multiple platforms. Although the summit revealed ample consensus on the need for a radical reform of food systems, it also evidenced profound divergences as to how to approach the daunting tasks ahead.  

A follow-up mechanism has been designed to advance the national and global transformative actions announced at the summit, and the United Nations Secretary-General will convene a global stock-taking meeting every two years to measure progress.

This briefing updates an earlier edition, published in September 2021 ahead of the Summit.

Read the complete Briefing on ‘United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021: Process, challenges and the way forward‘ on the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

• Why a food summit
• The food system in the context of other systems

A makeshift migrant camp on Belarus' border with Poland has been cleared, Minsk said Thursday (18 November), as hundreds of Iraqis who failed to make the crossing to enter the European Union returned home.

The scramble over the role of gas and nuclear in the EU's sustainable finance rules has become a source of tension in the German government talks as the country's first ever three-party coalition is being negotiated in Berlin.

Street clashes again shook Khartoum as internet services returned to Sudan on Thursday (18 November), a day after 15 protesters were killed in the bloodiest violence since the country’s 25 October coup. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken led a...

In today's edition of the Capitals, find out more about Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer visiting Warsaw, some Irish vaccination centres reporting that about half of those who booked a booster shot had failed to show up, and so much more.

The European Commission has until February 2022 to comply with the EU Ombudsman’s recommendation to provide data related to the origins of imported Used Cooking Oil (UCO) biofuel in the EU, amid concerns over alleged fraud cases.

The United States on Thursday (18 November) urged Georgia to provide humane treatment to jailed ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been on a hunger strike for weeks is now reported to be in critical condition.

Cop26 drops a clanger, shark mascot is an absolute banger, and  Olaf Scholz has surprising doppelganger.

Finland will vote against the EU’s climate delegated act later this year because some aspects of the classification system for sustainable activities, known as taxonomy, concerning forest management are “difficult to understand and open to interpretation”, the government said in...

The Albanian government has again denied claims that it will house asylum seekers and refugees who have crossed the UK’s Channel. For the second time in the last month, British media has claimed Albania is working on an agreement with...

The next round of dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia has failed before it even started as the two countries could not decide on which topics to discuss. Despite EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak meeting with both parties on several occasions in...

Milo Djukanovic, the president of Montenegro, has denied dealing with Rezart Taci, an Albanian businessman wanted on suspicion of involvement in an international money laundering scheme. Wiretaps published in Albanian media suggested Taci had involved Djukanovic in the transfer of...

“Until ten years ago, one could not have imagined that government sessions would take place online, but the pandemic showed the opposite. And how it can work digitally. The public administration is ready, but I am not sure about the...

The elections scheduled for spring 2022 in Serbia are one of the reasons for the acceleration of formal activities in the pre-accession talks between Serbia and the EU. Still, it is unlikely for election conditions to improve by then, according...

France will push for motion on migration when it hosts the European Union presidency from January, president Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday, Reuters reports. "We should take a number of actions: stop the institution of lasting camps, act to dismantle the smuggling networks, and strengthen work with the international locations of origin to stop these flows," he said, adding "I'll carry reforms under the French presidency of the EU."

Slovenian interior minister Aleš Hojs, whose country chairs the EU presidency said the EU should seal its borders to prevent people coming to claim asylum in line with their international rights. "I believe external borders must be secured, even with fences if necessary ... There is no more 'Refugees Welcome'," he said at a conference in Sarajevo Thursday. He also said movements of "illegal" migrants were "destabilising the European Union".