European Union

German chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday faced new criticism over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will transport gas from Russia to Germany, following the poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Norbert Roettgen, head of Germany's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said that if the pipeline is completed now, "it would be the maximum confirmation and encouragement for [Russian president Vladimir] Putin to continue this kind of politics."

Ireland will put forward two nominees for the EU Commission to consider as a replacement for Phil Hogan as the country's representative on the EU executive, following the trade commissioner's resignation last week, Reuters reported. EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen requested Ireland to nominate both a female and male candidate. Prime minister Micheal Martin said Thursday that a decision would be made on nominees "very quickly."

On September 1, 2020, the President Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, delivered his annual Address to the Nation, announcing the start of a new stage of reforms.

Armenia’s illegal settlements in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan further complicate the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, writes Vasif Huseynov.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex unveiled on Thursday (3 September) a detailed national economic recovery plan amounting to €100 billion over two years. The plan is in line with those drawn up by Berlin and the European Commission, according to the head of the influential French think tank IDDRI. EURACTIV France reports.

At its back-to-school meeting on Tuesday (1 September), France's National Council for Ecological Transition addressed the controversial issue of reintroducing neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides, to save the sugar beet industry. The issue is causing quite a stir both at home and across the Rhine. EURACTIV France reports.

The European Union (EU) has legislation in place to protect our rights when travelling by plane. The European Parliament has advocated a higher level of protection for many years, and in the context of the Covid‑19 pandemic, the European Commission has taken steps to ensure air passengers’ rights remain protected.

EU legislation

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Should you be denied boarding, or your flight is cancelled or considerably delayed, common rules on compensation and assistance for passengers and minimum rights are established in the Flight Compensation Regulation.

As package travel may include air travel, air passenger rights are also covered by the Package Travel Directive, which aims at achieving a high and as uniform as possible level of consumer protection. Additionally, air carriers’ liability for transporting your luggage is specifically addressed in a Council Regulation on the carriage of passengers and their baggage by air.

European Parliament seeks better protection for air passengers

With the aim of improving information for passengers in the event of delays and clarifying the rules on compensation, as well as to give air carriers more certainty as to the law, the European Commission presented a proposal to review the rules on air passenger rights, in 2013.

However, the European Parliament, in a 2014 resolution on this proposal, asked for additional provisions. These include: ensuring that there is an airline contact person at the airport in the event of problems; further cabin luggage allowances; higher amounts for compensation in the event of delay; an exhaustive list of extraordinary circumstances in which compensation does not have to be paid; and guarantee mechanisms against air carrier bankruptcy. The Parliament reiterated its position in a 2019 resolution. The Council has not yet adopted a position on the proposal. After years of stalling, discussions reopened in 2019.

Coronavirus pandemic

The European Union has undertaken several steps to guarantee that passenger rights are applied coherently and to protect passengers across all EU countries during the Covid‑19 pandemic.

In March 2020, the European Commission adopted interpretative guidelines on passenger rights regulations and issued an information note on the Package Travel Directive. The Commission recalled that, under EU legislation, passengers have the right to choose between reimbursement (e.g. in money or in the form of a voucher) and re-routing, when transport tickets (plane, train, bus/coach and ferries) or package travel are cancelled. If the airline proposes a voucher, this offer cannot affect the passenger’s right to opt for reimbursement instead. The EU rules also set a deadline by when reimbursement is due: within seven days (following the passenger’s request) for air transport and within fourteen days after termination of a package travel contract.

The European Parliament called on the Commission to make sure these interpretative guidelines are properly implemented in the context of the developing Covid‑19 situation in a resolution of 17 April 2020.

The Commission subsequently reaffirmed passenger rights in a recommendation adopted on 13 May 2020, which aims to make travel vouchers an attractive alternative to reimbursement for cancelled trips. Vouchers should have a minimum validity period of one year and should be reimbursed at the latest fourteen days after the end of the validity period if the voucher has not been used.

Compensation in local currency

In September 2020, the European Court of Justice concluded that compensation awarded to air passengers under the Regulation may be paid in the national currency of the place of residence and not only in euros.

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

Further information

• Passenger rights, European Parliament fact sheet, February 2020
• Air passenger rights, Your Europe, European Union
• Flight Compensation Regulation (EC) 261/2004, European Parliamentary Research Service, November 2018
• Strengthening air passenger rights in the EU, European Parliamentary Research Service, May 2015
• EU rules on vouchers offered to passengers and travellers, European Parliamentary Research Service, June 2020

The major European political groups tolerate corruption and malfeasance among the member parties, says Green MEP Daniel Freund, who also analyses the weaknesses of instruments to fight the misuse of EU funds.

MEPs have packed their bags, ready to get back to Strasbourg after a forced six-month hiatus. But moving the entire EU circus to another country may not be the brightest idea right now. In an unprecedented move, European Parliament President...

Welcome to EURACTIV’s Global Europe Brief, your weekly update on the EU in the global perspective from our foreign affairs news team: Georgi Gotev and Alexandra Brzozowski. You can subscribe here. /// HOT RÈENTRÈE While most of political Europe was still on summer break,...

The European Parliament will fight to have a say in the oversight of the EU's €750-billion stimulus package, alongside the Council, MEP Jan Olbrycht, co-rapporteur on the EU's next seven-year budget (MFF), told EURACTIV Italy in an interview.

A proposed ban on polluting ship fuel in Arctic waters would only eliminate 5% of the most harmful climate-busting emissions due to a raft of waivers and exemptions, a new study warned on Thursday (3 September).

A new EDA research project, for which the Agency Steering Board has just given its go-ahead, will help participating Member States’ Armed Forces to step up their collaborative air training & exercise capabilities thanks to improved modelling and simulation.

The overarching aim of the project called MAJES (Modelling and simulation as a service applications for Air and Joint Exercises & Simulation) is to develop an interconnected and interacting system/network that will allow the military of participating Member States to perform training simulations for coalition operations in a distributed manner from different locations. This will allow much more realistic conditions than in the past when simulations were traditionally configurated and done locally, in isolation, which meant they were mostly unable to take into account external factors and changes and requested participating Member States to meet physically in specific training centres.

MAJES will thus help Member States in the preparation, execution and after-service of collective (but not physically joint) military trainings and exercises for air and joint operations using LVC (Live-Virtual-Constructive) technologies which suppose a mix of physical and simulated assets, including virtual adversaries. This will support as well the management and control of so-called ‘Battlelabs’ (digital distributed defence laboratories) for the concept, development and testing of System of Systems (such as the next 5th generation aircraft systems - FCAS) supporting experiment plan and data farming automation. The project also aims to improve the data collection from exercises for Artificial Intelligence learning in this distributed simulated environment which allows cooperation without joint physical presence.

The project will run over 36 months, starting from the signing of the project contract expected to take place early next year. Three countries are participating so far: France, the Netherlands and Norway (which is not an EDA Member State but has concluded an Administrative Agreement with the Agency). Industry from the participating countries is also involved.

The European Commission said on Thursday (3 September), the bloc could only slap new sanctions on Moscow after a probe reveals who was responsible for what Germany says was a deliberate poisoning with a toxic nerve agent of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The European Commission's lack of substantial response to concerns over the use of Clearview AI technology by EU law enforcement authorities has drawn the ire of MEPs on the European Parliament's Civil Liberties committee.

The protest rally in Sofia on Wednesday (2 September) marked the peak of two months of demonstrations demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev. EURACTIV's Kalina Angelova was there and captured the mood.

The ENVI Committee calls for the revision of the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism post-2020 so it can better respond to large-scale emergencies such as COVID-19.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The ENVI Committee calls for the revision of the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism post-2020 so it can better respond to large-scale emergencies such as COVID-19.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Greece's national blood donation centre EKEA, which is also the main testing hub for coronavirus, has warned hospitals across the country that it can no longer perform COVID-19 tests due to their “irrational” use that has created a shortage of reagents.

The official draft for an amendment to Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) has been made public. It contains incentives for more wind energy in southern Germany and measures for ageing turbines, but critics say there is still a lot of room for improvement. EURACTIV Germany reports.