European Union

Germany might let EU institutions borrow money on the international markets using the EU budget as security chancellor Merkel has said. "I can imagine such instruments further down the line ... More generally I would like to say that Germany not only wants to act in solidarity, but that it will act in solidarity," she said. Germany and The Netherlands have previously opposed issuing joint debt to fight the slowdown.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell has attacked US handling of the pandemic. He said it was "weak ... and now they are seeing the consequences", but "blaming China is not the solution". The US was wrong to defund the WHO, he added. It was also unhelpful that US sanctions were stopping humanitarian supplies from getting into Iran and Venezuela, with Borrell pledging to advocate for more access.

US oil prices turned negative for the first time on record on Monday after oil producers ran out of space to store the oversupply of crude left by the coronavirus crisis, triggering an historic market collapse which left oil traders reeling, the Guardian reports. The price of US crude oil crashed from $18 a barrel to -$38 in a matter of hours on Monday but recovered to $1.10 on Tuesday.

Only a tiny proportion of the global population – maybe as few as 2% or 3% – appear to have antibodies in the blood showing they have been infected with Covid-19, according to the World Health Organization, diminishing hopes that herd immunity will ease the exit from lockdown, the Guardian reports. "Easing restrictions is not the end of the epidemic in any country," the WHO said.

In the fight against the spread of COVID-19, the flag of one of the states affected by the virus is being displayed daily at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, a world-wide architectural monument, to express support and respect to the...

Over 100 Belgian academics sent a letter to the Belgian government with concerns on a contact-tracing app to fight the coronavirus pandemic. "Whether the app works or not, it is more important to realise that many will not want to use it, for completely legitimate reasons," it says. Academics said an app must be part of a larger set of measures, such as a significant increase in test capacity.

The European Commission, in collaboration with several partners, on Monday launched the EU's Covid-19 data platform to enable the collection and sharing of research data, including genes, protein structures, electron microscopy data and scientific publications. The platform is part of the coordinated research and innovation actions ("ERAvsCORONA") announced earlier this month. This project is set to follow the standards of open science.

Austria has offered 181 accommodation and sanitary containers to alleviate the overcrowding of refugee camps in Greece. "The EU will of course co-finance the delivery costs of these containers to the country," said a European Commission spokesperson. Some 39,000 refugees, asylum seekers and migrants are currently stuck on the islands, whose centres are designed for around 8,700.

Madrid added its voice to the debate on how to come up with big enough recovery plan that would help protect the euro and stabilise economies worse-hot by the corona-virus. EU leaders will flesh out ideas on Thursday.

The European Commission vice-president Vera Jourova recognised that the EU's pharmaceutical sector had a 'morbid dependency' on third-country suppliers. But some experts from the pharma field have warned export bans undermine global supply chains.

On 4 March, the European Commission's legal service handed president Ursula von der Leyen an analysis of the Greek government's controversial decision to temporarily freeze asylum applications. The commission will not now release the document.

After more than 22,000 coronavirus-related deaths and over a month of lockdown, Italy's health emergency is taking its toll from the social point of view too. Stress is skyrocketing.

'As a single mother, I am now caring for my severely disabled son alone, 24/7, without any assistance, without rest, with more demand for shopping, cooking, feeding and intensive care.'

Written by Nera Kuljanic,

© Sunny studio / Shutterstock

The digital transformation is fully under way, transforming the European economy and Europe’s society as a whole. New technical and soft skills are gaining in importance both in the labour market and as a means for fully participating in society. As a result, traditional roles, content and methods of education are being challenged – today’s education needs to prepare students for continuously changing tasks and roles both in the labour market and as European citizens. At the same time, today’s adults need help in reskilling and upskilling to enable them to tackle tomorrow’s challenges. Rethinking education in the digital age therefore constitutes a prerequisite for Europe’s future global competitiveness and for safeguarding European values such as equality, democracy and the rule of law.

Education in the digital age includes but is not restricted to digital education. It also encompasses the transmission of technical, soft and citizen skills, and refers to both formal and non-formal education throughout the entire lifespan of European citizens.

This new STOA study summarises the current state of play of education in the digital age across Europe, and anticipates trends and emerging issues across four stakeholder groups: policy-makers and public administration; students; educators and trainers; and employers and employees. Departing from the current strengths and weaknesses, and the upcoming opportunities and threats, the authors derived policy options for (European) policy-makers.

Main conclusions of the study

For approximately the last two decades, policy work has often focused on ‘soft’ factors, such as teacher training, teacher and student competence building, as well as content development. From around 2015 onwards, policy approaches have often included ‘iterative’ and ‘organic’ approaches, i.e. small-scale experiments that can, if successful, be upscaled and mainstreamed. In terms of providing digital infrastructure, digital equipment in schools is generally at a good level across the EU, but with large disparities between regions and countries. Emerging trends are the provision of platform and cloud solutions for schools, open educational resources and massive open online courses (MOOCs).

Students in Europe have high digital skills, although differences persist specifically according to educational background and country. Gender differences in skills are negligible among the young generation, but girls remain by far less likely to turn their digital competences into a career. In the future, soft and citizen skills such as computational thinking and entrepreneurship skills should be more strongly transmitted in European schools, and career guidance will play an increasingly important role.

Educators and trainers in Europe today frequently use digital tools, but it remains unclear whether they are sufficiently able to employ them in pedagogically meaningful ways. Furthermore, the vast majority of teachers do not, or only sporadically, participate in professional development focused on digital education. Teachers may, moreover, not be sufficiently prepared and/or not be offered the structural contexts for focusing their teaching more strongly on the soft and citizen skills that are urgently necessary in the digital age. At the same time, new teaching technologies could offer opportunities for personalising learning contexts, thereby improving student motivation and retention. When introducing corresponding teaching technologies, issues such as discrimination by algorithms and data protection will need to be discussed and solutions for them implemented.

Employers and employees increasingly operate in contexts of high work flexibility and a decreasing demand for mid-level qualifications. This influences education in the sense that today’s students need to be prepared for more flexible forms of work, a possibly more flexible labour market and more mobile and dynamic work biographies. At the same time, the existing workforce will have to undergo extensive upskilling and reskilling, increasing the relevance of lifelong learning and informal and non-formal education.

Options for policy-makers

The authors developed twenty policy options, out of which four are developed more in detail in the study:

• Incorporating education in the digital age more strongly into existing and future research frameworks to further promote evidence-based policy.
• Supporting the creation of a knowledge-sharing platform for education in the digital age to improve the dissemination and adaption of success models across Europe.
• Simplifying and harmonising the recognition and validation of lifelong learning to increase both value and quality of non-formal education, accelerate reskilling and upskilling, and to better match workers’ skills with labour market needs.
• Offering a harmonised, yet versatile cloud solution for the provision of (open) educational resources that can be adjusted to varying contexts (e.g. different countries, educational systems).

The study was carried out by VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH at the request of the STOA Panel, following a proposal from Eva Kaili (S&D, EL), STOA Chair.

Europe needs to learn from the 2008 crisis and its austerity-based response: the actions taken after the coronavirus crisis must be based on solidarity and socially-oriented principles that will help people, public services and companies recover and strengthen, write Femke Halsema, Ada Colau, Giuseppe Sala, and Anne Hidalgo.

Written by Katarzyna Sochacka and Clare Ferguson,

© European Union 2020 – Source: EP / Thierry ROGE

For the second time since the introduction of strict coronavirus containment measures, the European Parliament conducted its April plenary session with the majority of Members participating remotely, and used the alternative voting procedure put in place by Parliament’s Bureau for the March II session. This temporary voting procedure is available for use until 31 July 2020, unless extended by Bureau decision.

As in March, the session focused on a number of urgent legislative proposals as well as amendments to the EU’s 2020 budget to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Members also heard from the Presidents of the European Council and Commission on the coordination of the European response to the Covid-19 outbreak. Parliament then adopted a resolution setting out its position on the response to the pandemic and its consequences, ahead of the next video-conference meeting of EU Heads of State or Government, on 23 April. In this resolution, Members called for a massive economic recovery package, greater coordination on cross-border health threats, and condemned national emergency measures that restrict civil liberties.

Amending Budget No 1/2020: Support for Greece on migration pressure, measures to fight coronavirus and reconstruction assistance for Albania

Members approved draft Amending Budget No 1/2020 (DAB1), which will provide additional funds of more than half a billion euros to help address the needs arising from the increased migration pressures in Greece, to assist Member States to limit the impact of the coronavirus outbreak through meeting equipment and medical product needs, and to contribute to Albania’s post-earthquake reconstruction.

Amending Budget No 2/2020: Emergency support for the healthcare sector

Prior to the vote on draft Amending Budget No 2/2020 (DAB2), Parliament gave its consent to the Council to modify the 2014-2020 multiannual financial framework, in an amendment lifting restrictions on the scope of heading 3, ‘Security and citizenship’. Members then approved DAB2, which enables the use of three flexibility and last resort mechanisms (the Global Margin for commitments, the Flexibility Instrument and the Contingency Margin) and releases €2.7 billion in emergency support for the healthcare sector, to be used for development, production, procurement and distribution of medicines and medical equipment, including for testing. In addition, €300 million will be used to reinforce the reserves of emergency medical kit established by the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (rescEU).

Specific flexibility measures for ESI funds in response to the coronavirus outbreak

Members approved, by a large majority, specific flexibility measures for European structural and investment (ESI) funds to counter the coronavirus crisis, proposed by the European Commission as part of the second Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative (CRII+). This will temporarily allow programmes dealing with the impact of the crisis to be financed up to 100 % from the EU budget between July 2020 and June 2021, as well as greater simplification and flexibility in the rules on funding allocation.

Support for the fishing and aquaculture sectors

Members approved, again by large majority, measures supplementing those already agreed under the Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative to support the hard-hit fisheries and aquaculture sector. These additional measures include support for a temporary end to fishing activities, including for aquaculture farmers, for storage costs, and for greater flexibility and simplified procedures in allocating the funding.

Read this ‘at a glance’ on ‘Plenary round-up – Brussels, April 2020‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Read all EPRS publications on the coronavirus outbreak

Germany confirmed on Monday (20 April) it aims to replace its ageing fleet of Tornado fighter-bombers with aircraft from both European manufacturer Airbus and US-based Boeing.

For French president Emmanuel Macron, there is no way around Coronabonds, a position he made perfectly clear last Friday to the northern Naysayers, particularly Berlin. Because his own political future is at stake.

The coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating diplomatic "fractures", heightening US-China rivalry and weakening multilateralism, France's foreign minister said in an interview published on Monday (20 April).

The European Commission has been calling for preparedness against the pandemic since day one in January, the EU Commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarčič, told EURACTIV in an interview.