European Union

Committee meetings, Brussels

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

Hungary must provide food to rejected asylum seekers held in detention camps on its border who are appealing the decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said on Thursday (23 August). Human rights groups said that Hungarian authorities had...

Germany’s coal commission will not give any recommendation regarding mining-owner RWE’s plans to continue clearing forest for the planned extension of the Hambach lignite mine in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In its third meeting, the commission heard experts’ views on the implications of the country’s climate goals for the coal sector. EURACTIV's media partner Clean Energy Wire reports.

Italy's interior minister Matteo Salvini allowed minors to leave a migrant rescue ship in Sicily after a week on the boat, but 150 other people remain on board. Salvini demanded that other EU countries host the migrants. According to Italian media, the Sicilian prosecutor was investigating an unknown person for illegal imprisonment of migrants. Salvini responded on Twitter, saying the unknown person was him and they should investigate him.

Both the EU and Turkey are on the receiving end of Trump tariffs, which placed them in the same camp against the US.

From cigarette packaging to pensions access – Brexit will change a lot for British people, even if, as new preparatory notes show, the UK aims to stay close to the EU on many issues.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Lithuania on Thursday (23 August) for a Baltic summit saying he hoped to deepen ties with eastern EU nations as Brussels blasted Israel's plans for fresh settlements in the West Bank.

Rosengard, a migrant district in Malmo, Sweden, has a reputation for gang warfare and social deprivation, but some young people there are pushing for change.

With European elections coming up in May 2019, you probably want to know how the European Union impacts your daily life, before you think about voting. In the latest in a series of posts on what Europe does for you, your family, your business and your wellbeing, we look at what Europe does for unemployed people.

Are you, or is someone close to you, one of the nearly 19 million Europeans who were unemployed in 2017? Whatever the reasons for losing your job – the economic crisis, a skills mismatch, lack of education or training – the EU is putting measures in place to fight unemployment.

Twitter Hashtag #EUandME

© Andrey Popov / Fotolia

The EU wants 75 % of 20-64 year-olds to be in work by 2020. European employment strategy focuses on creating more and better jobs, and the ‘New Skills for New Jobs’ programme helps national governments to increase ‘flexicurity’, job quality, ensure better working conditions and create jobs. The 2012 employment and the youth employment packages introduced measures to tackle the demand side of job creation by reducing labour taxes and supporting business start-ups.

The European Social Fund (budget of over €86 billion for 2014-2020) finances projects that help people learn new skills and find jobs. The Employment and Social Innovation Programme (budget €920 million) aims at ensuring that those jobs are fair, durable, and involve adequate and decent social protection, while the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (budget €150 million) helps those who have lost their jobs when big companies reduce production or move it out of the EU, such as textile and clothing workers who face competition from Asia, or those employed in the manufacturing and car industries hardest-hit by global recession.

Sometimes, the problem is that there are no jobs at all in your region. The EU has set up the EURES network to help workers to move to work in any EU country (plus Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway).

Further information

• EPRS publication ‘Public expectations and EU policies – The fight against unemployment’, 2016
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=EPRS_BRI(2016)583864
• European Commission website on Employment, social affairs and inclusion
  http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=568
• European Commission website ‘Employment package’,
  http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1039
• EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service: www.epthinktank.eu

Air France and British Airways announced Thursday (23 August) that they will halt flights to Tehran next month, citing low profitability as the US reimposes sanctions on Iran.

Few people have better insights into the EU migration debate than Bernardino León, a man once described as the golden boy of Spanish politics. The diplomat said that disembarkation platforms and controlled centres for migrants, currently envisaged by EU leaders, won’t stop the flow of immigrants to Europe.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency, said on Thursday (23 August) he wanted to help the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator avoid a hard Brexit.

Spain on Thursday (23 August) sent back to Morocco 116 migrants who had forced their way into the Spanish territory of Ceuta, in a mass expulsion condemned by human rights activists.

The European Commission has called a meeting today (25 August) after Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said his party would vote to suspend funding to the EU unless other member states agreed to take in migrants being held on a coastguard ship in Sicily.

The UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, and Media Jeremy Wright on Wednesday (August 22) responded to concerns that Britain's broadcasting sector would be negatively impacted by Brexit, noting that broadcasting is a "vital part of what Britain offers the world."

Set in a dystopian post-Brexit Britain, a new video game follows the struggles of a bouncer of foreign ancestry in a world of xenophobia and immigrant camps, but gamers are divided over its message.

UK businesses and consumers should brace themselves for tariffs, customs bureaucracy and higher bank charges if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, London warned on Thursday (23 August) in its most serious reality check to date.

The EU's Digital Commissioner Mariya Gabriel will attend the G20 digital economy ministerial meeting in Salta, Argentina this week (23-24 August), with the aim of promoting the EU’s gender equality agenda in digital affairs.