European Union

The European Commission said Wednesday a "real driving emissions" (RDE) test for CO2 to help prevent cheating would take years to develop. "To think we can move from one day to another to an RDE test, that is not going to happen, that is not going to be possible," the commission told MEPs at a discussion about new reduction targets for cars. MEP Miriam Dalli proposed such a test.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker had called a pre-summit "informal working meeting" in Brussels on Sunday to discuss migration and asylum, the issue currently preoccupying both the German coalition government in Berlin and the new Italian government. The commission did not immediately specify who would attend, although it was thought to include Germany, France, Italy and Spain, plus incoming and outgoing EU presidencies - Bulgaria and Austria.

The European Commission on Wednesday ordered Luxembourg to recover €120m from the Engie group, after finding the country broke state aid rules by allowing French energy company to effectively pay no tax by treating some transactions as both debt and equity. Competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said "Engie paid an effective corporate tax rate of 0.3% on certain profits in Luxembourg for about a decade. This selective tax treatment is illegal."

Luxembourg will have to recover about €120 million in unpaid tax from French energy giant Engie, after the European Commission found the Grand Duchy guilty of breaching strict state aid rules.

The Nature4Climate Initiative is officially being launched in Brussels on Wednesday (20 June) by a coalition of conservation organisations, business groups, the UNDP and other major environmental NGOs.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s 2017 address to the nation focused on what he termed a new, third stage of the country’s modernisation. The EU is not only monitoring progress closely, but has an interest to see Kazakhstan as a prosperous, politically-balanced, democratic country in the region.  

Europe's choice is between unplanned, reactive, fragmented, ineffective migration policy and planned, regulated, documented movements of people, writes International Rescue Committee chief David Miliband.

EU institutional negotiators on Tuesday (19 June) reached an informal agreement on reforming Eurodac, a database that contains the fingerprints of asylum seekers. It means the age for obtaining fingerprints and facial images of minors will be lowered from 14 to 6 years, in a move that has generated controversy among some NGOs. The deal still needs approval from EU states and the European parliament before becoming law.

Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel and France's president Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday signed a joint declaration that offers concessions by both camps in terms of migration and the setting up of a eurozone budget.

EU member states should no longer have any "unjustified restrictions" that bans companies from storing data in another EU country, negotiators from the European parliament, European commission, and member states agreed Tuesday evening. "Data localisation restrictions are signs of protectionism for which there is no place in a single market," said EU digital commissioner Andrus Ansip in a statement. The actual final text of the legislation is not yet public.

European Commission, European Parliament, and national governments negotiators have agreed that by 2030 the EU's energy use should be 32.5% more efficient, a more ambitious target than agreed at an EU summit in 2014. They also concluded talks on a separate piece of climate legislation which would state that the EU would have zero net emissions "as early as possible" - more vague than the 2050 target parliament wanted.

Italy's interior minister Matteo Salvini said on Tuesday that he was not backing down from a controversial proposal to have a census of Roma people in Italy. "I'm not giving up, I'm going straight on. The Italians and their security come first," he announced on Facebook. Noemi Di Segni, president of Italy's union of Jewish communities, said the proposal recalled fascist race laws in the 1920s and 1930s.

The European Parliament's committee on legal affairs votes on Wednesday on the proposed article 13 of the digital single market copyright directive which would oblige internet services to proactively filter uploads in order to remove copyright infringements. "The damage that this may do to the free and open internet .... could be substantial," warned prominent internet luminaries including Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales in an open letter .

Written by Nikolina Šajn (1st edition),

© Tierney / Fotolia

On 11 April 2018, the European Commission published a proposal for a directive on better enforcement and modernisation of EU consumer protection, as part of its ‘new deal for consumers’ package of measures. The proposal comes after a fitness check of consumer legislation and an evaluation of the Consumer Rights Directive showed that the EU consumer legislation is fit for purpose, but could benefit from certain aspects being clarified and brought into line with the reality of the digital economy. The proposal focuses on various consumer issues, including penalties for infringements, transparency on online marketplaces, protection for consumers of ‘free’ digital services and dual quality of products. It would amend the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, the Consumer Rights Directive, the Unfair Contract Terms Directive and the Price Indication Directive. The proposal is in now under consideration in the European Parliament and the Council of the EU.

Versions

• June 2018: ‘Modernisation of EU consumer protection rules: A new deal for consumers‘ (1st edition)

Proposal for a directive on better enforcement and modernisation of EU consumer protection rules Committee responsible: Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) COM(2018) 185
11.4.2018 Rapporteur: Daniel Dalton (ECR, United Kingdom) 2018/0090 (COD) Shadow rapporteurs:

  Evelyne Gebhardt (S&D, Germany)
Julia Reda (Greens/EFA, Germany)
Marco Zullo (EFDD, Italy) Ordinary legislative procedure (COD) (Parliament and Council on equal footing – formerly ‘co-decision’) Next steps expected: Publication of draft report

Brussels and London have made progress on several technical sections of Brexit negotiations but "serious divergences" remain over the issue of Northern Ireland after a final round of talks ahead of this month's European summit, the EU said Tuesday (19 June).

The Hungarian government of Viktor Orban has said it will not wait until Friday, to hear a verdict of European legal experts on human rights, before going ahead with its bill curtailing NGOs who work with migrants.

OECD Secretary-General Ángel Gurría has blamed governments for the rise of populism and political fragmentation across Europe, claiming they also did not deliver benefits that were promised to citizens, he told EURACTIV in an interview.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday (19 June) won German Chancellor Angela Merkel's backing for reforms that are aimed at bolstering the eurozone against crises, including a vaunted budget for the bloc.

The head of the European Parliament's pesticides committee has warned the European Commission about the possible impact on organic wine-growing if the use of copper, a toxic substance according to EFSA and ECHA, is outlawed.