European Union

Poland, and the ruling PiS party in particular, attaches great importance to history. It is therefore no wonder that it continues to change its history and the names of those who made it, with the help of the state-controlled media. EURACTIV's media partner Gazeta Wyborcza reports.

The EU's new regional policy is a “balanced, simpler and ambitious” proposal, the best that could have ever been achieved under the current conditions, Commissioner Corina Crețu told Members of the European Parliament on Thursday (May 31).

As the European Commission pushes forward with digitalisation policies, its DESI-index is meant to measure how digital individual member states already are. Germany, however, is only in the midfield. EURACTIV Germany reports.

Anti-establishment and nationalist parties in Italy reached a new coalition deal on Thursday (31 may) reviving their plans to take power, narrowly avoiding snap elections and setting in motion an anti-austerity government in the eurozone’s third largest economy. On Thursday...

Dozens of industry associations have made a last-ditch effort to water down the draft ePrivacy legislation before national telecoms ministers gather to discuss the file next week in Luxembourg.

Solemn undertaking before the Court of Justice of the European Union of four new Members of the European Court of Auditors

Valcheva
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
The notion of ‘rights of access’ includes the rights of access of grandparents to their grandchildren

Wegener
Environment and consumers
The right to compensation for long delays of flights applies to connecting flights to third States with stopovers outside the EU

Hassan
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
When a person travels to a Member State after making a request for international protection in another Member State, the first Member State cannot decide to transfer that person to the second Member State before that second State has agreed to the request to take that person back

Korwin-Mikke v Parliament
Law governing the institutions
The General Court annuls the decisions of the Bureau of the European Parliament to impose penalties on the European MEP Korwin-Mikke due to comments made on the floor of the Parliament

US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday (31 May) that it would slap tariffs on steel and aluminium from EU, Canada and Mexico despite his allies' efforts to avoid a trade war with Washington.

The European Defence Agency (EDA), in cooperation with the Ministry of Defence of Austria and the Multinational Capability Development Campaign (MCDC), will organize next week CYBER PHALANX 2018, a combined cyber course & exercise designed to train military planners and staff of CSDP missions and operations to better cope with cyber threats.

To be held from 4-8 June in Wals-Siezenheim near Salzburg (Austria), CYBER PHALANX 2018 aims to strengthen both Member States’ and the EU’s resilience against cyber threats in the context of CSDP operations and missions. A particular focus will be put on cyber defence decision-making and planning processes. 

The combined course/exercise will allow staff and planners from Operational Headquarters (OHQ), Force Headquarters (FHQ) or Mission Headquarters (MHQ) to better understand the crucial importance of cyber situational awareness in missions and operations, to enhance cyber resilience, to increase interoperability and to cope with concrete cyber threats.  It will also help them to get familiar with existing European structures and cyber stakeholders and their respective roles. 

Practically speaking, CYBER PHALANX 2018 will take the format of a Command Post Exercise (CPX) containing elements of a Table Top Exercise (TTX). Both the course and the exercise concept will be continuously adapted and refined with lessons learned as they unfold.

The US now leaves us with no choice but to proceed with a WTO [World Trade Organization] dispute settlement case and with the imposition of additional duties on a number of imports from the US," European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday after US president Donald Trump confirmed that EU steel and aluminium import to the US will be taxed from 1 June.

European Union legislators have outlined a compromise deal on the bloc’s renewable energy policy for the coming decade, agreeing on a headline objective of 30-33% for 2030, sources said.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama calls for clearer enlargement prospects for the Western Balkans, saying it would be a "huge mistake" for the EU not to continue its engagement with the countries in the region. EURACTIV.fr reports.

The European Commission will host the European Development Days next week – a two-day-gathering for politicians, business leaders and the development policy community. The timing of the meet-up is apt.

The United States has taken aim at Turkey, demanding that it release a US pastor facing trial, as the State Department published its annual report on religious freedom saying it was "under assault" across the world.

The World Health Organisation's Independent Commission on Non-Communicable Diseases released a draft report on 10 May which - if implemented - will back away from its initial recommendation to introduce sugar taxes in order to tackle the so-called obesity epidemic. The final report will be released on 1 June.

In a move of high political importance, the Macedonian Orthodox Church has asked to go back to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, seen as the mother church of Eastern Orthodoxy, and lose the term “Macedonia” from its name.

Written by Angelos Delivorias (1st edition),

© Björn Wylezich / Fotolia

Covered bonds are debt securities issued by credit institutions and secured by a pool of mortgage loans or credit towards the public sector. They are characterised further by the double protection offered to bondholders, the segregation of assets in their cover pool, over-collateralisation, and their strict supervisory frameworks. Currently, their issuance is concentrated in five Member States. National regulatory regimes vary widely in terms of supervision and composition of the cover pool. Lastly, despite benefiting from preferential treatment under the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR), they share no common definition, which can lead to different securities benefiting from this treatment. To remedy this, the Commission has adopted proposals for, on the one hand, a directive, which would lay down investor protection rules and provide common definitions, and on the other, a regulation, which would amend the CRR with regard to covered bond exposures.

Versions

• May 2018: ‘Covered bonds – Issue and supervision, exposures‘ (1st edition)

Proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the issue of covered bonds and covered bond public supervision and amending Directive 2009/65/EC and Directive 2014/59/EU
Proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 as regards exposures in the form of covered bonds Committee responsible: Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) COM(2018) 94
COM(2018) 93
12.3.2018

2018/0042 (COD)
2018/0043 (COD)

Ordinary legislative procedure (COD) (Parliament and Council on equal footing – formerly ‘co-decision’) Rapporteur:

To be appointed.

Shadow rapporteurs:

To be appointed.

Next steps expected: Initial discussion in committee