European Union

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.

The European Commission approved a €18 million support package to Iran on Thursday (23 August) sending an important signal both to Teheran and Washington that Brussels will not back on its efforts to preserve the nuclear deal despite US sanctions.

EU diplomats from a dozen member states will meet Friday (24 August) to discuss the bloc's asylum policy as Italy refuses to let migrants on a coast guard ship disembark, while the European Commission is scrambling to find member states willing to host them. "We are stepping up our work to find a long-term solution," a commission spokesperson said, adding that the meeting is informal and no decisions are expected.

The number of West Nile virus infection cases in Europe has gone up in 2018, with increased temperatures to blame. The biggest number of cases has been registered in Serbia, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed. EURACTIV Serbia reports.

The liquidation of Cyprus’ Olympic Insurance, largely unnoticed on the island, is sending shockwaves through Bulgaria as it has left almost 200,000 policyholders with no coverage, causing a serious political crisis.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has dropped her support for Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann to become governor of the European Central Bank (EBC) and instead wants a German, possibly economy minister Peter Altmaier, to head the next European Commission, German daily Handelsblatt reported Thursday. Current ECB president Mario Draghi's term ends in autumn 2019, while the new commission will need to be set up after the European elections next May.

Recently published research has uncovered parallels between hate-fuelled Facebook posts and an increase in racially-motivated attacks on refugees in Germany, with material from the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party page under the spotlight.

The European Union is unlikely to heed London's call for it to match the latest US sanctions against Moscow over an attack on a former Russian spy in Britain earlier this year, diplomats in Brussels said.

Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen has incriminated the president while under oath, admitting that hush money was paid to two women who wanted to make their affairs with Trump public during the election campaign in 2016 - in violation of campaign financing laws. In a separate hearing, Trump's ex-campaign chief Paul Manafort was found guilty on various counts of fraud. Will Trump manage to stay in the White House?