European Union

Information about accreditation requirements for the one-year badge (2024)

Weekly schedule of President Charles Michel, 26 August – 1 September 2024

Delays in the disbursement of the European Union’s multibillion-euro Covid-19 recovery fund are severely hampering member states’ ability to rebound from the pandemic, according to a study released on Monday (2 September) by the European Court of Auditors (ECA).

Written by Gisela Grieger (1st edition).

On 24 January 2024, the European Commission published a legislative proposal under the ordinary legislative procedure for a new regulation on the screening of foreign investments in the Union. It seeks to revise and repeal Regulation (EU) 2019/452 establishing a framework for the screening of foreign direct investments into the Union.

Parliament’s committee on international trade is expected to be in the lead to draft a report with contributing opinions from other committees; once adopted by the plenary, this will serve as Parliament’s position for the trilogue negotiations with the Council based on the position of the EU Member States. Once a common position is achieved, Parliament and the Council will adopt it separately, after which the new regulation can enter into force.

Regulation (EU) 2019/452 was adopted in March 2019 and has been applied since October 2020. It has struck a delicate balance between the EU’s strong belief in the benefits of open markets for its economic prosperity, and the acknowledgment of risks that may be associated with some foreign direct investment (FDI) in terms of security or public order. The Commission’s evaluation of the 2019 FDI screening regulation’s operation has revealed that the significant substantive and procedural discrepancies between national FDI screening mechanisms have undermined the effectiveness and efficiency of the legal instrument. It has therefore proposed a revision of the EU framework to enhance regulatory convergence.

Complete version

• September 2024: Screening of foreign investments in the Union (1st edition)

Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the screening of foreign investments in the Union and repealing Regulation (EU) 2019/452 of the European Parliament and of the CouncilCommittee responsible:International trade (INTA)COM(2024) 23
24 January 2024Rapporteur:To be determined2024/0017(COD)Shadow rapporteurs:To be determinedOrdinary legislative
procedure (COD)
(Parliament and Council
on equal footing –
formerly ‘co-decision’)Next steps expected: Draft report Member States with/without an FDI screening mechanism in place, as of August 2024

Olive oil prices in the EU reached record highs last January, surging by up to 50% compared to the previous year and leading to significant changes in consumers’ choices. 

Following the nomination of Romanian Roxana Mînzatu, Belgium has also put forward a female candidate, 45-year-old Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib as European Commissioner.

The recent electoral success of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the German states of Thuringia and Saxony has sparked a range of reactions from politicians across the European Union.

When Ukraine launched its incursion into Russian territory in the Kursk Oblast on 6 August, many Western analysts said this was some sort of fireworks – it makes a hell of an impression, but it doesn’t last long. One expert we quoted called it “a footnote”.

The Spanish State is leaving the Canary Islands “abandoned” in the face of the current serious migratory crisis it is facing, the president of the Spanish autonomous region, Fernando Clavijo, said on Monday, while assuring that his government is mulling taking legal action against the government.

MEP Roxana Mînzatu (PSD/S&D) was on Monday officially nominated by the Romanian government for the position of European Commissioner of an apparently "relevant" portfolio, Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu announced at a press conference.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr is meeting with Portugal's centre-right government on Monday to formally signal his company's interest in the privatisation of state-owned carrier TAP, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.

Written by Gisela Grieger.

Mongolia is a geographically remote and resource-rich country with a peculiar location in northeast Asia. An ‘oasis of democracy’, it is sandwiched between its two expansionist authoritarian neighbours, China and Russia. This has required it to walk a delicate geopolitical tightrope of non‑alignment and a ‘third neighbour’ foreign policy to preserve its sovereignty and independence. During the past 35 years of bilateral diplomatic relations Mongolia has not been particularly high on the EU’s foreign policy agenda, with only a handful of EU Member States having an embassy there.

Since the 1990s, Mongolia has nonetheless benefited from EU development cooperation programmes aimed at supporting its sustainable economic and democratic development and from EU disaster relief for the increasingly harsh socioeconomic implications of its exposure to climate change. Classified as a lower-middle income country, Mongolia has also been a beneficiary of unilateral preferential access to the EU market, first under the generalised scheme of preferences (GSP) and later under the GSP+ scheme, and has been able to draw on additional EU funding programmes to bolster the diversification of its trade towards non-mining products.

Currently, an EU-Mongolia agreement on geographical indications is under negotiation with the same objective. The EU-Mongolia political and cooperation agreement (PCA), which entered into force in 2017, has significantly broadened the scope for bilateral, regional and international cooperation to policy areas that were previously not covered by the 1993 trade and economic cooperation agreement. Joint Committee meetings under the PCA have taken place regularly, with strands on political dialogue, human rights, trade and investment, and development cooperation.

EU reliance on resilient supply chains for critical raw materials (CRMs) to implement its green and digital transitions and Mongolian efforts to sustainably diversify its economic relations could draw the two partners closer. As the scramble for CRMs is in full swing and major CRM-importing countries have designed economic de-risking policies to find alternatives to China’s current quasi export monopoly on processed CRMs such as rare earths, the EU and Mongolia could enter into a CRM partnership, despite the geographical and geopolitical constraints and concerns that may arise over the environment and the investment climate owing to increased sourcing of CRMs from Mongolia.

Read the complete briefing on ‘EU-Mongolia relations: Possible critical raw materials partnership‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Mongolia’s top trade partners, trade in goods, 2023 Figure 2 – Main EU imports from Mongolia, 2023 Main EU exports to Mongolia, 2023

A law proposing that Russian citizens and entities be banned from buying property in Finland to minimise the security risk in times of crisis has been put forward by the Finnish Minister of Defence Antti Häkkänen on Monday (2 September).

The EU is a far cry from the targets set out in the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030, with marine protected areas (MPAs) providing limited protection against human activities such as bottom fishing, according to a recent scientific study, while the Commission blames the Member States.

The preliminary results for the eagerly awaited state elections in Saxony and Thuringia are in: the AfD has emerged the strongest party in Thuringia, where it received almost a third of the vote, with the conservative CDU coming second. In Saxony, the CDU won just ahead of the AfD. In both states, the offices for the protection of the constitution classify the AfD as a right-wing extremist organisation. The newly founded BSW was able to achieve double-digit results from a standing start. Europe's press takes stock.