European Union

Irish authorities were obliged to put Irish as well as English on veterinary-medical labels, the EU Court of Justice ruled Wednesday. The victory came for Peadar MacFhlannchadha, an Irish-language campaigner, in the first-ever case heard in Irish in the EU tribunal. The ruling also came out on St Patrick's Day, but represented a largely moral victory, as a new EU law superseding the pro-Irish label one is on its way.

Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, has announced a tough new nationwide lockdown amid infections surging to the highest rate since November, The Guardian writes. The country's health minister Adam Niedzielski said shopping centres, theatres, cinemas and hotels will close from Saturday, while schools will have to switch to online learning. Niedzielski added that Poland could see more than 30,000 new daily coronavirus cases starting next week if the trend continues.

'Chasse à la glu' - a French tradition of catching birds by putting glue on sticks is against EU law, the European Court of Justice said Wednesday, in a victory for the League for the Protection of Birds, a French conservationist group. No EU country should allow hunting that caused serious harm to "by-catch" (unintended target-species), the court ruled. French hunters had defended it as being used for songbirds only.

Australia said it will ask the EU to release 1 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine to help Papua New Guinea battle a dangerous outbreak that authorities fear could spread to other parts of the region, Reuters writes. "We've contracted them. We've paid for them and we want to see those vaccines come here so we can support our nearest neighbour," Australian PM Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

The European Commission has presented a common approach to vaccine certificates to facilitate travel. All EU-wide approved vaccines will be accepted for this document, but member states can decide to accept other vaccines too.

EU governments' lack of coordination in the first and second wave of the pandemic has caused concerns around supply chains, long queues at borders, and practically froze the bloc's passport-free Schengen zone.

A Milan court acquitted energy companies Eni and Royal Dutch Shell, plus a series of past and present managers including Eni chief executive Claudio Descalzi, in the oil industry's biggest corruption scandal, Reuters reports. Prosecutors had called for Eni and Shell to be fined and for a number managers from both companies to be jailed.

Greece denies any illegal pushbacks at sea. The EU takes their version of events as face value, in a system unable and unwilling to shed doubt on Greek authorities - posing accountability questions on the EU's border guard agency Frontex.

Enrico Letta will need all his diplomatic skills to unify a party in a state of perpetual civil war, where former communists co-exist with former Christian Democrats, and which has had nine different secretaries since it was founded in 2007.

Studies show that accommodation of the radical-right by mainstream parties leads to increasing vote share - for the radical-right. This is precisely what Emmanuel Macron is doing - and Marine Le Pen is gaining in the polls.

Turkey's pro-Kurdish party was fighting for its political survival on Wednesday (17 March) after a prosecutor asked the country's top court to shut it down for alleged links to militants waging a deadly insurgency against the state.

Under the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Brussels tightened relations with ASEAN agreeing on a Strategic Partnership. Current trade agreements negotiations with several ASEAN countries and the EP push for a region-to-region FTA give a glimpse...

President Joe Biden expressed support for the Northern Ireland peace agreement in the face of Brexit-related tensions when he met Ireland's prime minister Micheal Martin for virtual Saint Patrick's Day celebrations Wednesday (17 March).

British foreign minister Dominic Raab accused the European Commission of brinkmanship over its threat to ban exports of COVID-19 vaccines, calling for Commission head Ursula von der Leyen to explain her comments.

Dutch centre-right prime minister Mark Rutte is poised to extend his 10-year rule after elections in which new liberal and far-right faces also gained.

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Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

EU-US relations will not return to how they were before the rise of Trump. Still, the transatlantic reset is on its way, although it's arriving a bit slower than some might have wished. Yet Europeans should remember that even with Trump out of the picture, American interests are still what counts most in Washington.

Meeting the EU’s proposed new climate targets for 2030 will require a “transformation” of the bloc’s energy system, with a renewed focus on renewables and further efforts to cut fossil fuels in buildings, transport and industry.

In the context of the exponential growth of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the President of the European Parliament has announced a number of measures to contain the spread of epidemic and to safeguard Parliament's core activities.

The current precautionary measures adopted by the European Parliament to contain the spread of COVID-19 do not affect work on legislative priorities. Core activities are reduced, but maintained to ensure that the institution's legislative, budgetary, scrutiny functions are maintained.

The meetings will be with remote participation for Members (being able to view and listen to proceedings, ask for the floor and intervene in the meeting). Other participants are invited to follow the meeting through webstreaming.

Following these decisions, the next meeting of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE) will take place on 14 and 15 April 2021 (online).
The meeting agenda and documents will be published here.

SEDE meetings' calendar 2021
EP calendar 2021
Press release: MEPs quizzed the head of the IAEA about nuclear non-proliferation - 16 March 2021
Press release: Exchange of views with the NATO Secretary General - 15 March 2021
Press release: Instability in the Central African Republic - 24 February 2021
Press release: Chair of the Security and Defence Subcommittee welcomes extension of the New START Treaty - 5 February 2021
Press release: MEPs to discuss security and defence priorities with Minister Gomes Cravinho - 28 January 2021
Press release: MEPs call for unity in Common Security and Defence Policy - 4 December 2020
Press release: MEPS to examine prospects of the EU space defence sector - 27 November 2020
Press release: Common Security and Defence Policy: Disinformation targeting EU missions and operations - 16 November 2020
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The European Commission is 'not naive' to the UK's future ambitions in the data space and will be 'prepared' to suspend transfers of personal data to the country should the UK in the future diverge from EU standards, Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders has said.