European Union

The European Commission proposed a reform of the bloc's cybersecurity rules . "The time of innocence is over. We know that we are a prime target," warned commission vice-president Margaritis Schinas.

The EU's border agency Frontex says 8,150 irregular migrants reached the Canary Islands in November compared to 517 a year ago. "This is the highest monthly total for this route since Frontex began to collect the data in 2009," said Frontex, in a press statement. It noted almost 19,600 irregular migrants were detected reaching the Canary Islands in the first 11 months of this year.

Dozens of civil society organisations have signed a letter demanding the incoming Portuguese EU presidency won't be "used to champion big business interests over the public interest", minimise fossil-fuel contacts and reject corporate sponsorship. They also demand greater lobbying transparency from EU member state embassies. The letter is drafted by Corporate Europe Observatory and addressed to Portugal's prime minister António Costa.

MEPs on Wednesday pushed back against the conclusions of the EU leaders' summit of last week, arguing that the adopted legal text on rule of law is what matters - not the leaders' supplementary 'interpretation'.

EU national politics and leaders' personal ambitions have become its real enlargement criteria, in sad times for the European dream.

The press conference held jointly this week by the three EU institutions declared a breakthrough agreement on a joint-transparency register for lobbyists. Not everyone is convinced.

Parliament gave its consent on Wednesday to the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) so that EU support can get to citizens as from the start of next year.
Committee on Budgets

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 22 - Draft opinion on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2019 - European Commission
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Nikos Androulakis

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

An EU strategy for COVID-19 vaccinations, that addresses challenges inside and outside the EU, was debated on Wednesday with Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Parliament President David Sassoli presented the 2020 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Veranika Tsapkala in Brussels on 16 December.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

On Wednesday, MEPs approved the regulation designed to protect EU funds from being misused by EU governments who bend the rule of law.
Committee on Budgetary Control

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

On Wednesday, MEPs welcomed agreements on MFF, recovery fund and 2030 climate targets, but warned that they expect the Rule of Law mechanism to be strictly implemented.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Belgian pharmacies have been selling anti-corona masks made by Chinese firm Hubei Haixin Protective Products at a factory where 130 women from the Uighur minority were forcibly transferred 3,000km from their homes and families and put to work, according to an investigation by Belgian newspapers du Tijd and L'Echo. "If the masks conform to European standards, we're obliged to approve them for the Belgian market," a Belgian government spokeswoman said.

MEPs voted, on Tuesday, by a huge majority of 536 votes against 156, to reject Marek Opioła, a Polish MP from the ruling, right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, to fill Poland's seat at the EU Court of Auditors, a financial watchdog in Luxembourg. The secret ballot, following Opioła's hearing, did not give reasons, but came amid toxic EU-PiS relations over abuse of rule of law and homophobic politics.

Hungarian MPs passed a law on Tuesday saying only married couples can normally adopt children, while single people can do so only with special permission from the country's 'family affairs' minister. Hungary does not allow same-sex marriages. Its crackdown on LGBTIQ rights comes despite a recent scandal in Brussels, which saw a senior Hungarian ruling-party MEP arrested at a gay sex-party for flouting corona-rules.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), an EU agency in Paris, should, in future, regulate the way private companies assigned environmental-friendliness ratings to businesses to help guide investors, the Dutch and French market regulators have said in a joint appeal, Reuters reports. "The proposed framework is aimed at preventing misallocation of investments, greenwashing, and ensuring investor protection," they said, adding that "providers of sustainability-related services remain largely unregulated".

EU values commissioner Věra Jourová has told the Financial Times newspaper she will use the recently-agreed powers on rule-of-law conditionality to make sure the bloc's budget is not spent on "the wrong things, the wrong people, the wrong systems' - I mean political systems". She will not be an "activist" on the topic, however, she added. "It will be a stress test also for us [the commission]," she said.

The European Commission, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Gavi signed a €500m agreement "to secure fair and equitable access" to Covid-19 vaccines for 92 low and middle-income countries, it said in a statement. The deal is part of the Covax Facility aiming to make one billion doses of vaccines available for millions of people. The EU has allocated allocated more than €850m to Covax.

According to IPI's figures, 79 journalists remain behind bars in Turkey. While this is down from a high of over 160 in 2018, the figure still makes Turkey one of the world's leading jailers of journalists.

The European Medicines Agency will assess the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine on December 21, earlier than the originally planned date of 29 December. The decision follows public pressure from Germany's health minister Jens Spahn and others. "Our goal is an approval before Christmas," Spahn told reporters earlier Tuesday in Berlin.