Recently, the European Commission released its 2018 report on the Safety Gate for dangerous products, the former Rapid Alert System. The report shows that authorities exchanged 2,257 alerts on dangerous products. Toys‘ belonged to the most notified product category (31%), followed by ‘motor vehicles’ (19%), and ‘clothing, textiles and fashion items’ (10%), while the main […]
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Brexit preparedness in the area of Health and Food Safety
“In the health area, Brexit will have an impact on two crucial sectors: medicines and medical devices. For medicines: we have been working very hard over the last two years together with the European Medicines Agency and national authorities to ensure that everyone is prepared, especially the industry, as they had to adapt the marketing […]
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European Social Fund: fighting poverty and unemployment
The European Parliament is backing updated rules to tackle unemployment and high rates of poverty in the EU. The report, adopted in plenary on 4 April, proposes to increase funding for the European Social Fund in the EU’s budget for 2021-2027 with a primary focus on youth employment and children. Many people are concerned about […]
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Capital Markets Union: Pan-European Personal Pension Product (PEPP)
The pan-European personal pension product (PEPP) is a voluntary personal pension scheme that will offer consumers a new pan-European option to save for retirement. This new type of product is designed to give savers more choice and provide them with more competitive products, while enjoying strong consumer protection. It could be offered by a broad range […]
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Can we prevent bullying in school?
Bullying at school is nothing new, having probably existed as long as we have had modern schools. Although there is no universal definition of school bullying, it is widely agreed to be targeted aggressive behaviour, characterised by hostile intent, an imbalance of power and repetition over time. Bullying impacts severely on the victims’ physical and […]
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Natural gas: Parliament extends EU rules to pipelines from non-EU countries
To provide legal clarity for operators and competitive gas supply for all Europeans, MEPs approved new gas market rules to bring incoming pipelines under EU law. MEPs adopted an overhaul of EU gas market rules on Thursday with 465 votes to 95, and 68 abstentions to extend EU rules (including EU competition rules) to all […]
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European Citizens’ Initiative: Commission registers ‘Respect for the rule of law’ initiative
The European Commission has decided to register a European Citizens’ Initiative entitled ‘Respect for the rule of law within the European Union’. The aim of the initiative is to create ‘an objective and impartial evaluation mechanism to verify the application of the European Union’s values by all the Member States’. More specifically, the organisers call […]
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Brexit: visa-free access to the EU for UK nationals and to the UK for Europeans
UK nationals would be able to enter the EU visa-free for short periods after the country’s exit, provided EU nationals enjoy the same conditions when travelling to the UK. With 38 votes to 8 and 3 abstentions, Civil Liberties Committee MEPs backed on Wednesday a compromise with the Council on the proposal for a visa […]
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Global Report on Food Crises: acute hunger still affecting over 100 million people worldwide
A report presented yesterday jointly by the European Union, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) finds that around 113 million people in 53 countries experienced acute food insecurity in 2018, compared to 124 million in 2017. Key findings The figure of 113 million people […]
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