In 2023, 9.5% of the EU population were unable to afford a meal containing meat, fish or a vegetarian equivalent every second day, 1.2 percentage points (pp) higher compared with 2022 (8.3%). Moreover, focusing on people at risk of poverty in 2023 the share at the EU level was 22.3%, indicating a 2.6 pp […]
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Eurostat: EU population increases again in 2024
After a decline in 2020 and 2021 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU’s population has increased for the second consecutive year, rising from 447.6 million on 1 January 2023 to 449.2 million people on 1 January 2024. The negative natural change (more deaths than births) was outnumbered by the positive net migration. […]
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Eurostat: House sales drop in 2023
In 2023, the number of housing transactions decreased in 13 out of the 16 EU countries for which data are available, compared with 2022. This marks the second consecutive year that the majority of reporting countries have registered drops in sales. The largest decreases in the number of transactions in 2023 were recorded in Luxembourg […]
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Know your EU passenger rights before you travel
All packed, and ready to go? For those of you heading off on a summer break soon, we hope your travel plans don’t go wrong, but if they should, you should know that EU travel rules cover passengers in a number of eventualities. Whether your flight is cancelled, your train delayed or your luggage lost […]
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First Net-Zero Academy to train 100,000 workers in the EU solar photovoltaic value chain
the Commission has launched the European Solar Academy, the first in a series of EU Academies to be set up under the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA) to have in place the necessary skills along the net-zero technologies value chains. The role of NZIA academies is to develop learning content and programmes together with the industry, to ensure […]
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The European Commission decided to register two European Citizens’ Initiatives, entitled ‘Air-Quotas’ and ‘Stop Destroying Videogames’
The ‘Air-Quotas’ initiative calls for the Commission to establish a citizens’ carbon quota mechanism in each country that will encourage businesses to decarbonise through consumer demand. The organisers consider that this new mechanism should cover all purchases of goods and services, starting with air transport. The organisers of the ‘Stop Destroying Videogames’ initiative call for the Commission to introduce […]
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Eurostat: Drop in youths neither working nor studying
In 2023, more than one in ten (11.2%) young people aged 15 to 29 in the EU were neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET), a decrease of 0.5 percentage points (pp) compared with 2022. Over the last ten years, there was a noticeable decrease in the NEET rate among people aged 15 to 29. In 2013, the […]
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EU legislation on combating violence against women enters into force
The first EU rules on combating violence against women and domestic violence enter into force. Violence against women and domestic violence affects an estimated one in three of the 228 million women in the EU. By criminalising certain forms of violence against women across the EU – including online – and strengthening victims’ access to […]
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People at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the European Union in 2023
In 2023, 94.6 million people in the EU (21% of the population) were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, i.e. lived in households experiencing at least one of the three poverty and social exclusion risks: risk of poverty, severe material and social deprivation, and/or living in a household with very low work intensity. The figure slightly decreased compared with 2022 […]
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