EU Friday – 28 March

EU Friday – 28 March

EU Friday
Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. EU STOPS THE CLOCK ON SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS LAWS Good news – EU Member State representatives indicated their governments agree to the "stop-the-clock" proposal to postpone sustainability reporting for two years, a message that Europe's large companies have been desperately wanting to hear. The decision will save them a lot of resources that can be reinvested into competitiveness, which is desperately needed in view of sudden geopolitical winds of change. And even better news is that the rules on due diligence will also be postponed by one year, which should give a breath of relief of companies that are busy to survive and therefore not able to dedicate time and resources to checking their supply chains. After all, there is nothing wrong…
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EU Friday – 21 March

EU Friday – 21 March

EU Friday
Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. FROM SEGRE TO SEJOURNE: SIXTY YEARS OF SIU Uniting Europe's capital markets. Sounds easy, turns out to be actually quite difficult. Almost sixty years ago, the EU published professor Claudio Segré's report on "the development of a European capital market" explaining why Europe's capital markets lacked integration. The reasons? Lack of a single currency, of course. But also: "disparities" in the supervision of financial institutions and tax obstacles. Fast forward sixty years later, after the attempts by Mario Monti in 1999 (Financial Services Action Plan) and Jonathan Hill in 2015 (Capital Markets Union) – again, the EU plans to address supervision and tax issues, with its rebranded Savings and Investment Union presented this week. No wonder some call it old wine…
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EU Friday – 14 March

EU Friday – 14 March

EU Friday
Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. DIGITAL EURO RUNNING OUT OF CREDIT The ECB's digital euro project was already facing challenges, but last month's significant payment system outage has raised even more concerns. At the end of February, the ECB's TARGET 2 system that settles payments between banks suffered a major breakdown for a day. The outage, caused by an initial misdiagnosis of the problem, raised alarms about the central bank's ability to manage a complex, high-stakes digital currency. As MEP Markus Ferber put it: “this is a blow to the credibility of the ECB”. Others, such as Green MEP Rasmus Andresen, stressed that rebuilding trust is key – or the project could collapse before it even gets off the ground. Even digital euro fanboy MEP Jussi…
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EU 2024: Half-way there, the sprint begins   

EU 2024: Half-way there, the sprint begins   

Opinion, Views
There are three months left before this year’s EU elections on 6 to 9 June. By the end of March, a complete list of Spitzenkandidaten for the top European Commission job should be finalised. Since January, the pace of weekly political and legislative developments in Brussels has not slowed down. Previously contested laws such as the Nature Restoration law have been finalised, while others including the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive have been held hostage. The last two-month sprint begins before the last Plenary session of the current Parliament on 22 to 25 April. No slowing down In the course of February and the beginning of March, almost all European groups, that recognise the Spitzenkandidaten process, have put forward their candidates for the role of the next European Commission president.…
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EU Friday – 7 March

EU Friday – 7 March

EU Friday
Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. PARLIAMENT STEPS UP ENGAGEMENT ON DEFENCE Next week's European Parliament plenary and its Wednesday morning debate on current affairs is firmly sandwiched between two European Summits – the one that happened this week, dubbed by some as the most important meeting since the Cold War, and the one happening in two weeks, originally meant to be the most important one of the year. It gives MEPs a unique opportunity to scrutinise the decisions that have been taken and will be taken, even though it's the Presidency and the Commission in front of them, and not individual ministers at a time where a lot of the geopolitical decision-making seems to be multilateral rather than European. In line with Parliament President Roberta Metsola's…
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