EU Friday – 18 April

EU Friday – 18 April

EU Friday
Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. GREEN ON PAPER: CAN TAX BREAKS REALLY DRIVE SUSTAINABILITY? It's already been seven months since the Draghi report highlighted the crucial intersection between financing the green transition and maintaining competitiveness – and these issues are still very much on the table. As Brussels continues its deregulatory frenzy, with Omnibuses piling up across sectors, the questions raised by the Draghi report are more relevant than ever. Next week, the Parliament’s FISC subcommittee will hold a public hearing to explore whether tax incentives for clean energy can truly support the green transition. While the Draghi report suggested that these fiscal measures could help align these sectors with sustainability goals, the hearing will discuss whether they're enough to ensure real progress, or if they're…
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Happy New 2024-2029 Parliamentary Mandate: 5 years of advocacy opportunities

Happy New 2024-2029 Parliamentary Mandate: 5 years of advocacy opportunities

Uncategorized
Last week, between 16 and 19 July, the first plenary session of the newly elected European Parliament took place in Strasbourg. The Parliament re-elected Ursula von der Leyen as the European Commission President for the next five years with a comfortable majority. It re-elected its President, Roberta Metsola (EPP, Malta) with an overwhelming cross-party majority of 562 votes in favour, and chose to (re-)appoint its Vice-Presidents, including five Socialists and Democrats (S&D) Vice-Presidents (VPs), and three European People’s Party VPs. The first plenary officially kickstarted the new legislative mandate that will last for the next 5 years, until 2029. New groups and new strength The new Parliament is composed of 720 seats, which is a slight increase of 15 seats compared to the previous one (after Brexit), in order to…
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Let the Games begin: one month to European Elections

Let the Games begin: one month to European Elections

Opinion, Views
  In less than a month, on 6 to 9 June, Europeans will go to polling stations to vote on the composition of the next European Parliament, which will hold office for the upcoming five years (2024-2029). Given the current political shift towards the right in most EU Member States, the upcoming elections are likely to be a turning point in European politics. After the last plenary session of the current Parliament a couple of weeks ago, MEPs have left for their home countries either not to come back or to do their best to be re-elected. Goodbyes, tears, and current polls MEPs met for the last time in Strasbourg in April with a busy agenda of 90 votes. They approved trilogue agreements, such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, the…
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EU Friday – 11 April

EU Friday – 11 April

EU Friday
Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. EU PRIVACY RULES AT STAKE WITH NEW COMMISSION AI ACTION PLAN This week, Commission Presidents Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the AI Continent Action Plan, to position Europe as a leader in artificial intelligence. The plan aims to strengthen infrastructure, improve access to data, promote cloud solutions, build skills, and simplify regulations. Wait, where have we heard that before? The focus on simplification comes within a broader context of regulatory relief, particularly with the potential threat of a future Omnibus tackling the GDPR, the EU’s landmark privacy regulation. While the Commission claims that reducing regulatory burden could spur innovation, it raises concerns that this will come at the expense of Europe's strong data protection standards. Moreover, the plan's emphasis on infrastructure…
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EU Friday – 4 April

EU Friday – 4 April

EU Friday
Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. MINISTERS WANT LESS RED TAPE ON DIGITAL RULES DESPITE PRIVACY RISKS A new coalition of 14 digital ministers, the D9+ group, is pushing for a tech-savvy, competitive Europe. However, their latest declaration, signed in Amsterdam on 27 March, not only champions innovation but also the reduction of regulatory burden, which they argue are stifling businesses, especially SMEs. They're calling for a strategic EU approach to digital sovereignty, with a focus on AI, cloud computing and semiconductors, while advocating for a streamlined regulatory framework. This effort is part of a broader European Commission initiative, led by Commissioner Michael McGrath, to simplify and deregulate the EU's regulatory landscape. The GDPR revision, which is expected soon as part of a new Omnibus, aims to…
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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 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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EU Friday – 28 February

EU Friday – 28 February

EU Friday
Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. EU ISSUES FIRST DEREGULATION EXECUTIVE ORDER While everyone in the Brussels Bubble is busy comparing leaked and final versions of the “Omnibus”, the Commission proposal to unravel the fragile political compromise on sustainable finance and responsible business agreed over the last legislature, a more significant democratic change is hidden behind in procedural subtleties. Just as Trump decided to rename an ocean because he felt like it, von der Leyen decided to scrap sustainability reporting and due diligence obligations for 99.9% of EU companies, with an impact assessment that only looks as costs and a stakeholder consultation that admittedly saw complaints from "a few" businesses that had to be resolved. Some financial supervisors say that speed is more important than accuracy when…
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EU Friday – 21 February

EU Friday – 21 February

EU Friday
Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. THE CLEAN INDUSTRIAL DEAL: A PROCUREMENT POWER PLAY? A leak reveals that Brussels is about to rewrite the rulebook on public procurement. Next week, the European Commission will unveil its Clean Industrial Deal, a plan to use Europe's €2 trillion-a-year procurement market to boost local industry and accelerate the green transition. At the heart of the strategy? A "European preference" clause, designed to steer public contracts towards EU-made clean technologies. By 2026, procurement rules will be overhauled to prioritise sustainability, resilience and local production – a shift that could push European industry forward but also test the limits of international trade rules. It could help to align public spending with climate and industrial policy, a long overdue move to strengthen Europe's…
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