EU web links

A collection of links to web sites of the European Union institutions and other European business web sites.

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EU-FIRE — 16 April 2008, 21:42 CET

Innovative optoelectronic and acoustic sensing technologies for large scale forest fire long term monitoring. EU-FIRE project has the objective to design a really modern and efficient fire monitoring system and to develop a prototype in order to demonstrate the feasibility of a large scale forest fires long term monitoring, an thus the way to improve the quality of life in European wooded areas.

European Ombudsman annual reports — 15 April 2008, 18:19 CET

Annual reports on the European Ombudsman's activities. The European Ombudsman investigates complaints about maladministration in the institutions and bodies of the European Union.

Credit agreements for consumers — 10 April 2008, 21:51 CET

The European Council on 8 April approved the amendment voted by the European Parliament on the EU Directive establishing common rules on consumer credit.

Debate Europe - Democracy - Dialogue – Debate — 28 March 2008, 12:50 CET

Help give direction to the future of Europe. Join in any number of debates and give us your views on the challenges facing Europe today. Do you think it's going in the right direction? Are the institutions making a difference where it really counts? Are they being overly meddlesome in trivial areas and not meddlesome enough in others, such as securing jobs and protecting consumers? Where do you stand on the climate change debate? Where do you see Europe's borders ending? Take this opportunity to play your part in defining the road ahead.

Agencies of the EU — 07 March 2008, 12:42 CET

A number of specialised and decentralised European Union agencies have been established to support the EU Member States and their citizens. These agencies are an answer to a desire for geographical devolution and the need to cope with new tasks of a legal, technical and/or scientific nature.The EU’s agencies are grouped into four categories: Community agencies - Common Foreign and Security Policy agencies - Police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters agencies - Executive agencies.

Gender mainstreaming of employment policies in practice — 06 March 2008, 14:35 CET

The European Commission just published an expert report analysing gender mainstreaming in practice in the field of employment policies. The report also presents concrete examples of gender mainstreaming implemented over the last few years in 30 European countries.

Women and men in decision-making — 06 March 2008, 14:24 CET

This website on women and men in decision-making gives an insight into the relative numbers of women and men participating in the decision-making process and taking up leadership positions in the European Institutions, the 27 Member States of the European Union, the EEA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), and two of the EU candidate countries (Croatia and Turkey). The website contains data and indicators that cover decision-making in political, public and juridical and social and economic domains both on European and national level. For the political domain only, decision-making at regional level is also covered.

Joint Employment Report — 29 February 2008, 00:47 CET

Employment growth has been impressive during the last year according to the Joint Employment Report, to be adopted by Employment Ministers on 29 February 2008. Almost 6.5 million new jobs were created during the last two years and another 5 million jobs are forecast by 2009. Unemployment in the EU is expected to fall to under 7% in 2008, the lowest level since the mid-1980s. The Report – which assesses Member States’ implementation of their national reform programmes in the area of employment – is strongly upbeat. However, it also points to a number of ongoing areas for concern, notably youth unemployment and under-investment in education and training.

European cardiovascular disease statistics — 28 February 2008, 23:47 CET

This is the third edition of European cardiovascular disease statistics. The first edition was published in 2000 when the European Union consisted of 15 Member States. After enlargement in 2004 and then again in 2007, there are now 27 Member States. Much has changed in the last seven years, but cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the main cause of death in the EU. European Heart Network - EHN - web site.

Interim Economic Forecasts, February 2008 — 22 February 2008, 00:16 CET

The global economy is cooling and the financial turmoil still ongoing. So far, the European economy has weathered these headwinds relatively well, but can no longer escape unaffected. Growth is revised down by 0.4 pp. in 2008 and the high inflation is fading only gradually. Interim Economic Forecasts, February 2008 from the European Commission.

New Internal Market Package for Goods — 21 February 2008, 16:59 CET

This new package of measures from the European Commission is intended to boost the intra-community trade in industrial goods. The measures (described below) will ensure that the internal market becomes a reality for all manufacturers and producers, and will make it easier for companies, especially SMEs, to trade their products in the European Union. High quality safe products continue to be the goal, whilst ensuring market access for goods.

European Union Planning Team for Kosovo - EUPTK — 17 February 2008, 15:32 CET

The official Website of the European Union Planning Team for Kosovo EUPT. The EU is preparing for an enhanced role in Kosovo. In this context, the Council decided on 10 April to establish an EU planning team regarding a possible future EU crisis management operation in the field of rule of law and possible other areas in Kosovo. EUPT Kosovo operates in a complex political environment where the parallel status process will determine the overall framework for all successor organisations in Kosovo.

European Defence Agency — 15 February 2008, 19:03 CET

The European Defence Agency has been created to help EU Member States develop their defence capabilities for crisis-management operations under the European Security and Defence Policy.

Clean sky website — 01 February 2008, 11:58 CET

Clean Sky is a European Commission Joint Technology Initiative that will develop breakthrough technologies to significantly reduce the impact of the air transport on the environment. Clean Sky is expected to lead to earlier introduction of new, radically greener aircraft.

EU conveyancing services market: Commission study — 30 January 2008, 11:27 CET

The European Commission has published a study by independent consultants on the EU markets for legal services associated with house and land sales (conveyancing services). The study finds that consumers have greater choice and are on average paying less for conveyancing services under deregulated systems, with no loss in quality. The market for conveyancing services is worth about EUR 17 billion per annum; efficiency savings of even a few per cent following deregulation would therefore save consumers millions of euros each year. The Commission is calling on EU Member States to look at the findings and to review and update national laws which limit competition and the free circulation of services throughout the Single Market instead of serving the interests of consumers.

EU study to help improve care for people with disabilities — 29 January 2008, 23:31 CET

Institutional care for disabled people in Europe continues to fall short of acceptable standards in many cases, a new report released by the European Commission confirms. The study, entitled 'Deinstitutionalisation and Community Living – Outcomes and Costs', recommends a wider use of quality, community-based services, which offer better quality of life to people with disabilities, without necessarily costing more.

Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA): cost-benefit study — 28 January 2008, 21:23 CET

The European Commission has published a major study into the costs, benefits and opportunities created by SEPA (the Single Euro Payments Area) which was formally launched on 28 January 2008. The study shows that in the most favourable scenario the net benefits to payments markets over the next six years could amount to as much as EUR 123 billion with users gaining most. However, this calls for rapid and full migration from existing national payment products to the new SEPA payment instruments. The study also estimates that if SEPA can be used as a platform for e-invoicing there are further potential gains of EUR 238 billion.

Europa languages portal — 25 January 2008, 13:06 CET

This portal is your point of entry to information about languages from the European Union - Linguistic Diversity - Language Learning - Language Teaching - Translation - Interpretation - Language Technology

Languages in the EU website — 25 January 2008, 13:01 CET

Listen to all the 23 official languages of the European Union - i.e. the ones used for EU business. On this site you can hear examples spoken by interpreters from the EU institutions.

Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign — 25 January 2008, 12:49 CET

A European Campaign to raise awareness and change the landscape of energy - Sustainable Energy Europe is a European Commission initiative in the framework of the Intelligent Energy - Europe Programme, which will contribute to achieve the European Union's energy policy targets within the fields of renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, clean transport and alternative fuels.

DGT-TM - DGT Multilingual Translation Memory of the Acquis Communautaire — 20 January 2008, 15:24 CET

The European Commission's is making its collection of about 1 million sentences and their high quality translations in 22 of the 23 official EU languages freely available. This kind of data is highly sought after by developers of machine translation systems in which automatic translation software "learns" from manually translated texts how words and phrases are correctly and contextually translated. The data can also help the development of other linguistic software tools such as grammar and spell checkers, online dictionaries and multilingual text classification systems.

Portability of pensions — 18 January 2008, 12:40 CET

Changing job or country often means losing occupational pension benefits in some EU Member States. The difficulty of transferring these benefits from one country to another can be such that it has been identified by experts as a serious obstacle to the free movement of workers within the EU. Under the 'portability of pensions' Directive, proposed by the European Commission in October 2005, workers switching jobs or countries will no longer need to worry for the future. Designed to avoid major losses and in many cases allowing benefits to transfer with the worker across sectors and countries in the EU, the proposal is expected to boost the Commission's 'Growth and Jobs' strategy by making it easier for workers to move jobs and countries.

EU relations with Chad — 18 January 2008, 13:36 CET

European Commission website on EU-Chad relations - Country Overview; Country strategy; Priorities for co-operation; Financial data; Previous EDF financial data; Major development projects

Eurotariff rates: benchmarks — 17 January 2008, 16:26 CET

According to the Roaming Regulation, mobile operators should have offered customers a Eurotariff by 30 July 2007. This tariff shall be activated no later than one month after the receipt of the customer's request. Roaming charges should not exceed €0.49 for making calls and €0.24 for receiving calls abroad (excluding VAT).

EU Strategy for Biofuels — 14 January 2008, 23:17 CET

The European Union (EU) is supporting biofuels with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, boosting the decarbonisation of transport fuels, diversifying fuel supply sources, offering new income opportunities in rural areas and developing long-term replacements for fossil fuel.