Tanja Milevska Archives

MEPs voted in favor of a watered down deal on aviation emissions on 3 April, after the EU Commission backed down from its own proposal a day before.

 ‘Guest stars’ Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, the two most famous members of Russian punk collective Pussy Riot, called on the EU to go for bolder sanctions against Putin’s entourage, demanding tighter control of European funds allocated to Russia.

The unblocking of Airbus orders by China’s Xi Jinping in Paris last week is another argument for MEPs “in favour” of a stronger European stance on carbon emissions trading in the aviation sector.

China does not approve EU and US sanctions on Moscow, urging all parties to refrain from escalating tensions and isolating Russia. But Beijing is not entirely happy with the Kremlin's foreign policy either.

Faced with a depressed job market, a growing number of young people continue to live at home, with serious implications for their independence, warns a new study by Eurofound.

"Austerity has aggravated the crisis," trade unions stressed ahead of the EU leaders Spring summit, traditionally dedicated to economic issues, which opens in Brussels today (20 March). Wages have fallen by up to 23% across the EU, poverty has surged, and workers are overtaxed, said trade union leaders, calling on citizens to vote for a “social Europe” on 25 May.

Following the annexation of Crimea, the Russian-controlled province of Transnistria in Moldova has asked to join Russia, triggering concerns over the region's future stability, as experts lay down worst-case scenarios.

A compromise agreement reached with EU member states earlier this month over carbon emission allowances for aviation is set for rejection in the European Parliament today (19 March) as political groups have rallied to denounce “bullying” from China, Russia and the United States.

In the wake of the Ukraine crisis, the European Union should put an end to its dependence on Russian gas imports by being “less emotional” about shale gas exploration, says the head of BusinessEurope, the EU employers' association.

Ukrainian civil society groups gathered in Brussels last week to highlight their concerns about the troubled country, and called for help from the EU and the international community.

As the EU institutions found a fragile compromise on the emissions trading scheme for aviation, the EU commissioner in charge of transport said the EU executive was still “committed to the ETS” and put the blame on member states for its failure.

Developments in Turkey over the past year are a cause of concern and put into doubt the country's capacity to fulfill its EU membership obligations, the foreign affairs comittee of the European Parliament concluded yesterday (3 March) in its resolution on the progress of the largest EU candidate country.

An escalation of the situation in Ukraine could threaten the security of EU member states with sizeable Russian minorities such as the Baltic States, warned the president of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), Henri Malosse.

New European Commission rules for state aid to aviation will be more flexible for airports with up to 700,000 passengers per year until 2024, but green campaigners are angry at the EU executive for “backing down”.

A group of lawmakers has called on the European Commission to raise the state aid threshold for regional airports, arguing they are “vital” to the local economy and create “thousands of direct and indirect jobs”. But green campaigners disagree entirely and back what they describe as a “balanced” set of rules.

The European Parliament sent a “strong message” yesterday (5 February) in favour of an ambitious EU energy and climate policy for 2030, backing legally-binding goals for CO2 emissions, renewables and energy efficiency.

Former Slovenian MEP Zoran Thaler was sentenced last week to two and a half years in prison by a Ljubljana court following his involvement in the “cash-for-amendments” scandal from 2011, a journalistic spoof aimed at “testing MEPs’ ethics”.

The emissions trading system (ETS) for aviation is rapidly turning into a “political question of the EU’s influence on the world stage”, members of the European Parliament and industry representatives said on Thursday (23 January), ahead of a key vote in the Parliament's environment committee on 30 January.

A new study by the US Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) today (23 January) warns that imports of tar sands into Europe are likely to skyrocket if the block does not take measures.

Evangelos Venizelos, the foreign minister of Greece, which holds the Council of the EU's rotating presidency, said on Tuesday (21 January) that the main obstacle to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s EU membership was the country’s "lack of respect for European values".

As tensions rise again in Kosovo after the killing of a Serbian politician in the North, the country's minister in charge of EU affairs, Vlora Çitaku, called on the EU to be more “responsive” towards her newly-formed state.

The European Commission has fleshed out its plans for Moldova following acid comments from the Russian ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, on Monday (13 January), deriding Europe’s capacity to deal with Moldova's break-away province of Transnistria, which has close ties with Moscow.

The first of three crucial votes on the European Commission’s proposal on monitoring maritime emissions took place yesterday (9 January) in the industry, research and energy (ITRE) committee of the European Parliament.  

Tightening a Commission proposal to reduce shipping emissions would bring greater CO2 cuts as well as lowering operational costs for shipowners by up to €9 million a year, according to a new study published today (9 January).