Category: EU

The European partners of the SafeOnline Initiative (ESOI) are launching a ready-to-use toolkit for European organisations that want to help parents to improve their children’s online safety, the ChildFocus Foundation announced on Monday. Under the name of ‘SafeOnline Prototype’ and with the support of ChildFocus, this video guide provides all the practical information needed to develop a digital safety training project. With more than 2,000 educators sensitised in 2022 in five countries, ESOI aims to inform parents on how to address good digital practices with their children, in a context…

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EU Member States are eager to introduce a ban on the destruction of unsold clothing and shoes, the ministers responsible agreed at a European Council meeting in Brussels on Monday. The ban would help to reduce the waste mountain in the textile sector as well as increase the reusing and recycling of clothes. Belgium was one of the Member States that had pushed for the ban. “This agreement will accelerate the transition to a more sustainable economy, critical to the circular economy. It also contains bans on destroying other items…

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Ukraine is a major grain exporter, but due to the war in the country, this export was endangered. Normally, it passes through the Black Sea, but Russia occupies Ukrainian ports and impedes the passage of ships. Therefore, at the beginning of the war, grain got stuck. The European Commission then temporarily removed import duties on Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products. From now on, grain could be imported tax-free overland into the EU, and transported from there to the rest of the world, especially to Africa and the Middle East….

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The European Parliament “urged” the Commission on Tuesday to propose a binding methane emissions reduction target – including petrochemicals – by the end of 2025 for all relevant sectors. Whilst there is already an EU strategy in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – and very specific legislation to reduce CO2 emissions – there is still no EU legislation to reduce methane emissions specifically. However, the warming effect of this gas over 20 years is 80 times more powerful than that of carbon dioxide, stressed Environment Committee chair Pascal Canfin…

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In 2022, 422,400 people were ordered to leave an EU Member State, according to statistics published on 5 May by Eurostat, the EU’s statistics bureau. Of this number, 77,530 non-EU citizens were forcibly returned to a country outside of the EU. In total, over 1 million people were found to be undocumented within an EU Member State and a further 141,060 people were refused entry into the bloc, either at its external borders or at airports in Member States. “The largest number of refusals of entry were reported by Poland…

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Former Belgian Prime Minister and current MEP Guy Verhofstadt has announced that he will almost certainly retire from politics by the end of his parliamentary mandate in 2024. In a recent interview with De Tijd, Verhofstadt – who is renowned for his passionate pro-Europeanism – confirmed that he will not seek re-election to the European Parliament unless he is able to stand as a pan-European candidate in 2024: a highly unlikely possibility (currently, MEPs are elected by national constituents, rather than by citizens of other EU Member States). “I have…

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At an official ceremony in Brussels on Tuesday, Finland became the 31st Member State of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) security alliance. Finnish Foreign Minister, Pekka Haavisto, officially handed over Finland’s accession documents to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, formalising the nation’s membership. At a media event outside of NATO’s new headquarters in the Brussels municipality of Haren, NATO officials and members of the press gathered to watch Finland’s national flag be hoisted alongside the flags of the other 30 member nations. The event coincided with the alliance’s…

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Belgium is the largest European exporter of the plant protection product chlorpyrifos, a product that has been banned in the EU since 2020. That’s what Knack and Le Soir are reporting this week. Through detours, the substance could also be re-imported into our country via food. Sector Federation Belplant calls for a ban on the export of plant protection products banned in the EU to countries that are neither members of the OECD nor members of the Rotterdam Convention. However, the Federation advocates nuance in the discussion and emphasizes that…

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France and Britain signed two energy partnership agreements on Friday, emphasizing nuclear power as a safe source of low-carbon energy. The agreements were announced at a bilateral summit in Paris on energy, defense and migration. “France and the United Kingdom are working together so that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin can never again harm our energy security,” British prime minister Rishi Sunak said at a press conference in Paris. “We are creating a future where every watt of energy that powers our homes and industry comes from safe, sustainable and reliable…

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In Belgium, politics is divided by the nitrogen crisis. For us, the tough dossier plays a major role during the campaign for the provincial state elections, next Wednesday. A political crisis is looming. With our southern neighbors, the time has already come: nitrogen is a fissile fungus in the Flemish government. Tomorrow a knot must finally be tied, otherwise a government crisis threatens. If there is no nitrogen agreement in Flanders, the same thing threatens as in the Netherlands: a permit stop for, among other things, the construction of new…

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