Asking for labour market reform to spur competitiveness, BusinessEurope says it has identified a number of ready-to-use actions that could bring Europe back to work and lead the 27-country bloc closer to its strategic goal of raising the employment rate from 68 to 75%.
Polish rural communities largely depend on low-cost but dirty coal for their heating, but under pressure from Brussels to provide cleaner energy, Warsaw is proposing controversial shale gas wells as an alternative.
Helping young people to become entrepreneurs starts at school, where companies have a role to play in coaching students to get the skills required to succeed and compete in the world economy, argues Brian Ager, secretary-general of the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT), in an interview with EurActiv.
President Barack Obama's chief climate change negotiator has issued a warning over the future of the Kyoto Protocol, casting doubt on a key plank of international climate talks this December in South Africa.
While the EU is marred by a severe debt crisis and a lackluster economic recovery, schools and companies are trying to make the changes necessary to adapt the workforce to new challenges and increase entrepreneurship and competitiveness.
Poland is trying to broker a face-saving deal for Romania's and Bulgaria's accession to the European Union's borderless Schengen area. Under the compromise the two countries would first have barriers at airports and maritime ports removed, while maintaining land restrictions until after the French elections, diplomats told EurActiv.
Political and financial support is needed from the EU to help rural areas develop renewable energies at local level such as biomass and small hydro, according to Euromontana, an association representing Europe's mountainous regions.
EU energy ministers meeting in Poland today (20 September) will debate a paper by the European Commission, which makes the case for strengthening electricity interconnections in the face of Germany's nuclear phase-out.
On a visit to Germany, Turkish President Abdullah Gül said that his country and Germany were the only countries with healthy economies in Europe. EurActiv Turkey contributed to this article.
Political and financial support is needed from the EU to help rural areas develop renewable energies at local level such as biomass and small hydro, according to Euromontana, an association representing Europe's mountainous regions.
Standard and Poor's cut its unsolicited ratings on Italy by one notch, warning of a deteriorating growth outlook and damaging political uncertainty, in a move that took markets by surprise and added to pressure on the debt-stressed eurozone.
The ongoing trial against Ukraine's former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is not political and EU circles should not link this issue to a possible freezing of negotiations on the Free Trade Area Agreement, said Ukrainian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin in an exclusive interview with EurActiv.
A meeting of eurozone finance ministers ended with no new measures last Friday (16 September), amid pressing calls to quickly finalise the second aid package to Greece and ratify reforms of the eurozone's €440 billion bailout fund. “Everyone is disoriented,” summed up a dismayed Jean-Claude Juncker, Eurogroup chairman.
A fresh row has erupted in Brussels over the environmental benefits of biofuels, with academics and EU officials at loggerhead over how to account for CO2 savings in the product's life cycle.
While the new member states' generally small stature, relative poverty and inexperience limit their influence in the European Union, they are fast learning the game of Brussels lobbying, argues Gergana Passy.
Centre-right Latvian parties began talks yesterday (18 September) on a new coalition, aiming to block a pro-Russian party which gained the most votes in an election for the first time since the Baltic country won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Only Slovaks and Italians think that the euro is good for their country's economy, according to a recent poll by the German Marshall Fund. While most EU citizens from the 12 member states surveyed said that EU membership is beneficial for their country, only a minority has a positive view of the common currency.
European policies – and in particular the Common Fisheries Policy – put numerous species of whales and dolphins at risk of extinction, partly due to a disconnect between scientific research and policy, argues Greek MEP Kriton Arsenis (S&D).
Due to limited fuel choice, households in rural areas have turned to heavily-polluting oil and coal as their main source of energy, highlighting the potential of switching to cleaner energy sources, said in an interview with EurActiv Ecofys' Ann Gardiner relating the findings of a new study.
The euro's rise as an international exchange and reserve currency is being slowed by the incoherence of European monetary and fiscal policy, said economist Barry Eichengreen in an interview with EurActiv.
EU-candidate Turkey will freeze relations with the European Union if the Republic of Cyprus is given the EU presidency in 2012, Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay was quoted as saying by the Turkish press.
Germany's Social Democrats beat Angela Merkel's conservatives in a regional vote in Berlin yesterday (18 September), handing the chancellor her sixth election defeat this year ahead of a key euro zone vote in parliament in two weeks' time.
As banking migrates to the Internet, so too does payment fraud. Banks will have to be one step ahead of organised criminals to protect online payments, argues security expert Samee Zafar. EurActiv spoke to the banking security expert, who has been advising banks in the City of London on the EU's Payments Services Directive (PSD), which is expected to boost online payments.
Even though France will be unveiling the EU's first payments via mobile SIM cards this year, so-called m-payments face an uncertain future as phone operators worry about their bottom lines and consumers wonder who will be tracking their payments.
The architects of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), designed to harmonise euro-denominated money transfers, hope the system will allow customers to make payments using mobile phones. Dag-Inge Flatraaker, from the bank-driven European Payments Council, told EurActiv that banks have come a long way but must now work to iron out security issues.
Dag-Inge Flatraaker is general manager and head of Interbank Infrastructure and Payment System Strategy at Norwegian bank DnB NOR. He has also worked with the European Payments Council (EPC) on establishing a SEPA strategy for e-commerce and m-payments.
Flatraaker was speaking to EurActiv’s Claire Davenport.
To read a shortened version of this interview, please click here. More »
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The architects of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), designed to harmonise euro-denominated money transfers, hope the system will allow customers to make payments using mobile phones. Dag-Inge Flatraaker, from the bank-driven European Payments Council, told EurActiv that banks have come a long way but must now work to iron out security issues.
While the EU admits its plan to create a Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) across Europe will take longer than expected, consumer and banking groups argue that the scheme needs to be revised before it is rolled out any further.
Payments in 31 European countries are about to get faster, cheaper and easier once the EU's ambitious Payments Services Directive is fully translated into national law. However, member states have begun to opt out of some parts of the rulebook, making a level playing field harder to attain.
Europe has been on the cusp of a payments revolution since 2007, when it established a single rulebook setting the same payment standards and obligations across the 31-member EU/EEA. But the Payments Services Directive and a voluntary payments scheme, the Single Euro Payments Area, were welcomed only guardedly by the industry and member states and banks have been slow to implement both initiatives.
The potential benefits of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) are in danger of being outweighed by the risks as consumer groups’ warnings fall on deaf ears, according to a letter sent by European consumers’ organisation BEUC to MEPs and diplomats yesterday (25 January).
Visa will likely be asked to lower the fees on its payment cards before Neelie Kroes ends her mandate as EU competition commissioner, sources close to the negotiations between the card company and the EU executive told EurActiv.
According to Deutsche Bank, migration to online banking will hit 60% of the EU's population by 2020, prompting security experts to warn about data privacy issues in the face of rising organised crime on the Internet. EurActiv spoke to online security expert Samee Zafar.
In the European single market there are still large differences between the national payment systems. The EU seeks to remove these obstacles and reduce the costs to cross-border payments for consumers by creating a Single Euro(pean) Payments Area (SEPA). The European Payments Council (EPC) was set up to develop a common infrastructure and standards. However, there is only little progress, since banks are reluctant to apply standards and fear competition being opened up to non-banks, which makes it difficult to reach the 2010 target. Therefore, the Commission has laid out a common legal framework in its 2005 proposal.
The new Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) launched today (28 January) is widely expected to bring price reductions for consumers and offer new business opportunities for banks and payment operators across borders, according to a recent study.
Since 28 January 2008, every credit transfer carried out in euros is processed in the same way across Europe, with identical procedures and the same timeframe, but at a cost that will remain different from bank to bank “for a certain time”.
Consumers take centre stage in the Commission’s Green Paper on Retail Financial Services, which lays down options on how to make retail banking and insurance services better and cheaper for EU citizens. However, the Commission, Parliament and industry are at odds over how to improve consumer protection and choice in retail financial services.
The European Commission will allow banks to temporarily charge more for certain financial transactions to encourage them to invest in a smooth transition to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), the platform aimed at making cross-border payments as easy as domestic ones.
The European Commission yesterday (10 September) laid down a roadmap for rolling out the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) intended to create the same rules and standards on electronic payment services in euros.
The architects of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), designed to harmonise euro-denominated money transfers, hope the system will allow customers to make payments using mobile phones. Dag-Inge Flatraaker, from the bank-driven European Payments Council, told EurActiv that banks have come a long way but must now work to iron out security issues.
Dag-Inge Flatraaker is general manager and head of Interbank Infrastructure and Payment System Strategy at Norwegian bank DnB NOR. He has also worked with the European Payments Council (EPC) on establishing a SEPA strategy for e-commerce and m-payments.
Flatraaker was speaking to EurActiv’s Claire Davenport.
To read a shortened version of this interview, please click here. More »
Go to Source
The architects of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), designed to harmonise euro-denominated money transfers, hope the system will allow customers to make payments using mobile phones. Dag-Inge Flatraaker, from the bank-driven European Payments Council, told EurActiv that banks have come a long way but must now work to iron out security issues.