What a start to the last plenary session of the year! On Monday, EU leaders headed to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for the EU. As 5 out of approx. 503,679,700 EU citizens who couldn’t attend the ceremony, we followed the Brussels EP Information Office‘s invitation to have our ‘Nobel 2012’ picture taken.
Yet the Nobel Peace Prize left no traces on the blog this week. We focused almost exclusively on the plenary session in Strasbourg. Here is your weekly digest.
On Tuesday, MEPs debated the unitary patent. We had a plenary briefing ready with an overview of the proposed Commission package.
Flying home for Christmas? When you will take off depends on which airport slots are allocated to your airline of choice. The current regulation on the allocation of airport slots has its shortcomings; so the EC’s new proposal was discussed on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, EU-Russia relations were on the agenda. Our briefing explained why negotiations for a new EU-Russia agreement are proving long and complicated.
On Thursday, MEPs voted on amending the rules for written declarations. On average, MEPs hand in 75 written declarations per year. Our plenary briefing explained the proposed changes.
Both fundamental and human rights were discussed repeatedly during the session. Our contribution was threefold: A plenary briefing on assessing fundamental rights in the EU, a summary on combating hate crimes and a comprehensive keysource on Getting started with human rights information research.
Off the plenary agenda, we also published a book review on Debout l’Europe! (written by Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Guy Verhofstadt), a summary on the costs of cars, a Statistical Spotlight on Tourism in times of crisis and two briefings: one on how an EU-US trade agreement would impact consumer protection and food safety and another one on religious slaughter.
Mysteriously, our book tree seems to react to its increasing popularity with decreasing size. We acknowledge the on-going compression suspiciously but are optimistic that it will remain in full bloom until Christmas. If you’re in the EP, come up and see it!
Enjoy your weekend!
Be the first to write a comment.