European Union

Getting the green light for placing novel foods on the EU market will become faster and cheaper while the high level of protection of human health will be preserved. That's the main purpose of a draft regulation that the Council's Permanent Representatives Committee approved on 11 November 2015. The draft regulation was voted by the Parliament on 28 October 2015. Novel foods are foods not consumed in the EU to a significant degree before May 1997. They include for instance foods to which a new production process is applied. 

"The compromise approved today is a needed step towards faster innovation in the novel foods market while guaranteeing high levels of consumer protection for the European citizens", said Lydia Mutsch, member of the Luxembourg government and President of the Council. 

Cutting red tape 

Under the new rules the authorisation procedure for a novel food is expected to take on average around 18 months compared to three years under the current rules. The draft regulation also helps to reduce administrative burdens by switching to an EU-level procedure and providing for generic authorisations. This means that once authorised and added to the EU list a novel food may be placed on the market by any food business operator. This avoids the re-submission of new applications by other companies for the same novel food and should benefit in particular SMEs. Under the current rules, novel foods are authorised at national level and valid only for the applicant.

Easier access for traditional foods

The new rules will also facilitate the access to the EU market for traditional foods from third countries having a history of safe food use. For these foods an applicant must demonstrate that they have been safely consumed by a significant part of a third country's population for at least 25 years. 

Nanotechnology

The scope of the novel food rules explicitly covers food containing engineered nanomaterials. The Commission is mandated to adapt the definition of engineered nanomaterials to technical progress or the definitions agreed at international level. 

Insects

The new regulation provides also clarity that insects are covered and are hence subject to an authorisation procedure. 

Cloning

Food from animal clones will remain subject to the novel food rules. Commission proposals establishing specific rules on cloning are currently discussed in the Council and the European Parliament. 

Next steps

The Council is expected to formally adopt the new regulation on 16 November before it is published in the Official Journal of the EU. It will enter into force 20 days after its publication and will be applicable two years later. 

Background

The novel foods authorised under the current rules in the EU include for instance "rapeseed oil high in unsaponifiable matter", "rye bread with added phytosterols/phytostanols", "milk type products and yoghurt type products with added phytosterol esters", "coagulated potato proteins and hydrolysates thereof" and "phospholipids from egg yolk", "chias seeds" and "baobab extracts".

General : The Lux Prize not only gives recognition to some of the best European films, but also serves as an opportunity to show them to cinema lovers across the EU. Join the conversation on social media, enjoy the films and learn more about the Lux Prize and the people whose creativity and passion brought us this year's finalists: Mediterranea, Mustang and The Lesson.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

General : The Lux Prize not only gives recognition to some of the best European films, but also serves as an opportunity to show them to cinema lovers across the EU. Join the conversation on social media, enjoy the films and learn more about the Lux Prize and the people whose creativity and passion brought us this year's finalists: Mediterranea, Mustang and The Lesson.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

REPORT on the role of the EU within the UN - how to better achieve EU foreign policy goals
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Paavo Väyrynen

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

General : Martin Schulz called for a comprehensive and long-term migration policy in cooperation with African countries in order to tackle the refugee crisis. The EP President made the plea on 10 November at the Maltese Parliament ahead of the Valletta summit on migration taking place today and tomorrow. Schulz said: “As long as war continues, people will continue to flee and won’t be able to return home.”

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

General : Martin Schulz called for a comprehensive and long-term migration policy in cooperation with African countries in order to tackle the refugee crisis. The EP President made the plea on 10 November at the Maltese Parliament ahead of the Valletta summit on migration taking place today and tomorrow. Schulz said: “As long as war continues, people will continue to flee and won’t be able to return home.”

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : Aviation is a key driver of economic growth and jobs, but in order to ensure safety and let European companies maintain their competitiveness, current EU rules need to be updated. The European Commission is working on proposals now, but MEPs have already adopted a resolution on what they would like to see in the aviation package to be announced by the end of the year. Check out our infographic about the EU's largest airports.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : Aviation is a key driver of economic growth and jobs, but in order to ensure safety and let European companies maintain their competitiveness, current EU rules need to be updated. The European Commission is working on proposals now, but MEPs have already adopted a resolution on what they would like to see in the aviation package to be announced by the end of the year. Check out our infographic about the EU's largest airports.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Dyson v Commission
Energy
Dyson’s action for annulment of the regulation on energy labelling of vacuum cleaners is unsuccessful

Pujante Rivera
SOPO
The termination of an employment contract following the worker’s refusal to accept a significant unilateral change to essential elements of the contract which operates to his detriment constitutes a redundancy for the purpose of the directive on collective redundancies

Tecom Mican and Arias Domínguez
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
The Court defines for the first time the concept of extrajudicial documents of which the formal transmission to addressees residing in another Member State is necessary

Length of video : 134'
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Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

‘Mein Europa’ – ‘My Europe’ – the book published by Helmut Schmidt only two years ago, was not a new monograph, but a collection of different publications and speeches on European integration. It spans a lifetime – from his very first article about cooperation in a not yet existing community dating from June 1948 to his editorials about the crisis-ridden Union of the 21st century published in Die Zeit.

‘His Europe’ was not a love affair. With the pragmatic realism that the Germans automatically identify with his beloved city Hamburg and therefore refer to as ‘hanseatic’, he often pointed out that there was no need to be a ‘European idealist’. For him it was perfectly sufficient to see just how much it has always been and still is in the ‘strategic interest’ of the Federal Republic of Germany to remain a staunch defender of European integration. He had a deep intellectual and personal admiration for Jean Monnet, and he shared the Frenchman’s belief in the ‘essential rationality of people’. Asked for a wish at the occasion of his 95th anniversary last year, he said ‘My wish is that the Germans understand that the European Union must be completed – rather than putting ourselves above it’.

He also never forgot what the young Federal Republic owed to Europe’s founding fathers: ‘In 1950, the Schuman Plan appeared to me as an undeserved stroke of luck for Germany’, he wrote in his 2008 memoirs entitled ‘Off duty’. While he had, as an anglophile from Northern Germany, much greater cultural affinity with Britain and the English language than with his French neighbours, he never tired of reminding his successors to keep in mind that they should do ‘nothing without France!’ And he cultivated, over almost half a century, a somewhat surprising friendship with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing based on mutual esteem and trust, despite their obvious differences in temper and upbringing.

Like his friend, with whom he institutionalised the European Council and introduced the European Monetary System, he was always tempted to criticise the lack of leadership in today’s EU. But he recognised of course that an EEC of nine member states, which had already been sufficiently difficult to manage, was a piece of cake compared to today’s Union of 28. With the freedom of thought of the elder statesman he repeatedly called for a ‘Putsch’ of the European Parliament in order to shake up an institutional framework he considered no longer appropriate.

Helmut Schmidt was the first German chancellor I voted for in 1980. Some of the convictions he represented at that time have been a guidance ever since. The firm belief that the greatest accomplishment of post-war Europe is the welfare state, for instance. Or the will not to put his sharp intelligence in the service of an ideology or party line, but to find strong ethical foundations in a few non-negotiable, fundamental values: ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ and ‘solidarity’, as he summed them up in his own lexical update of the French revolution’s legacy.

It is a sad coincidence that Helmut Schmidt, a lifelong friend of Britain and promotor of the UK’s role in the European Union, passed away on the same day when the British prime minister defiantly throws his four-point letter on the table. At the same time there is also some ironical comfort in the fact that Cameron’s letter and speech were entirely eclipsed in the German news by the memories of a great statesman. It’s a good lesson: the ones you remember fondly are those who stand up and defend their beliefs in adversity, those who contribute to daring undertakings rather than sulk in their corner. One of my favourites quotes in class when I speak about the creation of the European Union is the one from Shakespeare’s Julius Cesar with which Helmut Schmidt concluded his elegant speech at the Labour conference of November 1974 in Brighton:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full tide are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

His Europe was one that took the current when it served, rather than losing its ventures.

Albrecht Sonntag, EU-Asia Institute,
ESSCA School of Management.
@Essca_Eu_Asia

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