European Union

US Vice President Kamala Harris pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday (25 July) to help reach a Gaza ceasefire deal that would ease the suffering of Palestinian civilians, striking a tougher tone than President Joe Biden.

Hungary borrowed one billion euros ($1.1 billion) from Chinese banks earlier this year, its debt management agency said on Thursday (25 July), as the EU member state faces a difficult financial situation.

Europe needs a plan to address Alzheimer’s Disease that contains concrete measures, each with its own deadlines, and supported with proper funding, MEP Tomislav Sokol (EPP) told Euractiv.

Russian propaganda has actively spread many fakes about the EU and European leadership to demoralise Ukrainians but failed to influence their pro-European intentions.

The European Commission found serious enforcement issues with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and called for clearer guidelines to strengthen data protection across member states in a report published on Thursday (25 July).

AI-Code is a three-year interdisciplinary project established to harness the power of artificial intelligence and future-proof technological solutions in ways that meet immediate real-world needs.

Re-elected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s political guidelines addressed calls for huge artificial intelligence (AI) research investments under the “CERN for AI” banner, but proponents and critics say the plan is lacking crucial details.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign pledge to impose steep tariffs on Chinese goods could benefit the European economy by providing diplomatic cover for EU policymakers to introduce similar trade defences, according to Nazak Nikakhtar, a former top US trade official.

Sixty-eight members of the French and European parliaments sent a letter to the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Wednesday (24 July) calling for the release of Paul Watson, the founder of the marine conservation NGO Sea Shepherd.

Two of the European Parliament's committees have set up a joint working group to monitor the implementation of the AI Act.

The idea of having an EU budget, including for agriculture, based on political conditions and milestones, as is the case with the bloc’s post-pandemic recovery fund, is "unacceptable," the outgoing Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski told Euractiv.

Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz defended the country's newly acquired hawkish stance on defence against internal critics and "populists" on Wednesday, saying that times are calling for stronger deterrence rather than arms control.

Written by Andrés García Higuera.

In today’s global, saturated textile and fashion system, obtaining accurate and precise data from upstream actors or from the supply chain can be challenging. Sustainability requires transparency, circularity, and more demand-driven operations; all this could help to bring down the textile production and consumption figures associated with ‘fast fashion’. Customer‑centric product design and production require new operations and business models based on more accurate data. The circular economy also entails new partnerships and open data sharing between actors in the ecosystem.

Transparency and traceability are challenging issues in today’s long, global, and saturated textile supply chains. The further down the supply chain the need for information goes, the harder it is to obtain reliable and accurate data.  Supply chain processes meanwhile generate a huge amount of data which, if correctly collected and precisely analysed, can help companies make more sustainable decisions throughout the entire upstream supply chain (from the fibre to the product phase).

The move towards a circular economy brings with it the need to acquire new kinds of data from downstream actions such as reuse, reselling, and recycling. This data is still largely missing, and new tools, measurements, and standards need to be developed to obtain and share data from these actions.

To realise the European Commission’s vision of a sustainable and circular textile sector, several regulations are on the way. The idea is that this will lead to the development of more sustainable practices in the industry and in business. Moreover, consumers might also change their behaviour if they are better informed. All this requires measurements and evaluations based on reliable data on the resources, materials, products, and processes used during a product’s lifetime.

The European Parliament’s Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) recently published a study entitled ‘Identifying data gaps in the textile industry and assessing current initiatives to address them‘. This study examines data gaps throughout the textile supply and value chains, from the fibre to the end-of-product life stage. It also exposes the challenges involved: missing data, data accessibility, data management, reliability, and relevance, mandatory or non-mandatory data collection, data sharing, and data cost challenges. Drawing on a literature review, 17 stakeholder interviews and 2 expert workshops, it gathers essential insights from the field and evaluates current and forthcoming initiatives to address data gaps. It also discusses policy options geared towards harnessing data to contribute to the sustainable transition and implementation of a circular economy in the textile sector.

Read the full STOA study and the options brief to find out more. This research was presented to the STOA Panel at its meeting on 14 March 2024, together with a complementary study on the ‘digital product passport for the textile sector‘, which was followed by the release of a promotional video.

Your opinion counts for us. To let us know what you think, get in touch via stoa@europarl.europa.eu.

Olympic swimming and triathlon events can now take place in the Seine, which now meets European bathing water standards, an NGO controlling water quality confirmed, following massive cleaning efforts by the French authorities and a spell of dry weather.

Italy will host an event in the autumn to present a network to transport hydrogen from the southern Mediterranean to northern Europe, its energy minister told Reuters on Wednesday, saying Switzerland could also be involved.

The Paris Olympic Games will welcome thousands of athletes from all over the world, as well as police officers from some forty countries, who will be supporting the French police forces in providing security for the world's biggest sporting event.

The Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN met in Laos on Wednesday (24 July) as it seeks to advance a stalled bid to resolve a crisis in Myanmar and cool tensions in the South China Sea, days ahead of a gathering of top diplomats from the world's biggest powers.

While EU countries are generally making progress on rule of law, Slovakia, Hungary face criticism when the European Commission presented its fifth annual report on Wednesday (July 24).

The war in Ukraine and the US presidential election dominated a NATO summit in Washington this month but, away from the public stage, the alliance's military planners have been focused on assessing the enormous cost of fixing Europe's creaking defences.

As European Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen prepares to spend the summer interviewing potential candidates for her new team, she may face challenges on three key fronts.