Politics

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the learning process of more than 1.5 billion students and youth around the world. The abrupt and unplanned shift to online schooling had a negative impact on student learning and achievement, with the greatest challenges experienced by the most vulnerable learners. Scientific evidence from across the globe is revealing the scale of the learning losses attributable to the school restrictions in response to the pandemic. The literature discussing the efficacy of policy interventions developed to address this generational challenge is very much limited to deliberations about reforming national education systems. Relatively little available research considers thi..

This briefing considers how the monitoring and enforcement of human rights clauses in the European Union’s (EU) agreements have evolved to promote human rights compliance. A series of recommendations will be presented with a focus on the themes of consultation, monitoring, and enforcement. Consultative mechanisms have been a core feature of EU agreements and this briefing identifies interventions that will strengthen existing practices and facilitate more opportunities for transparent reporting and monitoring. This briefing outlines the importance of setting human rights benchmarks as part of the impact assessment process and proposes the creation of a new and independent complaints mechan..

The report explains the shift from the traditional approaches of intellectual property protection in research and innovation to the new broader concept of intellectual assets management. It tries to answer the question “What is changing?”and gives recommendations to policymakers. The report starts with the policy and legal background for navigating the intellectual assets management landscape within the framework of knowledge valorisation. It provides different perspectives from different stakeholders´ points of view on intellectual assets management while trying to abandon the strictly individual topic-related “silos” approach. Open approaches to intellectual assets management are ..

The Use Case Observatory, initiated and conducted by data.europa.eu, the official portal for European data managed by the Publications Office of the European Union, serves as a comprehensive research project to assess the economic, governmental, social and environmental impact of open data across Europe from 2022 to 2025. The Use Case Observatory focuses on monitoring and analysing reuse cases, aiming to contribute valuable insights to the broader goals of data.europa.eu.

Exceptionally warm spring temperatures, combined with adequate water supply in most parts of Europe benefitted winter crops and created favourable conditions for the sowing and emergence of spring cereals and summer crops. Weather conditions have been particularly favourable in the Iberian Peninsula, leading to an upward revision of the yield forecast at EU level for durum wheat, spring barley and triticale.

This study, which was commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the JURI Committee, provides a comparative analysis of the laws on public benefit status found in the Member States of the EU from the perspective of associations and discusses the state of the art of EU law in this field. The study also deals with the legal regulation of cross-border conversion, merger and division of associations, focusing on some problematic aspects that also concern associations that hold the public benefit status. Conclusions focus on the need for the introduction of an EU statute that guarantees public benefit organizat..

European Parliament has been an active agenda-setter and initiator of several calls to regulate corporate social responsibility (CSR). On 10 March 2021, Parliament called the Commission to prescribe sustainability duties for companies established in the European Union or governed by EU law. Building on Parliament’s resolution, in February 2023 the Commission published a legislative proposal for a directive on corporate sustainability due diligence. On 19 March 2024, the JURI Committee adopted the text with 20 votes for, 4 against, and no abstentions. Parliament will vote on the text of the directive during the April II plenary. European Parliament is supported in its work by expertise and ..

The launch and the first steps of the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network took place at a time of unprecedented international challenges, with natural disasters and conflict leading to a historically large number of activations of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM). In this difficult global context, knowledge sharing and developing a strong community of civil protection practitioners became more important than ever. That is why the Knowledge Network was created. Shaped around the challenges facing civil protection, the Network was set up with three goals: to increase collaboration and build a stronger civil protection community, to support knowledge sharing, and to promote innovat..

This paper investigates the sensitivity of the demand for safe government debt to currency unhedged and hedged excess returns in a sample of US mutual funds. We find evidence of active rebalancing towards government bonds that offer relatively higher returns on an unhedged basis, in particular eurodenominated securities. The size of the effect is large, leading to a change in portfolio share by around one percentage point on average in response to a change by one percentage point in the currency-specific excess return. Interestingly, mutual funds rebalance their portfolio towards currencies, such as the Japanese yen, that display large deviations in the covered interest parity and offer high..

This thesis examines how linguistic diversity is legally regulated in the European Union by offering a comprehensive overview and analysis of the different ways in which the European Union, directly or indirectly, regulates the use of languages on its territory and promotes linguistic diversity. Language questions in the European Union are far from being settled, and much unresolved tension remains which necessitates a closer scrutiny of the status quo and the formulation of policy recommendations. The starting point is the examination of the scope of EU competences in this field, and the sort of action that is expected from the European Union. Fundamental issues that seem straightforward ye..

From grassroot initiatives to comprehensive approaches, structured collaboration helps unlock the potential of apprenticeships for the green transition. Apprenticeships are particularly well placed to develop the skills for the green transition, as they are at the intersection of the education system and the labour market. Building on evidence from Cedefop’s Community of apprenticeship experts, this policy brief looks at the different approaches that European countries follow to adapt apprenticeship provision to needs arising from the green transition. High-quality skills intelligence, multi-stakeholder governance structures and collaboration at all levels can help apprenticeships maximise..

We study how millions of granular and weekly household scanner data combined with machine learning can help to improve the real-time nowcast of German inflation. Our nowcasting exercise targets three hierarchy levels of inflation: individual products, product groups, and headline inflation. At the individual product level, we construct a large set of weekly scanner-based price indices that closely match their official counterparts, such as butter and coffee beans. Within a mixed-frequency setup, these indices significantly improve inflation nowcasts already after the first seven days of a month. For nowcasting product groups such as processed and unprocessed food, we apply shrinkage estimato..

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the PETI Committee, analyses the impact of digitalization on vulnerable social groups in terms of lower income and education, age, people affected by disabilities, minority ethnic groups and people living in remote/isolated geographic areas. It includes a review of the relevant academic literature, secondary data analysis, as well as three case studies focused on digital inequality in e-commerce and digital financial services. The study reviews the EU legislations relevant in the policy areas that are the object of the case studies and elaborates some reco..

The 9th Cohesion Report highlights significant achievements of Cohesion Policy in terms of fostering upwards economic and social convergence in the Union. Challenges remain especially at regional level, and these will be further impacted by structural transformations. Lessons learned from past implementation periods, and from the interplay with other instruments, underline the need for further improvement of the design of Cohesion Policy. A stronger and modernised policy is essential to fortify Europe’s growth model, to build an inclusive Union, and to deliver on the Treaty objective of economic, social and territorial cohesion.

This thesis exposes and explores the disconnection between the strong legal and constitutional potential of the EU’s reproductive prohibitions (on eugenics, reproductive cloning and heritable genome editing) and the political reality of bioethical subsidiarity. These prohibitions, contained in the Charter and in secondary law, are typically understood teleologically: as the result of international human rights law on the one hand, and as evidence of EU biolaw’s inexorable and continuing rise on the other. Based on legal historical and doctrinal analysis, this thesis proposes a new understanding. First, it shows that the prohibitions were enacted during the high-water mark of EU bioethics..

Disaster Risk Management (DRM) is a complex and interdisciplinary field that requires accurate, reliable visual products and reporting material to support the decision making process. In the disaster cycle there are two key phases to consider: before and after the event. Each phase consists of various activities. The pre-occurrence phase focuses on risk assessment, prevention and preparedness, while the post-occurrence phase encompasses response to the event, damage assessment, and recovery/restoration. The main objective of this quarterly report is to share how the European Crisis Management Laboratory (ECML) Mapping Team at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) supports all the various activitie..

Based on a literature review incorporating papers written before July 2021, this report presents behavioural factors affecting peoples’ decision to invest in socially responsible investment (SRI) products. It groups behavioural factors into three clusters: (i) attitudinal factors, (ii) social factors, and (iii) cognitive factors. Besides, it presents evidence on the behavioural interventions that can influence SRI decisions. Four types of interventions are identified: (i) information disclosure, (ii) information framing, (iii) labels, and (iv) defaults. Based on this review, we propose that scientists investigate the impact of social information on SRI, and policymakers take into account b..

‘The digital equilibrium : how governments, corporations, and individuals bargained the regulation of online speech in the European Union’ presents a novel approach to online speech regulation in the European Union. Through a game-theory-inspired method, the thesis walks the reader through over 20 years of public, corporate, and individual regulatory bargaining, tracing the objectives and strategies used by each of those players to obtain different regulatory equilibria in the online speech landscape. The thesis proposes a chronological evolution of how that bargaining game evolved by focusing on specific moments of regulatory equilibrium — the so-called ‘stages of the digital equili..

The internet has afforded many novel opportunities to children, but also presents several potential or actual risks to their rights and well-being. On the one hand, children can participate in social interactions, create content, and voice their opinions online like never before but, on the other hand, they are increasingly exposed to different risks and harms online. Protecting children from online risks while furthering their participation in the online sphere is important, to ensure that the rights of children enshrined under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU) are upheld. In this respect, age..

The internet has afforded many novel opportunities to children, but also presents several potential or actual risks to their rights and well-being. On the one hand, children can participate in social interactions, create content, and voice their opinions online like never before but, on the other hand, they are increasingly exposed to different risks and harms online. Protecting children from online risks while furthering their participation in the online sphere is important, to ensure that the rights of children enshrined under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU) are upheld. In this respect, age..

Is faoin gCoimisiún Eorpach atá sé píosa reachtaíochta Eorpaí a mholadh agus is faoi Chomhairle an Aontais Eorpaigh (na Ballstáit) agus Parlaimint na hEorpa atá sé an reachtaíocht sin a fhormheas sula ndéantar dlí di. An gnáthnós imeachta reachtach a thugtar ar an nós imeachta is mó a leantar chun treoracha agus rialacháin a ghlacadh. Togra reachtach ón gCoimisiún a chuireann tús leis an nós imeachta. Ina dhiaidh sin, déanann an dá chomhreachtóir, mar atá an Chomhairle agus an Pharlaimint, buanna an togra a phlé agus leasuithe a dhéanamh air más mian leo. Ag an bpointe sin, caithfear téacs coiteann a chomhaontú ós ionann na cearta agus na dualgais a bhaineann l..

Firm-level survey data and financial information show that uncertainty dampens investment, employment and growth. This research highlights the effects of uncertainty and offers mitigation measures. Using firm-level survey data combined with firm-level financial information, this working paper examines the impact of uncertainty on EU firms' investment and employment growth. The analysis shows that increased uncertainty significantly dampens investment and employment. Specifically, high uncertainty is associated with a 1 percentage point drop in employment growth and a 3 percentage point decrease in investment rates. Firms that cite uncertainty as a major impediment also report lower growth ra..

Recent economic shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis in Europe following Russia's invasion of Ukraine have brought energy poverty to the forefront of social and political debate. While EU policies increasingly address energy poverty, gender considerations remain overlooked. This study addresses this gap and aims to increase the understanding of the gender-energy poverty nexus, analysing existing literature and EU and national policies. It further analyses original qualitative data from seven EU Member States: Lithuania, Croatia, the Republic of Cyprus, Bulgaria, the Republic of Ireland, Spain, and Germany. By identifying the links between gender and energy poverty and the ..

The aim of this report is to investigate the potential for harnessing key features of Transformative Innovation to improve the design and the implementation of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) strategies, based on empirical analyses. The study draws on the conceptual framework on this question previously defined for the JRC (European Commission, 2024), and the methodology for case studies articulated in the same report. The case study research comprises overall 14 case study reports covering 16 territories from across the EU and beyond, casing various institutional contexts, a variety of biogeographical regions within different climate risks, different ranges of population sizes, and represen..

Welcome to the European Union (EU), the world’s first transnational and participatory democracy. As an EU citizen, you have the constitutional right to influence the rules that apply to almost 450 million people across an area of more than 4 million km2 in 27 Member States. You may well say: that sounds great, but HOW can I make my voice heard in practice? This publication by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) answers this question. This is your guide to active citizenship in the EU.

Our seven-member EESC Delegation knew before arriving in Abu Dhabi that prospects for success were not bright, as the situation of the WTO reflects the ongoing crisis of our society – a slow recovery from COVID-19, growing protectionism and the need to integrate new climate, sustainability and industrial challenges in an increasingly challenged and multidimensional world order.

A severe drought is currently affecting southern Africa and the Zambezi basin, with extremely dry and warm conditions from October 2023 to March 2024. Heatwaves are exacerbating the impacts of the lack of precipitation. The average temperature is abnormally high, registering record values since 1960. Soil moisture and vegetation conditions are severely affected, with negative anomalies over large areas of the region. The Zambezi river is at its lowest discharge for the season corresponding to about 20% of the long-term average. Crops have been affected as the extreme conditions occurred in the most critical period of the growing season, with severe economic and social impacts. River flow for..

This study provides new evidence on the relationship between unconventional monetary policy and auction cycles in the euro area. Using proprietary data on purchases of public sector securities implemented by the Eurosystem, the paper examines the flow effects of asset purchase programmes on 10-year government bond yields in secondary markets around dates of public debt auctions. The findings indicate that Eurosystem’s asset purchase flows mitigate yield cycles during auction periods and counteract the amplification impact of market volatility. The dampening effect of central bank asset purchases on auction cycles is more sizeable and precisely estimated for purchases of securities with med..

The European School Education Platform is the meeting point for the school education community working in early childhood, primary, secondary, and vocational education.