'Foreign talent' and child-abuse bill vote in focus This WEEK

After the meeting, the ministers of the EU-27 will meet the six foreign ministers of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. 

The EU-Western Balkans ministerial meeting will take place a few days after the EU Commission announced a €6bn growth plan for the region.

European Parliament president Roberta Metsola, for her part, will meet Armenia's foreign affairs minister Ararat Mirzoyan on Wednesday (15 November).

On Tuesday (14 November), EU ministers will meet with Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg and the European Defence Agency Steering Board for breakfast. Their meeting will be followed by a discussion on the EU's defence policy and efforts to support Ukraine militarily.

Stoltenberg is also expected to meet the college of commissioners the following day and with the EU commissioner for international partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen, on Friday (17 November).

Also on Wednesday, the European Commission is due to unveil its Talent Mobility Package. Under this initiative, Brussels want to create a system that would match European employers with third-country jobseekers to fill existing gaps in some sectors.

The package would include, for example, a recommendation for EU member states to recognise the qualifications of foreign work seekers.

European Council prep

Across the street, EU ministers in charge of European affairs will kick off preparations for the last European Council of this year, scheduled in early December.

Opening accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova and approving EU financial aid to Kyiv in the long-term are expected to be high on the agenda of the next meeting of EU leaders.

Spain's request to make Catalan, Basque and Galician EU official languages, the European electoral law and the commission's work programme for 2024 are also due to be discussed by the ministers on Wednesday.

Ministers from the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) will meet the same day in Apia, Samoa, to discuss further cooperation, before signing a new partnership.

Additionally, the decision-making body of the European Central Bank (ECB) will meet on Wednesday.

While inflation might remain high in the short term, keeping interest rates unchanged for a while could bring inflation to their two-percent target, ECB president Christine Lagarde said last Friday.

"We are at a level where we believe that, if kept long enough, — and this long enough is not trivial — will take us to the two-percent medium-term target," she said.

Child sexual abuse online

The controversial bill aimed at preventing online child sexual abuse will be voted on by the parliament's civil liberties committee on Tuesday.

While the commission proposal has been slammed as an unprecedented mass surveillance mechanism, MEPs' preliminary agreement advocates for targeted control of suspicious individuals subjected to judicial warrants.

If adopted, the bill will be subject to a plenary vote later this month.

On the same day, the committee is also expected to vote on a report extending EU crimes to include hate speech and hate crimes.

Also on Tuesday, co-legislators will gather for another round of negotiations on the first-ever EU law to combat violence against women and domestic violence.

Meanwhile, the potentially last trilogue meeting on the Critical Raw Materials act will take place on Monday. Minerals such as lithium or cobalt are considered key to the EU's strategic autonomy and economic prosperity as they are essential to the development of many modern technologies.

MEPs in the transport and tourism committee on Thursday (16 November) are poised to adopt its position on the revision of EU rules to fight illegal discharges from ships into the sea.

Also this week, Spanish socialists MPS in the Madrid parliament aim to register the controversial amnesty law that has secured Pedro Sánchez re-election as the country's prime minister — with an investiture vote that could take place on Wednesday or Thursday.