Thursday
9th Feb 2023
With the emergence of the pandemic, Spain's suicide figures have worsened, bringing to the surface the long waiting times, the lack of health personnel, and the absence of a national suicide prevention plan.
European Works Councils can play a key role for workers and their unions to bargain effectively — but what are they, why have they been neutered, and why is big business objecting to greater powers?
"We have to make the voice of workers heard and if there is a directive on their working conditions, it has to be in favour of the workers, not the platforms," said one of the leading MEPs of the report.
The European Parliament does not rule out mandatory anti-harassment training for MEPs — but has left questions of greater support for victims of bullying and abuse open-ended.
If just one-in-five barriers were removed from EU internal border regions, it could gain around two percent in GDP.
"At the current levels, benefits are not enough to lift people out of (relatively) poverty", the EU's advisory Social Protection Committee warned in 2022.
The European Parliament special committee still wants to hear from EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, whose undisclosed text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during the crisis have raised transparency concerns.
Europe's response to Elon Musk's Starlink broadband internet system — currently used by Ukraine in its war against Russia — is to deliver its first services sometime next year.
Companies are increasingly using software to spy on employees working remotely, said Polish computer forensics analyst Maciej Broniarz. "The market for highly intrusive spyware is snowballing," Broniarz told MEPs.
EU Commission estimates suggest that between 1.7 and 4.1 million workers are currently misclassified as 'self-employed'.
Next time you think people should not be criticised for "just being curious" about someone's origin, ask yourself just why that harmless extra sub-question only ever surfaces around non-white Europeans.
Emmanuel Macron's government has proposed to raise France's pension age from 62 to 64 and abolish sweetheart pension deals that allow public-sector workers to retire in their fifties. It's about time. France is late to raise its retirement age.
Dutch media authorities have granted a broadcasting license to TV Rain, a Russian news channel suspended in Russia and then also forced to leave Latvia following a row over its coverage of the Ukraine war.
The story of how Wilma Viscardini, a young female lawyer in a town in northern Italy in the 1950s, pioneered using new, liberal European legislation on issues like the free movement of workers or consumer rights, to help citizens.
Pan-European media could show citizens of Europe that the EU is not just a bureaucracy machine that produces rules, but a society made up of people who might share some similarities with you — or not. But does it exist?
Some EU countries lack clear and binding legislation regarding cycling infrastructure standards. There is little political will to introduce them, as this would stand in the way of real estate developers' interests or inconvenience car drivers.
Despite millions poured in, EU countries are failing to reduce car use. But by adding an environmental dimension, countries covered by cohesion policy can continue road building with EU funds and file it under measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
An investigation into the use of EU cohesion funds to build dysfunctional bicycle infrastructure in Czechia, Lithuania, Malta and Romania. Part one of three.
My frustration grew about the price that disabled people pay to participate, to have a voice. We put our health, our income and even our lives on the line just to do things that non-disabled people take for granted.
If small and medium-sized businesses can kickstart the world's economy, we need to ensure that job creators are chasing the right goals—and at the right pace.
More than half of registered trafficking victims are EU nationals, with most sold off for sex, said the European Commission. Most are registered in Romania, followed by Germany and the Netherlands.
On Monday the European Council is about to softly kill the main legislative part of the Farm to Fork and biodiversity strategy — all in the name of food security.
A new study commissioned by The Left in the European Parliament sets out how even legal forms of subcontracting have become the business model for exploiting workers in the European Union.
Thousands of Europeans have lost their jobs as a result of the energy crisis, a new report shows, but overall industrial output has remained stable throughout the year.
A new EU Commission bill wants to ensure the rights of a child from same sex couples are upheld in all EU states — at a time of backsliding of LGBTI+ rights in Poland and Hungary.
Germany even tried to mobilise support to turn the due diligence process, designed to prevent human rights violations, into a shield to protect companies from being taken to court. Thankfully this did not gain much traction.
The lead rapporteur on asbestos, Danish MEP Nikolaj Villumsen, responds to EUobserver's two-part investigation.
Let us be clear, Qatar is not a democracy, it is a conservative Muslim country that does not give foreign workers the rights and protection these workers deserve.
The EU Commission has watered-down a broad political initiative —but now governments of member states hold the key to what the EU should do. Some member states and regions have adopted asbestos strategies of some kind, from Poland to Flanders.
We're asking the EU to stop hiding behind pinkwashed slogans and finally walk the talk by providing all necessary legal tools to guarantee women their rights, say two Left MEPs, for International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Where once working men in heavy industry were diagnosed with cancers related to a more direct exposure to asbestos, now women in professions such as teaching, nursing and other occupations are being diagnosed, as well as young people.
The new rules aim to have at least 40 percent of non-executive director posts, or one-third of all director posts, on publicly-listed firms filled by women by July 2026.
Despite the immediate shock and outburst of solidarity after the recent terrorist attack by a 19-year-old sympathiser of far-right conspiracies, Slovak society appears to be absorbed in even deeper ideological divisions on issues related to gender and sexual orientation
