Sunday
23rd Jul 2017
By EUOBSERVER
"I’ll speak in French, because English is slowly losing importance in Europe," European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Friday, as he started a speech at the State of the Union conference in Florence, receiving big rounds of applause from the audience. "There is also a French election and I want to make sure they understand what I say," he added, calling the UK's decision to leave the EU a "tragedy".
Friday will mark 128 days since elections in the Netherlands. Four parties are negotiating to form a government coalition.
Lawmakers in Poland adopted a controversial reform of the Supreme Court, despite warnings from the EU that the move could trigger a sanction procedure over the rule of law.
EU and UK negotiators presented their Brexit positions to identify common grounds this week, but that was made difficult by the scarcity of UK position papers.
EU law professor Ellen Vos says the commission's proposed mini-reform on comitology, an obscure but often-used method of EU lawmaking, should go much further.
Candidates from all political families should be presenting their vision on where the Union should be headed. European socialists want to keep the Spitzenkandidat procedure for future elections.
Huge amounts of money from criminal activities are funnelled into the legitimate European economy. But little is being done about it at EU or national level.
