The European Commission is preparing an action plan for publication in April to mobilise an estimated €25 billion to harness the potential of the fourth industrial revolution, euractiv.com has learned.
Bulgaria and Greece are hard nuts to crack when it comes to implementing EU energy legislation and integrating with the wider European energy market. These two countries illustrate the difficulties of building an Energy Union.
The EU's new Consumer Rights Directive is designed to drag consumer rights legislation into the 21st Century by creating legal certainty for businesses and better protecting online shoppers in particular. But EU policymakers are currently at loggerheads over the scope of the draft law.
Traditionally, EU laws on advertising applied to print and broadcast media, but as adverts increasingly migrate to an unregulated online world, lawmakers and consumer groups are exploring ways to ensure that digital marketing does not infringe consumer rights.
As electricity and gas markets slowly open up to competition, EU countries with fixed pricing policies are coming under growing pressure to let market forces decide prices. But opponents point to the potentially high social consequences of the measure.
Consumer policy is moving up the European Commission's agenda as the EU becomes increasingly concerned about its popularity level among citizens.
The EU's regime for state aid aims to prevent member states from protecting or promoting companies to the detriment of competitors within the EU. The underlying goal is to guarantee an undistorted single market and to boost competitiveness. The ten new member states have to comply with the existing EU laws (the 'acquis') but some transition periods have been agreed during the negotiations.
