“The members of CEEP are still looking for a good reason why such a detailed and complex legislative initiative on concessions was published”, said today Rainer Plassmann, chair of CEEP SGI committee intervening at the EP Hearing on the award of concessions contracts. “However, they decided to work very closely with Members of the European Parliament to ensure that legislation will finally best respond to the needs of public services providers, which means at the end the needs of citizens”.

Three years after its inauguration -Eastern Partnership, the initiative of Poland and Sweden,  seems to have arrived to a breaking point. On the one hand, the attention of the European Union is focused on the debt crisis in the euro-zone and the foreign policy is concentrated on the revolutionary transformations in North Africa. On the other hand, the experiences from Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, where civil societies and democratic forces are still forming after the collapse of dictatorships, showed that the EU must support democratic values.

Brussels, Monday 19 March 2012:  European e-Skills Week 2012– backed by the European Commission launches today in Brussels. 

Vice President of the European Commission, responsible for Enterprise and Industry, Antonio Tajani, is officially marking the start of the European e-Skills Week 2012, by welcoming,  together with conference host, Anna Maria Darmanin, Vice-President of the European Economic and Social Committee,  more than 200 delegates from thirty member states.

A high penetration of renewables on the electricity network is at the heart of EU’s strategy for substantially decarbonising electricity by 2050 but the opportunity for renewables cogeneration is still under exploited. At the COGEN Europe Annual Conference 2012, Europe’s largest annual cogeneration event taking place on 3-4 May in Brussels, speakers are taking on the challenge of what is stopping bio-energy cogeneration expansion.