Joint press release issued by the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

Embargoed for 18 March 2011, 00h01 CET

Plaid Cymru MEP Jill Evans has welcomed today's decision by the European Parliament's Petitions Committee to call for an investigation into the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA). The decision follows two petitions submitted by Dr Brian John of anti-GMO campaign organisation GM Free Cymru and supported by Ms Evans.

MEPs heard serious questions raised about EFSA's impartiality in taking decisions in respect of authorising GMOs, with key concerns including:

Lothar Bisky, Chair of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left group in the European Parliament said today on behalf of his group: "We are all concerned and appalled by the current tragedy in Japan. After the earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese people are facing nuclear panic."

The fall-out from the Japanese tsunami has inevitably dominated media reports and blurred international attention to the rout of the Libyan opposition, left to fend off Gaddafi and his mercenaries by themselves.

VERHOFSTADT_90.jpgToday at a meeting in Parliament to assess the results of last week's European Council, Guy Verhofstadt denounced the inability of the EU to take decisive action on the Libyan crisis. "This makes me sick," he declared.

(DUBLIN, IRELAND) The improvement of working conditions throughout a worker’s career is a necessary condition to enable workers to continue to work for as long as possible. But what constitutes good working conditions, and what is required to allow older workers to remain in work? The new Foundation Focus explores the complex relationship between work and health, and asks European social policymakers what they will do to tackle the challenges of work and health, and an ageing society.