CPME Subcommittees and Board met on 14 and 15 March 2008 in Ljubljana. This was the first Board meeting chaired by CPME President Dr Michael Wilks, who commenced his mandate on 1 January 2008 for a 2 year period.

The following policy documents were adopted:

Commitments to EU Alcohol and Health Forum EN / FR

Waste-to-Energy capacity also needed for residues from recycling

More recycling and Waste-to-Energy (WtE) will reduce net Green House Gas emissions.

This is the conclusion of three recently published studies:

A new briefing released by the European Environment Agency (EEA) states:

European Business Leaders Call for a Simplified Patent Process to Drive Innovation Europe’s 500, the association of the European top growth companies, calls upon the European Commission and the Member States to introduce a simplified central patent application process for the EU. At present, inventors in Europe are required to complete 27 separate registration processes in many languages across the EU27 and the cost of obtaining approval for a single patent can be as high as €150,000.

The EU Committee of the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) has just submitted to the European institutions its priority areas for developing a European policy on sustainable urban mobility.

Last September the European Commission published a Green paper on urban transport, ‘Towards a new culture for urban mobility’, thereby marking the start of a consultation phase which will result in an Action Plan on urban mobility. UITP’s recent position came in response to this consultation.

The priorities of UITP’s EU Committee are:

High speed broadband networks at the centre of ETNO meetings with US authorities and industry

Washington DC – A delegation of leading European telecoms operators, chaired by Michael Bartholomew, ETNO Director, is meeting with US senior officials and industry representatives this week, to discuss high speed broadband deployment.