6th December 2011 /// Today, the first State of the Union on Disability was organised in Brussels. This historic meeting hosted by President José Manuel Barroso gathered Jerzy Buzek, President of the European Parliament, Herman Van Rompuy President of the European Council, and Yannis Vardakastanis President of the European Disability Forum: the representative organisation of disabled people in Europe. Together, they discussed how to improve the lives of 80 million Europeans with disabilities and to guaranty their rights and freedom of movement.

FoodDrinkEurope today launched its Competitiveness Report 2011, calling on policymakers in the EU to adopt a stronger stance on safeguarding its biggest asset -the Internal Market- in order to restore economic confidence in the Union and demonstrate the benefits of EU membership more concretely to its citizens.

6 December 2011 /// The European Disability Forum, AGE Platform Europe and Vodafone has announced the winners of the inaugural Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards at a ceremony attended by the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes and Vodafone Group Chief Executive Vittorio Colao. Working on the martphone revolution

Brussels, 01 December 2011

Consumers should be at the core of discussions on the future competitiveness and sustainable growth of the European automotive industry. But the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) – a consumer body representing 104 Touring and Motoring Clubs as well as 36 million members from its Brussels office -  believes the current CARS 21 process must do more to meet consumer expectations. The High Level Group was meeting today to adopt an interim report.

After nearly 40 years of stalemate, the European Union is on the brink of approving a unitary patent regime that aims to simplify costs, cut red-tape and enhance competitiveness for EU businesses.

Due to linguistic dispute over the decision to focus on translation into only three community languages (EN, FR, DE), Italy and Spain are not participating so the measures are being introduced by the 'enhanced cooperation' procedure involving the other 25 Member States.