Highly speculative financial market transactions in government bonds and credit-default swaps (CDS) will soon be contained throughout the EU. Negotiators of the European Parliament and the Council agreed on a new EU Regulation on short selling last night. "We have successfully fought for very strict conditions for short selling. Such restrictions are badly needed to contain destructive speculation", said Markus Ferber MEP who is in charge of the Regulation on short selling for the EPP Group.

Following the proposal made by Alain Lamassoure MEP, Chairman of the Budgets Committee of the European Parliament, the Polish EU Council Presidency, the European Parliament and the European Commission are organising a conference on Thursday 20 and Friday 21 October on the financing of European growth and competitiveness by 2020, which will gather the 27 governments of the EU Member States, representatives of the European Institutions and all national parliaments.

The EPP Group has welcomed today's proposal by the European Commission on project bonds. Commissioner Olli Rehn has proposed launching a pilot phase to attract private capital financing infrastructure in the field of transport, energy and ICT infrastructure.

According to the EPP Group, project bonds will help to secure the required investment in European infrastructure. They will create sufficient confidence to attract more private financing, thereby serving as an important mechanism for maximum leverage of public spending.

“There is a case for state aid funding to make sure that the Digital Agenda avoids a Digital Divide. But we have a warning about how to use public funds. Keep them out of our territories. Not because we are scared to compete with other players - on the contrary. But because it kills the will for private investment if the market figures that the state will just pour money in if you wait around long enough. That is not going to help Europe's Digital Agenda.

After almost 12 months of waiting, ANEC welcomes the adoption of a regulatory definition of nanomaterials by the European Commission, albeit with mixed feelings. We welcome application of the approach according to which the size distribution of a material should be based on the number concentration (i.e. the number of particles), and not on the mass concentration of a nanomaterial product. This is because a small mass concentration may contain the largest number fraction1.