European Year 2012 / Social aspects in focus / Parliament and Council Reach Agreement on campaign details

The European Year 2012 has finally got a name. 'Active ageing and solidarity of generations' is the title Parliament and Council agreed on in Strasbourg last night. "We have set out a clear message for the European Year 2012", said Martin Kastler MEP who is the European Parliament Rapporteur on the European Year 2012.

Debating a Commission plan to allow member states to temporarily reintroduce border controls in the Schengen area, GUE/NGL MEP Rui Tavares (Portugal) said that "we cannot and must not put Schengen to one side; this would be damaging to the European Union."

"In many areas, the EU's foreign policy has failed: in the Arab world, in Afghanistan, in dealing with the Palestinian problem and the conflicts in our eastern neighbourhood", GUE/NGL Chair Lothar Bisky told Catherine Ashton, responding to the EU's High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) on the main aspects and basic choices of the EU in this field.

After the long and failed negotiations on new kinds of food, including meat from cloned animals, rapporteur for the European Parliament, Kartika Liotard (GUE/NGL, Netherlands) revealed a "secret" document from the Legal Service of the Council of Ministers that stated that a ban on products from clones and their offspring is actually defensible under WTO rules.

Tomorrow, a meeting of nuclear safety regulators from all EU member states (ENSReg) will decide on the criteria for the planned EU nuclear stress tests. The Greens last week expressed concern (1) about draft criteria proposed by regulators from member states with nuclear energy (WENRA) and are urging EU energy commissioner Oettinger to ensure that any EU nuclear stress tests apply the strictest criteria (2). Ahead of the ENSReg meeting, Greens/EFA co-president Rebecca Harms said: