•  The European telecoms sector has been in decline and lags all other major regions of the world on financials – but could generate additional annual revenues in excess of €40bn by 2020 with the right policy framework in place
•  Operators need three freedoms: freedom to price, freedom to innovate and freedom to consolidate, in order to reverse this trend and maintain a healthy, competitive sector which can attract investment needed to build a world-class digital infrastructure

The European Banking Federation (EBF) expresses serious concerns over European Commission proposal to introduce new rules relating to access to basic payment accounts, transparency and comparability of bank account fees and bank account switching.

The EBF believes that the evidence and added value - to justify the proposed package is questionable. Moreover, it appears that some proposals are totally disproportionate to the actual needs.

Brussels, 8 May 2013: Last week the European Citizens’ Initiative ‘Water is a human right’ succeeded in gathering one million signatures from at least seven EU Member States in proportion to their size of population. This qualifies ‘Water is a human right’ as the first European Citizens’ Initiative ever to be submitted to the European Commission.

"CLEPA welcomes the today vote of the EP ENVI Committee on the revision of the 2020 targets for reducing CO2 emissions from vans.
We believe that the 147 g/km target is achievable with existing technologies. The retention of super credits for low emission vehicles and eco-innovation will also boost the development of breakthrough technologies." said Mr Jean Marc Gales, CLEPA CEO.

Transparency, consistency and comparability in the social and environmental information accompanying company financial statements are increasingly seen as important in terms of strengthening the trust of investors and stakeholders in those companies.