Stqarrijiet - kollha

The EU should reinstate Myanmar's duty and quota free access to the EU market, said the EP's international trade committee on Thursday, in support of the Commission's proposal to support Myanmar in its reforms, in particular its efforts to eradicate forced labour.

The political elites of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) still lack a joint vision of its overall direction, and the is country falling further behind others in the region, warned the Foreign Affairs Committee in Thursday's vote on the EU's 2012 progress report on BiH. The country needs consistent commitment by political leaders at all levels and fully-functional institutions, said MEPs.

Following the Open Conference of Presidents in the European Parliament on 20 March 2013 on the outcome of the Spring European Council where the issue of the Cyprus banking sector was raised, European Parliament President Martin Schulz on behalf of the majority of political group leaders in the European Parliament Conference of Presidents - EPP Joseph Daul, S&D Hannes Swoboda, ALDE Guy Verhofstadt, Greens/EFA Rebecca Harms and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, ECR Martin Callanan, made the following statement:

Renewed mutual engagement is needed to maintain constructive relations between the EU and Turkey, said the Foreign Affairs Committee in a vote on Thursday. In their resolution, on the 2012 progress report on Turkey, MEPs praise talks which might help settle the Kurdish issue and call for negotiations to be opened on the judiciary, fundamental rights and home affairs.

Transport MEPs welcomed the proposal to update air passengers' rights tabled by the Commission on 13 March but insisted that it include rules on hand luggage and solutions for passengers stranded if an airline goes bankrupt, in their first discussion of the proposal on Tuesday. Commission Vice-President Siim Kallas paid tribute to Parliament's preparatory work in 2012.

Banking needs a culture change, which piecemeal legislation will not achieve on its own, says a draft report presented in the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee on Wednesday. It advocates further, more radical reforms, including separating retail from investment banking, stimulating competition, improving corporate governance and crisis management, reducing complexity and curbing risk-inducing pay deals. The Commission is asked to table legislation to this end.

MEPs quizzed European Commission Aviation Director Matthew Baldwin on Tuesday about the new rules on flight and duty times for flight crews recommended by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). The Commission has yet to table a proposal to put these rules into effect, but some MEPs said they would exercise their right of veto if they do not guarantee that working conditions and passenger safety outweigh commercial considerations.

A deal on banking supervision legislation that will strengthen EU-level oversight of many EU banks was struck by Parliament and Council negotiators on Tuesday. Parliament's negotiators inserted many provisions strengthening the system's transparency and accountability. They also ensured that its working structures will be imbued with a European spirit, rather than reflecting just a sum of national interests.

The "right to be forgotten", explicit consent before a person's data is collected and a ban on profiling on the basis of ethnic, religious or sexual orientation criteria are among the main demands for data protection reform made by the legal affairs committee in a non-binding opinion adopted on Tuesday.

The Copenhagen-based European Environment Agency was the only EU agency whose management of EU funds in 2011 was not approved by the Budgetary Control Committee on Tuesday. In other votes, the European Commission and other EU institutions and agencies passed the committee's budget "discharge" test, but the decision on whether to approve the Council of Ministers' bookkeeping was once again postponed.