Highlights

The UK has announced it will not apply the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court it ratified in 2018. Unified Patent Courts (in London, Paris and Munich) have exclusive competence over European patents and European patents with unitary effect. As they ultimately fall under judicial supervision of the CJEU, UK participation after Brexit had already been a shaky issue. This paper evaluates the options for the EU after the news of the UK government leaving the UPCA, and the effects on EU patent law.

EU's Common, Security and Defence Policy has seen unprecedented developments since 2009. Many challenges remain, unity and political will being sine qua non conditions. These four short analyses requested by the SEDE sub-committee assess progress made and where the EU stands on Security and Defence, ten years after the Lisbon Treaty. They focus on key issues for the future: capabilities development, technological and industrial base, missions and operations, and the institutional framework.

How does the digital era affect the mental health of workers? What are the recent findings on the topic? This briefing requested by the EMPL Committee aims to provide an insight into how recent technical innova-tion and its pace affect the mental well-being of workers. It summarises the findings of the relevant literature and identifies areas requiring further research or data collection.

This study evaluates the visibility and communication of cohesion policy in online media and the effectiveness of communication activities. The communication of cohesion policy in online media has been weak in recent years, despite the increased political priority placed on communi-cation by EU institutions. Media coverage is often shallow, with limited depth of understanding or analysis and there is little appreciation of the role of the EU or wider impact of the policy.

A delegation of the Women's Rights and Gender Equality committee will be in Croatia to attend a high-level conference on Gender Equality: “Participation of women on the labour market – Benefit for society!” Equality between women and men is a fundamental value of the EU. It is therefore important to promote equal opportunities and non-discrimination based on sex. The FEMM mission will attend i.a. the EU Conference on Gender Equality and discuss gender equality issues with Croatian authorities.

This Briefing is a background note for the Committee on Budgets public hearing on “EU Own Resources and Fiscal Policy Harmonisation: Untapped potential for Synergies?”. It describes the very specific structure of the EU revenue coming from three types of own resources, i) traditional own resources, ii) VAT-based own resource and iii) GNI-based own resource. State of play of what has been done to improve own resource is provided. Lastly, fiscal policy harmonisation initiatives are listed.