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As announced in the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030, on 22 June 2022 the European Commission tabled a proposal for a nature restoration regulation. The proposed regulation would set multiple binding restoration targets and obligations across a broad range of ecosystems, from forests and agricultural land to urban areas, rivers and marine habitats, complementing other existing legal instruments. Altogether, these nature restoration measures should cover at least 20 % of the EU's land and sea areas ...

The EU and its Member States have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and use its definition of disability as a common reference at EU level. There is no other harmonised definition of disability in the EU. Although a wide variety of statistical surveys are available in terms of questions asked and population surveyed, a complete statistical assessment of disability in the EU does not yet exist. However, the annual Eurostat statistics on income and living conditions ...

Under the farm to fork strategy, part of the European Green Deal, the EU has set itself a double target: a 50 % reduction in the overall use of and risk from chemical plant protection products, and a 50 % reduction in the use of more hazardous ones by 2030. The proposal for a regulation tabled by the European Commission on 22 June 2022, which would replace the 2009 sustainable use directive, would require Member States to contribute collectively to achieving these EU-wide targets through the adoption ...

The marketing standards established by the 'breakfast directives' are more than 20 years old. Over time, food markets have evolved substantially, driven by innovation and changes in consumer demand and expectations. Taking this shift into account, on 21 April 2023 the European Commission proposed to update some of the rules governing a set of directives on food products – the 'breakfast' directives – including the marketing standards they introduced. The revision also echoes key messages of the EU's ...

Spain's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) is the second largest (in absolute figures) financed by the Next Generation EU (NGEU) recovery instrument and its main spending tool, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). Following the October 2023 amendment of the Spanish NRRP, to which a REPowerEU chapter was added, the plan's worth reached €163 billion (or 13.1 % of national gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019), which is an increase of roughly 135 % compared with the original (2021) ...

Ireland's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) is relatively small compared with most Member States' plans. In absolute terms and per capita, Ireland has the second smallest allocation (after Luxembourg) under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF)  initially €989 million, and following the European Commission's update of national allocations, €914.4 million in grants, to be disbursed in five instalments. Ireland has not requested loans and has not submitted a REPowerEU chapter. In May ...

On 5 July 2023, the Commission tabled a proposal for a regulation on certain new genomic techniques (NGTs). It establishes two categories of plants obtained by NGTs: plants comparable to naturally occurring or conventional plants, and plants with modifications that are more complex. The two categories will be subject to different requirements to reach the market, taking into account their different characteristics and risk profiles. Feedback from stakeholders is mixed. While industry interest groups ...

Algorithm-generated diets tailored to our individual needs could bring health benefits, but at the cost of having to share our most personal data, such as our DNA. The promises are many, but so are the open questions about interactions between genes, nutrients, environment and health, and the role of socioeconomic factors underlying food choices. Precision nutrition advice, services and products will need to be governed by a range of laws and policies, as they are at the intersection between food ...

The purpose of World Mental Health Day is to improve knowledge, raise awareness and mobilise efforts in support of mental health around the world. This year's theme, 'Mental health is a universal human right', underlines that a mental health condition should never be a reason to deprive a person of their human rights.

According to recent statistics published by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, over 376 million people around the world have been forcibly displaced by floods, windstorms, earthquakes or droughts since 2008, with a record 32.6 million in 2022 alone. Since 2020, there has been an annual increase in the total number of displaced people due to disaster compared with the previous decade of 41 % on average. The upward trend is alarmingly clear. With climate change as the driving catalyst, the ...