Search

Road safety has improved significantly in the EU, with the number of road fatalities falling by more than 60 % in the last 20 years. However, improvements in road safety fell short of the EU goals of decreasing the number of road deaths by 50 % between 2001 and 2010, and by an additional 50 % between 2011 and 2020. Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road safety-related traffic offences – the Cross-border Enforcement (CBE) Directive – is one of the pillars ...

On 9 December 2022, 20 years after the signature of the EU-Chile Association Agreement in 2002, the EU and Chile reached an agreement in principle on a new EU-Chile Advanced Framework Agreement, which comprises modernised trade and political and cooperation pillars. Negotiations were launched in November 2017, based on a Council negotiating mandate, which was the first-ever to have been published prior to the start of negotiations. Although the trade pillar had operated smoothly and led to an expansion ...

The Netherlands is set to receive €5 441.4 million, solely in grants, to implement its national recovery and resilience plan (NRRP). The plan is relatively small compared with most Member States' plans, with a value of 0.7 % of Dutch gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 (0.51 % in 2023). The original plan was awarded with €4 707.1 million from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). On 17 October 2023, the plan was amended to include an ambitious REPowerEU chapter along with other updates, allocating ...

Austria's national recovery and resilience plan (NRRP) was updated on 9 November 2023 with the introduction of a REPowerEU chapter. The plan now totals €4 187 million, of which €3 961million are financed through Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) grants. The difference is financed through national resources. To implement the plan, Austria is leveraging further amounts beyond EU support from the national budget. Austria has requested the maximum amount of grants available (non-repayable support ...

Since the downfall of the authoritarian General Suharto in 1998, a series of reforms have transformed Indonesia into the world's fourth largest democracy (and largest Muslim democracy). The country has a presidential system in which a directly elected president serves as head of both state and government. A two-term limit on the presidency helps to ensure a peaceful alternation of power. Also directly elected, Indonesia's House of Representatives (the lower house of the two chambers of parliament ...

Luxembourg's national recovery and resilience plan (NRRP) was initially to be financed by the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) with a total of €93.4 million in grants. This allocation accounted for around 51 % of the plan's total estimated value (€183.1 million), while a further 46 % of the costs were to be covered by the national budget, and 3 % from other EU co-financing. The NRRP has since been adjusted, first to factor in the European Commission's 2022 recalculations of the grants available ...

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, adding a REPowerEU chapter, the plan's value reached €163 billion (or 13.1 % of national gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019), an increase of roughly 135 % compared with the original plan of 2021 (€69.5 billion ...

A key moment during the October II session was the debate on managing migration in an effective and holistic way through fostering returns, based on a Commission statement following up the previous week's European Council conclusions. International topics also took up much of the agenda, with Members debating Commission statements on war crimes committed by Russia, EU action against Russian shadow fleets and ensuring full enforcement of sanctions, and protection of European journalists reporting ...

Shortly after having been elected Japan's Prime Minister in September 2024, Ishiba Shigeru called elections to the house of representatives (the lower house) to be held on 27 October. The vote will follow an intensive 12-day electoral campaign, against a backdrop of scandals involving members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), rising consumer prices, staple food shortages and security concerns over regional tensions. While this may weaken the LDP's majority, a divided opposition might ...

Croatia's national recovery and resilience plan (NRRP) is an ambitious outline of reforms and investment designed to mitigate the pandemic's socioeconomic fallout. Following the December 2023 amendment of the Croatian NRRP, to which a REPowerEU chapter was added, the plan's worth reached €10 040.7 million (or 18.5 % of national gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019), an increase of over 59 % compared with the original (2021) version of the plan, which was worth €6 297 million in grants only. The amended ...