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This activity report summarises and explains the work undertaken by the European Parliament in the fields of impact assessment and European added value during the calendar year 2022. It details the support given by the Directorate for Impact Assessment and European Added Value within the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) to assist parliamentary committees in their oversight and scrutiny of the executive in the fields of ex-ante impact assessment, European added value, and ex-post evaluation ...

The impact assessment (IA) defines in sufficient detail the problem, its drivers and the need to protect media pluralism and independence in the EU. While it duly explains that the problems identified affect the 'entire information ecosystem', their geographical scale is not very clear. The IA examines three options, with different packages of measures with a gradually increasing level of approximation of certain aspects of national frameworks relating to media pluralism and independence. Costs and ...

Democratic control and legitimacy in the evolving EU economic governance frameworkThe European Semester (ES) is a centrepiece of the EU’s evolving economic governance architecture and its democratic legitimacy and accountability has been contested in pre- and post-pandemic times. This paper introduces two perspectives – a democratic and a technocratic perspective – to evaluate the accountability of the ES, based on a survey of existing literature. Whereas there is broad agreement that the ES has ...

The initiative's general objective is to address interoperability issues Member States and the EU institutions face when delivering digital public services across EU borders. The impact assessment (IA) identifies the problem clearly as the limited interoperability of network and information systems supporting digital public services in the EU. However, the IA's efforts to identify the scale of the problem are limited, and it could have explained better how the problem would evolve in the future. ...

Vaikka Euroopan yhdentyminen on keskeinen kasvun, rauhan, ympäristönsuojelun ja sosiaalisen vaurauden edistäjä, jäljellä on edelleen haasteita ja mahdollisia kriisejä voidaan pitää todennäköisinä. Tulevaisuudessa Eurooppa voi valita useista eri etenemisvaihtoehdoista. Euroopan parlamentti kannattaa sellaisten kunnianhimoisten yhteisten EU:n toimien toteuttamista, joilla on mahdollista saavuttaa merkittäviä hyötyjä, ei ainoastaan tällä hetkellä, vaan myös erilaisissa mahdollisissa tulevaisuuden skenaarioissa ...

The Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive is the first piece of EU-wide legislation on cybersecurity, and its specific aim was to achieve a high common level of cybersecurity across the Member States. While it increased the Member States' cybersecurity capabilities, its implementation proved difficult, resulting in fragmentation at different levels across the internal market. To respond to the growing threats posed with digitalisation and the surge in cyber-attacks, the Commission has ...

This study analyses how governments, public health experts and other professionals communicated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact of these communication strategies. It investigates COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation practices, and how these practices were addressed in the European Union by the Member States and the European Commission. It draws up recommendations to improve responses in the future, including by analysing the role of the Code of Practice on disinformation ad the ...

Sixty years ago, on 5 February 1963, the European Court of Justice handed down the first in a series of landmark judgments that laid the constitutional foundations of the EU legal order. The seminal case of Van Gend & Loos offered the Court an opportunity to proclaim the doctrine of the direct effect of EU law within the legal orders of the Member States. In practice, this means that individuals may claim rights directly under EU law and enforce those rights before national courts. The Van Gend & ...

There is ample evidence that malign foreign actors are engaging in foreign interference in the politics and democracy of the European Union (EU) and its Member States. Much of this foreign interference escapes identification or censure by exploiting loopholes in the EU’s legislative and policy acquis. This in-depth analysis identifies some of those loopholes and proposes measures to close them. An EU focal point would significantly improve the EU’s capacity to investigate and respond strategically ...

Based on a 2018 (REFIT) evaluation, the IA defines the main problems, the objectives and the policy options to address them with a clear intervention logic. It is based on solid internal and external expertise and various consultations to compensate for a considerable (and acknowledged) lack of data. While it is transparent about methods, uncertainties and limitations, additional quantification and/or substantiation would have been useful in some areas, namely when it comes to potential impacts on ...