Maastricht set for European Public Sector Awards
November 5, 2009 Leave a Comment
The Dutch city of Maastricht on Thursday will see the presentation of the European Public Sector Awards, with an event and conference organized by the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) in the presence of several European commissioners. The night before the awards ceremony saw the presentation of a series of best practice certificates to [...]
Province of Limburg calls for more effective transfrontier cooperation with humouristic clips
July 9, 2009 Leave a Comment
The Province of Limburg has called for “the support of Europe and national authorities” to achieve more effective transfrontier cooperation in five key areas during a Council of Europe conference held in Maastricht on July 6-7, 2009. Public Transport in the Meuse-Rhine region Education in the Meuse-Rhine region Healthcare in the Meuse-Rhine region Public safety [...]
Minister wants Europeans to integrate better
July 1, 2009 Leave a Comment
Integration Minister Eberhard van der Laan wants Polish and other European immigrants to follow obligatory integration courses. At the moment European immigrants are not required to learn Dutch or assimilate in any way, but the minister is backed by a majority of the Lower House with support from the Christian Democrats, Labour Party and conservative [...]
Holidays popular with Europeans
July 1, 2009 Leave a Comment
Europeans like going on holiday. Dutch people aged 15 years and older, for example, went on holiday an average 1.4 times in 2007. They spend at least 4 nights away from home, in the Netherlands or abroad. Danes and Germans take about the same number of holidays as the Dutch. People from Luxembourg took the [...]
EU: Dutch government acts against European spirit
June 6, 2009 Leave a Comment
The European Commission said on Friday it will ask the Dutch government to clarify why it released last night preliminary results of the European elections in The Netherlands. The early release does not comply with the spirit of the European elections, said a spokesperson, speaking French. Source: EUX.TV, 5 June 2009
New portal to translate EU dailies into 10 languages
May 28, 2009 Leave a Comment
A new website launched Tuesday (26 May) aims to get EU citizens across the 27 member states talking and reading about the same issues, something that to date has been hindered by language barriers. With EUR 3m of European Commission funds a year and a team of 10 journalists, www.presseurop.eu is part of the EU’s [...]
Europe will intensify cooperation in education and training
May 15, 2009 Leave a Comment
The European Council has adopted a new strategic framework for cooperation between EU Member States to reform their education and training systems. This is an important signal in the current economic crisis. Common challenges, such as skills deficits, ageing societies and tough global competition, need joint responses and countries learning from each other. Common challenges [...]
Website to help Europe decide
April 17, 2009 Leave a Comment
With the European elections now just a little over seven weeks away many voters are still undecided as to which party to vote for on June 7. The EU Profiler website hopes to make the choice easier for the millions of Europeans voting. By answering a simple questionnaire, users will obtain a presentation of their [...]
Maastricht-Brussels Express curse or blessing?
February 26, 2009 Leave a Comment
The Maastricht-Brussels Express a curse or blessing? How succesful is this train connection in dealing with cross-border problems such as cultural barriers and technical differences? Source: EUX.TV, the Europe Channel
‘Gallery of Evolution’ opens in Brussels
February 13, 2009 Leave a Comment
The ‘Gallery of Evolution’ opened on February 12 at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. The Gallery of Evolution takes the visitor on a journey through the history of life, from the earliest forms to a prediction of the future. The Gallery of Evolution at the Brussels Museum of Natural Sciences is [...]
Immigration pushes Europe’s population to nearly 500 million
December 16, 2008 Leave a Comment
The population of the European Union increased to nearly half a billion in 2008, thanks largely to a rise in net migration, new figures show. According to the bloc’s statistical office, Eurostat, the 27 countries that form the EU will have a combined population of 499.7 million people on Jan. 1, up 2.2 million from [...]
Time to TH!NK ABOUT IT
December 4, 2008 Leave a Comment
The EJC has registered 50 bloggers for the first Europe-wide blogging competition, TH!NK ABOUT IT. We’ll get going with the January 2009 launch event, running until the European Parliamentary Elections in June. TH!NK ABOUT IT will host three bloggers from each EU member state in a a forum alive with debate and discussion – a [...]
Winter Wonders in Brussels
December 1, 2008 Leave a Comment
Friday night the mayor of Brussels Freddy Thielemans ceremoniously opened the annual Christmas market. (Winterpret)’Winter Wonders’ is made up of 240 wooden chalets, dotted around the centre. Apart from the 240 wooden chalets spread out over a route of a couple of kilometres, there is also a big sound and light show on the Market [...]
“Close soft-drugs shops in Maastricht”
October 30, 2008 Leave a Comment
The closure of coffee shops elsewhere in the Netherlands has triggered fears in the Belgian province of Limburg that drug tourists will now flock to the Dutch town of Maastricht. Flemish municipalities are concerned about the impact this move will have on them. Full article: Flanders News, 29 October 2008
Brussels wants EU-wide smoking ban in pubs and cafés
October 28, 2008 Leave a Comment
The European Commission is planning to start consultations on a possible EU-wide ban on smoking in all work places, but any legislative proposal on the issue is unlikely to happen during the term of the current commission, the EU executive said on Monday (27 October). “[EU social affairs] commissioner Vladimir Spidla would like to see [...]
Europe agrees to Blue Card for skilled migrants
October 23, 2008 Leave a Comment
European Union officials agreed to develop a so-called Blue Card, a fast-track work visa they hope will attract skilled migrant workers from devleoping countries. Engineers and health care workers are in high demand. In a bid to attract high-skilled workers from developing countries, the European Union will push forward a Blue Card scheme, an EU [...]
Belgian brothers win EU parliament film prize
October 23, 2008 Leave a Comment
The European Parliament on Wednesday awarded its cinema prize to Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for their film “The Silence of Lorna”, already feted at the Cannes Film Festival. The Lux prize and its Tower of Babel-inspired trophy, awarded only for the second time, means the mainly French-language film will now be subtitled in [...]
European Commission launches “Study in Europe” website to promote European higher education
October 20, 2008 Leave a Comment
The European Commission has launched a new web portal called “Study in Europe” to promote the attractiveness of European Higher Education to students from other parts of the world. The portal, at www.study-in-europe.org, is part of a wide-ranging campaign to increase the number of students from outside Europe who study in the EU. “Study in [...]
EU seeks more time out for working mothers
October 6, 2008 Leave a Comment
The European Commission unveiled Friday plans to extend minimum maternity leave in Europe by around a month, putting pressure on several EU nations to offer more support to working mothers. The plans would also help improve the rights of self-employed women by allowing them to take maternity leave should they wish to, and Brussels hopes [...]
Wallonia battles wasteland image
October 6, 2008 Leave a Comment
Belgian politicians are struggling to end a crisis that has paralysed government for 16 months. At its heart are tensions between the country’s north and south. In the second of a series of articles on Belgium, Henri Astier looks at French-speaking Wallonia’s efforts to change its fortunes and prosper within a united Belgium. Read full [...]
The English comedy club in Brussels
October 6, 2008 Leave a Comment
The English Comedy Club, an amateur English language theatre group in Brussels, is celebrating its 100th anniversary. It is the oldest English language theatre group in mainland Europe. Source: TV Brussels via Flanders News, 6 October 2008
English-speaking population grows, but not enough for Brussels
September 19, 2008 Leave a Comment
More and more people learn English every year, but fewer and fewer of them are good enough at it to act as interpreters, the European Union’s languages tsar lamented Thursday. The situation is paradoxical, EU Multilingualism Commissioner Leonard Orban told journalists in Brussels. “There are more and more people speaking English nowadays, and at the [...]
Brussels International, an English language programme for the international community in Brussels
September 18, 2008 Leave a Comment
Brussels International is the English language programme on TV Brussel, the capital’s regional broadcaster. The cooperation with TV Brussel enables people outside Brussels to be able to enjoy at least part of the programming of Brussels International. Every Sunday the regional station TV Brussel broadcasts a special lifestyle programme aimed at the international community in [...]
“Frietmuseum” opens in Bruges
August 28, 2008 Leave a Comment
The Belgian city of Bruges has opened a museum dedicated to the potato chip in the Saaihalle. According to Flanders Tourism, the “Frietmuseum” is the first of its kind in the world. The educational museum includes machines from the 18th century which were used to make chips, cooking pots, potato peelers and ovens. There’s also [...]
Only 1 Belgian zoo complies with animal welfare laws
August 21, 2008 Leave a Comment
Only one of Belgium’s 15 zoos complies with laws designed to protect wild animals that are held in captivity, according to a study carried out by the animal rights group GAIA. Members of GAIA visited the zoos during the past 12 months to see if they respect legislation designed to ensure animal welfare and visitor [...]
School children in EU to get more fruit and vegetables
July 9, 2008 Leave a Comment
School children could soon receive free fruit and vegetables in school, under a proposal unveiled by the European Commission on Tuesday (8 July) aimed at reducing the number of overweight children in the EU. Fresh fruit and vegetables worth €90 million of EU money would be distributed to schools, while member states participating in the [...]
All aboard the Eurocrat Express!
July 9, 2008 1 Comment
European parliamentarians have been enjoying their first ride aboard their very own train. The high-speed Thalys train has launched a new, direct service from Brussels to the French city of Strasbourg exclusively for MEPs. The service is an effort to silence growing discontent over the ‘travelling circus’, which involves the entire European Parliament uprooting to [...]
European Ombudsman: Late payment by Commission still a serious problem
July 8, 2008 Leave a Comment
The European Ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, has expressed his concern about the problems encountered by the European Commission in paying its bills on time. This follows his latest investigation into the timeliness of the Commission’s payments to citizens, companies, universities, NGOs, and other organisations involved in EU-funded projects and contracts. In 2007, delays occurred in [...]
Bonn: International gardeners grow together in city project
July 8, 2008 Leave a Comment
Interesting project in Bonn, covered by Deutsche Welle: 20 plots, 15 cultures – one garden. Families from 15 different cultures are growing the International Garden in Bonn together. View the photogallery on Deutsche Welle. Visit the website of the project with audio links: Deutsche Welle, July 2008
Brussels International: TV Brussels’ English programme for the international community in Brussels
July 3, 2008 Leave a Comment
Every Sunday TV Brussel broadcasts a special lifestyle programme aimed at the international community in the Belgian capital. Brussels International goes out on Sunday at 6:15 PM and is repeated until Monday evening. The programme is in English, but focuses on the rich diversity of the international community in Brussels. Source: Flanders.be, 1 July 2008
