European Union

The European Commission will begin the process on Friday of applying a 'blocking statute' against potential US extraterritorial sanctions on EU companies that operate in Iran, commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Thursday at an EU summit in Sofia. The 1996 regulation allows companies to ignore penalties issued by certain non-EU jurisdictions. Juncker also said the European Investment Bank will "facilitate investment between Europe and Iran".

Relations between Macedonia and Greece are "even stronger" after the two countries' leaders met in Sofia, Macedonian PM Zoran Zaev said Thursday. He said that he and Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras "looked at possible options for creative solutions" to their dispute over Macedonia's name. He said he hoped an agreement can be found in June, but that it will depend on "relevant political factors" in both countries.

The European Commission on Thursday referred six member states to the European Court of Justice for repeated failures to tackle air pollution. The six are Germany, France, United Kingdom, Hungary, Italy and Romania. Environment commissioner Karmenu Vella said: "The member states referred to the court today have received sufficient 'last chances' over the last decade to improve the situation." The six are accused of failing to tackle nitrogen dioxide levels.

Quim Torra, the new president of Catalonia's regional government, was sworn in at the Catalan parliament on Thursday. He pledged to be "loyal to the will of the Catalan people and its representatives in parliament". The oath did not mention loyalty to the Spanish king nor to the country's constitution, as it was the tradition until Torra's predecessor, Carles Puigdemont. Torra was elected by the parliament on Monday.

Bayer CropScience v Commission
Agriculture and fisheries
The General Court confirms the validity of the restrictions introduced at EU level in 2013 against the insecticides clothianidin, thiamethoxam and imidacloprid because of the risks those substances pose to bees

Karel de Grote - Hogeschool Katholieke Hogeschool Antwerpen
Approximation of laws
The EU directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts may apply to an educational establishment

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg's EU charm tour has gone awry before it began over plans to hide from public scrutiny.

Russian president Vladimir Putin and German chancellor Angela Merkel will meet for the second time in just one month in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Friday to discuss current global issues of Iran, Syria and Ukraine. The meeting could signal a shift in EU-Russia relations, amid a deepening US-European crisis of confidence, Russian state broadcaster RT reported.

"With friends like that, who needs enemies?" European Council Donald Tusk asked on Wednesday, as EU leaders were trying to come up with a reply to the US president's questioning of the transatlantic relationship.

French energy giant Total said on Wednesday it might quit a $2bn natural gas project in Iran if it could not secure a waiver from US sanctions. It follows a decision on Monday by Danish shipping operator Maersk Tankers to wind down business in Iran by November. German insurer Allianz said on Tuesday it was also prepared to curtail Iran-related business to avoid US sanctions.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that the UN has "collapsed" and described the international body as "finished" because of its lack of response to Israel's use of force against demonstrators in Gaza, where over 60 Palestinians were killed and thousands wounded during protests earlier this week. Irish premier Leo Varadkar blamed the US decision to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem for the violence.

A majority of 58 percent of voters in Ireland supports repealing the Eighth Amendment and allowing for abortions, a fresh poll from Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI has found ahead of the abortion referendum on 25 May. The pro-abortion camp is however shrinking, and is now three points lower compared to opinion polls in April, while the anti-abortion side increased four points in the past month to 42 percent support.

The EU is prioritising motorways and gas pipelines across the potential accession Western Balkan countries, plus hydropower energy projects which threaten one of the world's freshwater biodiversity hotspots.

Three European capitals are seeking to annul laxer nitrogen oxides limits for cars - which were introduced as compensation to the car industry's difficulties in passing the new on-road emissions test.

Written by Piotr Bakowski, Marc Lilienkamp and Rosamund Shreeves,

International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOT)

Although prohibiting discrimination and protecting human rights are key elements of the EU legal order, discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons persists throughout the EU, taking various forms including verbal abuse and physical violence. The first ever EU-wide survey on the extent and nature of discrimination, violence and hate speech experienced by LGBT people across the EU, conducted by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency in 2012, found that almost half of the respondents had felt personally discriminated against or harassed within the previous year, whilst a quarter said that they had been attacked or threatened with violence in the past five years. Lesbian women (55 %), young people (57 %) and poorer LGBT people (52 %) were more likely to be discriminated against, whilst trans persons were shown to experience the highest levels of discrimination, harassment and violence amongst all LGBT subgroups. One of the key findings was that 90 % of such incidents go unreported to the authorities. A study issued for Parliament in 2018 has quantified the serious impact of discrimination on LGBTI individuals and wider society (including increased health risks, estimated lost earnings of €19-53 million and a GDP loss of €25-71 million) and highlighted the uneven protection in the current EU anti-discrimination legislation.

Although sexual orientation is recognised in EU law as a ground of discrimination, the scope of the provisions is limited and does not cover social protection, healthcare, education and access to goods and services, leaving LGBTI people particularly vulnerable in these areas. Moreover, EU competence does not extend to recognition of marital or family status. In this area, national regulations vary, with some Member States offering same-sex couples the right to marry, others allowing alternative forms of registration, and yet others not providing any legal status for same-sex couples. Same-sex couples may or may not have the right to adopt children and to access assisted reproduction. These divergent legal statuses have implications, for instance, for partners from two Member States with different standards who want to formalise/legalise their relationship or for same-sex couples and their families wishing to move to another Member State. In practice, lesbian and gay couples can encounter problems getting their partnership and rights recognised in another EU country. For instance, two women legally married in the Netherlands may lose pension, inheritance, next-of-kin, or child custody rights when moving to, say, Italy, Latvia, or Romania.

During its eighth term, the European Parliament has adopted a number of resolutions strongly condemning homophobia, highlighting discrimination and calling for further legislation and action to protect and extend LGBTI rights:

• Regarding the EU legislative framework, it has called for monitoring to ensure proper transposition and implementation of existing EU legislation and reiterated its support for a proposed new directive, which would protect against discrimination outside the labour market, but on which the Member States have as yet been unable to agree.
• On family and free movement issues, Parliament has encouraged the EU and the Member States to ‘reflect on the recognition of same-sex marriage or same-sex civil union as a political, social and human and civil rights issue’ and called for further action to ensure that same-sex couples and their families can truly exercise their right to free movement across the EU, including automatic cross-border recognition of adoption orders, without discrimination.
• In March 2018, Parliament’s Annual resolution on the situation of fundamental rights in the EU condemned all forms of discrimination against LGBTI people, including the practice of LGBTI conversion therapies and the pathologisation of trans people, and stressed the urgency of tackling increasing levels of hate speech and hate crime. Its resolution on gender equality in the media sector in the EU, adopted in February 2018, puts forward concrete proposals for combating hate speech and harmful stereotypes.
• Parliament has also drawn attention to the human rights situation for LGBTI people outside the EU and the need to ensure that their situation is taken into account in asylum procedures.

To mark this year’s International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOT) on 17 May, the Parliament’s Intergroup on LGBTI Rights – an informal forum for MEPs – is organising a specific event to highlight the situation of LGBTI people seeking asylum in Europe.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) notes that, in addition to the risks faced by refugees at large, LGBTI refugees also face a series of risks that that are unique to sexual minorities. In 2017, the first annual report from the UN’s Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity gave an overview of the current global situation. It documents widespread physical and psychological violence against LGBTI persons in all regions — including murder, assault, kidnapping, rape, sexual violence, as well as torture and ill-treatment in institutional and medical settings — and highlights that displaced LGBTI persons may face continued or additional discrimination in the country in which they seek asylum or when they are internally displaced within their country of origin. UNHCR guidelines on interpreting claims to refugee status based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity were adopted in 2012.

Nevertheless, in 2017 the EU Fundamental Rights Agency’s review of the current situation in the EU for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex asylum seekers, found that although international and EU law guarantees safety to those fleeing persecution, in practice LGBTI people are not receiving the protection they need. There are considerable differences between procedures in the EU Member States in terms of how they take account of claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity and only some EU Member States are applying the UNHCR guidelines. Advocacy organisations, such as ILGA-Europe and Transgender Europe, have also called for further action to ensure that LGBTI asylum seekers and refugees are given more effective protection in the EU and that the proposed new package of measures on the Common European Asylum System takes the specific situation of LGBTI people into consideration.

For its part, the European Parliament is preparing a number of amendments to this new migration legislation, to ensure that the specific problems encountered by LGBTI refugees and asylum seekers are taken into account in procedures for assessing asylum claims and arrangements for reception and resettlement. Parliament has already adopted a resolution highlighting the need for asylum professionals, including interviewers and interpreters, to receive proper training on the needs of LGBTI people and for LGBTI-sensitive reception facilities across all Member States. Its resolution of February 2017 on equality between women and men in the European Union in 2014-2015 also calls for refugees who are victims of violence based on [their] sexual orientation or gender identity to be given support ‘at all stages of the migration process’, including measures such as immediate relocation if their safety cannot be guaranteed, mental health support and immediate gender identity recognition for the duration of asylum procedures.

See also our briefing on The rights of LGBTI people in the European Union.

Written by Joanna Apap, Eulalia Claros and Maria-Margarita Mentzelopoulou,

Areas targeted by main migration funding programmes

Funding instruments in the field of migration and asylum management cover, on the one hand, different EU policy fields, such as enlargement, neighbourhood, development cooperation and common foreign and security policy, as well as, on the other, international projects such as those managed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) at a more global level. The legal basis of each funding instrument provides for the range of its geographical and thematic coverage. In addition, interaction takes place between the different areas covered by the thematic and geographic programmes and other external financing Instruments. The funding landscape changed in 2013 with the new Financial Regulation applicable to the EU budget. This enabled the European Commission to create and administer Union Trust Funds in the field of external action, from 2014: these include multi-donor trust funds for emergency, post-emergency or thematic actions such as the Bêkou and the Madad Fund. The European Parliament welcomed this development in an April 2013 resolution, considering that it would allow the EU to raise the visibility of its external action and to have greater control over the delivery chain of such funds.
Following the Valletta Summit in November 2015, an Emergency Trust Fund for stability, to address the root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa was created. To meet the increased migratory challenges, EU funding for the 2015-2018 period has more than doubled. More-over, the crisis in Syria and in the neighbouring region led to the creation of different funding instruments, by the EU and the international community. EU agencies active externally are also funded through the EU budget. For the 2015-2018 period contributions for support to such EU agencies and their operations reaches €1.4 billion. Funding is one of the main instruments for EU cooperation with third countries in the area of migration, asylum and borders.

This paper aims to map and clarify the different funding instruments established for migration-related projects, financed by the EU as well as by the international community.

Read this briefing on ‘Migration & asylum: Projects & funding‘ on the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

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Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
According to Advocate General Szpunar, the Court is not competent to answer questions asked by the issuing judicial authority of a European arrest warrant on whether the executing authority can refuse to execute that warrant

Deutsche Lufthansa v Commission
Competition
The Commission must re-examine the request made by Lufthansa and Swiss concerning the waiver of their pricing commitments for the Zurich-Stockholm route

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The European Union is committed to the continued full and effective implementation of all parts of the Iran nuclear deal. After international negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme were concluded, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, was implemented on 16 January 2016.

Download this video here.

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The European Union's commitment to effective multilateralism, with the United Nations at its core, is a central element of its external action.

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