Piotr Maciej Kaczynski is Research Fellow at the Center of European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels. In this interview, he discusses the European Union’s plans for its own diplomatic service, known as the European External Action Service, or EEAS.

EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso have drawn up a plan for the EEAS after the Lisbon Treaty on the future of the union entered into force last December. That plan, seen widely as a compromise between member states, has been approved by the EU member states and is set to be approved by the Council. Enacting this plan, which seeks to give the EU a more solid footing in the global arena, will be the challenge for Ashton’s team during the second half of 2010.

Wanted: Fresh ideas for a smart, clean and efficient electric grid. That call was placed in Munich on 15 July 2010 at the European launch of the GE Ecomagination challenge. This challenge makes available $200 million (160 million euro) for innovative ideas in digital energy.

Watch this video playlist for individual interviews with:
- Tore Land, Director Ecomagination EMEA, GE;
- Rich Hudson, CEO of Science Business;
- Gina Domanig, Managing Partner, Emerald Technology Ventures;
- Antoine Harary, Director, Strategy One;
- Ramon Wyss, Professor, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm;
- and Wiktor Raldow, Head of Unit, DG Research, European Commission.

For more information about the Ecomagination challenge, visit:
http://innovatingthefuture.blogactiv.eu.

EurActiv organized a Stakeholder Workshop in Brussels on ‘Healthcare; the demographic crisis’. Among the speakers were Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau, member of the cabinet of EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes; Mario Romao, digital health policy manager for Europe at Intel’s global public policy team; Bulgarian MEP Parvanova; and Pascal Garel, CEO of HOPE, the European Hospital and Healthcare Federation.

Vincent Van Quickenborne is Belgium’s Minister for Economy and Reform. He talks about Belgium’s EU presidency ambitions to reach a breakthrough on a single European patent by December 2010. Linguistic issues are the main obstacle, he says in this interview conducted 14 July at a chemical industry conference in Antwerp.

‘Putting Europe Back on Track’ is the theme of the 2010 European Business Summit in Brussels, organized by the federation of Belgian enterprises FEB/VOB and BUSINESSEUROPE.

This highlights compilation made by EUX.TV completes our video coverage of EBS2010.

Also see the dedicated blog on Blogactiv: http://backontrack.blogactiv.eu

The 2010 European Business Summit kicked off on Wednesday in Brussels under the theme “Putting Europe back on track”. A new report that took the views of more than 250 CEOs of European companies, surveyed by Accenture and the Insead business school, called on European politicians to do more to encourage innovation and build a more sustainable and competitive Europe.

This first video highlight clip includes short soundbites from Rudi Thomaes, Chief Executive Office of the Federation of Belgian Enterprises VEB/FOB; Mark Spelmann, member of the senior executive council of INSEAD; Philippe de Buck, Director General of BUSINESSEUROPE; CNBC anchor and moderator Guy Johnsson; and Frank Brown, Dean of the Insead business school.

This EUX.tv news update previews the presidency and hears from Bernard Bulcke, the spokesman for the Belgian permanent representation to the European Union. Bulcke said one issue that needs to be addressed under the presidency is the way that the rotating presidency works together with the European parliament, and also the cooperation between the Council and the Commission.

A divided Belgium next Wednesday will take over the European Union’s six-month rotating presidency from Spain. With a caretaker government in charge, Belgium is preparing to help the block find compromises between the EU’s institutions over the Lisbon Treaty and between member states over rules for eurozone budget deficits.

Since the Lisbon Treaty entered into force in December 2009, the rotating presidency of member states in the EU involves a leadership in all government-to-government talks at the EU, except for those in the European Council, where the EU heads of state and government come together. This Council now is chaired by Herman van Rompuy, a former Belgian prime minister, for a 2 1/2 year period.

The European Parliament is not pleased with the lack of progress on economic reforms in the talks about increased economic cooperation in the European Union. After meeting with European Council President Herman van Rompuy, the leaders of the main groups in the parliament, commenting on the outcome of Thursday’s EU summit in Brussels and a subsequent briefing by Van Rompuy, all urged EU leaders to adopt measures that will lead to more effective economic governance.

Footage source: EbS
Edit: EUX.tv

SOUNDBITE (in English) Corien Wortmann-Kool (PPE, NL: I must say that, although I did feel and I expressed that the Council and the member states are very committed to work more closely together, we want to see more ambition, we want to see that they really coordinate their policies, that there is a kind of binding sanction mechanism when they don’t fulfil their obligations. And there, it is still a long way to go, and the Parliament really has to play a leading role as we did this week with the broad support of the EP on our position on the 2020 strategy and on the economic governance. And we really are going to challenge the Council to go hand in hand towards a strong and successful economic cooperation because that is in the interest of all our citizens that want at the end growth and jobs.

SOUNDBITE (in French) Véronique De Keyser (S&D, BE): In our group we are rather afraid about the fact that this idea of economic stabilisation in order to win over the confidence of financial markets will not only be an obstacle for real growth but will also bring job losses, more austerity, breaches on our social models… About the coordination method, we feel that the instruments that have been proposed are not that different from those being used for the Lisbon strategy; Lisbon objectives were good, but the method to obtain them has been a failure, are we driving towards a second failure then?

SOUNDBITE (in French) Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, BE): There is a huge breach in between Council’s and European Parliament’s positions. The Parliament wants real economic governance based on the community method and we do not believe that the Council, in trusting the member states to deal with this task, is ready for it. Lisbon strategy was a failure because member states were in charge of the job… We think that European Commission should be given more power on this field.

SOUNDBITE (in English) Rebecca Harms (Verts/ALE, DE):Maybe I had too high expectations; I expected clear steps from this summit towards a European economic governance and what I received are only very soft messages on more coordination and more cooperation, not very precise and Mr Van Rompuy even made it worse, from my perspective, because he very much showed that he is a man of the work in the old way, the intergovernmental, and this is not what Europe needs now.
SOUNDBITE (in English) Lothar Bisky (GUE/NGL, DE):Don’t spend money, don’t spend money… All the states do not want to spend money, but on the other hand, what will happen? what about the unemployment? Without money, if everybody keeps its euros there will be more people without jobs, then we will have more poorness and the education will not come the level we need in Europe. I am not satisfied about this, maybe it’s a starting point to go together into an economic governance, but it’s only a starting point, it’s nothing concrete.
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BRUSSELS – The president of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, on Thursday kicked off another key meeting in Brussels on the European economy. At the table… the EU’s 27 presidents and prime ministers, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the new UK Prime Minister, David Cameron.

The member states looked to be in broad agreement on ways to strengthen budget discipline and economic policy coordination, but as usual, the devil is in the details.

Diplomats said plans for tough sanctions on countries such as Greece were still controversial because they can potentially exacerbate the economic crisis and put eastern European countries at a disadvantage.

The summit has revealed what diplomats call a “general lack of enthusiasm for punishing countries that already on their knees.”

So instead of reaching an official agreement on a new stability and growth pact, the summit proved to be another opportunity for a European show-of-unity at a time that financial markets remain edgy over government budget deficits.

A firm agreement on punishing countries that violate the financial rules for the euro still is not on paper. That’s now expected to happen in October, giving the the member states another three months to overcome their differences.