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.

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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With 3.2 million .eu domains registered after five years, the .eu European domain continues to grow and enables companies and private individuals to adopt a European identity on the web, according to participants at a conference in the European Parliament organized on 2 June 2010 for European domain registrar EURid. In order to fully take up on the opportunities offered by the global web, Europe still needs to overcome some challenges, especially in the area of security and privacy. Speaking in this EUXTV Event Report are European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes (Digital Agenda), British conservative MEP Malcolm Harbour, Marc van Wesemael, general manager of Eurid, and others.

For all interviews conducted at this event, go to: http://eurid.blogactiv.eu/

Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Digital Agenda and Vice-President of the commission, on Wednesday delivered the main dinner address at the EURid dinner in the European Parliament, reflecting on the achievements of the .eu domain so far and on the Internet priorities for European policymakers.

Brussels will host the 38th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on June 20-25 and the .eu domain this year celebrates its fourth anniversary. To mark that anniversary, EURid, the European Registry of Internet Domain names, was invited for a dinner at the European Parliament hosted by British conservative MEP Malcolm Harbour.

Earlier in the week, Kroes delivered a 39-point Digital Agenda action plan to the European Union’s telecoms ministers. Story at EurActiv: http://bit.ly/bVUANd

For more information on the Brussels ICANN meeting, please visit http://brussels38.icann.org

Joe Biden, Vice-President of the United States of America, has given an addres to the European Parliament today in Brussels.

His visit to the Parliament is seen as the most senior by a US official since Ronald Reagan spoke to the Chamber in 1985 to mark 40 years since Victory in Europe day.

Biden spoke about Europe’s relationship with Washington in a multilateral world as well as climate change and global governance

The outspoken British Member of the European Parliament Nigel Farage on Thursday was injured in a crash with a light aircraft.

The election day crash happened just after 8 oclock in the morning shortly after his plan took off from a small airfield near the town of Brackley in the middle of England in Northamptonshire.

The plane was towing a banner with a slogan for the UK INdependence party.

Farage is still in hospital, and British media report him to be comfortable despite his injuries. The pilot is reported to be worse off and is said to be still unconscious.

As part of its campaign in the British general elections, UKIP has been flying banners across England in recent weeks. Nigel Farage is the former leader of the UK Independence Party

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday that it’s time for the European Union to act against what he considers as irresponsible behaviour by international credit rating agencies such as Fitch and Standard & Poor’s over the Greek government’s debt crisis. Barroso said he will see to it that the EU will make these agencies subject to supervision by European regulators.

“The crisis has once again brought the role of credit agencies to the fore,” said Barroso during a plenary debate at the EU parliament in Brussels. “These agencies play a pivotal role in the functioning of financial markets, but ratings appear to be too cyclical, to rely on the general market mood rather than on fundamentals regardless whether market mood is too optimistic or too pessimistic.”

This is Saturday’s press conference with Sweden’s prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and French Presidency Nicolas Sarkozy, with translation into English. At this press conference, Reinfeldt says that there is not going to a vote on the future of Jose Manuel Barroso as president of the European Commission in the 2009-2014 period at the July session in Strasbourg. They also address other issues that will be on the EU radar in the coming months, including climate change, a carbon tax and the situation in Iran. Video streamed from the EU presidency website.

Sweden’s European Affairs Minister Cecilia Malmström, a former member of the European Parliament, previews the second week of the Swedish EU Presidency in this video posted on YouTube.