European Union countries should hand the European Commission powers to coordinate gas flows in the 27-member bloc in the event of a gas crisis, according to a draft Commission report.

Open Europe yesterday published a new briefing responding to the European Commission’s proposal for a 5% above-inflation increase to the 2014-2020 EU budget. The Commission also earmarked an extra €58bn for projects and funds outside the main balance sheet, which would take the overall increase of EU expenditure to at least 7% compared to the previous budget period.

The European Commission unveiled yesterday its proposal for the next long-term EU budget, running from 2014 to 2020. Despite the UK, France and Germany demanding that EU spending rise by no more than inflation, the Commission’s draft envisages a 5% increase from the current budget period.

According to the second paragraph of Article 197 of the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC), Members of the Commission may attend all meetings and shall, at their request, be heard on behalf of the Commission. Under the consolidated Treaty of Lisbon, the first paragraph of Article 230 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) would shorten this to: The Commission m...

The Commission as recently made public its report on transparency in 2007. You can download the document - COM (2008) 630 final - here. The report is a valuable overview of all the activities of the Commission in the field...

An European Policy Institutes Network report compiled by national experts from 25 EU member states has concluded that the European Commission has been "politically weakened" under President José Manuel Barroso's stewardship. "A picture emerges of a European Commission that has become politically weakened vis-à-vis the other institutions and in the Union as a whole." The report states that the "d...

A comprehensive reform of the European Union's cohesion policy is required if the bloc's goal of boosting economic integration through regional wealth redistribution is to be achieved in the coming decades, according to an independent report published at the request of the European Commission.

PA reports that the Government last night pledged to block European Commission plans for a mandatory minimum tax rate on carbon across the EU. The front page of the Telegraph reports that Algirdas Semeta, the new European Commissioner for Taxation has said that an EU carbon tax is a "priority" for him and indicated that he might table a concrete proposal as early as next month.

Panorama really hits the nail on the head: The much bigger question raised by the Commission’s report, however, is whether it is, in fact, capable of properly regulating a charity operating somewhere like Gaza and the West Bank. … In paragraph 60 of its report, the Commission acknowledged that the material presented to it “seemed to indicate that

The Commission’s Annual General Report is clearly set out at treaty level: both the obligation to publish for the Commission and the task to discuss for the European Parliament. But looking for the European Parliament’s follow-up makes me wonder if my search techniques are sub-standard or if the EP does not care about its obligation. Regardless, for others the Annual General Report is ...