News, Publications and Consultations from the Past Week
News CW 12 (17.03.2025-23.03.2025)
Digital infrastructure: Politico reports on calls for “Buy European” requirements. In a letter to Ursula von der Leyen and Henna Virkkunen, up to 100 companies and lobby groups have called for Europe to become more technologically independent across all layers of its critical digital infrastructure. The requirements should increase the demand for homegrown tech and create a state infrastructure fund. This could then be used to support investments in more capital-intensive industries like microchips and quantum technology.
Defence: The European Commission and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy have jointly published a white paper on European Defence Readiness for 2030. Among other aspects, the paper outlines that accelerating the transformation of defence through innovations such as AI and quantum technology should be one of the seven key action areas.
Network expansion: The Centres for European Policy Network call for greater state assumption of risk in network investments and advocate the role of risk-absorbing measures such as loan guarantees and sureties. This could stimulate a “crowd-in” of private capital.
Digital Euro: In a conference, the ECB Chief Economist Philip Lane emphasised the importance of the digital Euro for Europe’s strategic autonomy.
AI: Euractiv reports on criticism of the third draft of the practical guide for general-purpose AI.
Selected Publications from the EP Think Tanks
- Europe’s policy options in the face of Trump’s global economic reordering
- Unpredictable Tariffs by the US: Implications for the euro area and its monetary policy
- Euro area monetary policy: Quarterly overview, March 2025
- Defence financing and spending under the Economic Governance framework
- Latvia’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan: Latest state of play
- Roadmap for women’s rights: Next steps for EU action on gender equality
Ongoing Relevant European Commission Consultations
- Technical description of important and critical products with digital elements (until 15.04.2025)
- Interim evaluation of the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (2024-2025) (until 10.04.2025)
- EU competition rules on technology transfer agreements (revision) (until 25.04.2025)
- Waste shipments – interoperability of systems for electronic submission and exchange of information and documents (until 02.04.2025)
- EU’s next long-term budget (MFF) – EU funding for competitiveness (until 06.05.2025)
- EU’s next long-term budget (MFF) – EU funding for cross-border education, training and solidarity, young people, media, culture, and creative sectors, values, and civil society (until 06.05.2025)
- EU’s next long-term budget (MFF) – EU funding for the single market, and cooperation between national authorities (until 06.05.2025)
- Connecting Europe Facility 2021-2027 – interim evaluation (until 28.05.2025)
- Connecting Europe Facility 2014-2020 – evaluation (until 28.05.2025)
Selections of the CW 13 (24.03.2025-30.03.2025)
Council:
The current preview of the Council’s work for the upcoming days until 06.04.2025 can be found here.
Summit and Ministerial Meetings:
- Informal meeting of health ministers, 24-25.03.2025, Agenda
- Agriculture and Fisheries Council, 03.2025, Agenda
- Environment Council, 03.2025, Agenda
- General Affairs Council (Cohesion), 03.2025, Agenda
Preparatory Bodies:
- Horizontal Working Party on Cyber Issues, 03.2025, Agenda
- Working Party on Public Health, 03.2025, Agenda
- WP on Hybrid Threats, 03.2025
- Working Party on Telecommunications and Information Society, 03.2025, Agenda
- Audiovisual Working Party, 03.2025, Agenda
- Trade Policy Committee (TPC) – Experts (Services and Investment), 03.2025, Agenda
- COREPER II, 03.2025, Agenda
- Working Party on Competitiveness and Growth – Internal Market, 03.2025, Agenda
- Committee on Cultural Affairs, 03.2025, Agenda
- Horizontal Working Party on Cyber Issues, 03.2025, Agenda
- Working Party on e-Justice, 03.2025
- Ad Hoc WP on prep. Council concl. on enhanc. prepared., resp. capability & resilience future crisis, 03.2025, Agenda
- Working Party on Telecommunications and Information Society, 03.2025, Agenda
- Working Party on e-Justice, 03.2025
- Horizontal Working Party on Cyber Issues, 03.2025, Agenda
- COREPER II, 03.2025, Agenda
An overview of the various Council dates can be found here.
Commission:
The agenda of the current Commission meeting was not available at our time of writing. You can potentially find it on the Commission’s website in the near future.
Parliament:
Plenary Sittings
There are no plenary sittings of the European Parliament taking place this week.
Here you can find a list of the upcoming dates of the European Parliament. The calendar of the plenary sittings for 2025 is available here (PDF).
Committees
LIBE Committee (Civil Liberties)
No meeting of the LIBE Committee is scheduled for this week.
The current timetables of the LIBE Committee can be found here.
JURI Committee (Legal Affairs)
No meeting of the JURI Committee is scheduled for this week.
The current timetables of the JURI Committee can be found here.
No meeting of the ITRE Committee is scheduled for this week.
The current timetables of the ITRE Committee (as of 18.03.2025) can be found here.
IMCO Committee (Internal Market)
No meeting of the IMCO Committee is scheduled for this week.
The current timetables of the IMCO Committee (as of 18.02.2025) can be found here.
CULT Committee (Culture and Education)
The agenda for the current meeting of the CULT Committee taking place on 25.03.2025 can be found here.
The current timetables of the CULT Committee can be found here.
Outlook:
An overview of the following session weeks can be found here. The provisional agenda for the upcoming plenary sittings can be found here.
European Court of Justice
You can find the judicial calendar of the CJEU here.
