The main activity of the Belgium Committee in the past weeks was the preparation of the presentation of our ICE at the 499th session of the General Assembly of the European Economic en social Committee (EESC)

Entitled 'Mapping the Cost of Non-Europe, 2014-19' , this study, by the Parliament’s European Added Value Unit, brings together work-in-progress on a long-term project to identify and analyse the ‘cost of non-Europe’ in a number of policy fields.

An initiative taken by some Professors (and opinion-makers) to claim a democratic choice to appoint the President of the European Commission

When proposing a candidate for the EU commission president, the Lisbon treaty instructs the European council to "take into account the elections to the European parliament" and states that the commission president "shall be elected by the European parliament" (Report, 28 May).

Between the ongoing sovereign debt crisis and the feeble European economic recovery, many EU member states currently find themselves clamped in an increasingly tight vice. On one hand, they are forced to adopt harsh measures to avert the risk of collapse of further economic sectors; on the other, they seek to support workers who lost their jobs and, more generally, attempt to mitigate the effects on those who have been hit the hardest by the crisis.