The European Commission is planning in the next couple of months to table a proposal for a carbon tax, a move likely to cause division among member states.

EU taxation commissioner Algirdas Semeta told Brussels weekly European Voice that he is planning draft legislation on a minimum rate of tax on carbon emissions.

Read more >> | EUobserver / Commission to table carbon emissions tax proposal.

Concerns that internet giant is unfairly discriminating against rival search engines.

Google says it is facing questions from the European Commission because of concerns that it is unfairly discriminating against rival search engines. But the Commission has denied that it has launched an antitrust probe into the activities of Google.

Read more >> | Google says it could face Commission antitrust probe | Policies | Information society | Information technology | European Voice.

ast week the hearings of the new EU Commission took place. Europarl|Tv looks back.
Also a report on the evaluation of the EP on the Climate talks in Copenhagen.

fter a full day of negotiations and rumours, Neelie Kroes was approved by the European Parliament as the new European commissioner for the ‘digital agenda’ post on Wednesday night.

The tortuous process of her confirmation reflected a new balance of power existing in Brussels since the Treaty of Lisbon became effective last December. José Barroso, chairman of the European commission, will be facing a more powerful European parliament in the next five years. It has already appropriated the right to reject individual commissioners.

Read more >> | nrc.nl – International – European parliament shows its teeth

eelie Kroes has managed to convince MEPs that she is up to the job of commissioner for the EU’s ‘Digital Agenda’, according to MEPs who had the opportunity to quiz the Dutch candidate for a second time.

Read more >> | EurActiv

very EU presidency, however carefully planned, always comes up against an unexpected crisis that puts its real capacity for active response to the test. As the Spanish presidency begins, Haiti has become the first test case of the EU’s capacity for coordinated foreign policy action.

As opposed to the bureaucratic and technical squabbles that have dominated discussion in recent months, we now have a real opportunity to see how coordination is going to work between the stable presidency and the rotational one. At the immediate subpresidential level, on the one side we have Lady Ashton and the Belgian Karel de Gucht; on the other, the Spanish Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega and the secretary of state for cooperation, Soraya Rodríguez.

Read more >> | The European Council on Foreign Relations | The European grill

utch candidate for the European Commission’s digital portfolio fails to live up to her reputation.

Neelie Kroes went into her hearings for a second term as European commissioner with a handicap that other re-nominees did not have. By the end, the effect of the handicap was all too evident.

Read more >> | Kroes off her game  |  Policies  |  EU governance  |  Commission | European Voice