Cross-border legal disputes: do you know you are entitled to free legal aid?

Cross-border legal disputes: do you know you are entitled to free legal aid? ... For almost ten years, the EU's Directive on access to justice in cross-border disputes has granted EU citizens the right to free access to legal aid in cases of commercial and civil disputes. Yet, merely 12% of EU citizens know they are allowed to claim free legal aid in the case of a legal dispute in a Member State different to that of their citizenship. Moreover, few lawyers are aware of the existence of such provisions. Therefore, enhancing awareness about the existence of this right is one of the main goals of the Report on the application of the Directive to improve access to justice in cross-border disputes, drafted by the EPP Group Coordinator for Legal Affairs Tadeusz Zwiefka MEP and voted on Tuesday. The Rapporteur recommends improving cooperation between public and non-governmental institutions competent in legal advice, organizing training for lawyers and legal experts and creating a database of lawyers and legal advisors whose language skills and knowledge of comparative law would make them most competent to lead a given case.
 

Fund for European aid to the most deprived

Within the framework of the EU2020 Strategy, the European Union has set itself the objective of reducing by at least 20 million the number of people in or at risk of poverty or social exclusion by 2020. Therefore the Commission has proposed to allocate a budget of 2.5 billion euros for the EU Aid for the Most Deprived (FEAD) Fund. The EPP Group Spokesman and Coordinator in the Employment and Social Affairs Committee, Csaba Őry MEP, explained that according to the EPP Group, the proposed  2.5 billion budget is insufficient to fulfil the targets of the fund, therefore the Group would like to allocate at least 3.5 billion. The European Parliament will vote on the Report on Wednesday.

Millennium Development Goals: what happens after 2015?

In 2000, the UN adopted a Millennium Declaration, thus setting concrete and time-bound development targets to be reached by 2015. Two years before the deadline, the EU has launched the debate on the post-2015 framework in order to adapt the goals to the current challenges. Filip Kaczmarek MEP, the EPP Group Spokesman in the Development Committee, is the author of the Report on the next generation of goals which will be voted on Thursday. In his Report, Kaczmarek proposes broadening the definition of poverty by not basing it on GDP alone but also on other indicators such as the human development index or the poverty gap, and to further link the MDGs with fields like energy, climate change and quality education.