Fine Gael (Ireland’s current governing party) will host the Congress to launch the election campaign of the European People’s Party (EPP) on 6 and 7 March 2014 in Dublin. 2,000 delegates are expected to attend the two day Congress which will launch the EPP’s campaign for the 2014 European Parliament elections, by approving its manifesto and selecting the EPP’s candidate for President of the European Commission. Starting from Dublin, the EPP presidential candidate will campaign in all Member States of the European Union until the scheduled European elections in May 2014.

A report received from some 90 UK businesses and business organisations, and over 20 business organisations across Europe sets out a range of proposals to ensure that the EU single market makes it easy for businesses in Europe to trade across borders, and to ensure that the EU regulatory framework is, and remains, competitive in the global market place.

Barriers to Overall Competitiveness. To address these, the EU should:

The European People’s Party (EPP) is the political family of the centre-right, whose roots run deep in the history and civilisation of the European continent and which has pioneered the European project from its inception. Tracing back its roots to Europe’s Founding Fathers – Robert SCHUMAN, Alcide DE GASPERI, and Konrad ADENAUER - the EPP is committed to a strong Europe based on a federal model that relies on the principle of subsidiarity.

The committee stage of the legislative process begins when a proposal is received from the Commission and concludes when the committee adopts its final report. The committee’s formal rules divide the passage of legislation into three distinct phases, each of which provide lobbyists with particular opportunities to influence the final position. At each phase lobbyists and committee members alike are confronted with a new or revised legislative agenda. The agenda for the first phase is provided by the Commission’s legislative proposal.

The Parliamentary Conference on the WTO is a joint undertaking of the European Parliament and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Its principal objective is to enhance external transparency of the WTO and make this inter-governmental organisation accountable to legislators as elected representatives of the people.

1. Alison Rose has been appointed UK Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium.

2. Nick Haggar will take over the presidency  of the European Generic Medicines Association (EGA) from Gudbjorg Edda Eggertsdottir.

3. Jacomien van den Hurk has been appointed as Director of EU Public Policy and Regulatory Affairs at PwC

4. Joost Vantomme has been appointed as Public Affairs Director to Hill+Knowlton Strategies’Brussels office.

5. Rémi Gruet has been appointed as Policy and Operations Director at the European Ocean Energy Association .

SME Europe (Small and Medium Entrepreneurs Europe) is the independent political network of Christian-Democrat and Conservative political and pro-business organization. The organisation was founded in May 2012 by the three Members of the European Parliament, Paul Rübig, Nadezhda Neynsky and Bendt Bendtsen. The main purpose of SME Europe is to help shape EU policy in a more friendly way. The importance of the work of SME Europe can be seen in the fact that SMEs are the key for sustainable jobs, growth and prosperity.

With taxpayers increasingly operating worldwide, tax authorities are moving from bilateral to multilateral cooperation and from exchange of information on request to other forms of co-operation such as automatic exchange of information. The Convention, provides a comprehensive multilateral framework for such co-operation and complements other initiatives, such as the standardised multilateral automatic exchange model being developed by the OECD and its G20 partners and efforts underway in the European Union to improve automatic exchange.

The Centre for European Reform proposes the following for making the European Commission stronger and more effective: " The EU cannot function well without a strong and independent European Commission. It needs the Commission to promote the single market, ensure that everybody follows the rules, protect the interests of small member-states against large ones, and think long-term about the broader European interest. As the euro crisis has continued, the Commission has gained greater technical powers to supervise eurozone economies.

The Centre for European Reform proposes the following to enhance the role of National Parliaments. "Some of the EU’s waning legitimacy stems from its poor performance: unemployment remains high, many economies have been in recession, and leaders have quarrelled while failing to come up with convincing cures for the eurozone’s ailments. But there is also the problem of how power is held to account in the EU’s complex and opaque decision-making procedures.