Belgium will host Europe’s biggest sportainment park
The facility will be located in Hasselt and is set to welcome its first visitors this spring
The crisis revealed some of the plights of the islander communities in Europe
Imagine you would like to buy something off the Internet, but you can’t because the suppliers refuse to deliver to your place of residence whereas they would to other places in your own country. That is, in fact, exactly what Madeira residents experienced during the height of the COVID pandemic when online merchants refused to deliver orders to the island.
The irony, in this case, is that there is EU-level regulation that forbids this practice, known as geo-blocking, where certain regions or countries are excluded from online access to services, with the idea that the whole of EU is a single market.
“Despite the European Regulation on this matter, the truth is that since it only applies in cross-border relationships, it prevents many consumers from having access to goods at a national level. Cross-border geo-blocking was forbidden, but not so at a national level”, was the comment from the Portuguese Association for Consumer Protection (DECO), written on their website.
Madeira is an autonomous region consisting of two inhabited islands in the Atlantic Ocean that are much closer to the western coast of Africa than they are to mainland Europe. Nevertheless, it is a Portuguese territory and thus EU laws apply there as in the rest of the bloc.
Local consumers reached out to DECO, which then lobbied the Portuguese Parliament to pass a law that prohibits discrimination based on place of residence. The law prohibits geographic blocking and unjustified discrimination, as well as other forms of discrimination in online sales based, directly or indirectly, on the consumer's place of residence or establishment.
This means that companies in Portugal are subject to the following conditions:
Citing concerns about humaneness, the legislation aims to discourage the proliferation of the so-called designer pet breeds
Naturally, many aren’t happy - not because of the reduced possibility for prayers, but because they felt it was an attack on welfare
The facility will be located in Hasselt and is set to welcome its first visitors this spring
Some autonomous shuttles in France are now doing their rounds without a human supervisor inside
Europe is striving to cut the costs of operating wind turbines on water
38,000 of these fellas help to purify the city air, so why not become friends with them?
2020 and 2021 were zero years for these types of events, but the break has not diminished its reputation
As Europe strives to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, Turku and Dijon are among a group of cities seeking to reach this goal two decades earlier
Some autonomous shuttles in France are now doing their rounds without a human supervisor inside
2020 and 2021 were zero years for these types of events, but the break has not diminished its reputation
Citing concerns about humaneness, the legislation aims to discourage the proliferation of the so-called designer pet breeds
The facility will be located in Hasselt and is set to welcome its first visitors this spring
The European Commission has published its first progress report charting the achievements of the socio-cultural movement that combines beauty, inclusion and sustainability
The 2023 edition of the creative initiative promises to be bigger, bolder and more inclusive
This initiative seeks to integrate the values of the New European Bauhaus into the European Commission’s 100 Cities Mission
Veni Markovski’s take on dealing with disinformation in the European Union's poorest country – Bulgaria
A conversation with the mayor of Utrecht on the occasion of her mission to COP27
A conversation with the President of the European Committee of the Regions, about energy, climate change and the underrated importance of cohesion policy