Starting today, EU patients can use digital prescriptions issued by their home doctor when visiting a pharmacy in another country across the bloc. For now, however, the initiative applies only to ePrescriptions prescribed in Finland and to the Estonian pharmacies that have signed the agreement.

Bulgaria will need to wait at least until mid-2022 to join the euro, according to Valdis Dombrovskis, commissioner in charge of the common currency.. Sofia's application to join the ERM-2, a waiting room for the euro, is likely to be successful “by the middle of this year,” he pointed out in a live chat on social media.

The Commission kick-started last week the debate on reforming decision-making for areas of EU taxation policy, which currently requires unanimity among Member States. This unanimity often cannot be achieved on crucial tax initiatives, and can lead to costly delays and sub-optimal policies, the EU press service reported.

The trilateral meeting of experts from Russia, the EU and Ukraine initially scheduled on 15 January was canceled in the last minute. The ministerial meeting however remains in the plan for 21 January, European Commission Spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen announced. 

The European Central Bank and national authorities supervising financial institutions' compliance with EU anti-money laundering obligations, in close cooperation with the EU Commission and the European Supervisory Authorities, have reached an agreement on the new cooperation mechanism.

This month the AI4EU project officially starts, with a kick-off meeting among the partners in Barcelona tomorrow. As stated earlier the development of the AI4EU platform will bring together 79 top research institutes, SMEs and large enterprises in 21 countries that will build a focal point for artificial intelligence (AI) resources, including data repositories, computing power, tools and algorithms. To further facilitate access to AI technology the project team will work closely with the Digital Innovation Hubs for robotics and the future network of AI excellence centres.

The EU's top trade negotiator Cecilia Malmstrom was headed to Washington on Monday to meet US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in an effort to breathe life into an attempt to strike a trade deal. During her visit Malmstrom will also take part in a US-EU-Japan meeting today. The three nations are due to discuss subsidies made to state-owned firms and forced technology transfers. China will be the main topic of these talks.

The European Commission repeated on Monday that EU leaders would not renegotiate a Brexit treaty agreed last month with Prime Minister Theresa May and was pressing on with planning for Britain to crash out of the Union without a deal.

The Emergency Social Safety Net, the largest ever EU humanitarian programme, launched in 2016, has now assisted 1.5m of the most vulnerable refugees in Turkey, the European Commission press service reported on Monday.

The European Commission has approved under EU State aid rules a voucher scheme to support the take-up in Greece of broadband services with download speeds of at least 100 Megabits per second (Mbps). The measure will contribute to reducing the digital divide, in line with the objectives of the EU's Digital Single Market, while limiting distortions of competition at the same time. The scheme will be also accompanied by a detailed evaluation to assess its impact. The results of this evaluation will be submitted by Greece to the Commission by December 2021.