Legislators from the Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) MEPs backed on Tuesday the draft recommendation, presented by the rapporteur Patryk Jaki (ECR, PL), to go ahead with the adoption of a regulation addressing the dissemination of terrorist content online on the basis of the Council position at first reading adopted on 16 March 2021.

Over 300 million farmed animals suffer in cages across Europe and this is cruel and unnecessary, say the organisers of citizens’ initiative (ECI), calling for banning caged farming in the EU. The initiative gathered about 1.4 million signatures from 18 EU countries. On Thursday, MEPs debated this ECI, together with its organisers, EU Commissioners and people from other EU bodies.

The EU Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Trade Committees voted on Thursday in favour of the agreement that sets the rules of the future relationship between the EU and the UK. Their members backed the proposal by rapporteurs Andreas Schieder (AFET, S&D, AT) and Christophe Hansen (INTA, EPP, LU) by 108 votes, one against and four abstentions, and thus recommend that Parliament’s plenary approve the treaty.

Rules for Artificial Intelligence (AI) must be human centric, risk-based and balanced, requested in their new report MEPs from the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee.

Two weeks after the EP’s decision to accelerate the approval of the Digital Green Certificate, the Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) discussed on Tuesday different aspects of this recently proposed 'document' that should facilitate safe and free movement, with EU Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders and with the European Data Protection Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski.

During the week, the quarrels over the rule of law conditionality mechanism and its use erupted with renewed vigor in the European Parliament. EP delegations of the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) and Hungarian Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Union disseminated on Friday a joint statement that strongly reject the statement by Dutch MEP Sophie in ’t Veld from Renew Europe Group.

In a resolution, MEPs warned the European Commission that if it fails to fulfil its obligations under the legally-binding conditionality regulation and does not take all appropriate measures to defend the EU’s financial interests and values, Parliament will consider this to constitute a failure to act and will take the Commission to court under Article 265. 

At the plenary session on Thursday, MEPs adopted one implementing and two operational regulations on which methods to use to collect or make available specific own resources, which constitute the revenue for the EU budget.

MEPs adopted by a wide majority at the EP plenary on Thursday  the progress report on North Macedonia, authored by  Ilhan Kyuchyuk, Bulgarian MEP from Renew Europe/MRF and EP standing rapporteur for the RNM. 

At their mini-plenary in Brussels, MEPs decided to accelerate the approval by June of the Digital Green Certificate, which aims to facilitate safe and free movement inside the EU during the pandemic.