Politics

EU Parliament: refugee relocation plenary, “State of the Union”, democracy in Poland, EU budget

(Strasburg) Next week’s plenary session of the European Parliament is going to be rather intense. MEPs are meeting in Strasburg from 12 to 15 September to listen to and debate the “State of the Union” presented by President of the Commission Jean-Claude Juncker; a remarkable political and programmatic speech on 14 September, two days before the informal summit on the future of the Union, in Bratislava, of the 27 Heads of State and Government, without the representative of the United Kingdom. Then the Parliament will take into consideration the candidate of the United Kingdom, Julian King, for the role of EU Security Commissioner. Moreover, MEPs will evaluate recent developments in Poland and their impact on fundamental rights. They will debate the Apple case (on the decision of the Commission about fiscal agreement in Ireland), car emissions (vote on the first report of the board of enquiry), and EU budget 2017. The Parliament will vote on the proposal to use the 54 thousand places originally meant for relocating asylum-seekers from Greece and Italy to other EU member States, for the resettlement of Syrian refugees from Turkey to the EU. The commission for civil liberties was against.