The European Commission will today (12 July) propose a series of measures to protect savers from the risk of failure in a move aimed at restoring confidence in the banking system and preventing public panic during financial storms.

 Michel Barnier, the EU's internal market commissioner, is planning to review legislation governing bank deposit guarantees and the protection of retail investors, according to a Commission note obtained by EurActiv.

He is also embarking on a more ambitious venture to introduce guarantees against the failure of insurance firms with a "minimum set of common requirements" across Europe.

Russian gas monopoly Gazprom is trying to unsettle the EU-favoured Nabucco gas pipeline consortium by trying to enlist one of its members, German utility RWE, for the alternative South Stream pipeline, the Handelsblatt daily reported yesterday (11 July).

 Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom's vice-president, proposed that German energy utility RWE (Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk AG) should become part of South Stream, writes Handelsblatt, quoting sources close to the negotiations.

RWE, the second largest electricity producer in Germany, is already a member of the Nabucco consortium (see 'Background').

Should Gazprom succeed in ousting RWE from the Nabucco consortium, the EU-favoured project would be pronounced dead, the German press wrote.

Irish minister for justice Dermott Ahern has confirmed that Dublin is seeking to block a new European Commission initiative that would allow the free transfer of personal data on EU citizens to Israel.

The minister's statement over the weekend, reported in Israeli daily Haaretz on Monday (12 July), follows recent media reports that Ireland is concerned the data could be misused after eight fake Irish passports were allegedly used by Israel's intelligence agency Mossad in the assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh earlier this year.

As a result, Irish officials last week called for the scrapping of commission plans to declare Israeli data protection standards as being sufficient to allow the transfer of personal data.

Without the formal declaration, the broad transfer of the personal information such as bank and telephone details between the two sides is forbidden.

"It may well be the case that Israel provides data protections which meet EU standards," a spokesman for Mr Ahern said last week, reported the Irish Times.

"But the minister believes the EU committee has to take very serious account of the forgery of EU passports - including Irish ones - by Israel in recent months."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Transparency campaigners are worried that a PR outfit which lobbies the EU on maritime issues has "bought up the top of the EU's maritime department lock, stock and barrel."

The alert comes as Malta's Joe Borg, the commissioner responsible for maritime affairs and fisheries until last year, gets set to start work with Fipra, a PR consultancy actively lobbying on maritime issues, whose main office is about 100 yards from the commission's headquarters in Brussels.

On 11 June, the commission gave Mr Borg the green light to work at the firm, saying: "In view of the fact that Mr Borg's envisaged activity falls outside the scope of his portfolio during his time in office," it did not even need to convene its Ad Hoc Ethical Committee, a body which examines potential conflict of interest when commissioners leave the EU.

Mr Borg is to join his old colleague John Richardson, a former director in the European Commission's "Directorate General Mare," the EU's maritime and fisheries department, who in September 2008 became Fipra's "maritime policy and diplomacy special advisor."

During his time at the commission, Mr Richardson headed the task force that drafted the EU's 2007 Integrated Maritime Policy, which deals with competition, employment and environmental standards in the sector. He also headed up the Baltic Sea, North Sea and Landlocked Member State directorate.

Corporate Europe Observatory, the EU transparency watchdog, has sharply criticised the developments, noting that Fipra has not even signed up to the commission's own lobbyist registry.

European Court of Justice rules against US firm that sells MMT on the EU market.

Europe's highest court has rejected a claim from an American company that an EU decision to restrict a potentially risky chemical compound was unlawful. The outcome will be seen as a vindication of the precautionary principle, the `better-safe-than-sorry' approach that underpins many EU laws to protect health and the environment.

In a judgement yesterday (8 July), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that an EU law to restrict the fuel additive MMT was lawful. MMT is a manganese compound added to petrol to stop it igniting too quickly. Although hardly used in the EU, talk of banning it sparked a high-stakes lobbying battle inside the European Commission in 2008. (See this European Voice.com article for more.)

The EU imposed restrictions on MMT in 2009, citing the risk of damage to human health and possible damage to car engines. Under the EU's fuel quality law, MMT in fuel shall be limited to 6 milligrams of manganese per litre from 2011, falling to 2mg per litre from 2014.

Afton, the only company that sells MMT on the EU market, said this amounted to a de facto ban, and that the limits were arbitrary and unscientific.

President Nicolas Sarkozy faces the nation in a prime time TV interview Monday night as he battles record low approval ratings and a growing political donations scandal that has turned into the biggest challenge confronting the French president since he took office three years ago.

In a rare summer time TV interview Monday, Sarkozy will face French journalist David Pujadas, the main anchor of the public televison network France 2, on the terrace of the Elysée presidential palace - a first in France.

The embattled French president has also promised to address questions from ordinary French people posted on the presidential Facebook page in an attempt to reach out to voters.

Just days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition struck a deal to revamp the country's healthcare system, senior members of the governing parties have expressed doubts about the bill.

Leading members of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their junior partners, the Free Democrats (FDP) ended months of intense debate on Tuesday of last week when they agreed on a compromise to fill next year's 11-billion euro ($13.95 billion) gap in healthcare funding.

A major provision in the bill, crafted by Health Minister Philipp Roesler, would raise the mandatory health insurance premium, which is shared by employers and employees ,to 15.5 percent of wages, up from the current 14.9 percent.

GP practices will be obliged to join forces to commission treatment directly under a reform blueprint published by Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary.

They will be handed much of the multimillion-pound budget currently handled by primary care trusts (PCTs), which will be abolished along with strategic health authorities.

Exclusive: Two protesters beaten by unidentified police officers during a Gaza demonstration in London receive £25,000 in compensation from the Metropolitan Police, writes home affairs correspondent Simon Israel.

"A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest ." Laozi.
Whatever the sound: a rustling of big leafy fronds, a sudden crash, an echo of leaves stripped from broken branches, even before you can understand the direction and the intensity, you know it's a new scandal in the forest. It's enough to casually glance at the headings in a newspaper or listen to half a sentence in a café in the morning. The fallen trees are a common news item, background hum. Our hearing is so used to the constant sound of rotten wood or dried-out wood that is lying on the ground that every other sound is a marvel, an exception, so improbable to be invariably ignored. The voice of the forest is in fact unknown to us. The campaign groups, the associations of citizens that develop a new idea about refuse, about renewable energy, about the regeneration of the territory and a thousand other positive ideas, are invisible to our senses. Covered up by the incinerators, by nuclear power stations, by the Great Useless Works, by the endless trials for mafia and for corruption of members of the government and of parliamentarians. A noise that leads to deafness, repeated and wearing like a vuvuzela. The trumpeters of the scandals, the crows in every bush, have the task of transforming the crashing noises in melodies, the rotten wood into politicians, into industrialists, into blameless bankers, even after the verdict of the Court of Cassation. In the forest each one counts for one. The tiny shoot can become a great oak. The forest is enough in itself and perhaps this is disenchanting, this apparent indifference in relation to the degradation of Italy is in reality a step change from the past, a slow change to doing it yourself, taking into your hands the future of your own country, from the Val di Susa, to the referendum for public water, to the new industry of waste recycling at Vedelago, to the cleaning of rivers and streams, to the "gruppi di acquisto solidali" (GAS) {purchasing solidarity groups}, to the participation in town council meetings, to the opposition to military bases like the one at Dal Molin in Vicenza. The forest grows, the old trunks, corrupted and full of woodworm, fall down. It seems that the noise they make covers up everything. Keep your ears open. Like the American Indians, put your ears to the ground. There's a new music that's growing. It's honest and discreet but it's irresistible. It's you.

tell it...

~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~

Italian police launched one of their biggest operations ever against the powerful 'ndrangheta crime syndicate on Tuesday, arresting 300 people including top bosses and seizing millions worth of property in pre-dawn raids.

The man believed to be the 'ndrangheta's top boss, Domenico Oppedisano, was picked up in Rosarno, a small coastal town in Calabria, the southern region where the organization is based, police said.

Also arrested was the man in charge of the gang's businesses in Milan, where the 'ndrangheta has been making major inroads.