Russia's deputy energy minister Anatoly Yanovsky has clashed with MEPs over the EU's "overdependence" on Russian gas.

Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, UKIP deputy Roger Helmer called on the EU to cut its "overdependence" on energy from Russia.

He said that instead of relying on Russia to meet its energy needs, the EU "would be better" exploiting the "rich" potential of shale gas in Europe.

Helmer, who is responsible for energy issues for UKIP, said, "Europe needs to become less dependent on its energy, particularly from Russia.

"We have learned the consequences of an overreliance on energy from unstable parts of the world. The Russians can turn off the taps whenever they want, as they did, of course, a few years ago.

"Russia can also use this European dependence on their energy for gaining extra leverage over us."

The European Parliament and member states have reached an agreement on new rules that will further reduce the cost of using a mobile telephone abroad within the European Union.

The legislation replaces price caps for mobile roaming that were first introduced in the EU in 2007 but which expire at the end of June this year.

The price caps are significantly lower than those proposed by the Commission in July 2011, although they are not as low as those put forward by MEPs.

Angelika Niebler, a German centre-right MEP who led the Parliament's negotiations on the issue which concluded late on Tuesday (27 March), said that the new law would bring about "more competition in the market to put an end to the ripping-off of consumers".

Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for the digital agenda, said: "Consumers are fed up with being ripped off by high roaming charges. The new roaming deal gives us a long--term structural solution, with lower prices, more choice and a new smart approach for data and internet browsing."

EU diplomats around the world are facing calls to have their annual leave cut amid a claim that offices are left "empty for many months of the year".

MEP Ingeborg Graessle says in a working document that some officials can take 17-18 weeks off including overtime.

The EU's External Action Service (EEAS) says it is trying to change a system inherited before its creation in 2010.

But EU officials have described as "ridiculous" the idea that offices abroad are being left untended.

One source said that most of the people sent to work in EU delegations and embassies around the world were "thoroughly committed to their job"

Bulgaria has abandoned plans to build a new nuclear power station at Belene, close to the Romanian border.

The country's deputy finance minister says the cabinet wants to build a gas-powered plant on the site instead.

A Russian-built reactor, which had been ordered for the facility, could now be installed at an existing nuclear plant at Kozloduy.

Environmentalists had opposed the plant, which had first been proposed when Bulgaria was under communist rule.

The story of the killers has dominated headlines in Germany for months now and given rise to one of the biggest scandals in post-war Germany.

It turns out intelligence agencies had had the group under surveillance for years, and even found a bomb-making factory in their garage back in 1998.

So why were the trio not stopped earlier? Why were they allowed to disappear and then stay underground? And why was it that security services blamed the murders on the Turkish mafia at the time? A right-wing motive was never investigated.

The failures have prompted some to ask whether there is more than incompetence to blame, whether Germany's police and security services contain elements sympathetic to the far right - an accusation the institutions vehemently deny.

A parliamentary inquiry is currently under way into their activities, and Newsnight has seen a secret internal report revealing serious blunders by law enforcement agencies.

The lower house of the Netherlands parliament has condemned a website set up by the right-wing Freedom Party (PVV), which invites Dutch citizens to denounce "nuisance" caused by Europeans from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.

The motion approved yesterday (27 March) says the PVV website (see background) characterises an entire category of people - those from Central and Eastern Europe - as undesirable.

"The Lower House, after having heard arguments, states that the PVV website ... unnecessarily puts a group of people in the cross-hairs," said the motion, approved by a 94-56 vote. PVV has 23 MPs.

The European Parliament has called the website "deplorable" and pressed Prime Minister Mark Rutte to distance himself from it.

The motion was tabled by the central-left D66 party.

BRUSSELS - New EU rules currently being worked on to make banks take less risks and hold more capital may have "unintended consequences" on the eastern European economies where companies are more reliant on bank loans than in the West.

"I'm only advocating for central and eastern Europe because it is the most dynamic region of the EU," Gernot Mittendorfer, chief risk officer at Erste Group Bank - an Austrian bank active in countries like Hungary, Romania, Serbia.

"We have to be careful what impact all these regulations will have in the region, because I think Europe will be better off having this area well-funded," he told this website on Tuesday (27 March).

The Austrian banker explained that because financial markets are relatively new to the region, bank loans remain the main source of funding for small and medium enterprises in the area.

(Reuters) - European leaders are caught between former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel's injunction "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker's admission that "We all know what to do. We just don't know how to get re-elected after we've done it."

Signs of reform fatigue are growing in euro zone countries as bond market pressure for a radical budget and economic overhaul has eased slightly. While several governments have pushed through changes in pension, employment and welfare systems that would have been unthinkable before the currency area's debt crisis, the reform push is losing momentum in the face of political resistance.

Italy's unelected prime minister, Mario Monti, made a veiled threat to quit this week for the first time in an attempt to force through a shake-up of labour laws intended to make it easier for companies to fire workers. Monti warned Italians that his team of reforming technocrats might not stay in office until a 2013 election if trade unions and politicians picked his plan apart.

Britons suffered the biggest drop in disposable income in more than three decades last year in a squeeze that may continue this year as energy prices increase.

Real household disposable income fell 1.2 percent, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. That's the biggest drop since 1977 when the then Labour government sought to cap incomes growth in an attempt to bring down inflation. The report also showed that the economy shrank 0.3 percent in the fourth quarter, more than the 0.2 percent contraction previously estimated.

European governments are preparing for a one-year increase in the ceiling on rescue aid to 940 billion euros ($1.3 trillion) to keep the debt crisis at bay, according to a draft statement written for finance ministers.

The euro-area finance chiefs will probably decide at a meeting in Copenhagen tomorrow to run the 500 billion-euro permanent European Stability Mechanism alongside the 200 billion euros committed by the temporary fund, a European official told reporters in Brussels yesterday.

Beyond that, they are also set to allow the temporary fund's unused 240 billion euros to be tapped until mid-2013 "in exceptional circumstances following a unanimous decision of euro-area heads of state or government notably in case the ESM capacity would prove insufficient," according to the draft dated March 23 and obtained by Bloomberg News.

h/t Eurointelligence

A draft declaration for the Copenhagen Ecofin suggests an increase in the ESM to €940bn through a temporary merger of EFSF and ESM; this is not a done deal yet as there remain conflicting reports about the likely agreement; high level sources are still talking about a range of €700bn to €940bn, which means it is not clear whether the unused funds of the EFSF will be carried forward; Weidmann compares the ECB's liquidity policies to the Tower of Babel; Marek Belka said Greece should talk about a parallel currency to address the competitiveness issue; says Thomas Mirow was doing a good job at the EBRD, and warns the eurozone not to include the EBRD in the eurozone jobs carousel; Nicolas Sarkozy does not want to nominate Wolfgang Schäuble as head of the Ecofin before the presidential election, as it would cement the impression that Germany is running the show; the European Commission's troika representative says Greece is not out of the woods yet; bank lending to the private sector is still falling in the eurozone, with wide intra-regional variations; data suggest that LTRO did not yet have an effect on the real economy; the crisis has raised the French household savings rate to 16.8%; investors reject the enforcement of CACs in 10 out of 12 Greek foreign-law bonds; Belgium needs to make a further €5bn in savings next year to meet the 2013 deficit target; Edward Hugh, meanwhile, does the math on the Spanish debt, and it
looks much worse than the official statistics suggest.

An unemployed Austrian man sawed his foot off, apparently to avoid being found fit to go back to work.

http://www.euractiv.com/future-eu/delors-points-finger-europes-killers-news-511850#.T3R3CBfsTjw.twit ter

Addressing directly Van Rompuy, who is discretely steering EU summits since he took office two and a half years ago, he said:

"No, Mr. Van Rompuy, you are not defending the community method ... The community method is the constant primacy of the European interest. It should be the fight of each Commissioner to be there not because it's nice to be there and because the job is well paid, but to be there for the sake of the European interest."