, €42bn was spent on
transport, building and the environment, €16bn on
education and research, €13bn on welfare, €20bn on foreign and defence policy, €2bn in
finance, €2bn in
energy, €1.5bn in communications, and €13bn in administration. A major part of EU law, and most of the EU's budget, concerns public regulation of enterprise and public services. A basic norm of the
Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, in article 345, is that the "Treaties shall in no way prejudice the rules in Member States governing the system of property ownership", meaning the EU remains neutral between private or public ownership, but that it can require common standards. In the cases of education and health, member states generally organise public services and the EU requires free movement. There is a unified
European Central Bank that funds private banks, and adopts a common monetary policy for price stability, employment and sustainability. The EU's policies on energy, agriculture and forestry, transport and buildings are crucial to end
climate damage and shift completely to clean energy that does not heat the planet. Among these, 33% of the entire EU budget is spent on agricultural subsidies to farm corporations and owners. The EU also has an increasing number of policies to raise standards for communications, the internet, data protection, and online media. It has limited involvement in the military and security, but a
Common Foreign and Security Policy.
Education and health , are tuition free and funded through fair tax, after the
European Social Charter and
International Bill of Rights, although their governance does not always give sufficient voting power to staff and alumni. Education and health are provided mainly by member states, but shaped by common minimum standards in EU law. In the case of education, the
European Social Charter, like the
Universal Declaration, the
International Bill of Human Rights, say that "everyone" has the right to education, and that primary, secondary and higher education should be made "free", for instance "by reducing or abolishing any fees or charges" and "granting financial assistance". While the history of education was confined to a wealth elite, today most member states have tuition free university. There are no common rules for university finance or governance, although there is a right to free movement and universities have voluntarily harmonised standards. In 1987, the
Erasmus Programme was created to fund students to study in other countries, and with a budget of €30 billion from 2021 to 2027. From 1999, the
Bologna Declaration and
Process led to the creation of the
European Higher Education Area where member state universities adopted a common degree structure (bachelor, master, and doctoral degree) with a goal to have similar expectations in learning outcomes. Member states may not impose different fees on students from other member states or limit their numbers, and this appears to have worked even without a system for countries to reimburse one another if costs differ widely. However, if member states have grants or student loans,
R (Bidar) v London Borough of Ealing held there may be a minimum residency requirement, such as three years. Most of the world's best universities enable majority staff, and significant alumni or student voice in university governance. For instance, the French Education Code requires that universities have a board of management with 24 to 36 members, and 8 to 16 elected by professors, 4 to 6 by non-academic staff, 4 to 6 by students, and 8 external members, and have an academic council elected by staff with powers to set important rules, such as on training or examinations. Secondary, primary, and pre-school are generally free from fees. More successful school systems tend to be well-funded and public, and do not have barriers to children based on wealth, such as private fees for school. Most schools enable staff and parents to vote for representatives on their children's school governing bodies. in
Paris, while a minority have more costly private provision with worse outcomes. As in education, there is a universal human right to 'health and well-being' including 'medical care and necessary social services', although human rights law does not say what the best system of health governance is. Among EU member states there are two main traditions of health care provision, based on public service or insurance. First, healthcare may be seen as a public service free at the point of use, with hospitals largely owned by the public health service and doctors publicly funded (the "
Beveridge model".) This is the system, for example, in Finland,
Sweden, Denmark,
Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece or Ireland. Second, healthcare can be provided through insurance, where hospitals and doctors are separately owned and run from the service provider (the "
Bismarck model"). There is a large spectrum between systems based mainly on public insurance and usually creating public option hospitals or requiring no profit (such as France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia, the Czech Republic or Estonia) and those that allow substantial private and profit-making insurance and hospital or doctor provision (the Netherlands and Germany). In all cases, health is universal, and subsidised or free wherever people cannot afford insurance premiums, unlike the notorious case of the United States which still does not have universal healthcare. The healthcare outcomes vary greatly between different systems, so that while there is generally higher life expectancy with more investment, healthcare tends to have worse outcomes and costs more where there is more private business or profit. Under the
Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union article 56 there is the right to receive services, with rules codified into the
Patients' Rights Directive 2011. Article 4 requires that people are treated, article 5 requires reimbursement of costs by the person's country of origin, article 6 requires national contact points to connect healthcare providers or insurers and patient organisations, but under article 8 member states may require prior authorisation for people to travel abroad for treatment where the costs are high or planning is needed. A
European Health Insurance Card is also available for free to receive health across the EU. This system was developed after
R (Watts) v Bedford Primary Care Trust, where in 2003 Mrs Watts travelled from the UK to France, paid £3900 for a hip replacement operation, and claimed she should be reimbursed. The UK's National Health Service waiting lists were 4 to 6 months at the time. The Court of Justice's Grand Chamber held that health care counted as a 'service' under TFEU article 56, and that in principle there was a right to receive those services abroad. However, high demand could justify waiting lists in a national health system, but individual circumstances of the patient had to be assessed. For non-EU nationals, the
European Court of Human Rights held in
N v United Kingdom that it was not inhuman and degrading treatment contrary to
ECHR article 3 to deport someone to a country where there were unlikely to live longer than two years without treatment. There is no duty 'through provision of free and unlimited health care to all aliens without a right to stay within its jurisdiction' to avoid 'too great a burden on the Contracting States.' However, if someone's death would be imminent the European Court of Human Rights has held that a decision to remove would violate ECHR article 3.
Banking, monetary and fiscal policy Banking, monetary and fiscal policy is overseen by the
European Central Bank, member states, and the
EU Commission. This is vital for European society as it affects the human rights to full employment, to fair wages, housing, and to an adequate standard of living. When the
Eurozone and common currency of the
euro was established, there was no political agreement to develop a full EU fiscal policy (i.e. tax and spending), so that governments would pool money and lend to countries in trouble, because it was thought that wealthier member states should not have to subsidise poorer member states. However, there was planned to be a common central bank, which would aim to have common interest rates. The
ECB, based in Frankfurt, controls monetary policy that underpins the
euro. Member states also have central banks (such as the
Bundesbank, ,
Banco de España), and these 19 Eurozone member state central banks have a duty to act compatibly with ECB policy. The ECB has an executive board with a president, vice president and four other members, all appointed by the
European Council by qualified majority, after consulting the European Parliament, and the Governing Council of the ECB. The Governing Council is made up of the ECB executive board and member state central banks using the euro, they have 8 year terms, and can be removed only for gross misconduct. is meant to maintain "
price stability" and full employment, but it has not yet used its
monetary policy powers to make banks divest the fossil fuels that cause inflation, to prevent escalating wage inequality, or escalating housing prices. The European Central Bank's 'primary objective... shall be to maintain
price stability. Without prejudice to that objective, it shall support the general economic policies in the Union', such as 'balanced
economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive
social market economy, aiming at
full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the
environment.' There are three main powers to achieve these goals. First, the ECB can require other banks to hold reserves proportionate to their type of lending. Second, it may lend money to other banks, or conduct 'credit operations'. Third it may 'operate in the financial markets by buying and selling' securities. For example, in
Gauweiler v Deutscher Bundestag a German politician claimed that the ECB's purchase of Greek government debt on secondary markets violated
TFEU article 123, which prohibits directly lending money to member state governments. The Court of Justice rejected that the ECB had engaged in 'economic policy' (i.e. fiscal transfers) rather than monetary policy decisions, which it was allowed to do. So far the ECB has failed to use these powers to eliminate investment in fossil fuels, despite the inflation that gas, oil and coal cause given their price volality in international markets. Beyond the central bank, the
Credit Institutions Directive 2013 requires authorisation and prudence provisions in other banks in all EU member states. Under the
Basel III programme, created by an international banker group, banks must hold more money in reserves based on the risk-profile that it holds, as determined by the member state regulator. More risky assets require more reserves, and the
Capital Requirements Regulation 2013 codifies these standards, for instance by mandating that proportionally less in reserves is needed if more government debt is held, but more if mortgage-backed securities are held. To guard against the risk of
bank runs, the
Deposit Guarantee Directive 2014 creates an EU wide minimum guarantee of €100,000 for bank deposits, so that if anyone's bank goes insolvent, the state will pay the deposit up to this amount. There are not yet rules requiring higher reserving and accounting practices for
climate risk and of gas, oil or coal reserves become worthless as Europe replaces fossil fuels with renewable energy. (PPP) per capita in 2019. The EU has not yet updated its GDP measures to discount for harmful goods and services that create
greenhouse gas emissions, pollution or ill health. The
budget of the European Union is set in 7 year cycles, and in 2022 around €170bn was spent, of which nearly one-third was agricultural policy, including regional development. EU member state government expenditures are far higher as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product, but are constrained by the
Fiscal Compact, which requires no more than a 3% budget deficit compared to GDP in any given year, and aiming for surpluses or balanced budgets. As a result of the
Eurozone crisis, a
Treaty establishing the European Stability Mechanism created a fund to assist countries with severe fiscal problems. The results of the "strict conditionality" attached to loans (or so called
structural adjustment) that required privatisation, cuts to welfare, and wages in Greece, Spain, Portugal or Ireland was particularly negative. The EU's main metric for economic performance has been GDP, which adds up market exchange values in firm accounts and government expenditures according to the
Gross National Income Regulation 2019, even though this fails to discount polluting and harmful economic activities such as energy and industry that damages the climate, the environment and human health. The EU's budget mainly comes from contributions of around 0.7% of GDP per member state, as well as a share of
EU value added tax and customs duties. The EU does not yet have a more comprehensive system for preventing tax evasion, or for fair taxation of multinational or financial corporations.
Electricity and energy Like the world, the EU's greatest task is to replace fossil fuels with clean energy as fast as technology allows since protection of "life", and "improvement of the quality of the environment" are fundamental rights, and the highest policy goals of the EU. In international law, there is also 'the inherent right of all peoples to enjoy and utilize fully and freely their natural wealth and resources' such as clean air, and the right to 'the benefits of scientific progress', such as clean energy. The EU's overall target is to reduce toxic
greenhouse gas emissions by 50–55% by 2030, and be carbon neutral or negative by 2050, and 32% renewable energy by 2030, though a 45% target by 2030 was proposed by the commission and backed by Parliament in 2022. Since the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine it aims to eliminate Russian fossil fuel imports as fast as possible. However laws such as the
Hydrocarbons Directive 1994 still enable gas and oil extraction. It requires that licences are awarded based on technical and financial capability, methods, price, and previous conduct, that applicants are treated equally by objective and non-discriminatory criteria, and advertisements for tenders must be public. It has not yet required that existing licensees pay for the pollution and climate damage they have caused, nor sought to end extraction of gas and oil. are 90% from (1) energy generation from gas, oil and coal, (2) buildings with gas heating, (3) transport using oil, and (4) agriculture. By 2023, clean energy was cheaper from wind, solar or hydro, but EU law has not yet required rapid clean technology adoption. A growing number of cases seek to enforce liability on gas, oil and coal polluters. In
Friends of the Earth v Royal Dutch Shell plc, the Hague District Court held that Shell was bound by the tort provisions of the
Dutch Civil Code, Book 6, section 162(2), interpreted in light of the
Paris Agreement 2015 article 2(1) and
ECHR articles 2 and 8 (rights to life and home), to immediately start cutting all of its emissions by 45% by 2030, whether generated directly by its corporate group (scope 1), indirectly from its purchases (scope 2), or indirectly from its value chain or the purchase and use of its products (scope 3). It emphasised the 'serious and irreversible consequences of dangerous climate change in the Netherlands... pose a threat to the human rights of Dutch residents'. After this loss, Shell dropped "Royal Dutch" from its name, and moved its headquarters to London. In
Lliuya v RWE AG Mr Lliuya, who lives in
Huaraz,
Peru has claimed that
RWE AG should pay 0.47% of the costs of flood defences against a melting mountain glacier that increases the size of
Lake Palcacocha, because RWE is responsible for 0.47% of historic global greenhouse gas emissions. The
Higher Regional Court of Essen gave leave to appeal on whether there is causation of damage, and in 2022 visited the lake. There has also been heightened responsibility on member state governments. In
Urgenda v State of Netherlands the Dutch Supreme Court held the Dutch government must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% before 2020, following the
IPCC 2007 minimum recommendations, and that failure to do so would violate the right to life and home in ECHR articles 2 and 8. In the
Klimaschutz case, the
German Constitutional Court held that the German government must speed up its climate protection measures to protect the rights to life, and the environment under the
Grundgesetz 1949, articles 2 and 20a. However the EU and member states have so far failed to codify liability to prevent pollution and climate damage by corporations that profit, and the
EU Emissions Trading System has failed to adequately price carbon for the damage it causes (prices traded under €98 per metric ton until the end of 2022). has been driven by "biomass" being classified as "renewable", even though burning wood for power pollutes the air and harms human health more than coal, and drives
climate damage. As clean energy from
wind,
solar or
hydro storage replaces pollution from gas, oil and coal, EU law has standards for generation and distribution networks. First, in generation, the
Renewable Energy Directive 2018 still enables biomass and biofuel to count toward "renewable" energy statistics based on the argument that trees or plants absorb greenhouse gases when they grow, . The third main set of standards is that the EU requires that electricity or gas enterprises acquire a licence from member state authorities. There must be legal separation into different entities of owners of networks from retailers, although they can be owned by the same enterprise, to ensure transparency of accounting. Then, different enterprises have rights to access infrastructure of network owners on fair and transparent terms, as a way to ensure different member state networks and supplies can become integrated across the EU. Most EU operators are publicly owned, and the Court of Justice in
Netherlands v Essent NV emphatically rejected that there was any violation of EU law on free movement of capital by a Dutch Act requiring electricity and gas distributors to be publicly owned, that system operators could not be connected by ownership to generators, and limited the level of debt. The Court of Justice held a public ownership requirement was justified by 'overriding reasons in the public interest', 'to protect consumers' and for the 'security of energy supply'. It further pointed to the foundational case of
Costa v ENEL, where the Court held in 1964 that the treaties do 'not prohibit the creation of any state monopolies' so long as they do not operate commercially and discriminate. The approach of EU law is that even where energy companies are privatised, they still are subject to the same rules as the state on direct effect, because it remains that they are 'providing a public service'. The evidence suggests "consumers pay lower electricity net-of-tax prices in countries where there are still incumbents owned by national governments." With the sharp rise in fossil fuel prices that came from the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the fossil fuel cartel
OPEC deciding to restrict supply, the EU Commission proposed a windfall fossil fuel tax. There are not yet common standards on energy enterprise governance, although a number of member states ensure that workers and energy bill payers have the right to vote for directors.
Agriculture, forestry and water Everyone has the right to food and water, and under the
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU "the improvement of the quality of the environment must be integrated into the policies of the Union". The
Common Agricultural Policy's origins lay in ensuring that all farm workers had fair wages and everyone had food, since in 1960 a third of employment and a fifth of
GDP was in agriculture, and after WW2 Europe had been on the brink of starvation. In 2020, the agricultural workforce was 4.2% of the EU total. The CAP's objectives are still to increase production, "a fair standard of living for the agricultural community", to stabilise markets and supplies, and "reasonable prices" for consumers. In 2021, the CAP was 33.1% of the entire EU budget, at €55.1 billion, however there are no requirements for subsidies to be used so that farm workers (as opposed to owners) have fair pay scales, few requirements for rural development, and minimal standards for environmental improvement. is 33% of the EU budget, but does not yet require fair wages for farm workers, that production stops using fossil fuels, or that
reforestation and
rewilding takes place. The CAP has three main parts. First, the
European Agricultural Guarantee Fund distributes 'direct payments', which are 70.9% of the CAP budget. The
Direct Payments Regulation 2013 gives payments to an 'active farmer' that carries out agricultural activity, grazing or cultivation, does not operate airports, rail, waterworks, real estate, sport or recreation grounds, and has the land at their disposal. The farm must have at least 1
hectare and receive €100 for each, though member states can set higher thresholds (e.g. 5 hectares and €200). If payments reach over €150,000 there is a 5% reduction per hectare for each hectare. This favours large farm corporations, and the largest 1% typically receive around 10 to 15% of all subsidies in member states. As conditions of receiving subsidies, farms can be required to keep land in good condition, for public, animal, and plant health, and maintain environment standards. For minimal biodiversity, farmers must have over two crops if they have 10 hectares, not farm at least 5% of lintensively (an 'ecological focus area' over 15 hectares, and have three crops over 30 hectares. Environmentally sensitive grasslands, as designated by the Habitats Directive 1992 and the Wild Birds Directive 2009, should not be more turned into more than 5% agricultural area. The second main part, also carried out by the EAGF, is 'market measures'. Under the
Agricultural Products Regulation 2013 certain crops and meat are eligible for purchase by member state authorities, to be 'stored by them until disposed of', with extra aid for storage. The goal of this is to restrict supply and therefore raise prices, particularly in response to unexpected drops in demand, a health scare, or international market volatility. In 2018, this was 4.59% of the CAP budget. The benefits of many of these subsidies go to the parties in the food supply chains with most
bargaining power, which is usually supermarkets. The
Agricultural Unfair Trading Practices Directive 2019 article 3 prohibits practices such as late payments by buyers of food to suppliers, cancellations at short notice, unilateral alteration of terms, threats of commercial retaliation, and payments by suppliers to the buyers (i.e. from farmers to supermarkets) for stocking, adverts, marketing or staff. These rules limit supermarkets' abuse of a dominant position but do not ensure subsidies reach farm communities. The
Food Safety Regulation 2002 article 14 requires that food is not place on the market if it is 'injurious to health' or is 'unfit for human consumption', but there is no requirement that supermarkets or others eliminate harmful packaging such as plastic. The third main part, administered by the
European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, is 'rural development' payments, which are 24.4% of the CAP budget. Following the 'Europe 2020 Strategy by promoting sustainable rural development', payments are made for knowledge transfer, advice, asset investment, and business development aid. Priorities may include improving water and energy use. The courts give the EU a wide discretion to implement policy, so judicial review is possible only if agricultural measures are 'manifestly inappropriate'. EU law does not yet have a systematic plan or subsidies to rewild depleted environments, and to move to complete clean energy infrastructure. , once covered 80% of Europe, but now cover only 43.5% of EU land. There is no plan yet to reforest and rewild the continent in the agriculture budget. Outside farms, forests cover just 43.52% of the EU's land, compared to 80% forest cover
historically across Europe. There is no requirement yet to undertake any reforesting or rewilding of land, while the
Land Use and Forestry Directive 2018 merely requires that member states keep accounts of land use and forestry changes based on greenhouse gas emissions, and that emissions do not exceed removals of greenhouse gases. Globally, the
Timber Regulation 2010 requires that all timber traders know their supply chains and keep records for 5 years, to ensure that any illegally harvested timber is banned in the EU law, however there is not yet any ban on imports of goods (such as beef or palm oil) from countries that continue to deforest their landscape. For water resources, in nature or for drinking, the
Water Framework Directive 2000 sets common standards and provides that member states should oversee water industry standards. The
Drinking Water Quality Directive 2020 requires water that is "wholesome and clean", and article 4 defines this as free from micro-organisms and parasites dangerous to health, and compliant with chemical and biological standards in Annex I. The
Bathing Waters Directive 2006 sets standards for quality of bathing waters, namely riviers and beaches, to be free from toxic waste or sewage. There must be adequate remedies for breaches, so in
Commission v United Kingdom (1992) it was held that the UK's approach of accepting undertakings from water companies to behave better in future, instead of using enforcement orders, was inadequate to comply with EU law. Fines can be and often are significant, ranging into hundreds of thousands or millions of euros for breach.
Transport and buildings Clean road, rail, sea and air transport are fundamental goals of the EU, given its commitment to human rights for 'improvement of the quality of the environment', 'services of general economic interest', and the right to 'the benefits of scientific progress'. However, the pace of reform is slow compared to the urgency of reversing
global heating. The
Renewable Energy Directive 2018 article 25 requires that final energy consumption in transport in each member state is 'at least 14%' renewable by 2030. This is within the 2030 target for 32% "share of energy from renewable sources in the Union's gross final consumption of energy". In 2022, the EU promised to
ban sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles only by 2035, enabling manufacturing corporations to profit from toxic emissions for another 13 years, though many member states have higher standards. There is not yet a plan for full
rail electrification, or clean shipping or air travel, even where technology exists. was 19% in 2021. In the
Dieselgate scandal, firms such as
Volkswagen,
Fiat,
BMW and
Renault engaged in mass fraud to conceal toxic emissions, leading to thousands of deaths. In road transport, the
Emission Performance Regulation 2019 says manufacturers of "new passenger cars" should not allow emissions to exceed 95 grams of CO2 per kilometre, and 147 grams of CO2 per kilometre for new light commercial vehicles, but this is merely an "EU fleet-wide target" rather than requirements for each vehicle. Manufacturers can agree to pool their production quotas, so as to meet their targets on average, but there is no legal sanction for failure to meet the target. Member states are simply required to record the relevant success or failure, and manufacturers' performance is published. By contrast the
Vehicles Emissions Regulation 2007 sets the "
Euro 6" standards in maximum emissions that car manufacturers can have. Since the 'Euro 1' standard was introduced in 1992, standards became cleaner each 4 to 5 years, but recently stalled. Article 2 states this applies to vehicles under 2,610 kilograms, while the
Heavy Vehicle Emission Regulation 2019 applies to heavier vehicles, with looser CO2 limits. Article 4 states manufacturers must 'demonstrate that all new vehicles sold, registered or put into service in the Community are type approved in accordance with this Regulation'. Article 6 requires manufacturers to 'provide unrestricted and standardised access to vehicle repair and maintenance information' should there be any non-compliance. Article 13 requires penalties imposed by member states for breach are 'effective, proportionate and dissuasive', and breaches include any 'false declarations' as well as 'use of defeat devices'. This reference follows the "
Dieselgate" scandal where
Volkswagen and manufacturers around Europe and the world fraudulently concealed their true emissions. In 2007,
Commission v Germany held that the German Volkswagen Act 1959 violated
free movement of capital in
TFEU article 63 by ensuring that the state of Lower Saxony had a golden share to exercise public control over the company's governance. It limited voting rights of individual shareholder to 20% of the company. The German government's justification that the restrictions were an overriding public interest, for instance, to protect workers was rejected. A justification for environmental protection was not offered. After this, the Porsche family dominated Volkswagen, and in 2007 a new CEO,
Martin Winterkorn took up his post and aimed in 'Strategie 2018' to become the world's largest auto-manufacturer, and it began to install cheat devices. is coordinated by the commission, and has a patchwork plan to gradually upgrade track for a faster network. People need to have a driving licence to drive on a road, and there is a common system of recognition around the EU. For delivery vehicle workers, the
Road Transport Regulation 2006 limits daily driving time to 9 hours a day, a maximum of 56 hours a week, and requires at least a 45-minute break after hours. Drivers may also not be paid according to distance travelled if this would endanger road safety. Taxi enterprises are usually regulated separately in each member state, and the attempts of the app-based firm
Uber to evade regulation by arguing it was not a "transport service" rather than an "Information Society Service" failed. Most bus networks are publicly owned or procured, but there are common rights. If buses are delayed in journeys over 250 kilometres, the
Bus Passenger Rights Regulation 2011 entitles passengers to compensation. Under article 19, a delay over two hours must result in compensation of 50% of the ticket price, as well as rerouting and reimbursement. Article 6 says 'Carriers may offer contract conditions that are more favourable for the passenger', although it is not clear many take up this option. Article 7 says member states cannot set maximum compensation for death or injury lower than €220,000 per passenger or €1200 per item of luggage. There is not yet a requirement for the major bus, delivery, taxi enterprises to electrify their fleets even though this would create the fastest reduction of emissions and would be cheaper for business in total operating costs. or
end to polluting motors until 2035, or 2030 in some member states. In rail transport, the
Single European Railway Directive 2012 requires that ownership of tracks and operating companies are separated to prevent conflicts of interest and pricing, particularly to ensure that trains can run from one member state to another. Most European railways are publicly owned, and each train enterprise must have separate accounts and member states should run railways 'at the lowest possible cost for the quality of service required'. The
Rail Passenger Rights Regulation 2007 article 17 states that 25% of a ticket price should be refunded if there is a one-hour delay, and 50% over two hours, with a threshold of €4 to claim. Passengers have a right to take bicycles on trains where they are not overcrowded, there must be clear information on tickets, and there are rights to make reservations. Finally, in air transport, under the
Flight Compensation Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 there is a minimum right of €250 compensation for 2 hour delay on 1500 km flight, €400 compensation for 3 hour delay or more on a 1500–3500 km flight, and €600 for 4 hours in flights over 3500 km flight, plus the right to refreshments, hotels, and alternative transport. There are not yet duties on airline companies to invest in research for clean fuels, and eliminate unnecessary flight paths when clean land transport alternatives (such as high-speed rail) exist. Finally, the 'right to housing assistance' is a basic part of EU law. House prices are affected by monetary policy (above), but otherwise the EU's involvement is so far limited to minimal environmental standards. The
Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2010 aims to eliminate unclean materials and energy waste to have "nearly zero-energy buildings", particularly by setting standards for new buildings since 2020 and upgrading existing buildings by 2050. There is, however, no requirement yet that all buildings replace gas heating with electric or heat-pumps, have solar or wind energy generation, electric vehicle charging, and particular insulation standards, wherever possible.
Communications and data The right 'to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers' is a basic part of
freedom of expression, as much as the right against 'arbitrary or unlawful interference with [our]
privacy, family, home or correspondence', whether interference is by business, government or anyone else. Communication networks, from the post to telephone lines to the internet, are crucial for friends, families, business and government, and EU law sets standards for their construction and use. For example, the
Postal Services Directive 1997 article 3 requires 'universal service' at minimum standards by the main postal provider. For mobile phone access anywhere in the EU, the
Roaming Regulation 2022 eliminates extra charges for mobile calls, texts and data when abroad in other member states, and wholesale charges must be fair. To ensure internet service providers do not slow speeds for some websites to gain unfair profit, the
Net Neutrality Regulation 2015 states providers 'of internet access services shall treat all traffic equally' but this shall not prevent 'reasonable traffic management measures'. is made from
optical fibre networks, meaning much faster internet than old
copper cables. The EU's pledge is at least 100
Mbps internet speed to all households in 2025, and 1000
Mbps not until 2030, even though speeds 10 times this were available in 2015. Since today's communications have mostly merged into the internet, the
Electronic Communications Code Directive 2018 is critical for EU infrastructure. Article 5 requires a member state regulator or a "competent authority" is set up that will license use of the
radio spectrum, through which mobile and internet signals travel. A regulator must also enable access and interconnection to other infrastructure (such as telecomms and broadband cables), protect end-user rights, and monitor "competition issues regarding open internet access" to ensure rights such as universal service and portability of phone numbers. Articles 6–8 require the regulators are independent, with dismissal of heads only for a good reason, and articles 10–11 require cooperation with other authorities. Articles 12–13 require that use of electronic communication networks is authorised by a regulator, and that conditions attached are non-discriminatory, proportionate and transparent. The owner of a communication network has duties to allow access and interconnection on fair terms, and so article 17 requires that its accounts and financial reports are separate from other activities (if the enterprise does other business), article 74 foresees that regulators can control prices, and article 84 says member states should "ensure that all consumers in their territories have access at an affordable price, in light of specific national conditions, to an available adequate broadband internet access service and to voice communications services". While some EU member states have privatised all, and some part, of their telecomms infrastructure, publicly or community-owned internet providers (such as in
Denmark or
Romania) tend to have the fastest web speeds. . Historically to protect people's privacy and correspondence, the post banned tampering with letters, and excluded post offices from responsibility for letters even if the contents were for something illegal. As the internet developed, the original Information Society Directive 1998 aimed for something similar, so that internet server providers or email hosts, for instance, protected privacy. After this the
Electronic Commerce Directive 2000 also sought to ensure free movement for an "information society service", requiring member states to not restrict them unless it was to fulfill a public policy, prevent crime, fight incitement to hatred, protect individual dignity, protect health, or protect consumers or investors. Articles 12 to 14 further said that an ISS operating as a "mere conduit" for information, doing "caching" or "hosting" is 'not liable for information stored' if the 'provider does not have actual knowledge of illegal activity' and 'is not aware of facts or circumstances from which the illegal activity or information is apparent', but must act quickly to remove or disable access 'upon obtaining knowledge or awareness'. Article 15 states that member states should 'not impose a general obligation on providers... to monitor the information which they transmit or store' nor 'seek facts' on illegality. However the meaning of who was an "ISS" was not clearly defined in law, and has become a problem with social media that was not meant to be protected like private communication. An internet service provider has been held to be an ISS, and so has a Wi-Fi host, the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000 recital 11 states email services, search engines, data storage, and streaming, are information society services, and an individual email is not, and the
Information Society Directive 2015 makes clear that TV and radio stations do not count as ISS's. None of these definitions include advertising, which is never "at the request of a recipient of services" as the 2015 Directive requires, however various cases have decided that
eBay,
Facebook, and AirBnB, may count as ISSs, but the cab app Uber does not. The main rights to data privacy are found in the
General Data Protection Regulation 2016. First, there is the right to have data about someone processed only with their 'consent', or based on other justifiable grounds, such as a lawful purpose. It has been held that consent is not given if there is 'a pre-checked checkbox which the user must deselect to refuse'. Under the
Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002 a well-known result is that websites must not install "
cookies" into someone's web browser unless they positively accept cookies. The EU has not yet simply enabled people to block all cookies within a browser, and required that websites give people this option without thousands of annoying buttons to click. Second, people have the right to be informed about data kept on them. Third, there is a right to be forgotten and the data to be deleted. Where legal standards do not exist, Alphabet, Facebook or Microsoft have largely been uncontrolled in privacy invasion, for instance,
Gmail pioneering surveillance of emails for ads as its first business model, and Facebook abolishing service-user voting rights over changes to its privacy policies in 2012. There are no rights yet in EU law for service-users to vote for representatives on boards of big tech companies that take their data, or to have decision-rights over use of their data, in contrast to the rights of service-users of websites like
Wikipedia.
Media and markets Pluralism and regulation of the media, such as through 'the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises', have long been seen as essential to protect freedom of opinion and expression, to ensure that citizens have a more equal voice, and ultimately to support the universal 'right to take part in the government'. In almost all member states there is a well funded public, and independent broadcaster for TV and radio, and there are common standards for all TV and radio, which are designed to support open, fact-based discussion and
deliberative democracy. However, the same standards have not yet been applied to equivalent internet television, radio or "social media" such as the platforms controlled by
YouTube (owned by Alphabet),
Facebook or Instagram (owned by Meta), or
Twitter (owned by
Elon Musk), all of which have spread conspiracy theories, discrimination, far-right, extremist, terrorist, and hostile military content. ,
Cruz and
Trump campaigns in 2016 took personal
Facebook and other data without user's consent, built psychological profiles of everyone, and corporations and the
Russian military flooded social media with ads or bots to manipulate voters.
EU law does not yet regulate web media spreading false news, discrimination or propaganda. General standards for broadcasting are found in the
Audiovisual Media Services Directive 2010. It defines an audiovisual media services to mean those 'devoted to providing programmes, under the editorial responsibility of a media service provider, to the general public, in order to inform, entertain or educate, to the general public by electronic communications networks', either on TV or an 'on-demand' service. An 'on-demand' service involves 'viewing of programmes at the moment chosen by the user and at his individual request on the basis of a catalogue of programmes selected by the media service provider'. Member states must ensure audiovisual services 'do not contain any incitement to hatred' based on race, sex, religion, nationality or other protected characteristics. Article 9 prohibits media with 'surreptitious' communication or 'subliminal' techniques, to 'prejudice respect for human dignity', that would 'promote any discrimination', prejudice health and safety or 'encourage behaviour grossly prejudicial to the protection of the environment'. Social media on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter may be thought to be exempt as they lack 'editorial responsibility', however each use algorithms to exert 'effective control' and profit from arrangement of media. After 2018 new provisions on "video-sharing platform service" providers were introduced, with duties on member states to ensure under article 28b that video-sharing platform providers protect (a) minors from content that "may impair their physical, mental or moral development", (b) the general public from content "containing incitement to violence or hatred", and (c) the general public from content whose dissemination is criminal in EU law, such as terrorism, child pornography or offences concerning racism or xenophobia. Under the
Digital Services Act Regulation 2022 the rules from the
Electronic Commerce Directive 2000 were repeated, so that a platform's or "gatekeeper's" liability is limited unless the platforms have failed to act with due diligence to stop certain illegal content, complying with transparent terms and algorithms. New codes of conduct should be drawn up for best practice. Fines for large platforms go up to 6% of annual turnover. These rules fall short of most TV standards that restrict inaccurate news (such as
flat Earth conspiracies or
global warming denial), discriminatory content short of incitement to hatred, systematic bias, or propaganda from dictatorships or corporations. By contrast,
Wikipedia's online content has user-regulated policies preventing uncontrolled use of
bots, preventing
personal attacks by suspending or banning users that break rules, and ensuring Wikipedia maintains a
neutral point of view. The EU has also begun to regulate marketplaces that operate online, both through
competition law and the
Digital Markets Act Regulation 2022. First, in a series of Commission decisions, Google and Amazon were fined for competition violations. In the
Google Shopping case, the Commission fined Google €2.4 billion for giving preference to its own shopping results over others in Google's search, leading to huge increases in traffic for Google over rivals. In the
Google Android case the Commission fined
Alphabet Inc (by then Google's rebranded parent name) €4.34 billion, or 4.5% of worldwide turnover, for paying phone manufacturers to pre-install its apps, such as Google search or Chrome, as a condition to license its app marketplace Google Play. In the
Google AdSense case, the Commission fined Google €1.49 billion for stopping third-party websites displaying their adverts in Google's embedded search widgets, given that it was dominant in the ad market, and unfairly excluding competitors from results. In the
Amazon Marketplace case an investigation for abuse of dominant position was launched for Amazon using other traders' data to benefit its own retail business, and preferencing itself in its "Buy Box" and in access to "Prime" seller status. This was settled after Amazon committed in 2022 "not to use non-public data relating to, or derived from, the independent sellers' activities on its marketplace, for its retail business", and to not discriminate against third parties in its Buy Box and Prime services. The
Digital Markets Act codifies many of these standards.
Consumer Products The
General Product Safety Regulation (
GPSR) is a European
regulation on
consumer protection. It replaces
Directive 2001/95/EC on general product safety. The regulation is intended to ensure that products placed on the market in the European internal market do not endanger the health and safety of consumers through a high level of consumer protection. The GPSR mandates a risk-based approach to product safety, requiring manufacturers and other economic operators to conduct comprehensive risk assessments before placing products on the market. These assessments must consider: • Foreseeable use and misuse of the product •
Chemical,
mechanical, and
electrical hazards • Vulnerable consumers, including
children, elderly individuals, and persons with
disabilities Where no harmonized standards exist, economic operators must use scientific and technical knowledge to ensure compliance.
Foreign, security and trade policy •
Common Foreign and Security Policy, including the
Common Security and Defence Policy (funded by the
European Defence Fund and
European Defence Agency), membership of
NATO, the
United Nations • TFEU art 214,
Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations •
European Neighbourhood Policy •
Common Commercial Policy (EU),
European Commissioner for Trade,
European Union free trade agreements,
World Trade Organization •
TFEU art 218, advisory opinion procedure on international agreements
Security and justice •
Area of freedom, security and justice and
European Arrest Warrant, TFEU art 67 In 2006, a
toxic waste spill off the coast of Côte d'Ivoire, from a European ship, prompted the commission to look into legislation against toxic waste.
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas stated that "Such highly toxic waste should never have left the European Union". With countries such as Spain not even having a crime against shipping toxic waste,
Franco Frattini, the
Justice, Freedom and Security Commissioner, proposed with Dimas to create criminal sentences for "
ecological crimes". The competence for the Union to do this was contested in 2005 at the Court of Justice resulting in a victory for the commission. That ruling set a precedent that the commission, on a supranational basis, may legislate in criminal law – something never done before. So far, the only other proposal has been the draft
intellectual property rights directive. Motions were tabled in the European Parliament against that legislation on the basis that criminal law should not be an EU competence, but was rejected at vote. However, in October 2007, the Court of Justice ruled that the commission could not propose what the criminal sanctions could be, only that there must be some. == See also ==