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Although the existence of sport can be traced back as far as 776 BC, it has only featured at the level of the European Union (EU) in the late 1980s owing to an increase in economic activity.

Today, EU law is of considerable importance in the regulation of sport. Although there has been an increase in EU legislation that seeks to regulate sport, at the same time EU law still fundamentally recognises the sporting autonomy principle within Sport Governing Bodies (SGBs).

Such sporting autonomy, which can take various forms such as legal, political, and financial, allows Sport Governing Bodies to establish, amend and interpret their rules freely, without any undue political or economic influence.

The competence of the EU in relation to sport is to develop an evidence-based policy and to foster cooperation and manage initiatives in support of physical activity and sport across Europe.

In 2017, the European Commission released a White Paper on Sport which was hailed as being the first comprehensive initiative on sport by the EU.

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Excerpt from:
Sport and the European Union - Times of Malta

WARSAW, Poland (AP) Polands controversial disciplinary chamber for the countrys top court on Monday changed its own previous ruling and ordered an outspoken judge reinstated to work.

The decision comes as Polands leaders are debating abolishing the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Court, which has been a sore point in Polands relations with the European Union and an obstacle in obtaining much-needed EU funds for pandemic recovery. A draft law by President Andrzej Duda on the topic could be debated in parliament this week.

The right-wing government, which is pursuing a generous social policy and extending aid to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian war refugees, is seeking ways to reach an accord with the EU on the issue of the judiciary and obtain the frozen billions of euros.

The EU said it was a breach of the rule of law and launched sanctioning steps after Polands government used the disciplinary chamber which is intended to ensure the highest judicial standards to sanction and suspend judges who had been critical of changes that put the justice system under political control.

One of the judges, Pawel Juszczyszyn, was suspended and had his earnings reduced in early 2020, and has been battling for reinstatement. On Monday, a one-judge panel of the Disciplinary Chamber ruled that Juszczyszyns long suspension violated the independence that judges are entitled to and interfered with Polands justice system.

Juszczyszyns superior at the court in Olsztyn vowed Monday to reinstate him within weeks.

Other judges are battling against their suspensions, which they see as politically-motivated, including Igor Tuleya of a Warsaw court.

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Poland's divisive disciplinary body restores judge to work - The Associated Press

There is a limited risk of another housing bubble developing in Ireland due to stricter rules that have reduced risk in the financial system, the European Commission has found in an in-depth review.

The review was triggered in 2021 because during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic European Union officials identified Ireland as having macroeconomic imbalances due to high private and public debt levels.

However, Ireland is no longer experiencing such an imbalance, partly due to an exceptional economic growth of 13.5 per cent last year, the commission found. Ireland was the only EU country to avoid recession, bolstered by the strong performance of multinational companies, and the economic outlook remains positive as the country is relatively sheltered from the effect of the war in Ukraine.

Overall, effective macro prudential policy settings suggest risks of another housing bubble remain limited, the review found.

Overall, the financial sector looks much healthier compared to the run-up of the great financial crisis. Since then Irish banks have become significantly more resilient and the introduction of stricter rules and requirements contributed to addressing many pre-crisis vulnerabilities of the banking sector.

House prices are expected to continue to increase this year due to a combination of factors including inward migration, households funnelling increase savings into real estate, and pent-up demand following the pandemic.

House price growth is expected to remain high in 2022 as demand continues to outstrip supply, the report stated.

The influx of refugees from Ukraine is expected to increase housing demand pressures. Population growth was concentrated in urban areas where the shortage of housing was most acute.

A sharp increase in mortgage approvals in 2021 suggests that a backlog has built up, which may contribute to continued house price inflation in 2022, it found.

Measures introduced by the Government have had an overall positive impact on housing availability, according to the review, which found that public investment in social housing and reforms of the planning and development process will increase the housing supply.

However, labour shortages and inflation in the cost of building materials will challenge the governments Housing for All plan, by delaying projects and making them less affordable.

Illustrating the pressure, it noted that the price of rough timber rose by 43 per cent while reinforcing metal rose by 35 per cent in 2021, due to a combination of higher shipping costs, Covid-19 factory closures, price increases in iron ore and energy and the pre-selling of stock materials.

The knock-on effects on raw material prices from the war in Ukraine and strong competition from large-scale retrofitting projects may continue to keep prices amongst the highest in the EU, it predicted.

The extraordinarily marked economic growth of the past decade in Ireland has decreased both private debt and public debt, the review found.

There are risks to the Governments finances ahead, however, including the public spending required to address the persistent undersupply of housing.

In addition, the economy requires major intervention to become more sustainable and bring down net greenhouse gas emissions per capita that are 80 per cent higher than the EU average, which will require significant action over this decade.

Originally posted here:
Limited risk of another housing bubble in Ireland, says European Commission - The Irish Times

The European Central Bank is signaling the end of its grand experiment with negative interest rates, which it started in 2014.

Some critics say that policymakers there kept rates too low for too long. Thats making it harder to combat inflation, which is hitting Europe just like it is the United States. But policymakers had their reasons.

Most of us grew up in a world where if you put money in the bank, youd get interest maybe not a lot, but something. Think of negative interest rates as the opposite: You pay the bank to hold onto your money.

The idea behind that is to make savings so unattractive that banks hand out more loans, and that households no longer save but start investing or just consuming, said Carsten Brzeski at ING Research.

Until 2014, when the European Central Bank became the first major central bank to try it, making interest rates negative seemed kind of like defying economic gravity.

I think most of us thought, You know, thats a nice idea, but could never really happen,' said David Wessel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

But it did happen, and it helped push the value of the euro lower. That, in turn, boosted the European economy by making its goods more attractive to foreign buyers. Just like the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank is now trying to phase out access to easy money.

ECB has a pretty tricky job here much, harder than the Federal Reserve, Wessel said. The Fed has a strong economy and too much inflation. Europe in part because of whats going on in Ukraine has a weak economy and too much inflation.

That means Europes central bank will probably move a lot more gingerly than policymakers here in the U.S., Wessel said.

And, according to Claus Vistesen at Pantheon Macroeconomics, economists will be watching for whether it can stick with a slow and steady approach.

If the ECB raises interest rates now, and then if youre speaking six, nine months time, maybe theyre lowering interest rates again, that would be a disaster for the ECB, Vistesen said.

Its a real risk for the European Union economy, which is still dealing with the pandemic and a war just over its borders.

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European Central Bank likely to end its negative interest rate experiment - Marketplace

This paper responds to Moldovas request of 3 March 2022 to accede to membership of the European Union. The European Council meeting at Versailles on 10-11 March endorsed the Councils invitation to the European Commission to produce an Opinion on this request. The present paper gives our opinion on the position that we would like to see the Commission take, namely that the EU should extend candidate status to Moldova.

Progress in implementing the Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area between the EU and Moldova means that there is already a substantial degree of preparedness for the accession process. While Moldova has an important reform agenda to sustain, especially on the judiciary and rule of law, its democratic electoral processes have been of impressive quality since 2020. There is good coherence between the presidency, government and parliament on the reform and European integration agendas. Moldovas common history, border and partly overlapping citizenship with EU Member State Romania is also relevant.

With Russias ongoing aggression in Ukraine, Moldova is next at risk on account of political, economic and security vulnerabilities. Recent explosions in Transnistria point to the possibility of this separatist region being instrumentalised by Russia to destabilise Moldova. These factors further underline the case for comprehensive EU support and the need for geostrategic clarity, which should be framed by an EU decision to extend candidate status to Moldova.

Go here to read the rest:
Opinion on Moldova's application for membership of the European Union - CEPS