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⏪ This week we ask: What are a few of the things the current European Parliament have done for us since the elections in 2014? ⏪
📌 No more plastic fantastic: Reduction of the waste of plastic carriers bags (2015) 🛍🗑❗️
📌 Climate change: The EU ratified the Paris Agreement in a speedy process (2016) 💚🌍
📌 Eyes on terrorist offenses and serious crime: Collection of Passenger Name Records (PNR) of all flights (2016) 📜✈️
📌 Roam like home: End of roaming surcharges in the EU (2017) 📱📶🇪🇺
📌 “Geo-blocking” no thanks: End of barriers to cross-border online shopping (2018) 💻💶🛒
📌 No more plastic fantastic: Reduction of the waste of plastic carriers bags (2015) 🛍🗑❗️
➡️ EU countries are now required to reduce the use of the commonest and most polluting plastic bags drastically. The EU member states has been able to choose: either to take measures to reduce annual average consumption of plastic bags to 90 lightweight bags per citizen by the end of 2019 and 40 by the end of 2025 OR ensure that by the end of 2018, no more light plastic bags are handed over free of charge to shoppers.
📌 Climate change: The EU ratified the Paris Agreement in a speedy process (2016) 💚🌍
➡️ The UNFCCC Paris Agreement on fighting climate change is the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal. The entry into force of the Paris agreement came less than one year after its signature and seen as a massive achievement. Did you know that the European Union accounts for some 12 % of global greenhouse gas emissions?
📌 Eyes on terrorist offenses and serious crime: Collection of Passenger Name Records (PNR) of all flights (2016) 📜✈️
➡️ This new directive regulating the use of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data in the EU for the prevention, detection, investigation, and prosecution of terrorist offenses and serious crime. It obliges airlines to hand national authorities passengers' data for all flights from third countries to the EU and vice versa.
📌 Roam like home: End of roaming surcharges in the EU (2017) 📱📶🇪🇺
➡️ The abolition of retail roaming surcharges, from 15 June 2017, has enabled consumers to call text and use mobile data for the same cost at home and while traveling in another EU country, and transfer data across borders from another EU member state for the same cost as at home.
📌 “Geo-blocking” no thanks: End of barriers to cross-border online shopping (2018) 💻💶🛒
➡️ Online buyers will have wider and easier cross-border access to products, hotel bookings, car rentals, music festivals or leisure park tickets in the EU: You are now able to shop online in the EU without being blocked or automatically re-routed. The traders will have to treat cross-border shoppers in the same way as local ones, granting them access to the same prices. In fact,63% of websites assessed in a survey did not let shoppers buy from another EU country!