Overview of the main topics and events at the Council of EU and European Council.

The indicated format of each meeting (physical or virtual) are subject to change.

Video conference of economics and finance ministers, 4 November 2020

Ministers will exchange views on non-performing loans and measures to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing. They will also be briefed on Council conclusions on the European Semester and EU statistics, international finance meetings in October and the 2020 annual report of the European Fiscal Board.

Video conference of foreign affairs ministers (trade), 9 November 2020

Trade EU Ministers will exchange views on Trade Policy Review and outlook for WTO and relations with China and US during a videoconference.

Video conference of European affairs ministers, 10 November 2020

Rule of Law, Enlargement and MFF will be on the agenda of the videoconference of EU Affairs ministers.

Justice and Home Affairs Council, 13 November 2020

Ministers will hold an orientation debate on a number of key and interrelated elements of the pact on migration and asylum.

For video coverage of Council sessions and audiovisual material, please see the following Council websites:

October 30, 2020 About the EUIPO

ID5 6th Annual Meeting

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) hosted the 6th ID5 Annual Meeting online via the KUDO platform on 29-30 October 2020. The USPTO commemorated the 5th anniversary of the ID5 forum.

ID5 is the multilateral cooperation forum, inaugurated in 2015, which allows the five largest design Offices, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cooperate for the benefit of users in the field of design registration. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was present as an observer, as in previous ID5 Annual Meetings.

Mr Iancu, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO, opened the session and thanked all the partners for their efforts this year to quickly adapt to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. During his opening remarks, the Executive Director of the EUIPO, Mr Christian Archambeau, congratulated USPTO for hosting the meeting online. Mr Archambeau also highlighted the cooperation shown within the ID5 forum. He congratulated the forum for its 5th anniversary and highlighted all the progress made in the design cooperation area within the ID5 during the last five years.

During the meeting, the ID5 partner offices updated participants on progress in a number of cooperation projects. The EUIPO reported on the progress made in the ‘Quality Management’ project co-led with the CNIPA.

Five new initiatives were approved as new projects for the ID5 forum, the ‘Exchange of New Technologies’ by the EUIPO, ‘Joint Communication Action’ by the EUIPO and the KIPO, ‘Deferment of Publication’ by the KIPO and the USPTO, the ‘ID5 5-Year Review’ and ‘A Study of Term of Protection’ by the USPTO.

The ID5 partners also agreed that the CNIPA would be host and secretariat for the 2021 ID5 Forum.

The user session this year will be held via written exchanges through the website only due to limitations posed by the COVID‑19 pandemic.

By Gregor Burkhart, Principal scientific analyst — prevention, EMCDDA

When the EMCDDA began its operations in 1995, it was clear that the understanding and narrative on prevention had to change. What was needed was a cultural shift from a rather amorphous concept — often based on good intentions — to a prevention that was more scientifically sound, rooted in clear concepts and evidence of effectiveness, and that could improve real-life practice and decision making. This month, Gregor Burkhart, Principal scientific analyst for prevention at the EMCDDA looks back on key milestones of the past 25 years of monitoring in this field.

1995–2000: Promoting basic evaluation

When the EMCDDA started monitoring drug prevention in 1995, the level of evaluation of prevention interventions in Europe was low. This prompted us to focus first on promoting evaluation skills and tools in the prevention workforce and on awareness-raising on the importance of drug prevention among policymakers. One of our first steps was to develop the Exchange on Drug Demand Reduction Action (EDDRA)(1997) — a database of demand reduction interventions with minimum levels of evaluation — and to launch EMCDDA guidelines for the evaluation of drug prevention (1998). These early days also saw the organisation of the ‘First European Conference on the Evaluation of Drug Prevention’ (Lisbon, 1997) — the findings of which were published in the monograph Evaluating drug prevention in the European Union (1998) — and the ‘Second European Conference on the Evaluation of Drug Prevention’ (Strasbourg, 1999).

2001–2005: Better describing and classifying prevention interventions

In order to facilitate evaluation, our next step was to launch the Evaluation Instruments Bank in 2001, offering easy-access tools for evaluating prevention and treatment. EDDRA was also growing at this time and was adopted by most EU Member States, including some of those entering the EU in 2004. In this period, we introduced the concepts of ‘universal’, ‘selective’ and ‘indicated’ prevention (in EMCDDA and EU official documents), began mapping manual-based prevention programmes and developed systematic prevention categories, allowing interventions to be rated and compared. At this point, we played an active role in establishing the first multi-country randomised prevention trial in Europe — the European Drug Addiction Prevention Trial (EU-DAP) — and its associated Unplugged programme, which is still used worldwide today.

2006–2010: Developing the evidence base for prevention

In this next phase, we called for more responsibility and caution vis-à-vis the potential harms of mass media prevention campaigns. We also pioneered work explaining the potential of the little-known and under-used indicated prevention, dedicated to addressing personal neuro-behavioural vulnerabilities before problem substance use occurs. EDDRA expanded at this time as clearer categories of evaluation were introduced. Via an EU-funded project, the EMCDDA was instrumental in developing the European Drug Prevention Quality Standards (EDPQS), which set out criteria on how best to implement relevant and effective prevention. We also participated in the UNODC working group to establish International Standards on Substance Use Prevention and published the Prevention and Evaluation Resources Toolkit (PERK) to help professionals prepare their interventions for entering EDDRA.

2011–2015: Promoting the evidence base and prevention science

As co-founder of the European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR), the EMCDDA hosted the 2nd International Conference of the European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR) in Lisbon in 2011. Here we presented a ‘how to’ guide on conducting high-quality drug prevention in the form of the European drug prevention quality standards: a manual for prevention professionals, which became a reference for the EU Minimal standards on Demand Reduction. During this period, we coined the concept of ‘environmental’ prevention, showcased evidence for prevention strategies in the Best Practice Portal and began publishing comparable data from all Member States in the EMCDDA prevention profiles, reaping the rewards of having harmonised and standardised rating criteria and prevention categories in previous years.

2016–2020: Taking evidence into the field of practice and decision-making

In order to help decision-makers select effective programmes, the EMCDDA launched in 2017 its Xchange registry of interventions that have undergone rigorous scrutiny of their evidence for effectiveness, together with reports of their implementation. It also began hosting that year, an online Healthy Nightlife Toolbox (HNT), providing information on good-practice interventions targeting drug and alcohol use and related problems among young people in nightlife settings. Technical reports were also published in this period on ‘environmental’ prevention and its level of application in Europe (2018) and on exploring a systems perspective in the field (2019). Advancing the professionalism of the drug prevention workforce in Europe was the focus of a new European Prevention Curriculum (EUPC) handbook published by the EMCDDA in 2019, as part of the EU-funded UPC-Adapt project. This resource is now the basis for face-to-face, online and e-learning training courses and for EMCDDA-delivered cascaded training in European countries and beyond to help local decision-, opinion- and policy-makers improve their decision-making. The EUPC training was rolled out in 2019 and 2020 in a quarter of the EU Member States.

Beyond 2020

Looking back at the past 25 years, much progress has been made in Europe in developing responsible and evidence-based interventions in substance use prevention. Yet, prevention practices for which there is little, or no, evidence of effectiveness are still being implemented in school and community settings today. This is why it is crucial to develop a professional prevention workforce that values prevention science and is trained in, and knowledgeable about, approaches that are empirically tested, safe and likely to yield results. In the coming years, the agency will expand its provision of EUPC training to frontline professionals, increase the use of online and digital approaches to reach and engage with the prevention workforce in European countries and continue to develop the knowledge base in the areas of effective environmental and crime-prevention interventions.

The full range of EMCDDA resources is available on a prevention topics page.

Today, the Council adopted by unanimity a Recommendation on ‘A Bridge to Jobs – Reinforcing the Youth Guarantee’. The main aim is to better support youth employment across the EU, in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is bringing back high youth unemployment rates and increasing the number of young people not in employment, education or training (NEETs).

The new Youth Guarantee reaffirms the commitment of the EU member states to set up national schemes through which young people can receive an offer of employment, education, traineeship or apprenticeship within a period of four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education. At the same time, the recommendation extends the age limit for targeted young people from 25 to up to 29 years and provides for better inclusion of persons from vulnerable groups, such as NEETs, young women and people with disabilities.

The Youth Guarantee will be implemented through supportive measures at national, regional and local level, taking into account the following guidelines:

• mapping – identifying target groups, available services, skills needs and young people at risk of becoming a NEET
• outreach – targeted information campaigns among young people and reaching out to NEETs
• preparation – better profiling to match needs and responses, counselling and guidance, and improving digital and other important skills
• offer – employment incentives, quality and equity, and post-placement support

The measures provided in the recommendation will be financed by EU funds, such as the European Social Fund Plus (‘ESF+’), and investments by member states. The Recovery and Resilience Facility and REACT-EU will provide additional Union funding for youth employment measures.

The recommendation was adopted by written procedure.

Background

The new recommendation replaces the Council Recommendation of 22 April 2013 on establishing a Youth Guarantee. The initiative has helped to improve the lives of millions of young Europeans. More than 5 million young people have registered in Youth Guarantee schemes each year since 2014, and more than 3.5 million of them accepted an offer of employment, continued education, a traineeship or an apprenticeship.