eHealth has a rich and wide-ranging potential but its implementation still faces obstacles, including a lack of compatibility between eHealth systems. More legal clarity, political will and dissemination of best practices are urgently needed, were the main conclusions of a recent roundtable held in the European Parliament.

EuroACE, the European association representing companies in the energy efficiency in buildings sector, cautiously welcomes the Commission’s publication of the Energy Efficiency Directive. However, EuroACE is concerned about the lack of long term strategic vision in the proposals.

EuroACE spokesperson Julie Todisco said ‘EuroACE does not believe that this is a basis to reach the 20% energy saving target by 2020 and does not form a foundation to address the complete renovation of Europe’s building stock by 2050’.

The Party of European Socialists (PES) can announce that over 1000 Socialist and Social Democratic Members of National Parliaments have signed up to a call for a European Tax on speculation. “As a way of showing just how clear the difference is between a Conservative Europe and a Progressive Europe, there could not be a better, clearer and stronger message”. So said PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen.

Today, the European Commission presented the draft Energy Efficiency Directive which should allow
the EU to meet its 20 % energy savings target by 2020. The proposal is however unlikely to allow this
crucial target to be met and even falls behind the measures announced in the Energy Efficiency Plan.
The directive invites the Commission to assess by 30th June 2014 whether Member States are on track
to meeting the 20 % target. Experts agree that corrective measures implemented at that stage would

Glass for Europe deplores the lack of ambition emanating from the Commission proposal for an Energy Efficiency Directive released earlier today. Although the political objective of increasing Europe’s rational use of energy by way of reducing energy demand in key sectors such as buildings is very much welcome, the measures laid down in the proposal are clearly insufficient for the EU to achieve its current target of saving 20% of energy consumption by 2020.