Joining calls for better protection of victims, discouragement of demand for trafficked human beings and the establishment of an Anti-Trafficking Coordinator, GUE/NGL MEP Cornelia Ernst said Parliament's trafficking report had "great significance for the hundreds of thousands of victims of trafficking" and urged member states to support its proposals.

The ELDR Party, together with the liberal group in the European Parliament (ALDE) and the European Democratic Party, are hosting a lunch summit on Thursday 16 December with the liberal prime ministers, deputy prime ministers and commission vice president.

The topics on the agenda are European economic governance and the EU budget.

Joint Press Statement by Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, President of the Party of European Socialists (PES) and Martin Schulz, President of the Socialists and Democrats Group (S&D) in the European Parliament.

The eurozone ship is adrift. Conservative prevarication in 2010 has left the European project perilously close to the rocks. It is time for action rather than more ambiguous double speak from the German Chancellor and the French President. Their mixed messages over the last 7 days on Eurobonds and Fiscal EU issues have created yet more divisions for market speculators to exploit.

Bairbre de Brún MEP with the European United Left/Nordic Green Left Group in the European Parliament  has welcomed the progress made in Cancún, with the adoption of the Cancún Agreement, while warning that much work needs to be done if we are to see the necessary ambition and the necessary detail in the coming months.

Speaking as the deal was sealed at the UN Climate talks in Cancun, Ms de Brún said:

"Many who came here feared that we would once again come away without agreement and that the very process would lose force and credibility.

At the closing of the 16th edition of Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP16), today in Cancún the International Association of Public Transport stresses the positive impact of public transport on climate change and green economy, and highlights therefore the urgent need to include transport, and more specifically urban transport, in climate policy.