Brussels
(Brussels) The EU Parliament has a busy schedule today. The Employment and Social Affairs Committee is expected to vote on an update of EU rules for protecting workers from carcinogens and mutagens at work. “The aim – the official website of the institution reads – is to adopt new thresholds for exposure to eight new cancer-causing chemical agents”. Budget and Human Resources Commissioner Günther Oettinger will be quizzed on Martin Selmayr’s appointment as Secretary-General of the European Commission at a public hearing organised by the Budgetary Control Committee. A resolution on the issue will be voted on by the Parliament in plenary sitting on 19 April. The appointment, which has aroused strong criticism in the EU institutions for how it took place and for the concentration of powers in a single person, is seen by the college led by Jean-Claude Juncker as in ‘full compliance’ with the rules”. MEPs had submitted over one hundred questions to the Commission, which, in turn, issued an 80-page response. Today the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs is expected to vote on a report on “violence towards and pressure on journalists, worsening economic and working conditions in the media, fake news and net neutrality”. FRONTEX Executive Director, Fabrice Leggeri, and FRONTEX Fundamental Rights Officer, Inmaculada Arnaez Fernandez, will present the new Joint Operation Themis to the Civil Liberties Committee. Themis is the programme that will replace Triton and includes search and rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean, covering migration flows from Algeria, Tunisia, Libya Egypt and Albania.
