Held in London on Friday 26 February, these two half-day courses will look at recent changes to how the EU works and where to find information about it.

'Lisbon changes' (morning) will highlight the main developments in the EU institutions and decision-making processes brought about by the new Treaty, including the advent of the General court, use of 'Union law' vs 'Community law', and extension of the 'ordinary legislative procedure'.
'Europa changes' (afternoon) will provide expert advice on navigating the new Europa website and its subsites, including EUR-Lex and Eurostat.

Delegates can attend one session or both. Prices for EIA members are £90 half day, £140 full day; non-member prices are £125 and £175 respectively.
The draft programmes can be viewed via our Training page, which also has an online booking facility.

The training course on EU Funding on 7 May, organised on behalf of the European Commission Representation in the UK is now fully booked, although a reserve list is being kept. Programme and booking form are on the Commission website.

Managing in challenging times - special offer.
EIA members are being offered a 50% discount on the two-day conference ‘Managing your law firm library and information service through challenging times’, 16-17 February 2010, London. The discounted price is £395+VAT / €455+VAT. Further details of the event are on the Ark Group website. Anyone interested in taking up the discount should mail eric@eia.org.uk for the booking code and contact details.

Places are free to EIA Members, with a £30 charge for others. More details are on the website.

All EIA publications are free of charge to Members; non-members can buy them as pdf files.

Work continues on the revised edition of 'European information: a guide to official sources', which will now be available once the new European Commission has been finalised.

Europatweets
Europatweets was started with the aim of promoting participation in the June 2009 European elections by providing information from representatives of the EU institutions. Still active, it brings together tweeters from those EU institutions, notably the Parliament and Commission (there is a ‘Council’ section, but contributions were mainly from the Swedish Presidency; Spain doesn’t seem to be joining in during its six months at the helm).
There’s the usual mish-mash of general news tweets on the main page, courtesy of Europe by Satellite, BBC News, El Pais etc. However, the real interest for EU-watchers lies in the sections dedicated to MEPs and parties. In addition to seeing the latest tweets, there’s a chart showing which MEPs and European Parliament groups are the most active tweeters.
It’s not a particularly well-organised site: the main page has links to the various sections, but they aren’t repeated on subsequent pages, making navigation more difficult than it should be. There is a standard navigation bar offering a country/political group option, but for many choices it seems the user has to get back to the start page. Worth a look, though.

Amongst the questions received this week, was this:
I have been asked to obtain any reports produced by the EC, related to the E-Commerce Directive. Apparently, under article 21 of the Directive on electronic commerce (Directive 2000/31/EC), the European Commission is obliged to submit a report every two years to the European Parliament. I have found one published on 23 November 2003 on EurLex, but haven't been able to find any others. I assume this means that the Commission hasn't published any more, as I would have thought I would find them on EurLex?! Any clarification on this would be most helpful.

To which Eric responded:
As you say, there's no sign of any report other than COM (2003) 702. Two places worth checking for such things are:
1 - the website of the relevant Commission DG, which in this case has a number of pages related to the Directive (see for example this page), but which mentions only the First Report.
2 - Summaries of legislation (aka SCADPlus), which again has a relevant page but likewise makes no mention of anything after the 2003 report (see this page).
If your enquirer is desperate to know why there's been nothing (it is pretty unusual, given that the Commission is legally bound to produce the reports), then it would be worth contacting the DG via the page mentioned above.