[Agenda] Brexit and digital services overhaul This WEEK

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier will brief EU ambassadors on Monday morning about the state of negotiations.

With only a few weeks left before the UK cuts all ties with the bloc, von der Leyen last week told EU leaders there was a greater likelihood of a no-deal.

After EU leaders at their summit last week overcame the blockade by Hungary and Poland, and unlocked the EU budget and coronavirus recovery fund, MEPs will get a chance to vote on it this week.

On Monday (14 December) the text on the controversial rule-of-law conditionality is expected to be voted on in the budget committee, and the plenary will get a chance to vote on it on Wednesday (16 December).

On Wednesday, MEPs will also vote on the seven-year EU budget file as a whole.

The same day von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel will brief MEPs on last week’s leaders’ summit.

Digital re-start

On Tuesday (15 December), the EU Commission is expected to present the Digital Services Act, a comprehensive overhaul of the European rules for online business and social media.

The commission wants to create a true digital internal market and the new proposed rules could also provide legal guarantees for the rights of platform users.

Migration is back

On Monday (14 December) EU home affairs ministers will discuss the migration and asylum pact presented by the commission earlier this year.

Ministers will focus on the external dimension, the proposed pre-entry phase, the solidarity mechanism and internal migration.

They are also expected to discuss how to improve the bloc’s relations with non-EU countries in order to improve readmissions and “better manage” migration.

Belarus prize

On Wednesday at noon, the laureates of this year’s European Parliament Sakharov Prize For Freedom of Thought will receive their award at a ceremony.

This year, the democratic opposition of Belarus represented by the Coordination Council – an initiative of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Svetlana Alexievich, Maryia Kalesnikava, Volha Kavalkova, Veranika Tsapkala, and political and civil society figures Siarhei Tsikhanouski, Ales Bialiatski, Siarhei Dyleuski, Stsiapan Putsila and Mikola Statkevich, have been nominated.

Water-tight?

On Tuesday and Thursday, MEPs will vote on new drinking water rules, designed to offer high quality and better access to tap water in the EU, in order to encourage people to drink tap water rather than bottled water.

The new rules are the result of the first-ever successful European Citizens’ Initiative, called Right2Water which gathered over 1.8m signatures.