The consultation paper contains proposals which ensure that the supervisory fees charged to credit rating agencies (CRAs) reflect the costs of registration, certification and on-going supervision whilst remaining proportionate to CRAs’ turnover.

ESMA’s main proposals are to charge:

1. A single registration fee of €45,000;
2. Annual supervisory fees of €20,000 to registered CRAs with annual revenues of between €1 million and €10 million;
3. An annual endorsement fee of €20,000 to all CRAs endorsing credit ratings for use in the EU; and
4. Annual fees to all certified CRAs.

ESMA’s proposals are also intended to align the approach to collecting CRA supervisory fees with the approach taken under ESMA’s other supervisory mandates so that the fee collection process becomes easier to administer in future.

The aim of this consultation is to gather stakeholder views on the appropriateness of the proposals and their likely impact. These views will help ESMA prepare Technical Advice for the European Commission on changes to the Delegated Regulation on fees charged to CRAs.

ESMA seeks feedback on its proposals from CRAs and their auditors, firms considering registration as Credit Rating Agencies and firms applying for certification status. The consultation paper may also be of interest to trade associations representing CRAs and users of credit ratings.

Next steps

The public consultation is open until 15 March 2021. Responses should be submitted using the form available on ESMA’s website. The responses to the Consultation Paper will inform ESMA’s Technical Advice to the European Commission on the revision of the Delegated Regulation, by 31 June 2021.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission has told Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft to continue monthly reports on their efforts to tackle fake news, especially on COVID-19, for another six months.

Social media and online platforms have come under fire globally over the spread of fake news, leading to calls for regulators to force them to do more or face cumbersome rules.

The companies, together with TikTok and advertisers, have signed the European Union’s code of practice to tackle the spread of disinformation on their platforms, and had to submit reports on their efforts during an initial six-month period.

The reports will continue for another six months because of their relevance during the virus pandemic, the EU executive said.

The companies have been told to provide more data on how disinformation spreads during the coronavirus crisis and on the granular impact of their actions in EU countries.

“The pandemic has become a breeding ground for false claims and conspiracy theories and platforms are important amplifiers of this type of messages,” Commission Vice-President for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova said in a statement.

“We must continue working together to improve our fight with disinformation, but we need more transparency and better effort from the online platforms,” she said.

The European Union is “not fit for purpose” in the task of reducing poverty in Europe and Brexit risks exacerbating the problem, the UN’s special envoy on human rights has said after a two-month investigation.

Prof Olivier De Schutter, who was given access to senior officials across the bloc’s institutions, said the EU’s “constitutional framework” was driving a race to the bottom in corporation and income tax and salary levels.

A lack of harmonisation on those issues, coupled with the 1997 stability and growth pact that imposes ceilings of 3% a year in national budget deficits and 60% of GDP on public debt, were major constraints on progress, he said.

The internal competition to cut taxes and wages as member states sought to attract investment risked being further fuelled by Brexit, said De Schutter, as the UK sought to find a competitive advantage over the 27 member states of the EU.

Taxation is set by national governments but there is “soft” internal pressure within the bloc to rein in the most egregious policies that would no longer apply to the UK, De Schutter said.

The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights said the UK’s departure could weaken further the ability to restrain fiscal hawks in EU governments lobbying to attract investment.

He said: “Unfortunately, when countries have to think about how to reform taxation, they will be looking behind their shoulder at Singapore-upon-Thames and asking whether they are not, you know, shooting themselves in the foot.

“That, they’re already doing among themselves, but at least there’s greater transparency and there’s some form of pressure within the EU. But that is something the UK will not be involved in any more. So, the means of coordination to soften the competition are going to be lacking.

“I think it’s going to add pressure on member states and make it perhaps more difficult to achieve the lofty goals they would like to set for themselves.”

De Schutter said he had found “good intentions” within the bloc’s institutions but the EU does not currently have a target for reducing poverty within its 27 member states. The previous target of taking 20 million people out of poverty by 2020 was missed by 8.7m people.

One in five people – more than 92.4 million or 21.1% of the EU population – still experiences poverty, defined as having an income below 60% of national median income. A total of 19.4 million children, representing 23.1%, live in poverty across the bloc.

De Schutter, who was appointed to his role in May last year, said: “My sense now is there’s a big fear that if a new target is announced it will again be a failure.”

The UN envoy publishes his report as the EU is about to agree on projects that will be financed by the bloc’s €750bn coronavirus recovery fund.

De Schutter said that for all the EU’s institutional faults, there was an opportunity to turn around a record of failure – but that there was scant evidence that poverty reduction was a focus.

He said: “The impression I had, having spoken with the teams in France, Italy, and in Spain, having prepared the national recovery residence plans, is everyone was working under pressure of the clock ticking. They have to imagine very quickly how to spend this money.

“The initial drafts were sent to the commission for reaction to be given in October/November, and they prepare the final plans by April, and it’s very difficult to wisely spend money when you’re under such pressure. And so, for example, the consultations with social partners were reduced to a minimum. And very often people in poverty were not involved.

“So the priorities were set based on a technocratic assessment of what needs to be done. And on the windfall effect of these European funds, but not on the sound assessment of the social needs. I think that may lead to natural recovery and visitor resilience plans that are not fully tailored to the needs of people in poverty.”

De Schutter’s report advises that the EU sets a target of 50% poverty reduction by 2030 and that the pursuit of this is taken into account when the commission issues its country-specific recommendations on economic and social policies, known as the “European semester goals”. He is also asking that investment in children’s education and training is not included in the stability and growth pact calculations of budget deficits.

He said: “It’s now or never that we can rethink the EU and avoid this mismatch that still exists between the economic dimension and the organisation of competition across the internal market on one hand, and the social dimension, which has only very timidly emerged recently.”

CSC – IT Center for Science is an integral part of the Finnish national research system. Its mission is to develop, integrate and offer high quality IT services for research, education, culture, public administration and industry.

To take AI development in pathology to the next level, a European consortium combining leading European research centres, hospitals as well as major pharmaceutical industries, is going to develop a repository for the sharing of pathology data.
The 6-year, €70 million project called BIGPICTURE, will herald a new era in pathology. 

Pathology is the cornerstone of the workup of many diseases such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, of the follow up after transplantation and is also critical for the evaluation of the safety of drugs. It’s based on the examination of tissue samples (slides) under the microscope. However, despite its pivotal role, it still relies heavily on the qualitative interpretation by a qualified pathologist.

While the microscope symbolizes the profession, the digitalisation of slides in recent years ignited a revolution: not only images can now be shared and accessed from distant locations, they can also be processed by computers. This opens the door for artificial intelligence (AI) applications to assist the pathologist and help study diseases, find better treatments and contribute to the 3Rs (replace, reduce, and refine animal use in research). However, the development of robust AI applications requires large amounts of data, which in the case of pathology means a huge collection of digital slides and the medical data necessary for their interpretation. Sharing these has so far remained challenging due to the data storage capacity required to host a sufficiently large collection and to concerns regarding the confidential character of the medical information.

To allow the fast development of AI in pathology, the BIGPICTURE project aims to create the first European, ethical and GDPR-compliant (General Data Protection Regulation), quality-controlled platform, in which both large-scale data and AI algorithms will coexist. The BIGPICTURE platform will be developed in a sustainable and inclusive way by connecting communities of pathologists, researchers, AI developers, patients, and industry parties.

The project is divided into four main aspects that concern the large-scale collection of data. First, an infrastructure (hardware and software) must be created to store, share and process millions of images that can be gigabytes each. Second, legal and ethical constraints must be put in place to ensure adequate usage of data while fully respecting patient’s privacy and data confidentiality. Then, an initial set of 3 million digital slides from humans and laboratory animals will be collected and stored into the repository to provide data for the development of pathology AI tools. Finally, functionalities that aid the use of the database as well as the processing of images for diagnostic and research purposes will be developed. 

BIGPICTURE is a public-private partnership funded by IMI, with representation from academic institutions, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), public organisations and pharmaceutical companies, together with a large network slide contributing partners. The consortium partners involved in the project are: 

Academic institutions: Radboud University Medical Center (NL), Linköping University (SE), Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (UK), University Medical Centre Utrecht (NL), Uppsala University (SE, ELIXIR node), Haute Ecole Spécialisé de Suisse Occidentale (CH), Eindhoven University of Technology (NL), University of Warwick (UK), Technical University of Munich (DE), Medical University Graz (AT), Institut Pasteur (FR), University of Liege (BE), University of Semmelweis (HU), National Cancer Institute (NL), Region Östergötland (SE), Medical University Vienna (AT), University of Marburg (DE), Helsingin ja Uudenmaan sairaanhoitopiirin kuntayhtymä (FI),

Pharmaceutical companies: Novartis Pharma AG (CH), Janssen Pharmaceutica NV (BE), Bayer AG (DE), Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH (DE), Novo Nordisk A/S (DK), Pfizer Ltd (GB), Roche (CH), Sanofi Aventis recherche et Développement (FR), Institut de Recherches Internationales Servier (FR), and UCB Biopharma SRL (BE).

Other public & private organisations: CSC – IT Center for Science Finland (FI, ELIXIR node), Biobanks and biomolecular resources research infrastructure (AT), Azienda Ospedaliera Per L’Emergenza Cannizzaro (IT), Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.(DE), Deutsches Institut für Normung E.V. (DE), European Institute for Innovation through Health Data (BE), European Society of Pathology (BE), Digital pathology association (US), GBG Forschungs Gmbh (DE), ttopstart (NL), Sectra AB (SE), Cytomine SCRLFS (BE), Stichting Lygature (NL), Owkin (FR), Deciphex (IE), MedicalPhit (NL), Timelex (BE), 

In this large-scale project, CSC – IT Center for Science, together with the Universities of Linköping and Uppsala, will build a platform with secure data access mechanism for receiving and storing pathological images and their descriptive data. The implementation utilizes the service components developed in the European life sciences infrastructure ELIXIR and in the Nordic Tryggve project. In particular, CSC has developed tools for research data access mechanism that play a key role in this project. 

– When the CSC’s users can apply for access to comprehensive pathological image datasets,  that data combined with the unique HPC computing resources near by, will be an enticing opportunity to drive digital innovations like diagnostic algorithms,” says Tommi Nyrönen, the Head of Node of ELIXIR Finland from CSC.

BIGPICTURE starts on 1st February 2021 and will run for 6 years. However, the platform is meant to last, and the consortium will elaborate sustainability plans to maintain and continue to develop the platform beyond this term.

More information

Contact in Finland: Tommi Nyrönen, CSC,  +358 50 381 9511, tommi.nyronen at csc.fi

Interview requests and other media questions can be directed towards: [email protected]

Acknowledgement of support and disclaimer

This project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 945358. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and EFPIA. www.imi.europe.eu
This communication reflects the consortium’s view. Neither IMI nor the European Union or EFPIA are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

This article was first published on 28 January by CSC.

The Irish port of Rosslare has seen a staggering increase in traffic since the Brexit transition period ended, as hauliers seek new routes bypassing Britain to link the Republic with the EU.

“Since the first of January, we’ve seen a 476-percent increase in freight to mainland Europe when compared to last year,” port manager Glenn Carr told AFP.

“We’ve gone from three direct services a week to mainland Europe to now 15.”

Jutting out of the morning fog, a giant ferry makes its landing from the French port of Dunkirk — tracing a new route opened by Danish firm DFDS on January 2.

Soon afterwards, a ship from Cherbourg pulls alongside and lowers its ramp — churning the slate-grey waters of the harbour on Ireland’s southeast coast.

Meat trucks and tankers roll onto the dock. Drivers work together — shouting in French — to delicately reverse a flatbed packed with farm machinery.

Spanish hauliers wait in their cabs for the sailing to Bilbao.

On the sloping approach to the docks, a sign welcomes the steady stream of traffic to “Rosslare Europort: the gateway to Europe”.

Britain left the EU in January 2020 after a seismic referendum in 2016 which voted to sever ties with the bloc. But the full effects were felt only with the end of the so-called “transition period” at the start of 2021.

With Britain now outside the customs union and the single market, new checks and paperwork are snarling traffic at the island nation’s borders.

Delays and hurdles mean Irish hauliers are re-thinking the UK’s “landbridge” route they have traditionally taken to EU markets.

Pre-Brexit, more than 150,000 trucks transported three million tonnes of freight to and from the EU in this way — driving across Britain, crossing the Irish Sea and English Channel by ferry.

But in the early days of January, Dublin Port — a key link in the “landbridge” — experienced a lull in traffic and some sailings were cancelled.

In Rosslare — the second busiest freight hub in Ireland — there are signs logistics firms may be charting a new course to Europe: the one with least resistance.

“When you look at the end-to-end delivery of a trailer to the market, what we’re seeing and what we’re being told now is that it’s not much different from the landbridge,” said Carr.

“However, the big benefits are, you’ve no paperwork, your drivers are well rested, you’re saving on fuel.”

Among the forest of lorry trailers parked on Rosslare’s docks, one colour stands out — the canary blue of Amazon Prime trailers.

Dozens are dotted throughout the port and “tugmasters” — squat, truck-like vehicles used to load unaccompanied freight — shunt them to and fro at pace.

Online shoppers in Ireland — a nation of just five million — often rely on British sites serving larger UK markets to fulfil their orders.

However, since January 1, amazon.co.uk has imposed steep “import fees” on some items — to cover “border taxes, customs duties and fees levied in the country of importation”.

Reports earlier this week suggested people in the British province of Northern Ireland will also see their menu of Amazon products shrink as the site de-lists products due to Brexit customs rules.

But Irish customers can avoid fees and disruption by shifting their allegiances to Amazon proxies in EU markets — amazon.fr, amazon.es and amazon.de.

Already there are signs that the habits of retailers and shoppers alike have changed in the post-Brexit landscape.

“A lot of the major retailers in Ireland are now bringing their products for their shelves directly in from mainland Europe now,” explained Carr.

“We’re seeing big customers, the likes of Amazon, now bringing in a lot of freight on a daily basis.”

Copyright AFP. All rights reserved.