IRELAND’S rules for processing and granting asylum will come into line with the rest of the EU once the draft Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill comes into force early next year.

RETAILERS will be banned from giving discounts to customers who pay by cash rather than credit cards under new legislation, Retail Ireland has warned.

FOR years now Belgians have been compromising with one another in an effort to keep the country together. They have five parliaments and a power sharing arrangement that would baffle the best mathematician.

People could be forgiven for believing the centuries-old feud between Britain and France was about to be ended by the son of a Hungarian ad salesman who officially takes over as President of France today.

FRANCE often gets bad press worldwide, being hammered by the US for its political decisions and Britain for its economic ones.

AFTER the euphoria of the Eurofest and Berlin declaration to celebrate the EU’s 50th anniversary at the weekend, it’s back to real politics for member states and their political leaders.

THE first anniversary of the UN Human Rights Council is approaching, but rather than celebrating the successor to the discredited Human Rights Commission, the new body is to be heavily criticised by the European Parliament.

TWO years ago nobody would have predicted that Europe’s leaders would agree on anything to do with energy. Now it is being welcomed as a new industrial revolution and the heads of the 27 member states will later today agree to a major policy outline.

IRISH is now a fully-fledged EU working language, and European Union institutions are rapidly building up a complement of qualified people to interpret the spoken word and translate the written.

FATAL accidents at work could be cut by a quarter inside five years under a strategy unveiled by the EU.