Trends

9 September 2016

The Combat against Urban Air Pollution

Indian cities have experienced exponential growth and are among the most polluted cities in the world. But pollution also affects European cities. Concerning air quality, the city of Zurich in Switzerland comes out on top followed by Copenhagen, Vienna and Stockholm.

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25 July 2016

The Impact of Terrorism on Tourism

After the terror attack in Nice and in-addition to the terrible cost in human lives, local and national authorities are concerned about the effects of terrorism on tourism. As regards the European countries, it seems that terror has a lower than expected impact on tourism. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the European travel industry has proven to be very resilient to such dramatic events and is in a position to recover relatively quickly.

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13 May 2016

The Pet Industry is Booming

With human life expectancy on the rise and more and more single-member households in the developed countries the pet industry can be happy.

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29 March 2016

PAPs: a Successful Business

The food industry still plays a key role in Europe. In the EU this sector employs directly more than 4,5 million people mainly in the small and medium sized enterprises and that is very important for the local economic activity. Despite losing market share to emerging economies the EU remains the world's largest exporter of processed agricultural products (PAPs).

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12 February 2016

Developing Countries face a new Challenge

The latest ILO report reveals an alarming trend in the labour market of emerging countries. Guy Ryder the ILO's Director General explained this bleak picture: " the significant slowdown in emerging economies coupled with a sharp decline in commodity prices is having a dramatic effect on the world of work ".

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13 January 2016

Food Waste

The end of the year festivities often encourage overeating. The beginning of a new year should mean looking forward to achieving progress on the question of food waste. The European Commission stressed that around 100 million tonnes of food are wasted annually in the EU. This figure could rise to 120 million tonnes by 2020.

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13 November 2015

Marriage is less and less Fashionable

Since 1965 the crude marriage rate in the EU-28 has declined by close to 50%. And according to Eurofound the percentage of people aged 18-30 who were still living with their parents had risen to about 48%. Obviously, there is a clear link between these two figures.

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13 October 2015

The Weight of the Recycling Industry

In a world which increasingly depends on its IT industry, Europe recycles only 35% of its electronic waste.

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8 September 2015

Germany and France: 2 European Champions

We are talking here about annual leave and paid holidays. Surprisingly, and according to a recent report from the "Institut der Deutschen Wirtshaft" (IW) Germany is also leader in such a ranking.

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31 July 2015

The World Bank and IMF report on Poverty

Let us highlight the main lessons to be learnt from the recent World Bank report on poverty. The key lesson sounds very positive: globally, extreme poverty has declined significantly. In 2011, 1 billion people could be classified as extremely poor compared to 1.25 billion in 2008.

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