The new Vehicle General Safety Regulation starts applying today. It introduces a range of mandatory advanced driver assistant systems to improve road safety and establishes the legal framework for the approval of automated and fully driverless vehicles in the EU. The new safety measures will help to better protect passengers, pedestrians and cyclists across the EU, expectedly saving over 25,000 lives and avoid at least 140,000 serious injuries by 2038.   As the coming into force of the General Safety Regulation empowers the Commission to complete the legal ...

Surging investments made by Chinese firms in EU high-tech industries is fueling conflict between Beijing, Berlin and Brussels, reported The Politico.

Germany’s Deputy Economy Minister Matthias Maching submitted a proposal comprising of six key points to government officials to review investment at the EU level on Monday, Reuters cited local newspaper Welt am Sonntag reporting.

Since September 2009, energy consumption-relevant light sources have been disappearing step-by-step from the market. This year it’s the turn of the high voltage reflector tungsten halogen lamps as best-known representatives. These are no longer permitted to be put into circulation in the European Union from 1 September 2016 as part of the third step of Directive (EU) 1194/2012. 

Philips Lighting, a global leader in lighting, welcomed a group of 28 European Union (EU) Agriculture Ministers including EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Phil Hogan to the Philips Lighting GrowWise Center in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The Center leads horticultural and vertical farming research where growth recipes are developed for food crops. The visit was part of the Informal Meeting of Ministers of Agriculture organized by the Dutch EU Presidency. The central theme of this two day visit to the Netherlands was 'Food of the future - the future of food'.

France and UK recently sent recall notifications to the EU The Rapid Alert System for Non-food Dangerous Products (RAPEX) for LED luminaire products made in China, due to electric shock risks.

Three major Pilot Lines, which help SMEs take photonics technologies from lab into market, have been launched today by the Photonics Public Private Partnership (PPP). The Pilot Lines mean that thousands of high tech SMEs in Europe - who often lack access to advanced, cost-intensive infrastructures and expertise needed to manufacture new and innovative products – will be able to take their good ideas, scale-them up and validate them with the first customers for commercial production. The Pilot Lines will focus on health applications, flexible organic light-emitting diodes and sensors for the detection of chemicals in gas and liquids. 

New possibilities for utilizing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxi de are a topic at the UN Climate Change Conference. Related activities in industry, science and politics were presented at an accompanying event of the Paris Summit by Climate-KIC, a European Union initiative for climate innovations. Based on a model program named “enCO2re”, Climate-KIC wants to promote the partial replacement of increasingly scarce petroleum with carbon dioxide (CO2) in the plastics industry. The program is headed by materials manufacturer Covestro, a pioneer in the field.

EU member states have recently voted in favor of pushing back halogen bans to 2018, as lobbyist argue LED alternatives are simply not ready to meet market demands yet, reported End Europe.

Cheap Chinese LED bulbs can disrupt DAB radio signals, and stop the radio from working, according to a report by the Telegraph.

LED light bulbs energy-saving capacity is being dimmed by an EU proposal to prolong the shelf life of halogen lamps from 2016 to 2018, according to a Guardian report.

The EU’s GLADIATOR project (FP7 grant agreement number 604000) began on 1st November 2013 and will finish in April 2017 after 42 months. GLADIATOR seeks to improve the quality and size of CVD graphene sheets, and to reduce their production costs, in order to make the use of graphene more attractive e.g. in applications such as transparent electrodes for large area organic electronics. According to analysis by OLED-info, the new technology developed will be demonstrated in the production of large flexible OLEDs. 

The EU has recently issued the newest LED lighting product energy efficiency regulations which will take effect September 1st. According to the regulations, all LED exports to Europe must meet the new energy efficiency standards.

From now on, Tridonic will be providing an energy index for all LED light sources. This means that Tridonic is already meeting the requirements of implementation measure 874/2012 which will come into force in September and which requires all luminaires and light sources to have appropriate energy labeling. From September 1, 2013 all light sources must carry an energy label, and from March 1, 2014 all luminaires.   In the case of luminaires, the energy label does not relate to the energy efficiency of the luminaire but to the efficiency of the lamps or LED modules tha...

The mandatory phase-out of the 100-watt incandescent and frosted light bulb takes effect in Europe Tuesday. The move was part of European Union’s drive to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by the year 2020 in the fight against global warming. Factories must immediately stop producing frosted incandescent bulbs and the least efficient 100-watt clear bulbs, but shops will be allowed to sell their remaining stock of such bulbs.