Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO)

The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO) is composed of employment, social protection, consumer protection, health and equal opportunities ministers, who meet around four times a year.

It is the task of the European Community to raise the standard of living and quality of life of its citizens, notably through high-quality jobs and high levels of social protection, health protection and protection of consumers' interests, while at the same time guaranteeing equal opportunities for all its citizens.

In these fields, the Council usually decides by qualified majority, acting together with the European Parliament under the codecision procedure (social security is an exception: here the Council acts unanimously). It adopts European rules to harmonise or coordinate national laws, in particular on working conditions (workers' health and safety, social security, employee participation in the running of companies), strengthening of national policies to prevent illness and combat the major health scourges and protection of consumers' rights.

Since employment and social protection polices remain the responsibility of the Member States, the Community's contribution is confined to setting common objectives for all the Member States, analysing measures taken at national level and adopting recommendations to the Member States.

Within the Council, and in particular in the framework of the Employment Committee and the Social Protection Committee, Member States can exchange ideas and information or share the results of their own experiences.

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

The European Parliament is a major agenda-setter in the area 
of European policy and the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) plays a key role in the work of the Parliament. It has responsibility for such matters as the economic and monetary policies of the EU, taxation and competition policies, free movement of capital and the regulation of financial services (banks, insurance, pension funds, asset/fund management, accounting, international monetary and financial systems etc.). Moreover, as the great majority of Parliament's work is done at Committee level, it is ECON that does most Parliamentary work on these key economic and monetary policy areas. This puts ECON at the centre of the Parliament's work on the current economic and financial crisis and gives ECON significant influence on the policy agenda in the EU and internationally.



THE PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
The President is elected for a renewable term of two and a half years, i.e. half the lifetime of a Parliament. The President represents the European Parliament vis-à-vis the outside world and in its relations with the other EU institutions. The actual president is Martin Schulz.

COMENIUS EUROPEAN CHAMBER MUSIC

This project aims to bing together different schools through the music. The participating countries are: Spain, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania.
The main objetives is for the students to play folk music from the different countries in order to get to know different cultures.
The project will end with the recording of a CD containing all the songs and wich will be distribuited in all of the schools involved in the project.
Recetly they have been in Murcia, at San Buenaventura School (Spain), and they attended to the concert which was given by the San Buenaventura's quire and students about the most famous soundtracks.
Some time ago there have been meetings at other countries such as Poland, Turkey, Italy...
The students are very excited with this project because they are included on it.
From So-Europe, we are sure that it will be succesful.