Euroalert iCal: Public holidays in the EU and in the European institutions for free on your mobile phone

In 2012, Euroalert published for the first time the information on the public holidays in the EU member states. This information is based on the national holidays calendar published annually in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) with data provided by the countries themselves.

This time Euroalert goes further by adding more data to this calendar, and by offering the possibility to get also for free the calendar with the public holidays in European institutions. This information is published in the OJEU in a format (PDF format) that is not useful either for businesses or citizens. For example, a SME that wants to expand its market to other European Union country will be interested to know in a fast and simple way, the public holidays in each EU country. On the other hand, European citizens that organize a vacation travel within the EU would also be interested in knowing in advance if their scheduled days coincide with a public holiday.

These are the reasons for the launching one year more an iCalendar format with the public holidays with an added bonus on this edition. The calendar containing the national holidays EU member states, it has been added the public holidays from the countries that also belong to the European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), namely Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. You can add as an iCalendar format, a format that is available for example from Google Calendar or from many other calendar applications developed for SmartPhones, tablets or computers, the public holiday's calendar of the European institutions. This calendar contains the days that the EU institutions (Council, Commission, European Parliament, European Central Bank, etc..) are closed to the public in 2013 and in 2014.

In order to enjoy this calendar of public holidays in the EU, you only have to download it from Euroalert and, if you have any further question, you can contact us by email or via our Twitter profile and through the Euroalert Facebook page.

Beware, one train can hide another (or the importance of choosing the right CPV)

One of the things we do at Euroalert is making sure that the Competitive Intelligence products and services based on public procurement that we provide for our subscribers are of the highest quality. Much beyond than enhancing their technical features or aggregating new sources of data, Euroalert Team works with our clients to ensure that they get the information about public contracts that really affects their businesses.

One of the most important ingredients to achieve that is to make a good tender profile and choose the right CPV codes which are used in public procurement in the EU. If the codes are accurately identified, then the public procurement widgets implemented by our subscribers in their websites will show the contracts in the sectors and countries that really interest their users. In the same way, choosing the right CPV codes when building up a profile to set an alert on public procurement and government contracts in 10ders Alerts, is really important so that the subscriber gets the right alerts in the mail-box.

It seems easy, but this process can sometimes be a tricky one. Not only the CPV code list contains more than 9 000 codes and turns the process of choosing the right one into a digging experience, but one can also be tempted in some occasions by the first results of the search which are maybe not the right ones. It may happen like in the old railway road-crossings where “one train can hide another”, and a title of a contract which is apparently irrelevant for a business really “hides” one which is really interesting.

It also happens that sometimes the names of the CPV can be somehow misleading. Not leaving the railway environment, we recently found a funny example when solving a query from one of our subscribers. Why does a tender about “disposable non-chemical medical consumables and haematological consumables” in Poland appears in a search about rail transport? Easy, it seems that in publishing the tender someone may have mixed the code for “sleepers” with the one for “sleeping pills”.

With Euroalert you can always rely on the advice of our Team to solve these details and build up the profile which better fits into your needs. This will help you to get the most out of the widgets to publish tenders, the alerts on public procurement, the successful bidders lists or the product reports on public procurement.