Euroalert.net lends an Ear to Europe!

Over the past nearly 4 years, Euroalert.net Official Blog has been one of the channels where we have been telling you all the news and developments related to our business and services, which go beyond the daily track of EU news and activities. It has also been the way for you to give us your feedback about these changes, which has been indeed of quite a help for us. It is easy to follow Euroalert.net's evolution over this time in its Blog, as it has been the channel to announce new features in our services – widgets, public procurement and government contracts alerting services, on-line store, etc.; the launch of new sections with more contents in our web – such as EU Law, or commercial opportunities and public procurement in multilateral organizations, etc.; Euroalert.net's mentions in the press, or Euroalert.net's participation in open data events where we have been contributing with our experiences in re-using public sector information.

However, no announcement has made us more excited as the one we are bringing you today: Macarena Rodríguez, from La Oreja de Europa, will join us as new Euroalert.net Editor in Chief from 1 April!

As Macarena needs no introduction among all followers of European Union matters, let us just tell you that she is coming with a bag full of new projects and new energy to bring you every day all the most relevant contents about the day-to-day activity of the European Union and its institutions.

We are sure that her contribution to Euroalert.net's Team will make it an even more useful site for all of you, and will also allow us to move faster in our goal to build the first pan-European platform to aggregate public procurement and tenders from the 27 Member States in the European Union.

La Oreja de Europa ("Europe's Ear") will of course keep on listening to Europe, and will not disappear or be part of Euroalert.net corporation. It will remain a personal project run by Macarena Rodríguez, who will keep on devoting as much effort as before to create a space for reflection and opinion on EU issues. Euroalert.net, will of course be very happy it remains so.

Welcome to Euroalert.net Team, Macarena!

Euroalert.net has a brand new look!

Throughout the last weekend we have been publishing the new versions of the different websites which make Euroalert.net. The main change you will perceive is the new look of all sections of Euroalert.net, whose main objective is to improve the overall clarity in the presentation of these contents.

We really hope you will like these changes but, above all, what we really hope to have achieved is our goal to improve the presentation and allow you to better read the contents on the most relevant news about the European Union that we publish every day. As always, your feedback is very much appreciated, so send us all your comments and opinions through Euroalert.net twitter channel!

A few weeks ago we already announced the launch of a new Public procurement alerting service, a service that you can also try and test for your business thanks to the 7-day free trial you can get by registering in Euroalert.net website. This alerting system is one of the services that will make up the wide range of products and services Euroalert.net will be launching during 2011 as part or its strategy to become the first pan-European platform to aggregate all public tenders and public procurement contracts in the European Union.

Following this same trend to create business services based on public sector information, Euroalert.net has also launched over the last months the service to provide customized newsletters on European information, as well as the new section on European Union legislation, where for the moment you will find the legal provisions published in the L Series of the OJEU, but that will be expanded very soon.

In the coming weeks you will be noticing more changes as more new features will be added in order to improve the content we offer you every day as well as the services we provide based on this information. But, before anything else, we will be making the announcement you are all waiting for, the name of the person who will be the new Euroalert.net Chief Editor from 1 April...

First (tender) announcement of the year... in Euroalert.net

2010 has been such a busy year for Euroalert.net that we didn't even realize to wish you all a Merry Christmas or to publish the traditional end-of-the-year post listing all the achievements and highlights of the last twelve months... Those of you who also follow Euroalert.net Twitter account of joined our Facebook page have already received our Christmas greetings, but for all who don't here the best wishes for year 2011 from all the Team who makes Euroalert.net, we hope it will be a year full of good projects and new opportunities for all of you.

The truth is that this year, in addition to Euroalert.net's usual activity which brings you every day all the information on EU News, funding opportunities and EU grants as well as government contracts and public procurement in the Union, we have started offering a daily update on the legislation published by the Official Journal of the European Union, and we have also inaugurated the new Euroalert.net on-line store.

But 2010 has been above all THE year for Open Data, a year which brought us the occasion to take part in all the events for open data community we managed to attend, even opening some of the data related to public procurement which are managed by Euroalert.net and releasing them in our project ShowMeTheTenders.net; a year in which we were also honoured to be one of the cases of PSI reuse to be mentioned by some of the most relevant Spanish media such as El País, Expansión or Cinco Días. This year Euroalert.net also contributed to Commission's public consultation on PSI Directive, as well as the consultation launched by the Spanish Ministry of Industry on the PSI-reuse Royal Decree. We are sure that all these common efforts will lead to a more favourable Open Data legislation quite soon.

This is not going to be a the detailed count of all 2010 achievements, not at all..., but just as an example of Euroalert.net activity over the past months, on 30 December - almost closing up the year, we launched the new tailored alerting service on public procurement 10ders Alerts - more details will follow in another post. This new service, together with some more in the pipeline, will complete over 2011 the most comprehensive tool kit of information services to help SMEs to access public procurement and government contracts.

In some countries there used to be some sort of traditional expectation about which would be the first TV commercial of the new year... as a “tender version” of such tradition, here comes the first announcement - tender announcement of course..., of year 2011: those interested in multilateral tendering, at your marks, first announcement of year 2011 is a EuropeAid forecast for a contract to provide support to the Kosovo Judicial/ Prosecutorial Council under funded an IPA instrument.

Happy 2011 to every one and good luck to all those bidding this year!!!

The EU policies and EU funding, described in Euroalert

As all those who follow us already know, Euroalert.net is a primary source for keeping abreast of developments in EU funding regarding to both calls for proposals and European programmes, as we publish daily all information concerning the policies adopted by the EU in our EU Funding section.

To finance these policies, the Union relies on EU Programmes and Initiatives that are later developed in the form of calls for proposals. Euroalert has been maintaining and publishing for more than ten years a comprehensive database in which you can find over 400 European Programmes and Initiatives published since 1972 and over 1,500 calls for proposals. In addition, we are continually updating the quality of such contents.

Well, besides putting these tools for searching funding opportunities at your disposal, in Euroalert we want to improve our section of EU funding and so we have published new pages on which we explain in detail the ins and outs of EU funding: where it comes from, how it is managed, to which areas it is addressed...

• On the one hand EU funding sources explains where the EU obtains the necessary funding to develop its policies, what it does spends these funds on, and how it develops its budget.
• In addition, we dedicate a space to programmes and initiatives that fund the policies of the European Union, and to explain it, you can find four groups of programmes: instruments of cohesion and regional development, instruments of common agricultural and fisheries policy instruments, cross-border cooperation programmes, transnational and interregional and other instruments or policies.
• Finally, the section Calls for proposals describes how these funding opportunities generated for the development and implementation of the various community policies are disseminated.
  
  

Moreover, if you want to know which Euroalert category covers a singular policy of the EU, or the policies covered by each category, you can consult the table that we have developed and which is also available along with a description of EU policies, in the same Euroalert EU Funding section.

Thus, Euroalert keeps on moving its mission of becoming an authority on electronic information about the EU, joining in a single source all the relevant information on EU funding. Soon, we will announce a major step in this line that we are preparing for the whole Euroalert community.

Euroalert keeps on crossing borders ... together with Infosistema in Portugal

In September we announced you that Euroalert went to Lisbon to attend meetings and events of the business delegation of Castilla y León that accompanied the President of the Junta de Castilla y León, Juan Vicente Herrera, to the Portuguese capital.

In that mission we had the opportunity to promote Euroalert.net EU information services: business opportunities in the public sector and community funding, in the business meetings that ADE Internacional EXCAL, the external trade promotion Agency of the Junta of Castilla y Leon, had organized.

Well, as a result of our expedition to our neighbour country, we have reached an agreement for the distribution of Euroalert.net services in Portugal through the company Infosistema, with whom we share important values such as commitment to innovation and value creation for our customers. Thus, the service that we provide to Euroalert subscribers in Portugal will be improved thanks to a much closer presence and to the local knowledge that the team of Infosistema will provide us.

As always, we want you to feel participants in this new success in Euroalert expansion, because when Euroalert.net advances and overcomes another barrier, alll of you jump with us. Thank you so much for this new jump!!

Próxima estação do Euroalert.net: Lisboa!!

If this autumn you are travelling anywhere in Europe, you'll probably meet a member or associate of Euroalert.net, because we won't stop!! We had already told you that at the beginning of October Euroalert.net will be in Brussels to assist to Open Days 2009, but, before that, we are visiting the capital of our portuguese neighbours.

Among 21 and 23rd September we will be in Lisbon to promote Euroalert.net EU information and public tender services, to visit some customers and clients and to participate in events and meetings prepared for the delegation of entrepreneurs from Castilla y Leon that will accompany the President of the Junta of Castilla y León, Juan Vicente Herrera, to the portuguese capital. We will have the chance to meet Portuguese entrepreneurs in the business meetings organized by ADE International EXCAL, the Junta of Castilla y León agency for external promotion.

E agora nossa estréia em português neste blog...: Estamos seguros de que esta viagem será uma oportunidade perfeita para reforçarmos os laços com as instituições e agências portuguesas, e convidamos a todos aqueles de vocês que estejam interessados em ser parte da comunidade Euroalert.net em Portugal e aproveitar as ferramentas da Euroalert.net para a distribuição de conteúdos, informações e oportunidades de negócios no sector público europeu, a que nos enviem um email.

A comunidade Euroalert.net cresce e atravessa fronteiras!

Euroalert.net scores a goal!!!

We start the summer with an announcement that has little to do with the information from the European Union or the new features of Euroalert information widgets, but, anyway, we are very proud of it. For some months we have wanted to say you that this year Euroalert.net "has been in the courts" of the real world. Yes, yes, scoring goals for real! :-)

The truth is that in Euroalert.net we are completely convinced thatcorporate social responsibility (CSR)is a way to contribute to the community and further improve our competitive performance with a behaviour that goes beyond strict compliance with legal obligations. We believe that this is not a practice suitable only for large multinationals,so we have decided to act on what is closer to us, and we have tried to score a goal in the real world...

This season, handball team from La Salle College in Valladolid has begun to wear a sweatshirt sponsored by Euroalert.net. It is a small grain of sand with which we intend to support the basic sport, which almost always has limited resources, and we have all suffered that lack as we practised it.

We hope these guys get very far, and who knows...? perhaps this is the first step of a career which ends in a national team ..! ;-). In Euroalert.net we believe that there is no small challenge! but above all we wish that you enjoy training, competing and, overall, learning about teamwork.


We wish you all a happy summer. In Euroalert.net we don't close for holidays, and will continue offering you the best tools and informations on the European Union.