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A record number of people in EU countries now personally feel like they are citizens of the European Union, according to a long-running survey monitoring the continents views on integration.

As Britain heads towards the exit door the rest of the continent feels more positive about European identity than ever, with a solid 68 per cent of the population telling the regular Eurobarometer poll that they feel they are a citizen of the EU.

The up-tick also comes alongside a sharp increase in optimism for future of the continent-wide bloc, with a big fall in people who foresee the continents economy worsening over the next 12 months compared to last year.

56 per cent of people across the continent are optimistic about the future of the EU in general a rise in six points on the previous survey published in the autumn of last year.

21 per cent also now think the EU economy will get worse, down from 28 per cent in the last poll, while 21 think it will get better, up from 18 per cent. 45 per cent believe it will stay the same.

There were sharp rises in EU optimism in France, where new president Emmanuel Macron saw off a far-right challenger, and Portugal, whose government has ended austerity and kick-started growth with an investment programme.

When the European Commission started asking about EU citizenship identity in 2010 62 per cent of people said they felt like EU citizens.

The latest results appear to contradict the narrative spun by the Leave campaign that Brexit would cause a domino-effect of other countries wanting to leave the bloc.

The new figures also come amid a solid increase in growth across the continent and a hardening of attitudes to secession from the union as the so-far shambolic nature of Britains exit becomes clear.

In the first quarter of the yearthe UKs economy fell to the bottom of the EU growth league, with first quarter GDP figures being beaten by every other EU country. The UKs 0.2 per cent growth rate in that period was well below the Eurozones 0.6 per cent rate.

Britain also lagged behind the eurozone in the first quarter, with 0.3 per cent growth compared to 0.6 per cent.

The Eurobarometer survey is conducted by the European Commission and polls the view33,000 people across the EU.

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More Europeans than ever say they feel like citizens of the EU - The Independent

Sweeping reforms are set to take charge of European consumers online privacy and data concerns next spring, but the impact could be global and a huge win for consumer privacy advocates. The regulation applies if the companies collecting or storing data are based in the European Union or deal with data of E.U. residents, even if their headquarters are elsewhere.

Passed by the European Union in April 2016, the regulation officially known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or known as PR-speak on Twitter as #GDPRubbish is supposed to give Internet users more control over the ways that their personal information is used.

As the BBC explained, Simply put, organisations need to keep records of all personal data, be able to prove that consent was given, show where the datas going, what its being used for, and how its being protected. If companies dont comply, they could face penalties of 20 million euros or up to 4 percent of annual global turnover (whichever is greater).

The European Parliament shared this breakdown when the regulation passed:

The new rules include provisions on:

The GDPR is scheduled to take effect in May 2018. Were in the middle of the two-year transition period for companies to come into compliance, but one survey found that more than 60 percent of organizations havent even started implementing their new protocols.

As Axios Sara Fischer pointed out, That means everyone from Google to your neighbor who sells shoes on eBay could be affected. Its also not just tech companies like Google, Apple, Facebook that are involved, but data-collecting businesses across all sectors including publishers.

However, the tech companies will be leading the way. Were going to see innovative things from Google and Facebook in terms of how they deal with it, David Downing, executive vice president at ASG Technologies, told Axios.

Startups and smaller companies are worried about the regulation being overly burdersome.

We hold millions of datapoints on our users and we already take protecting this very seriously. Our customers trust us with their data on the assumption that we wont leak or lose it, which we dont, Tom Davenport, the CEO of a London technology company with 10 employees, told the Sun. Its fundamentally pretty straightforward. Its frustrating therefore to now be hit with such a massive and complex piece of legislation in this area.

European Union officials say its necessary: This is the kind of price we pay for a civilized way for the flow of personal data in the world, Wojciech Wiewlorowski, assistant supervisor at the European Data Protectionin Brussels, told Axios.

The new law equals bigger fines for getting it wrong but its important to recognize the business benefits of getting data protection right, a spokesperson for the U.K.s government agency in charge of enforcing the GDPR told the BBC.

A coalition to raise awareness of the regulation just launched today in Ireland, with a newsletter highlighting the buzz around the GDPR as its official implementation deadline approaches in May.

While the regulation is grounded in the European Union (and will still apply in the United Kingdom after it exits the group), analysts say the GDPR is a big step in securing consumer data worldwide.

I am optimistic that many of the GDPRs protections will trickle down from the EU to other western nations, wrote Simon Crosby, the cofounder of an global online security company, in a Forbes post. For a large enterprise such as a bank, implementing different controls and procedures for managing privacy for each geography in which it operates is likely to be onerous.

The regulation can be a bit jargon-heavy, which led to the popularity of the #GDPRubbish hashtag. (Weve included some of the more coherent and comprehensive breakdowns as links in this piece.) People have been fact-checking different claims about GDPR on Twitter, though we cant verify that all the tweets on the hashtags are accurate.

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The European Union's new data privacy rules will make companies worldwide clean up their online security, or else - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

One subject died and four others suffered from brain damage in a 2016 study run by Biotrial in Rennes, France.

David Vincent/ASSOCIATED PRESS

By Hinnerk Feldwisch-DrentrupAug. 1, 2017 , 4:36 PM

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has issued new, stricter rules for studies that test drugs in people for the first time. They aim to better protect participants in such first-in-human studiesoften healthy volunteers who receive a financial reward.

The guideline, which was issued on 25 July, will take effect in February 2018. It comes in the wake of a tragedy in a French drug study last year that led to the death of one man and serious neurological damage in four others. But some say the revision isn't going for enough.

The new guideline emphasizes that drug developers must perform comprehensive preclinical tests of a new compound, including how it binds to its target and whether it has so-called off-target effects; experts argue such studies fell short for the French study. EMA also provides more detailed guidance on dosing and how to monitor subjects' safety. Trial sponsors need to have strategies to minimize risks at every step and have to deal with adverse events timely and adequately.

Also new in the guideline are provisions for trials consisting of multiple substudies, which have become far more common the past decade. (The French trial, run by Biotrial in Rennes for a Portuguese drug company named Bial, used multiple groups of volunteers to test many different dosing regimens and interactions with food.) In some cases, drug developers need to analyze all the results of an earlier part before moving on to the next.

Neuropharmacologist Daniele Piomelli from the University of California, Irvine, welcomes several of the new rules. Bial and Biotrial made the incomprehensible decision to test daily doses of up to 100 milligrams, he says, when much smaller doses had been shown to completely inhibit the target enzyme; the new rules would have prevented that.

But the guideline doesn't sufficiently address another mistake, Piomelli says. After the first volunteer was hospitalized with strokelike symptoms, the remaining subjects received another dose the next morning. Under EMA's new rules, a serious adverse reaction in even one subject should be considered a reason to stop if it is at least possibly related to the drug candidate. But Piomelli says that with healthy volunteers, any serious adverse event should be presumed to be drug-related. In doubt, you stop, he says.

EMA certainly tried to improve the guideline, says Joerg Hasford of Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich in Germany, the chair of the Association of German Research Ethics Committees. But the wording is supersoft, Hasford says. Drug developers want studies to go fast, and EMA appears to accommodate them, he says. Studies with multiple parts, for instance, are attractive to trial sponsors because they have to apply for approval and produce participant information only once. But Hasford says such setups should not normally be allowed for first-in-human trials.

The guideline also lacks sufficient ethical guidance on weighing the benefits against the risks before a trial starts, he adds. Some researchers criticized the Bial trial because the company had not shown that the test drug, called BIA 10-2474, was a promising drug candidate. It was not clear that this compound was useful for anything, Piomelli says.

In an email to ScienceInsider, an EMA spokesperson says that the guidelines need to cover many different scenarios and that the agency can't produce an omni-comprehensive document. Trial sponsors have to interpret and apply the provisions in a manner that is proportionate to the level of uncertainty linked to the novel drug and the characteristics of the subjects, he says. And the revision focuses on technical aspects, he emphasizes; ethics committees are responsible for weighing studies' ethical questions.

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After French drug trial tragedy, European Union issues new rules to protect study volunteers - Science Magazine

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is considering a "whole range of actions" in response to rising tensions in Venezuela, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday after the head of the bloc's parliament called for targeted sanctions against President Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuela jailed two leading Maduro critics on Tuesday in a fresh blow to the opposition after deadly protests erupted around an election last Sunday, prompting the United States to impose sanctions on the leftist president.

Washington and the EU tend to coordinate their sanctions but the bloc has been divided over how to respond. Spain has been the most vocal in advocating sanctions, while others have so far mostly been cautious.

The European Parliament head, Antonio Tajani, joined the small choir calling to punish Maduro.

In a letter Tajani said that following the "unjustified arrests" of opposition leaders Antonio Ledezma and Leopoldo Lopez, he would like to consider "freezing assets and imposing travel ban to the EU to the members of the Venezuelan government including its President, Nicolas Maduro and its entourage".

Since the bloc needs unanimity to introduce sanctions, diplomats in Brussels said that did not seem imminent.

Catherine Ray, a spokeswoman for the EU's executive Commission in Brussels, told a news briefing:

"Consultations with member states are ongoing to ensure an appropriate and coordinated response by the EU. Obviously the whole range of actions is (being) discussed."

Diplomats explained the bloc was working on joint declaration on Venezuela, where clashes last Sunday marred the election of a new political body with sweeping powers to strengthen the hand of the leftist government.

The EU has suggested it might not recognize the result of the voting.

The diplomats said the declaration would threaten Maduro with more "measures" it can take against what Tajani described as a country "falling into dictatorship", but would not mention sanctions specifically.

On Monday, the United States government slapped sanctions on Maduro, freezing his assets subject to U.S. jurisdiction, and barring Americans from doing business with him.

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EU says mulling 'range of actions' on Venezuela but sanctions unlikely now - Reuters

Joseph Muscat revealed there is a genuine feeling around the EUs leadership that Britain could still remain in the political project.

The Maltese prime minister, however, said there are others who are less optimistic when he was asked how wide-arranging the opinion is.

While speaking to CNN, he was asked whether his views on Britains chances of remaining in the EU are shared, Mr Muscat said: There are some who think in the same manner as I think, others are less optimistic.

CNN

But I do think I am not alone in having this point of view.

Mr Muscat did though refuse to name the politicians we are referring to during the interview.

He had previously claimed Brexit will never take place because everyone will lose if the will of the British electorate was genuinely delivered.

The Maltese PM urged British leaders to hold a second referendum in an attempt to overturn last years historic vote.

Mr Muscat told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant: For the first time, Im starting to believe that Brexit will not happen.

I am seeing hopeful signs that indicate things will change. I see encouraging signs that the tide is turning.

Twitter

1 of 5

Tourists from the UK have been stuck in four hour queues

Im not saying the Brits have made a mistake, but the mood is changing.

He did, however, claim there is no solution to Brexit, claiming everyone will a loser when Britain leaves the EU.

Mr Muscat added: The referendum was democratic, but has resulted in a situation everyone loses.

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'I'm not alone!' European Union leader clinging to hopes Brexit WON'T happen - Express.co.uk