Lane gets EP backing for ECB

Irish central bank governor Philip Lane has received the backing of the European Parliament’s economic committee to be the next vice-president of the European Central Bank. Reuters reports that the committee’s chairman, Roberto Gualtieri, said that some groups within the parliament had reservations about the other candidate for the role, Spanish minister of the economy Luis de Guindos. “The majority of the political groups considered Governor Lane’s performance more convincing,” Gualtieri said after the committee held informal hearing with both candidates. Reuters also quoted Sven Giegold, the spokesman for economic and financial affairs for the Greens/EFA Group. “Lane has shown himself to be a distinguished and proven economist, De Guindos, on the other hand, as a politician who would like to be a top job at the ECB,” he said. The political maneuvering continues next week when euro zone finance ministers will endorse their preferred candidate. The appointment has implications over who will succeed current ECB president Mario Draghi, whose mandate expires at the end of 2019.

Social media giants still short on EU rules

Facebook and Twitter have been accused by the European Commission of failing to fully abide by European Union consumer rules after publishing changes to their terms of services. The Commission has put pressure on both companies, as well as Google, to comply with the rules. Google's latest proposals appear to be in line with the requests made by consumer authorities, but Facebook and Twitter are said to have “only partially addressed important issues about their liability and about how users are informed of possible content removal or contract termination.” The Commission says that the two social media giants are still deleting content uploaded by users without informing them, and Twitter is also changing its terms of use without telling users. Vera Jourová, European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality said the failure to fully comply is unacceptable and underlines the need for a new deal for consumers. “EU consumer rules should be respected and if companies don't comply, they should face sanctions," she said. The social media giants have also faced months of intense pressure from Brussels, among other regulators, over the quick removal of hate speech and fake news.

UK directors calls for partial customs union

The British Institute of Directors has called for a compromise deal that would keep a significant amount of British exports within the EU’s customs union after Brexit. Its proposed partial customs union would cover industrial goods and processed food products, which would avoid tariffs and costly rules-of-origin requirements under the agreement. “There are some important choices to be made about our future economic relationship with the EU, but sadly this debate has not fully come to fruition,” Allie Renison, the IoD’s head of trade policy, was quoted as saying by Reuters. “Even now, 20 months on from the referendum, there is still much talk and much less action.”