Highlights

The fight against impunity is a global challenge. New obstacles are preventing the perpetrators of international crimes from being held accountable. The paper compares three accountability mechanisms – international criminal tribunals, universal jurisdiction and transitional justice – and provides case studies.

Europe’s digital ecosystem remains heavily dependent on non-EU software and cloud providers. This study maps these dependencies, as well the geopolitical and economic risks they raise. It finds that US firms dominate all major software layers, exposing Europe to strategic vulnerabilities. It also outlines policy options and areas of action to strengthen Europe’s technological autonomy and resilience.

This study maps the current housing needs in the EU, highlighting inequalities in affordability, access and quality. The study analyses key factors affecting housing demand and supply challenges, the broader impacts of housing scarcity, and how EU legislation and funding affect national policies.

This briefing proposes a multistep algorithmic method to determine the seat allocation for Parliament on a permanent basis, based on various scenarios. This allocation of seats is modelled considering constraints such as the number of seats allocated to each Member State, the size of the Parliament, and degressive proportionality.

This study shows how parliaments in the EU-27 Member States, as well as Canada, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, exercise the budgetary control function. While the principles underpinning budgetary control are consistent, practices and cultures differ considerably.

This study assesses how performance and mainstreaming are integrated into EU spending. It maps existing indicators, instruments and governance arrangements, and offers recommendations to the 2028–2034 MFF. The paper on Concepts and practices examines the performance based budgeting implementation in Cohesion Policy and the RRF

This study, requested by AFET, reviews EU options for using Russian sovereign, private and windfall assets frozen under EU sanctions as reparations for Ukraine. It proposes ways to overcome legal and political constraints and argues an EU reparations loan instrument is currently the most viable path.

Rare diseases affect an estimated 6-8% of the European Union population, meaning that between 27 and 36 million people in the EU will experience one at some point in their lives. This in-depth analysis presents the findings of the public consultation on rare diseases conducted by the European Parliament in March 2025 to inform the forthcoming work of the Committee on Public Health.

This report examines EU progress on implementing UN CRPD Article 19. Looking deeper into the UN CRPD reviews and the possibilities that the new MFF offers, it evaluates EU and national efforts on deinstitutionalisation. Despite policy advances, institutionalisation, inadequate community-based services and lack of meaningful consultation persist.

This briefing focuses on three distinct CRPD articles: accessibility, education and employment. The petitions highlight patterns of exclusion in multiple contexts.

This study requested by the EUDS Special Committee reviews the current framework to protect democracy in the EU in view of the forthcoming European Democracy Shield. It provides a comprehensive map of the existing instruments, and identifies and analyses outstanding policy challenges, regulatory gaps and implementation issues. The study also formulates recommendations to strengthen democratic resilience

Following a June workshop in the Committee on Budgetary Control focusing on the implementation of the gender mainstreaming methodology in the EU budget, with an emphasis on budgetary control, this briefing, produced the Committee on Budgets, examines how gender budgeting in the current 2021-2027 budget cycle compares with the proposal for the post-2027 period.