After a busy plenary session in France, we are looking forward to returning to our daily events back in Brussels. During the past session we have had interesting and lively debates and votes on undeclared work, on the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) regulations, and on the future European Council meeting of 18 and 19 February, which will addres issues such as Schengen, the refugee crisis and EU-UK relations.

During the upcoming week a delegation including three of our MEPs will be on mission in Turkey discussing human rights and ways of spending the special fund for refugees fleeing conflict areas. Our Group will be represented by MEPs Sylvie Guillaume, Tanja Fajon and Péter Niedermüller.

This weekend we are also marking the International Day for Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Our Group has been active in our #EndFGM Campaign, and you can check out our latest video here.
 
We are also getting closer to the much-awaited Africa Week our Group is organising. A more mature and contemporary Africa-EU partnership can help us address the global challenges we face. Together we can strengthen democracy and human rights, and foster sustainable economic and human development in our societies. The S&D Group Africa Week is a series of political and cultural events aimed at celebrating Africa-EU relations and discussing ways to give them new directions. The events will take place between Tuesday 5 April 2016 - Thursday 7 April 2016. You can check out our programme here.

Our new site on the Digital Union is up and functional. This is an important debate topic for our Group and we believe that informing EU citizens about their rights and opportunities in this new, digitalised world is essential. You can read more about our position and priorities on this on our new webpage, where you can also find some good-to-know technical slang