Iers voorzitterschap gaat deze week van start (en)

BRUSSELS - Ireland takes over the EU presidency this week, amid promises to help restore growth to the European economy.

It marked the event with a modest balloon-flying and EU flag-raising ceremony in Dublin castle on New Year's eve.

On Monday (7 January), it will also switch on its "Skylum" - an art installation in the EU Council building in Brussels in the form of an inflatable bubble which changes colour and makes sounds when people walk underneath it and which aims to symbolise a marriage of new technology with traditional crafts.

Its foreign ministry on New Year's eve said: "The year 2013 will usher in a new phase in the European Union's drive for recovery."

Its foreign minister Eamon Gilmore in an op-ed in the Irish Times the same day noted that despite Ireland's current EU bailout, its EU membership over the past 40 years transformed it from a rural backwater to one of the wealthiest societies in Europe.

He noted that - apart from talks on the banking union and the 2014-2020 EU budget - Ireland will try to get young people back to work with a new "youth guarantee scheme," to clinch an EU-US free trade deal and to help online firms and small businesses to prosper in the single market.

Top EU officials and the 27 commissioners will visit Dublin on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In keeping with the Irish theme, the European Commission will on Tuesday publish a review of EU social welfare standards and on Wednesday propose measures to help entrepreneurs launch new businesses.

The commission will on Wednesday also unveil its European Cyber Crime Centre.

The unit, based in the EU joint police body, Europol, in The Hague, will target online organised crime, including child pornography.

For their part, MEPs on the budget control committee will on Thursday question EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton i on how she spent EU funds while starting up her foreign service in 2011.

Deputies on the civil liberties committee will the same day vote whether to let member states temporarily suspend visa free arrangements with non-EU-countries in the event of a sudden surge in migration.

Outside Brussels, Greek leader Antonis Samaras will on Tuesday visit German Chancellor Angela Merkel i in Berlin for an "informal exchange of views" as Athens tries to keep EU bailout money flowing.

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt on Thursday will consider lowering eurozone i interest rates to help households and businesses get back to borrowing and spending once again.