This week, the Commission published the Autumn Package within the scope of the current European Semester. It comprises several reports and analyses, above all the Annual Growth Report 2019.

The EU Parliament has committed itself: it regards the 1.11 % of the GNI as proposed by the Commission as too low. Hence, one can expect tough negotiations with the Council over the coming months.

The European Commission presented its 2019 Work Programme at the end of October with the intention of concentrating increasingly on its priorities until the European Parliament elections in May 2019. The main focus will be on finalizing the proposed dossiers.

Seven years after the LIBOR scandal and two years after the Panama Papers, the European Union is facing the next financial scandal. This time, the tax authorities in Austria, Germany, Belgium and seven other Member States were cheated out of tax revenue totalling at least 55.2 billion Euros.

In a well-attended committee room of the European Parliament, AK, ÖGB, ETUC and DGB welcomed trade union representatives and members of the EU Parliament to a panel discussion. The subject matter of the event was the Company Law Package of the European Commission. The debate in particular focused on the impending threat the draft legislation might pose possible to workers’ participation.

This week, the “New Deal For Consumers” found itself several times on the agenda of the European Parliament. One workshop, organised by the S&D faction on 8 October 2018 with the title “European Collective Redress - Strengthening the Rights of EU Citizens” did not only reveal significant differences of opinion, but also unfair lobbying tactics by the industry against the introduction of a new instrument of European collective actions.

The discussion on the Multiannual Financial Framework is one of the topics, which currently concerns Brussels the most. In May 2018 the Commission had presented its budgetary proposal for period 2021 to 2027, which is supposed to have an overall volume of Euro 1,279 billion. This equals 1.11 % of the Gross National Income. However, Parliament regards this percentage as too low: they insist on their demand of a budget of 1.3 %. Even if budget issues are first and foremost within the competence of the Council, Parliament nevertheless has a potential influence, which it intends to use.

On 2 October 2018, the Institute for Co-Determination and Corporate Governance (IMU) of the Hans Böckler Foundation hosted the first “Worker’s Voice” breakfast debate at the Representation of North Rhine-Westphalia to the European Union. The main focus of the discussion was on “best practice” examples regarding the cooperation of social partners at the global level. However, the proposal of European company law means that things will get significantly worse for transnational co-determination.

Over 130 people gathered on 24. September 2018 on the premises of the Permanent Representation of Austria to the EU to attend the panel discussion “Corporate Capture in Europe: The influence of corporations in policy making and what to do about it”, hosted by the Brussels Office of the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour (AK EUROPA) and the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB Europabüro) and The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU). The question of the influence of business interests on legislation in the European Union was hotly debated.

In the new report “Corporate capture in Europe” the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) members and allied groups have collected and analysed a series of examples of corporate capture throughout Europe. They show how deeply entrenched and embedded the relations between policy makers and business interests are.

These cases – covering a variety of topics including tax evasion, banking regulation, the digital single market, defence, Dieselgate and others – will be the starting point to explore the concept of corporate capture.