It has become a tradition of the first plenary week after the summer recess: the speech of the Commission President on the State of the Union to the European Parliament. From 2010 to 2013, Manuel Barroso and since 2015 Jean-Claude Juncker has used this speech to provide a retrospective on the most important developments of the past and a forecast for the coming months. On 12th September 2018, the current Commission President delivered his last State of the Union Address, as he had announced already that he would stand down as Commission President after the EU elections in May 2019.

BAK takes very seriously the call of the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that divisions in Europe must be overcome. Unfortunately, in the Commission’s communication on the EU Multiannual Financial Framework for 2021-2027, far too little or even no mention is made of the cause of division, namely the deep divide between rich and poor within the Member States and hence within the whole of the EU.

The European Commission aims to achieve streamlining and synergy effects through a new Single Market Programme covering the competitiveness of enterprises, consumer protection, financial services, the food chain, European standards and statistics. BAK has doubts, however, as to how those objectives can be achieved given the wideranging topics concerned.

We pay our taxes, so why don’t corporations? This new report shows how the Big Four are embedded in EU policy-making on tax avoidance, and concludes that it is time to kick this industry out of EU anti-tax avoidance policy.

In his inaugural speech before the European Parliament on 3rd July 2018, Federal Chancellor Kurz presented the programme for the Austrian Council Presidency. Under the motto “A Europe that protects”, the programme unites three focuses: Migration, Digitisation and Neighbourhood Policy in the Western Balkans. However, from the point of view of the Chamber of Labour, the protection of social standards with regard to European workers and employees is missing.

The discussion on the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework places special emphasis on the issue of gender budgeting. The European Parliament’s Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality held a discussion with experts, to which Sybille Pirklbauer, the expert of AK Vienna, was invited. She takes a clear position: gender budgeting requires more than an abstract acknowledgement; it needs clear and measurable targets and financial resources.

On 21.12.2017, the Commission had presented its proposal for a Directive on transparent und predictable working conditions. This week (19.6.2018), MEPs of the responsible Employment Committee debated the now available EP draft report on the Directive. Even though it was possible to recognise the general approval of the proposal by all factions, opinions significantly differed in particular with regard to the question, who should be the future beneficiary of the extended rights of the Directive (“notion of the employee”).

After a long period of standstill, the debate on deepening the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) seems to have gained momentum again. Following his success in the presidential elections in France, the French President Emmanuel Macron used his so-called “Sorbonne speech” in September 2017 to surge ahead with far-reaching ideas on the future of the Eurozone. However, initially without any noticeable reaction of the most important addressee his speech was aimed at. Germany had been occupied with forming a government for a long time.

The 2nd of May had been eagerly awaited by many in Brussels, as for months the Commission had named this day to present its proposal for the Multiannual Financial Framework from 2021 until 2027. Finally on Wednesday the day had arrived: Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and the Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources, Günther Oettinger, presented the ideas of the Commission on the Budget from 2021 in the European Parliament.