This week, an extraordinary meeting of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) of the European Parliament took place in Strasbourg on the fringe of the plenary session of the European Parliament. On the agenda: a first debate between the parliamentarians on the future of European financial supervision.

During the course of the worldwide financial crisis, the criteria for making use of the European Globalisation Fund were changed in the middle of this year: the funds are now also available to workers, who lost their jobs as a result of the global finance and economic crisis. So far, 21 applications for assistance from the European Globalisation Fund have been made, 8 more than in the last two years combined.

This week, the Commission presented a new Eurobarometer survey on poverty and social exclusion and held a conference under the motto “Poverty: between perception and reality - a communication challenge”. The survey and the conference are associated with the 2010 European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion, whose aim it is to reach a broad public and to shed light on the different perceptions of poverty and social exclusion.

The frequencies, which are released by the conversion from analogue to digital television, will be used for innovative services, informed the Commission in a press release. Interactive television or mobile phones with advanced functions could now be made possible by the freed frequencies.

This week, the Commission in Brussels published two Communications, which deal with regulating the financial markets. On the one hand, this concerns future measures to restrain the derivative markets, which played a central role in the financial crisis. On the other hand, the Commission has also adopted a Communication on an EU Framework for Cross-Border Crisis Management in the Banking Sector.

A new microfinance instrument for employment; more money for energy projects, for promoting small and medium-sized business and for milk farmers: that is what suggestions of the European Parliament included for the EU budget, which was adopted on Thursday in its first reading.

This week, the European Commission presented two legislative instruments for changing the Common European Asylum System: the Directive on qualification and status of persons in need of international protection and the Asylum Procedures Directive.

This week, the European Commission presented progress reports on the accession negotiations with Croatia, Turkey and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. No EU accession negotiations have been opened yet with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and the Kosovo.

Based on the present Communication, the European Commission presents its vision for future of transport within the Union. The urgently required basic change of direction does not happen and the Communication of the European Commission is on the whole little innovative. It is to be feared that the present programme will neither be able to fulfil the climate protection targets nor the requirements of the Lisbon Strategy.

This week, a second debate took place in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) of the European Parliament in Brussels on the planned intention of the European Commission to regulate hedge funds and private equity firms for the first time at European level. The proposal of the Commission has to be decided in the so-called codecision procedure by both the European Parliament and the Member States. Both organs have already begun to examine the content of the Commission proposal.