The Crème de la Crème of the European hedge funds and private equity industry met at a conference organised by the Commission in Brussels at the end of last week in order to combine forces against a regulation of their industries.

It is the objective of the campaign to make the public aware of the gender pay gap and to show possible counter measures. In the European Union women on average are earning about 17.4 % less than men. At a wage difference of over 25 %, Austria together with Estonia forms the tail end of the of the wage differences in the European Union.

The Employment Committee of the European Parliament has voted against changing the Road Transport (Working Time) Directive thereby preventing self-employed drivers from being exempt from the Directive’s regulations on working time. The rejection must now be confirmed in the Plenum of the European Parliament.

For some time, the report of a high level group of experts - the so-called la Rosìere Group -, which had been commissioned by Commission President Barroso, was eagerly awaited in Brussels. Its mandate: What should financial regulation in Europe look like in future?

They had been expected for a long time - now they have arrived. The European Commission this week published a Communication containing regulations for so-called “Bad Banks”. These are institutes to be established by the state in order to buy toxic assets from the banks. Using taxpayers’ money.

The financial and economic crisis has hit the car industry with full force. In the last quarter of 2008 new car registrations in Europe declined by an average of 20 %. With regard to managing the crisis, the EU now puts the ball firmly back in the corner of the industry, thereby restricting its role to supervising the industry’s adherence to the regulations of the internal market and the competition law.

China reports an import decline of 43.1 % in January 2009; exports had shrunk by 17.5 %. Most Asiatic countries are faced with a similar bleak state of affairs. The situation in the EU is still slightly better: in December imports were down by 7.8 %, exports fell by 0.9 %.

A new economic study of the European Commission takes stock of the EU enlargement. The assessment of the European Commission is highly positive; it is, however, only restricted to economic key figures.

Loss of income, precarious employment and working conditions, decline in quality in respect of labour intensive services: these are the first results of a study on privatising public services commissioned by the Commission.

On Wednesday, the European Commission took the first steps to open deficit proceedings against Spain, France, Greece, Malta, Ireland and Latvia. Last year, these Member States ran up budget deficits between 3.2 and 6.3 percent.