Just less than two weeks until the EU Employment and Social Affairs Ministers will meet in Brussels. This is the last opportunity for the Italian Council Presidency to prove whether it is capable of bringing important social policy initiatives to conclusion. However, the way things stand this is unlikely to be achieved, even though allegedly, the agenda includes politically charged dossiers. Thus, instead of political agreements one will only present reports to be at least able to show that one has definitely made an attempt to find solutions.

The austerity policy of the Troika is supposed to lead to the consolidation of public households; however, its impact on countries affected by the pressure to cut costs, has disastrous consequences in some cases. Already in the past, AK and ÖGB have time and again emphasised that the austerity programmes should not be used to abolish social standards, which had been contended successfully over many decades and to privatise important public sectors. Which concrete effects the policies of the Troika have, has been demonstrated in particular in the Greek healthcare sector.

CETA, the Free Trade Agreement between the EU und Canada came to its conclusion at the EU-Canada Summit on 26 September 2014 in Ottawa. CETA and TTIP also played a large role at the hearing of the designated EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström in the European Parliament in Brussels this week. Even though she stood by the controversial Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), Malmström received majority approval of the competent committee.

The hearings of the 27 designated EU Commissioners in the EU Parliament have been taking place since the beginning of the week. Of particular interest was the hearing of the Belgian Christian Democrat Marianne Thyssen, who will be in charge of Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour mobility in the EU Commission - provided her appointment is confirmed by the EU Parliament. Thyssen’s absolute priorities include youth unemployment and the implementation of the European Youth Guarantee.

Last week, the Committee on Budgets of the European Parliament froze part of the budget for expert groups of the EU Commission. The reason for this lies above all in the imbalanced composition of these external advisory committees. In doing so, the European Parliament follows the demand of AK and ÖGB to guarantee more internal transparency and less dominance of Big Business within the expert groups.

The negotiations on the Free Trade Agreement between EU and Canada, which began in 2009, seem to have reached their conclusion. The intention is to declare the negotiations on the Agreement officially concluded within the scope of the EU-Canada Summit on 26.9.

In May 2014, 5.2 million of young people in the EU were unemployed. Against this background, the plenum of the EU Parliament initiated a discussion with representatives of the Council of Ministers and the Commission on the Youth Guarantee and its implementation in the individual Member States. Looking at the figures it becomes apparent that the situation, for example in Greece, Spain and Croatia remains changed. One out of two young people is still without a job.

The Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour (AK) would like to make the following statement to participate in the consultation process on the White Paper of the EU Commission “Towards more effective EU merger control”. The AK agrees to the publication of the present statement.

In its everyday work, the European Commission regularly receives support from external advisors in so-called groups of experts. However, the problem is that the overwhelming majority of these advisors represent corporate interests. In the past, both AK and ÖGB have repeatedly pointed out this unsatisfactory situation. The European Parliament and the newly appointed European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly are also very critical of this development. O’Reilly, for example, recently launched a public consultation on her own initiative to get the problem under control at last.

A recent study commissioned by the German Ministry of Finance shows that the implementation of the Financial Transaction Tax would generate an additional income of over 17 billion euros in Germany alone. Admittedly, speculators could in many cases take their transactions to other countries; however that would not harm the economy.