Following years of negotiation, the European Parliament has now voted in favour of the Free Trade Agreement of the EU with Columbia. In spite of the still existing human rights violations and violent acts against trade unions. The new Agreement is expected to come into force in 2013.

Following the publication by the EU Commission of the White Paper on Pensions, one of the most important strategy papers on the subject of pensions, in February this year, it is now the turn of the European Parliament to have its input. The competent rapporteur recently presented her report and made no secret of her ideas: expanding private retirement savings and occupational retirement schemes as well as the necessity to link the statutory retirement age to life expectancy.

The action plan on corporate governance continues the current course. Current company rules shall be modernised. The Commission focuses on enhanced transparency, greater engagement by shareholders and the promotion of cross-border operations. Individual points of the action plan are going in the right direction. Nevertheless, the rights of employees are being short-changed.

The experiences of the last years clearly demonstrate that urgent improvements are needed to ensure the implementation, application and enforcement of the Directive in respect of posting workers within in the framework of the provision of services. That is why the European Commission proposed an Enforcement Directive with new solutions and measures on 21 March 2012.

We would like to draw your attention to the further treatment of the Free Trade Agreement with Columbia and Peru. In spite of the serious and repeated objections of the international trade union movement, the EU-Parliament has been asked to vote on an extremely problematic negotiation outcome.

BAK welcomes the intention in the proposal to strengthen consumer protection and to extend the scope of application to insurance undertakings.

The BAK is basically very critical of trade liberalisations. However, it prefers the multilateral process, which primarily includes developing countries, to bilateral free trade agreements.

In October 2011, the Commission presented a new draft Directive, in which the financial reporting standards for small and medium-sized entities of the current 4th and 7th Directive shall be revised and consolidated.

The ECJ judgments concerning the relationships between market freedom and fundamental trade union rights of 2007 and 2008 revealed the fault lines which run between the single market and the social dimension achieved at the national level.