The European Commission has initiated a Consultation on the MiFID at the beginning of the year. It plans to present a bill for June 2011.

The European Commission has presented a Reflections Paper on Servicesof General Interest in Bilateral Free Trade Agreements. The latter aims to reframe the understanding and treatment of public services in future trade negotiations. In this context, two proposals are particularly problematic.

On January 12 th, 2011 the Commission has presented the Annual Growth Survey (with the additional title: “advancing the EU’s comprehensive response to the crisis”) in conjunction with three appendices (Progress Report on Europe 2020, Macro-economic Report, Draft Joint Employment Report).

Workers have a massive interest in a robust economic development, a solid public budget and in fair wealth distribution. An important prerequisite for all of these is an adequately regulated and stable financial market.

This week, the Austrian Federal Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection Rudolf Hundstorfer and the chairman of the German services trade union ver.di, Frank Bsirske harshly criticised the ideas of the European Commission concerning a coordinated EU economic policy within the framework of a panel discussion, which had been organised by the Brussels Office of the Austrian Trade Union Federation and the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour.

The hundredth anniversary of the International Women’s Day was celebrated on 8 March. There is cause to celebrate many successes - however, equality is still a long way off.

Four months after the official end of the consultation period on the Green Paper on Pensions, the EU Commission presented the results for the first time. It is a summary of the over 1,700 reactions received. Europe will not be able to rid itself quickly of the pension debate as the Commission plans to publish a “White Paper on Pensions” as early as the third quarter of this year. It will already contain the next measures to be taken.

The clock is ticking. In 4 days the European Parliament will vote in its plenary session on 8th March, whether the EU will go ahead internationally with the introduction of a tax on speculators or not.

Already in October of last year, the EP came out in favour of introducing a European Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) with overwhelming majority.

This week, the chairman of the Union of Postal and Telecommunications Workers Helmut Köstinger has made his first official visit to the EU institutions in Brussels. Apart from meetings at the Commission, there was a Round Table with MEPs on the liberalisation of postal services, which had been organised by the Brussels office of the Austrian Trade Union Federation and the Chamber of Labour as well as by UNI Global Union.

This week, the European Parliament debated in its special committee on the future of the EU budget from 2014 the revenue side of the EU budget. Janusz Lewandowski, commissioner for financial programming and budget, who had been invited, remained disappointingly vague. Replying to a comment by an MEP that the commissioner had in reality hardly said anything in his 10-minute statement, Lewandowski himself admitted that this statement was not too far from reality. In the end the budget commissioner gave a little hint in favour of taxing the financial sector.