Every six months, another Member State takes over the Presidency of the European Union. From July 2010, it is the turn of Belgium. Since yesterday, the Belgian Presidency is officially at the helm. An own programme has been developed and presented. Under the motto “Europe in Action!”, the Belgian Presidency is prepared to meet future challenges.

The travel arrangements to attend the informal summit of the EU Economics and Finance Ministers in Madrid were not the only challenge the ministers had to cope with. The plan was to discuss how the economic cooperation within the Eurozone could be improved against the background of the Greece debt crisis.

This week, the European Commission presented an action plan to create a single area of security and justice for 500 million European citizens in the next five years. Among others, the action plan provides for stricter data protection, for strengthening the rights of the accused in criminal proceedings and for specifying in more detail the conditions of entry and residence of third country nationals for the purpose of seasonal employment.

This week, many MEPs too were among the “volcano victims” unable to travel to Strasbourg to attend the plenary meeting. Due to the fact, that a regularly vote could not be guaranteed it was decided to postpone voting to the next plenary session in May.

This week, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg has delivered a judgment, which is, also from an Austrian point of view, very exiting. Roughly spoken, the ECJ decided that in case of a risk of a shortage of doctors in their own country, universities are able to limit access for foreign students. Austria may now be able to heave a sigh of relief and to maintain its quotas applicable to foreign students.

According to the independent analysis of the European Commission in a report published this week, financial institutes can best be made to face up to their responsibility with regard to the costs of the financial and global economic crisis by introducing a bank levy.

Tackling the crisis and sustaining Europe’s social market economy are only two of the key issues, the new EU Commission wants to deal with this year. The Commission does not hold back with fine words and says right at the beginning of the Communication on this year’s Work Programme “It is impossible to carry on as if nothing had happened” and “It is now a matter of political will”.

The financial crisis caused by banks and major financial groups has cost European taxpayers billions. That is why the belt must now be firmly tightened. The consequence is tax increases for employees and cuts in public services. The only ones, who once again do not want to make any contributions to the costs of the crisis, are those, who triggered it: the financial institutes. With the strong support of Germany.

This week, the Commission presented the long awaited Proposal on the European Citizens’ Initiative. This will give one million European citizens the opportunity to ask the Commission to submit certain legislative proposals. However, this is by no means as easy as it sounds. Some hurdles have to be overcome first. The threshold values, for example, with regard to minimum numbers of Member States and citizens per country have to be exceeded.

The coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty does significantly upgrade the role of the European Parliament (EP) in Trade Policy. This concerns both the information rights of the EP and its codecision competence. Hence, the Parliament will in future play a significant role in international relationships, provided these have a trade policy component.