This week, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) negotiated the long discussed project of a European financial transaction tax. Once again, no agreement has been reached. However, the ten EU countries, which are prepared to engage in “closer cooperation” concerning the taxation of financial products, agreed on main issues regarding the taxable base.

The implementation of the Digital Single Market is regarded as one of the priorities of the European Commission. This week, the European Commission has presented two proposals, which shall offer easier access to digital contents. Hence, uniform European Contract rules have been planned for internet transactions. Apart from that, the further cross-border use (“Portability”) of online contents shall be made possible and the copyright has to be modified.

According to information of the European Commission, online trade is on the increase, but has not yet reached its potential.

On 7th December 2015, the historic opportunity was missed to drive forward the quality of men and women. The blame for this has to be laid at the door of some Member States of the European Union, as actually everything had been in place to agree on a quota for women on supervisory boards. However, instead of finally setting up binding rules, an agreement has been blocked as the rights of shareholders, business and national sensitivities carried a greater weight than gender equality policy.

The implementation of the Digital Single Market is regarded as one of the priorities of the European Commission. This week, the European Commission has presented two proposals, which shall offer easier access to digital contents. Hence, uniform European Contract rules have been planned for internet transactions. Apart from that, the further cross-border use (“Portability”) of online contents shall be made possible and the copyright has to be modified.

According to information of the European Commission, online trade is on the increase, but has not yet reached its potential.

This week, Jonathan Hill, EU Commissioner responsible for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, has presented a proposal to overhaul the Prospectus Directive (regu-lates among other which information a company has to provide potential investors with).

Yesterday, the EU Commission presented its Annual Growth Survey 2016, the first element of the annual cycle of economic governance. Even though it states a moderate recovery of the EU’s economy; at the same time, it also points towards growing inequalities between the Member States and alarming social conditions. Parallel to the Survey, the Commission published the Alert Mechanism Report, which is to point out threatening macroeconomic imbalances in the Member States. For the first time, Austria also comes under scrutiny.

This week, the European Commission presented its plans as to how savings of citizens and companies will be made even more crisis-proof by introducing a unified Europe-wide deposit insurance scheme. However, some Member States, among them especially Germany, are sceptical.

The plans to set up a European deposit insurance scheme (EDIS) do not come as a surprise. The so-called Five Presidents' Report on strengthening the Economic and Monetary Union already declared that an EDIS would be a consequent and necessary step towards the completion of the European Banking Union.

This week, a debate on the gender pension gap took place in the plenum of the EU Parliament between MEPs and the EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, Marianne Thyssen. The existence of a general pay gap between men and women has been a well-known fact for a long time. However, what is less well known is that this also has a direct effect on women’s pensions, which in turn poses a greater risk of poverty for older women.

This week, the European Parliament has adopted new rules on sales of insurance within in the European Union by a large majority in Strasbourg. The aim is improve the protection of consumers. The intention is that the rules will not only concern insurance intermediaries and companies but also all market participants selling insurance policies. Hence, in future, consumers shall also be protected for example when buying a policy at a travel agent or when taking out renting vehicle insurance.

The adopted proposal states the following points:

Also this year, the Commission has prepared statements on the Budgetary Plans of euro area Member States and assessed to which extent these comply with the budgetary discipline demanded by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). However, the Commission today signalled its readiness to allow exceptions: hence, due to higher security spending, the budgetary discipline will probably be relaxed for France.