Apart from the planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) with the USA and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada (CETA), the planned Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) is currently also the subject of intense debate.

The coming weeks will show whether after more than three years of negotiations, the Member States will agree to the proposal of the EU Commission regarding women on supervisory boards of listed companies. This seems actually somewhat unlikely as the general consensus amongst informed opinion is that states such as Germany, Poland or Denmark will continue to block any agreement. Austria belongs to the supporters of the proposal, just as the EU Parliament, which already agreed on this two years ago.

This week, the rapporteurs of the Social Democratic and the Conservative group presented a first draft of the report on tax avoidance and tax evasion of multinational corporations in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament.

This week, the European Commission has launched a first stage consultation with EU social partner organisations in order to learn how the work-life balance could be improved and how obstacles to women’s participation in the labour market could be removed. The consultation is the logical step following the withdrawal of the proposal to amend the Maternity Leave Directive by the EU Commission.

A high-level conference hosted by AK EUROPA, the Brussels Office of the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour and ÖGB Europabüro, the Brussels Office of the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions, which addressed the challenges of digitalisation for the workplace and for social Europe, took place this week attended by a large audience.

This week, the EU Commission adopted its second Work Programme. It contains the clear message for EU citizens that the Commission will show restraint concerning small issues, but demonstrate generosity and ambition with regard to big ones and aim at achieving better results. Similar to the first Programme, the EU Commission limits itself to overall 23 key initiatives.

This week, the competent Commissioners Jyrki Katainen and Elżbieta Bieńkowska presented the roadmap for the new EU Single Market Strategy. Above all, its purpose is to drive forward economic freedoms, apart from dealing with questions of Sharing Economy, hence services such as Airbnb and Uber...

Participatory Economy or Sharing Economy

This week, the European Parliament in Strasbourg adopted improved rights for consumers with regard to package travel. Above all, these protective measures are now covering tourism and travel-related services, which consumers have combined and booked themselves.

During a press conference this week, Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice President of the European Commission, informed among other that the currently existing national deposit insurance schemes - according to a proposal by the European Commission – shall be supplemented by a system based on reinsurance. A respective legislative proposal will be presented before the end of 2015.

In general, the deposit insurance scheme increases the trust of investors in banks and is to prevent the risk of a bank run.

Political decisions are supposed to be taken only after all the relevant and varied interests have been given equal consideration. At the European Union level, however, it is clear that the tone is overwhelmingly set by large corporations and the financial sector. This is apparent both in the numbers of lobbyists acting to represent business interests in Brussels, and also due to the fact that it is overwhelmingly individuals with links to companies and their associations who are engaged as experts in legislative activity.