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.

On Tuesday, Werner Langen of the European People’s Party presented 125 Amendment Applications on a Proposal for a Regulation on OTC derivatives, central counterparties and trade repositories in the Economic and Finance Committee of the European Parliament. The intention is to debate the regulation again mid-April in the Committee and to vote on it in Parliament at the beginning of June.

The AK is expressly opposed to the optional contract law instrument. This instrument poses a particular problem for consumers, as it burdens them, in their capacity as the weaker economic partners, with the decision on the most favourable choice of law – a decision, which most consumers, because of their lack of having detailed knowledge of the actual options, are not up to.

The proposal of the EU Commission concerning the intra corporate transfer of third-country nationals has now been on the table for over six months, during which time the Council has held negotiations behind closed doors. The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has also prepared a draft opinion and this week even held a very interesting public hearing on the subject.

That is the title of an article by the American economist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman. The plans of an European economic government also seem to be hooked on the idée fixe of competitiveness, associated with wage and government cuts. Austerity measures and the European economic government were the key topics of a conference, which had been organised by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) and the European Federal of Public Service Unions (EPSU) this week.

The development of the protection of fundamental rights in Europe is a particular concern for the Federal Chamber of Labour (AK). Against this background, the AK is pleased to have the opportunity to comment on the Communication from the Commission on plans in the dataprotection area.