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.

After almost a year of stalemate, the Commission is taking a new step towards revising the Working Time Directive. This week, the Commission presented a Communication on reviewing the Working Time Directive. Strictly speaking, this is the initial phase of consulting the social partners at European level. This initial phase will ascertain whether action is needed with regard to the Working Time Directive at EU level and on what such an initiative should be based on. Negotiations between Council and Parliament failed in April 2009

A positive development is on the horizon with regard to the Directive proposal of the Commission on EU Consumer Rights: in a debate in the European Parliament, Commissioner Viviane Reding, who is now in charge of this dossier, confirmed that the Directive proposal on Consumer Rights would worsen the situation in some Member States. The consequence: she is moving away from planned full harmonisation, where only EU law would have applied, but not national regulations, which were better.

At the beginning of this week, the President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Jean-Claude Trichet and the Eurogroup Chairman, Jean-Claude Juncker attended the economic committee of the European Parliament. Apart from talking about the further procedure with regard to the situation in Greece, the debate also dealt with the general budget policy of the Member States. Trichet and Juncker are adamant that the economic support measures by the governments have to be reduced as quickly as possible and that spending has to be consolidated.

It is only a few months since the public sector was urgently required to rescue the financial sector with hundreds of million Euros bailout money. Many small investors lost their savings, because they were not, or not adequately informed about the risk of the financial investments, they put their money into. This week, the Economic Committee of the European Parliament voted on a review of the so-called Prospectus Directive, hence the documents, which are supposed to inform investors about the specific risks of the respective investment.

This week, the Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier appeared before the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. Digital agenda, copyright, online piracy, intellectual property, trademark law, patent law and corporate law are only some of the topics that Barnier wants to address during his period in office. Barnier got EU Patent Law in his sight

Only two weeks ago, it did not look good for the future of including fat, salt, sugar, the country of origin and similar information on food product labels. In its statement, the Internal Market Committee of the European Parliament had made further concessions to the food industry. This week, the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety voted on the draft Directive.

In Brussels this week, one of the most controversial draft laws of the European Union suffered a clear setback. Shortly before reaching the finishing line, the other Member States lost the courage to outvote Great Britain with regard to the regulation of hedge funds and private equity funds. Although the German Chancellor Angela Merkel protested, in the end, the consideration for the coming general elections in Great Britain prevailed.

Commission President José Manuel Barroso introduced the Economic Strategy Europe 2020 on 3rd of March. If its predecessor, the Lisbon Strategy was still under the motto to make Europe the “most competitive, knowledge-based economic area in the world”, the EU now aims at creating economic growth on an “intelligent, sustainable and integrative” basis. What is behind this title and above all, what can workers expect from the new strategy?