The financial and economic crisis has hit the car industry with full force. In the last quarter of 2008 new car registrations in Europe declined by an average of 20 %. With regard to managing the crisis, the EU now puts the ball firmly back in the corner of the industry, thereby restricting its role to supervising the industry’s adherence to the regulations of the internal market and the competition law.

China reports an import decline of 43.1 % in January 2009; exports had shrunk by 17.5 %. Most Asiatic countries are faced with a similar bleak state of affairs. The situation in the EU is still slightly better: in December imports were down by 7.8 %, exports fell by 0.9 %.

A new economic study of the European Commission takes stock of the EU enlargement. The assessment of the European Commission is highly positive; it is, however, only restricted to economic key figures.

Loss of income, precarious employment and working conditions, decline in quality in respect of labour intensive services: these are the first results of a study on privatising public services commissioned by the Commission.

On Wednesday, the European Commission took the first steps to open deficit proceedings against Spain, France, Greece, Malta, Ireland and Latvia. Last year, these Member States ran up budget deficits between 3.2 and 6.3 percent.

On Thursday this week, the great majority of MEPs voted in favour of the initiative report on social economy.

This week, the EU Commission published the first monthly monitoring report on EU employment and social situation and a country comparison study on early childhood education and care in Europe.

Barroso’s patience snaps.Currently, political Brussels is in deep turmoil. Once again, the reason is the financial crisis, which has long developed into an employment crisis. The Portuguese Commission President Barroso causes a stir by warning the member states against national solo attempts to tackle the crisis and threatens to enforce the rules of competition. It becomes increasingly clear that the Commission only inadequately fulfils its coordination and leadership role with regard to overcoming the crisis.

Following 2 years of hard negotiations in the European Parliament and in the Council the path is now clear to impose for the first time sanctions against employers, who provide work for illegal immigrants says Claudio Fava, the parliamentary rapporteur in charge. The final legislative resolution of the MEPs, however, was postponed to March. Reason: Claudio Fava demanded an additional declaration, which does not exclude further legal action, in particular against sub-contractors.

On 2nd February, Meglena Kuneva the Bulgarian EU Commissioner for Consumer Protection presented the results of the 2nd Consumer Scoreboard in Brussels. There was little surprise that the buck of the worst performers was passed to electricity and gas suppliers and to the banks.