Deze week in de Europese Unie (en)

EUOBSERVER / WEEKLY AGENDA (6-12 November) - Turkey's bumpy path towards EU membership will once again be a major topic this week with the publication on Wednesday of a European Commission progress report.

The report is expected to be critical of Ankara's slow rate of reform and is set to highlight human rights and democracy issues as well as the fact that Turkey still has not normalised relations with Cyprus.

A last ditch attempt by the Finnish presidency get talks between Cyprus and Turkey back on track and create a token of goodwill between the two sides before the publication of the report failed last week, further souring the atmosphere in the run up to Wednesday.

Further EU enlargement as a more general issue is also set to feature this week in another commission report, as well as in a series of reports on progress in individual EU hopeful states in the Western Balkans.

According to the BBC, the Brussels executive is set to say Western Balkan countries should postpone moves to join the EU, highlighting that they can only expect to join the bloc in the medium to long term. The message is likely to be a blow to Croatia which officially opened EU membership talks last year and has been hoping for a speedy pre-2010 accession date.

Working time

On Tuesday meanwhile, the working time directive, a problem that has proved almost as complicated as future enlargement, has been given top and only billing at an all-day meeting of employment and social ministers in Brussels. The Finnish EU presidency is hoping to succeed where several other presidencies have failed and get agreement on this divisive piece of legislation.

Under the EU's current law, employees may not work more than an average of 48 hours per week calculated over a so-called "reference period" of 12 months, or they can plump for longer hours under an opt-out scheme which was secured by the UK.

The law is due for an overhaul following a 2004 European Court of Justice ruling with implications for people who work on call, such as doctors. Member states are divided into two camps - those supporting the opt-out and those against.

On the same day, EU finance ministers will meet in Brussels to discuss, amongst other issues, adjustment of excise duty rates on alcohol, as well as on duty-free allowances for travellers from outside the EU. Ministers will also discuss the court of auditors report for 2005 - which for the 12th year running saw the accounts not signed off.

The Ecofin meeting will be preceded by a meeting of the 12 eurozone ministers on Monday evening to discuss the commission's autumn economic forecasts. There will also be a discussion with the head of the International Monetary Fund, Rodrigo de Rato, on the restructuring of his institution - something of importance to EU member states set to be strongly affected by the changes.

European Parliament

MEPs will spend a relatively quiet week in Brussels preparing the following week's plenary session in Strasbourg.

One of the main events will be the hosting of the inaugural meeting of the EUROLAT Parliamentary Assembly, bringing together MEPs and national MPs with parliamentarians from Latin America.

There will also be an MEP delegation to Poland as part of the parliament's investigations in CIA activities in Europe. Poland was named last year by NGO Human Rights Watch as a country where the CIA may have been running secret camps - an allegation Warsaw has strongly denied.

Another delegation will travel to Congo to see the work of the EU force that had been overseeing elections in the country.

Climate change

For the next two weeks - 6-17 November - a UN meeting on climate change will take place in Nairobi, Kenya.

It is 12th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 2nd meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The EU will be sending a delegation led by Finnish environment minister Jan-Erik Enestam, who will present the bloc's stance at the conference.