REGRETS ABOUT WORKING TIME.

• Position: Brief article

Once his presidency of the European Union comes to an end, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen's biggest regret will be the failure of the negotiations on the revision of the Working Time Directive, he told the AFP in the margins of the EU Summit in Brussels on 14 and 15 December. "We started off well and almost achieved a result," he said, but "we were just one vote short" of reaching the required qualified majority among member states to be able to adopt a text, added Vanhanen.

At the beginning of November, Finland was the fifth EU Presidency to fail in reforming this legislation, which in many ways is emblematic of the divisions between member states about a social Europe. One of the aims of the...