A meeting of EU institutional staff was held on Thurdsay (23 May) in the European Commission’s flagship Berlaymont building, with hundreds of current and former employees gathering in front of the canteen.

Negotiations on a new staff regulation are expected to conclude by 18 June, and trade unions have flexed their muscle by convening a general meeting on 30 May at 10 a.m. to keep staff informed of any further action.

Speakers at the meeting said the pay cuts proposed by the Council would be “dramatic”.

Last week, the Commission said restaurants would be banned from serving oil to diners in refillable glass jugs or dipping bowls from next year. Instead, to protect consumers from fraud, restaurants would have to use sealed, non-refillable bottles that must be disposed of when empty.

“There must be coordination, cooperation, and harmonisation for renewable energy,” Hollande said when asked to react to statements by Gérard Mestrallet, the CEO of GDF Suez who has complained about overcapacity in the renewable energy sector.

The European Union, Hollande explained, needs to “encourage the best renewable energies and refrain from changing the rules along the way, like was unfortunately the case in France in recent years”.

As part of Ukraine’s campaign to win Germany’s sympathies, the country’s deputy Prime Minister Alexander Vilkul visited Berlin on 22-23 May, meeting with senior German officials in an attempt to highlight economic benefits the Association Agreement will bring to Germany and the European Union as a whole.

Aid groups said if it became impossible to send enough money to operate, donors might withdraw support for their programmes.

"This could eventually reduce our ability to carry out projects or even force a complete close down," Mathias Mogge, director of programmes for German aid group Welthungerhilfe, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"If all the agencies had to pull out, it would affect millions of people," said Mogge.

Pascal Lamy, the former European Union trade commission who is director-general of the trade body, has urged Europe to forge closer economic ties with its southern neighbours following on the WTO’s own Aid for Trade initiative to improve Africa’s trade capacity.

Lamy said on Wednesday (22 May) he expects growth in the eurozone to remain flat, with slightly better performance forecast in the United States and Japan. Developing economies will grow at a more robust pace, he said.

Except for the Greens, most MEPs have backed going ahead with the negotiations on the so-called Transatlantic Investment and Trade Partnership (TTIP), but reiterated their concerns on a number of issues, especially cultural diversity.

European Commissioner in charge of trade, Karel De Gucht, tried to quench some of the criticism, explaining that cultural diversity as enshrined in the EU Treaty and in the UNESCO Convention on cultural expressions was a guiding principle of the Commission’s actions, including trade.

EU leaders held a two-hour and a half discussion on energy with the objective of lowering prices and boosting the Union’s industrial competitiveness.

The summit conclusions suggest that no major decisions were taken, indicating that "the supply of affordable and sustainable energy to our economies is crucial" in the current economic context.

Iceland's next prime minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, said Wednesday (22 May) that his cabinet intended to halt his country’s accession negotiations, which began in 2010.

Iceland submitted its application to join the EU one year before, in the midst of a banking and economic crisis.

"The EU talks will be stopped until a referendum has been held on the issue. When the referendum will be held has not been decided," Gunnlaugsson told a news conference.