Germany has long fought to have more supervision of [non-German] national decisions on budgets, labour market reforms, pension schemes or retirement age in member states.

Fixed it. Meanwhile, most German banks shouldn't be subject to outside supervision.

And did we mention this?

Deutsche Bank failed to recognise up to $12bn of paper losses during the financial crisis, helping the bank avoid a government bail-out, three former bank employees have alleged in complaints to US regulators.(FT.com

And let's not forget:

Opposition lawmakers and German media have accused Ms. Merkel of hosting a private party at taxpayer expense for the birthday of Mr. Ackermann, an influential but controversial figure in Germany.

(WSJ)

In its penultimate edition before its closure, FTD has an interview with Olli Rehn, who has become the latest official to pronounce the crisis to be over. The latest acute phase of the crisis was in June, he said, and now we have reversed the trend. The reason he gives is the austerity policy, which will have led to a reduction in the eurozone-wide deficit from 3% this year to 2.5% in 2013. He said the Commission would from now onwards no longer look just at nominal targets, but increasingly at structural targets - and be willing to accept a trade-off between structural reforms and deficit reduction.

Wanna trade? Keep up the defence spending but bring wages down. Ask Olli Rehn how to do it, he'll explain.

"The most savage budget of the economic downturn" says the Irish Independent, assessing the government's new austerity budget, which aims to save €3.5bn. The savings will come through a mix of higher taxes on property, income and alcohol, plus cuts in benefits, including those for parents, pensioners and the unemployed. Ireland must make savings in order to continue to receive EU and IMF bailouts. Seizing on a comment by Ireland's deputy prime minister, Eamon Gilmore, who pledged the budget would be fair and "those who had the most would pay the most", the daily's opinion writer, Johnny Fallon, brands the fairness test a failure ...

The paper - put together by EU council president Herman Van Rompuy and published Thursday (6 December) - lays out a loose time framework for achieving "genuine economic and monetary union."

...

It points out that while state budgets are at the "heart" of parliamentary democracies, national assemblies "are not in the best position" to take the "common interest" of the union into account.

...

It will be the European Parliament that "first and foremost" will be given more oversight powers as more economic and monetary powers are given to the EU level.