Business at the European Parliament was dominated by the high-stakes political negotiations surrounding yesterday's vote in favour of the services directive.
But over the four-day plenary session other topics were addressed by MEPs, from the fate of the EU constitution to the rendition of prisoners, and on a lighter note the dangers of sunburn.
Austrian president Heinz Fischer's keynote speech addressed the difficult issue of how to deal with the rejection of the EU constitution. Austria, which holds the EU presidency, is evaluating the options for advancing the treaty and is keen not to dump the text negotiated by the Irish presidency in 2004.
"It would be a mistake to lie down meekly and allow the project of a constitutional treaty to perish and to more or less escort it to the cemetery," said Mr Fischer. But it was his proposal to introduce European-wide referendums to decide the fate of EU treaties that attracted most attention. Although admitting to being no fan of "plebiscitary democracy", Mr Fischer said that if other member states were going to make use of them for major EU decisions, an EU-wide referendum would be better for democracy.
"I consider the current practice of holding a referendum in some member states and not in others, thereby creating a sort of patchwork of referendums across Europe, to be rather unsatisfactory," said Mr Fischer, who outlined a plan to carry out an EU-wide referendum on specific matters of particular importance to Europe. This would work by applying the system of double majority, where the referendum would be passed if the majority of all voters and a majority of member states were in favour.
The idea was considered during the Convention on the Future of Europe and strongly dismissed by states, which makes it unlikely to be re-floated anytime soon. But with future enlargement likely to make EU decision-making more unwieldy, member states may have to grapple with the constitutional conundrum in the near future.
The plenary session also saw the first working meeting of the special committee of inquiry into the rendition of prisoners by the US military through the EU. The working programme put forward by the rapporteur raises the tantalising prospect of former and current members of the US administration being called to give evidence. It is also set to call Irish ministers to discuss the use of Shannon by the US.
Besides the services directive, MEPs voted on several legislative proposals, including a report on the welfare of chickens. The report on a commission proposal means that tighter rules on animal welfare for birds kept for meat production will be adopted. This will outlaw practices such as beaking - where a bird's beak is cut off - and reduce the density of chickens kept in holding enclosures.
Fine Gael MEP Mairéad McGuinness said the new rules amounted to over-regulation in the poultry farm sector.
"It will enforce production standards that are so severe as to lead to a mass exodus from the chicken production sector in Ireland and elsewhere across the EU," said Ms McGuinness.
On a lighter note the Optical Radiation Directive, dubbed the "sunshine directive" by the media, was voted through on a second reading. The directive will introduce a range of measures designed to protect workers from artificial optical radiation from devices such as lasers and ultra-violet lamps. But the directive is better known for the rules removed from it in the parliamentary process than for those that remain.
"The council (of EU ministers) has accepted parliament's key demand that the legislation should cover only artificial sources of optical radiation and not natural sources such as the sun," the parliament said following the vote.
In an initial draft employers could have been held liable if workers were exposed to sunlight at work. The so-called "tan ban" was held up as an example of the extension of the nanny state.
Independent Irish MEP Marian Harkin welcomed the deletion.