A funny thing happened in the European parliament in Strasbourg last week. More than 600 deputies from all 25 member states of the European Union took a core piece of EU legislation and voted - by a very large majority - to change it drastically. They voted on almost 400 amendments, including one to change the core principle of the new law. When they had finished, instead of being denounced as a bunch of irresponsible populists, they were praised for their wisdom. Far from emasculating the legislation, they may well have saved it.

Not that everyone was pleased. There were 30,000 trade unionists demonstrating outside, many of whom wanted the entire document scrapped. After the voting was done, the main representatives of European business sounded even more upset than the unionists, because they thought the changes had gone too far to appease the workers. But the end result is that thanks to 18 months of painstaking work by the much-maligned parliamentarians, a compromise has been found to save the law from deadlock. If the member states can carry on the good work, there is a real chance of final agreement by the end of 2006.