The Employment and Social Affairs Council gave its green light at first reading, on 8 March, to a draft directive to reinforce the social protection of self-employed workers and assisting spouses. The proposal, which forms part of the European Commission’s package on balance between work and family life, is meant on the one hand to improve the social protection of self-employed workers in order to remove obstacles to female entrepreneurship, while on the other it aims to enhance the social protection of assisting spouses, who often work in the self-employed sector without enjoying the corresponding rights (farmers’ wives, for example). They will be granted autonomous social protection rights and a maternity allowance allowing them to interrupt their activity for at least 14 weeks. The Council extended the scope of the Commission’s proposal to life partners recognised by national law.