At a time when very few European consumers decide to look for a mortgage to buy a new home and the European lenders very sparingly grant such loans, the European Commission found the opportunity to launch its new initiative on a Mortgage Directive, supposedly to better protect consumers. Under the experience of the past four […]Whose interests are protected by the new Mortgage Directive?
April 23, 2013 by 4 Comments
At a time when very few European consumers decide to look for a mortgage to buy a new home and the European lenders very sparingly grant such loans, the European Commission found the opportunity to launch its new initiative on a Mortgage Directive, supposedly to better protect consumers. Under the experience of the past four […]Is the EU’s enlargement over-stretched?
April 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The myth that the European Union is a seamless economic volume is belied not only after the latest developments, with Berlin and Paris working hard to institutionalise the fragmentation of EU’s financial markets. The dysfunction is also depicted by hard-core macroeconomic and labour market statistics. Again it’s not only the huge differences in the relative […]Galileo and EGNOS programmes back in orbit powered with €70 billion
April 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Irish Presidency of the European Council secured a major breakthrough agreement on the development of Europe’s global satellite navigation system. According to a relevant Press release, “The Irish Presidency has secured agreement with the European Parliament on an EU Regulation on the implementation and exploitation of European satellite navigation systems. The purpose of the […]Eurozone retail sales fall shows recession
April 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical service, retail trade volume in February compared with January 2013 fell by 0.3% in euro area and remained stable in the EU27. However in comparison with the same month of 2012, the drop in retail sales was much larger. In detail, in February 2013 compared with the same month […]Eurozone recession subsides
March 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
According to the €-coin index the euro area growth remained negative for the 18th month in a row in March 2013, after the index turned negative in October 2011. The index measures the level of economic activity in the entire Eurozone and predicts GDP developments some months before the official data appear. The only positive […]Can the EU last long if it cuts Cyprus out?
March 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The latest and most important rhapsody in the Cyprus tragedy was performed yesterday morning by the twenty-three members of the European Central Bank’s governing council. The text issued by them was very brief and went like this: “The Governing Council of the European Central Bank decided to maintain the current level of Emergency Liquidity Assistance […]European tourism remains a strong growth factor
March 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The mighty European services industry offers more jobs and employment despite the ongoing financial crisis. Tourism, being the largest service sub-sector offers a strong support base to the recession stricken Eurozone economy. Yesterday the European Commission published a Eurobarometer survey on the tourism industry, with very encouraging findings. According to this survey, “Tourism’s robust and […]German banks suffer of nausea amidst rough seas
February 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Earlier this week, Dr Andreas Dombret, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, responsible for financial stability and risk controlling, delivered an open lecture in Hamburg, entitled “In the year 2013 – Challenges from a financial stability perspective” . Apart from the burning questions he posed for a number of Eurozone countries’ sovereign debt, […]The EU patent space and Unified Court are born
February 20, 2013 by 1 Comment
Yesterday, during the Council of the European Union meeting, twenty-two member states opened a new page in the history book of the EU, by signing the international agreement for establishing a Unified Patent Court (UPC). Once the agreement enters into force, the signatory countries will form a unified area in terms of patent law. Since […]IMF: Sorry Greece, Ireland, Portugal we were wrong!
January 5, 2013 by 3 Comments
Sorry Greece, Ireland and Portugal says now the International Monetary Fund, we have grossly underestimated the negative effect on your economies, from our draconian austerity policies we recommended two years ago. This unbelievably blatant recognition, that the Fund, together with the EU Commission and the European Central Bank are applying wrong policies to the over-borrowed […]“Private” sea freight indexes hide Libor like skeletons?
December 22, 2012 by 1 Comment
The almost three centuries old Baltic Exchange is a private and closed platform, where around 60 shipping brokers based mainly in London are contributing voluntarily their cargo prices. On the base of those contributions the Exchange publishes benchmark freight price indexes for a round number of 70 sea routes and vessel categories. The indexes are […]European car industry: The Germans want it all
December 21, 2012 by 1 Comment
That the German cars are gas guzzlers is a fact beyond reasonable doubt, not because they are badly engineered, that they are not, but simply because they are usually powered by engines of many thousands of cm2 cylinders. Those powerful Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches, Audis and even Volkswagens produce hundreds of PSIs, but at the same time they […]Regional policies slowed down by EU bureaucracy
November 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Despite the commonly recognised urgent need for more infrastructure projects aiming at interconnecting transport, energy and telecommunication networks in the 27 EU member states, clumsy inter-institutional cooperation between the main EU bodies, namely the European Commission, The Parliament and the Council, threatens to deprive such projects from already available resources. In this respect it was […]EU: Huge surplus in the trade of services with the rest of the world
November 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
A regular criticism neo-liberal economist pen down against the European Union is that Europe is not competitive enough. They blame for that the high EU standards of social protection and the strict labour legislation. They fail to see however that the Eurozone and even the entire European Union, is highly competitive in the crucial sector of […]Markets are more sensitive to Greece’s woes than Merkel
November 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Greece’s three official creditors, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union are actually two and in last analysis only one, the ECB. In reality all the other sixteen Eurozone governments plus the EU institutions and the IMF, haven’t given away not even one cent to Greece. They have only issued guarantees […]eGovernmnet for more efficiency, equality and democracy
November 20, 2012 by 1 Comment
At the fifth Ministerial eGovernment Conference in Malmö, (Sweden) the 27 EU ministers, responsible for administrative affairs, outlined a joint vision and policy priorities on how to developing smarter online public services for citizens and businesses by 2015. The EU Commission hailed this agreement and commented that eGovernment is a key step towards boosting Europe’s […]Cheap sea transport with low cost seafarers
October 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The last Transport, Telecommunications and Energy (TTE) Council of the European Union dedicated to transport issues, took place in Luxemburg, towards the end of October 2012. The main item on the agenda came under the title, “Improving working and living conditions for seafarers”. Nothing is more misleading than this. Progressively it seems that the EU […]
