The European Sting is Your democratic, independent and top quality political newspaper specialized in European Union News. Unique Features: iSting & Harry Sting
According to the last Eurobarometer survey on Entrepreneurship, when the Europeans are asked, “What holds them back from starting up a business”, a large majority of EU respondents think that it is difficult to start one’s own business due to a lack of available financial support (79%) and due to the complexities of the administrative […]
The European Commission through the most competent lips of its member, Michel Barnier, responsible for Internal Market and Services rushed to endorse the new unbelievably generous concession to banks all over the developed world. This time it was the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS), the oversight body of the Basel Committee on […]
Black economy has been traditionally the weak point for a number of European countries in the South of the Old Continent. Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Malta to name only the Eurozone countries with black economy percentages around 20%, are usually on the head of European Commission’s country lists with economic activities outside […]
Business activity in Eurozone has being deteriorating for the past nine months. Last December however the PMI, index which measures this phenomenon, gave the first indications that the bottom of the dreadful U curve is now behind. In detail, the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the industrial sector, being drafted on data over the demand […]
The oldest Swiss bank was forced to temporarily shut down its US subsidiary yesterday, after its lawyers accepted that it has being helping at least 100 American citizens to avoid taxation. The bank Vegelin, of St Gallen, established in 1741 is accused by the US tax authority, the famous IRS, that it has directed those […]
It took almost one year to the European Commission to decide that Samsung is potentially abusing its dominant position, in the mobile telephony standard patents. It was January 2012 when the EC issued a statement saying that, “The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention […]
Pharmaceutical firms in Europe have an awkward relation with their customers. The truth is that their selling prices and product licencing are directly or indirectly controlled by the buyers, that is governments, or government control health insurance schemes, offering almost free health services to citizens. As everybody knows governments are not only able to influence […]
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 […]
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 […]
Two major Chinese providers of mobile phone equipment, Huawei Technologies Co. and the smaller ZTE Corporation, according to a Wall Street Journal report are under scrutiny by the European Commission, for allegedly offering their products at dumping prices. This report is still unconfirmed by the EU authorities. Its wording though is very carefully chosen by […]
In the years of globalisation, free movements of capital, goods and to a lesser degree of labour, have raised exponentially citizen’s wellbeing in our western economic volume and not only. This achievement has to be totally credited, to the opening of national markets to international competition. At the same time though globalisation has created new opportunities […]
Cloud computing seems to function in the same way for the ICT world, as the ocean-going shipping for the real economy, it is highly efficient, can be lucrative and dangerous, demands investments in skills, R&D and infrastructure, depends to a rather limited extend on the cooperation between the public and the private sector and suffer […]
Antitrust EU Commission services have an excellent record in identifying, monitoring, substantiating with facts and finally punishing cartels and dominant position abuses. This last week two concrete cases stand witnesses to that.Protecting consumers In the first case the European Court of Justice rejected an appeal against a General Court’s decision, which had upheld almost completely […]
Motor vehicles have being for decades the easy target of many forms of taxation, especially in post WWII Western Europe. Taxes on acquisition, on ownership, on motoring, on licences are but a few. The initial idea behind, in the minds of politicians who supported the imposition of taxes on cars, was that private ownership of […]
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 […]
Out of the fourteen altogether topics that the European Union policies and rules cover, the huge automotive sector is affected directly or indirectly by nine of them. Let’s count: Business, Economy-finance-competition, Employment, Energy and natural resources, Environment-consumers-health, External relations and foreign affairs, Regions and local development, Sciences and technology, Transport and travel. The car industry and markets […]
Enforcing fair competition in the fast-moving digital markets, like in the Google case, is a fight against time. If the antitrust procedures take the long way of legal battles before the European courts, the possible competition law breaches may purport billions to the culpable party. That is why, Joaquín Almunia, Vice President of the European Commission […]
