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The European Court of Auditors (ECA) in a report that was published yesterday reveals that the EU spends billions to help the rural economy restructure but with poor results, delivering “only limited value for money”. EU spending on agriculture be it production and producer subsidies or supporting structural investment plans has being traditionally criticised not […]
Commissioner Michel Barnier, responsible for financial services, had a rough time yesterday at the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) of the European Parliament, when he told the legislators that the Commission will press ahead with its proposal about the creation under its own roof of the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) for Eurozone’s failing banks. […]
Bit by bit the much advertised resumption of economic activity in Eurozone fades away. The fall of unemployment rate by just one decimal point to 12.1% in June and the increase of GDP during the second quarter of this year by 0.3% fuelled overoptimistic estimates that Eurozone has definitively left behind the lowest part of […]
It is very interesting to note how the various sides reported on the workings of the first meetings of ECOFIN and Eurogroup councils after the summer break. Seemingly the 28 ministers of Finance and the 17 of them making up respectively the two bodies discussed all the burning economic and financial issues, from the disbursement […]
In a ground breaking development opening the way to the European Banking Union, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank undersigned the draft text of an Interinstitutional Agreement providing for the exact procedures related to the enactment of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. The legislative had reserves about the transparency and accountability of the SSM […]
Janusz Lewandowki, the EU Commissioner for Budget joined yesterday the European Parliament in repelling the severe cuts on EU funding for 2014 proposed by the Council. The usually low tone Polish Commissioner appeared rather shocked when he understood that the Council proposal was infested with deep reductions in crucial items of the 2014 budget. For […]
Yesterday the Lithuanian Presidency of the Council made another blunder and a very bad start in its relation with the European Parliament. After the Lithuanian Vice-Minister Algimantas Rimkūnas presented to the plenary of the Legislative the Council a proposal for the EU 2014 Budget, with which many MEPs strongly disagreed, the Lithuanian Presidency issued a […]
A rather disappointing picture of the world economy drew OECD Deputy Chief Economist Jorgen Elmeskov last week, when he said that “The gradual pick-up in momentum in the advanced economies is encouraging but a sustainable recovery is not yet firmly established. Major risks remain”. If it was not for China’s predicted growth during the last […]
The Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Linas Linkevičius, whose country is currently holding the rotating president of the EU Council, during the workings of last Saturday’s informal meeting of the 28 Foreign Affairs ministers in Vilnius supported so openly and provocatively the US positions on Syria, to the point that only his tiny and deeply anti-Russian country […]
In an unprecedented move the American President Barack Obama asked yesterday all and each one of the G20 leaders participating in the Saint Petersburg summit to back ‘his’ war against Syria by signing a paper (joint declaration) authorising the US to use military force. This is an attempt by the US to neutralise the United […]
This year there was no summer recess for the European Commission Directorate General for Trade (DG TRADE) and more precisely for the Directorate C which is competent for Asia. China kept the department’s bureaucrats busy all along this August, because on the 7th and the 16th of this month the Directorate produced two major cases […]
The European Commission adopted yesterday a proposal for measures on shadow banking introducing new but quite loose and thus ineffective rules and controls for money market funds (MMFs). This is a parallel financial system created by the major banks in order to avoid even the few controls and restrictions that the official banking system has […]
Benoît Cœuré a French economist, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and former head of French public debt office, delivered a revealing speech on ECB’s programme for Eurozone state bond purchases in the secondary markets, known as Outright Monetary Transactions initiated in September 2012. Cœuré said that OMTs arrested and neutralised […]
Trade protectionism is a very dangerous medicine for economic illnesses. On most occasions it is like a drug that kills the pain and the symptoms but at the same time it dilutes the possibility to cure the illness that causes them. If an economy loses its competitiveness in a certain sector or in the entire […]
The fact that the American President Barack Obama unexpectedly decided to “seek authorisation for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress”, in order to launch an attack against the Syrian government forces, is the first direct and open recognition of the limits of the American military and political supremacy, after the […]
After yesterday’s barrage of new positive statistics, the European economy seems to secure this summer position in the upwards pointing part of the curve. Business climate, economic sentiment and inflation all seem to turn out much better than expected readings for August. Even the abrupt fall of inflation in the euro area from 1.6% in […]
Olli Rehn, Vice-President of the EU Commission responsible for the economy and euro and Yves Mersch, member of the executive board of the European Central Bank both delivered speeches yesterday in the European Forum Alpbach 2013, set in the breathtaking Alpine landscape. A very convenient excuse for an escape to Tirol. The European Forum Alpbach […]
Three major Middle East countries, Iraq, Egypt and Syria are in a transitory phase or in deadly civil war and all of them being threatened with effective partitioning. After Iraq, the US supported actively by Britain, is now planning an attack to Syria which will certainly lead to a partitioning of the country. In this […]
Today Thursday the new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is expected to confirm from Nottingham, a historic city in east Midlands, that the central bank of Britain is not to raise its basic interest rate from the currently very low level of 0.5%, “until the Labour Force Survey headline measure of the […]
What Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, said about the uncertainties that an eventual new hair-cut of the Greek state debt may trigger doesn’t exclude this possibility. She stressed that it may set off a “domino effect of uncertainty” and scare off possible investors. But the country has already performed a voluntary hair-cut on the privately […]
Last Friday 23 August the European Commission released its flash estimate for the consumer confidence index of this month, finding it markedly improved in relation to July. The full Business and Consumer Survey with final data on August developments is due to be published on 30 August 2013. In detail the Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic […]
The German banks in the north of the country seem to face grave problems. Yesterday the European Commission was forced to approve more state aid to Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (NORD/LB). This is a German Landesbank, one of the largest commercial banks in the country, which serves as central institution to savings banks in the German […]
When Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, Prime Minister of Iceland, visited Brussels last month, he tried to teach the European Union a lesson about the scientific analysis on fishing stocks of North Atlantic. Seemingly, European Commissioner Maria Damanaki responsible for Maritime and Fisheries Affairs didn’t learn anything. Yesterday, she decided to adopt trade measures against Faroe Islands […]
Yesterday European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy issued an utterly hypocritical joint statement on Egypt. Last week’s massacre of Muslim demonstrators by military and police forces in all major cities of the country was covered with condolences to the families of the dead. The fact that Egypt is […]
Early last Wednesday European Sting writer Elias Lacon stressed that “Eurozone banks are unable to support real economy’s dawning growth”. Hours later on the same day Eurostat, the EU statistical service, announced its flash estimate for the second quarter of 2013 euro area and EU27 growth and informed us that both those economic volumes recorded […]
Industrial production in the European Union is definitively in a virtuous path as statistical data confirm business managers’ assessment, that their order books are as full as they have never been in the past. The same is true for industrial production. According to a press release published yesterday by Eurostat – the EU statistical service […]
The Americans after having managed to become the target of aggressive rhetoric from all sides of the Egyptian political spectrum they now try to enter again in the picture behind the European Union. To this effect the US Secretary of State, John Kerry and the European Union High Representative, Catherine Ashton issued a joint statement […]
In an unexpected move the European Commission announced on Wednesday 7 August that it “…continues anti-subsidy investigation on solar panels from China…”, and this only a few days after Commissioner Karel De Gucht, responsible for foreign trade had announced on 27 July that the issue had been concluded ‘amicably’ between Brussels and Beijing. In contrast […]
Retail sales are an infallible measurement of the internal dynamism or its absence in every economy. They are tightly associated with consumption which is by far the largest component of Gross Domestic Product, investments and exports accounting for the rest of it. For quite some time now retail trade dynamism in Eurozone is practically non-existent […]
There is no doubt that the European Central Bank is determined not only to continue supporting Eurozone’s real economy with liquidity at almost zero interest rate cost for as long as it needs to achieve tangible growth, but by the same token it appears ready to succeed the American Fed in keeping the western financial […]
Triumphant announcements, that the European economy has entered in a new growth path just because unemployment in June has decreased in the EU27 by one decimal point and the Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) in July increased by 1.2 points in the euro area cannot stand a rigorous critic. Incidentally unemployment in the euro area was […]
Slowly but steadily the European Commission works towards the creation of a seamless patent registration and protection legal environment in 25 member states (Italy and Spain are not participating). To this effect the EU’s executive arm is now proposing new legislation to fill the legal gaps for unitary patent protection. In detail the Commission on […]
Exactly ten days after the European Sting predicted on 19 July that most likely EU and China would soon settle their long time dispute on solar panels, Commissioner De Gucht confirmed last Saturday: “We found an amicable solution in the EU-China solar panels case that will lead to a new market equilibrium at sustainable prices”. In […]
