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Last Saturday 15 June the President of the European Commission Manuel Barroso was in Rome and met with the Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta. In a Press conference after the meeting the EU dignitary, probably for the 100th time, spoke about “the drama of the high level of youth unemployment in many parts of Europe”. […]
In a day when the US economy got good marks from the IMF for growth and the appropriate monetary easing by the Fed, last Friday 14 June the Foreign Affairs (trade) Council of the European Union also gave the green light to the European Commission to enter into formal bilateral trade negotiations with the United […]
As promised, the plenary of European Parliament overwhelmingly approved yesterday a resolution by 483 votes to 27, and 65 abstentions, accusing with it some core EU countries and “to some extend the Commission” for holding back crucial legislation to promote the financial sector’s reform. The European legislators want the financial sector to serve the real […]
The accidental coincidence of the visit of the European Commissioner Štefan Füle, responsible for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy to Turkey last week, with the crtical moment when the events in Istanbul’s Taksim Square were at their peak, may affect negatively the relations between the EU and this country. Negotiations over Ankara’s roadmap to become one […]
Thank God the European Parliament is there. Today 12 June the Plenary Session of the Parliamentary Committee for Economic and monetary affairs will ask the Commission and the member states, through the European Council, to explain why they are dragging their feet on crucial financial sector reform legislation, in a debate starting at 8.30 this […]
Once more Eurostat, the EU statistical service, went a step forward and produced deep socio-economic analysis with labour market data, than sheer statistical tables. Without colouring its statistics with ideology, the choice of the variables to analyse and present betray a scientific strictness accompanied however with increased susceptibility towards inequality and exclusion. This time it […]
In an inspired speech last Friday, in Helsinki the European Commissioner Michel Barnier, speaking at the 4th Annual Economic Forum, made crystal clear that the Commission has not abandoned the target of a strong and effective European Banking Union. He stressed that “We cannot have a genuine Economic and Monetary Union without a Banking Union”. […]
Protection of citizens and businesses web data is still a pending issue in the European Union and internet companies may, probably legally, sell to marketers names, telephone numbers, mail addresses and consumer profiles including personal details. The existing privacy laws are twenty years old and far from effectively protecting our data from being sold and […]
Yesterday, only a few days after the European Commission decided to impose provisional anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese solar panels imported in the EU, the Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the European Union issued a Press release where the spokesperson of the Mission confirmed that the Ministry of Commerce of China, in response […]
The leadership of the European Central Bank took yesterday a step back from its strong presence in the public discussion over the depth and the strength of the under construction European Banking Union (EBU) and more precisely the single bank resolution authority. Both its President and Vice President Mario Draghi and Vítor Constâncio had very […]
Despite the ambivalent mood within and without Europe for the euro area’s economic prospects, some factual developments do not seem to be discouraging. For one thing the Commission gave yesterday the green light for Latvia to adopt the euro and join the Eurozone as from 1 January 2014. The solid decisiveness of this country during […]
It is unbelievable how strongly and some-times unduly the Irish Presidency of the EU Council presses the European Parliament in the negotiations over the Multiannual Financial Framework 2014-2020, which sets the limits for the EU budget spending for the next seven years. The Irish government ministers who are conducting those negations act as if Ireland […]
IMF Mission’s “Concluding Statement” (Article IV Consultation) on the German economy which was published yesterday, contains almost the same basic recommendations as the European Commission’s assessment aired at the Semester Press Conference in Brussels on 29 May. Both reports had references to Germany’s over stretched fiscal consolidation (meaning unneeded austerity) and the need to increase […]
Last week the President of the European Council Herman Van Ropmuy went to Rome, to meet the Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta. This was a very significant move by the EU Council President. Italy is the third largest economy of Eurozone with large and more or less competitive private sector productive structures in manufacturing, services […]
Eurozone unemployment rate rose by one decimal point in April reaching 12.2%, from 12.1% in March. This development does not constitute a strong indication that recession in euro area is getting worse. For one thing the rise of the rate of people without a job is very slight and falls in the margin of the […]
All business and consumer indicators for the euro area showed betterment in May according to the Commission’s Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), which conducts those regular and harmonised surveys. Business climate indicator (BCI), consumer confidence and economic sentiment indicator (ESI) all improved during this month of May. It’s the first time […]
The European Commission at the Semester Press Conference in Brussels yesterday confirmed in the most official way, what was already known. Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal, are getting an extension of the deadline to correct their fiscal deficits by one year and France, Poland, Slovenia and Spain by two years. This Semester conference comes in […]
Only days after the 27 EU leaders gathered in Brussels on 22 May and decided that, “The supply of affordable and sustainable energy to our economies is crucial”, Eurostat, the EU’s statistical service, announced that, “in the second half of 2012 household electricity prices in the EU27 rose by 6.6% and gas prices by 10.3%”. […]
Michel Barnier the European Commissioner responsible for the Internal Market and Services in a clear-cut way broke yesterday Commission’s silence and joined the European Central Bank’s approach, over the creation of an effective European Banking Union, able to guarantee that failing or about to fail banks will be duly resolved or managed by one central […]
In a rare but not quite unexpected move, the German Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble has reportedly wrote a letter to his colleague, the Federal Minister of Economics Philipp Rösler, proposing that their two ministries cooperate in supporting the Eurozone countries under distress. To do this, he tells his government fellow, they should use […]
The enactment of the European Banking Union emerges now as the next statutory step for Eurozone and the European Union as a whole, if the block is to continue as a solid entity or starts unravelling during the next credit crisis, which might not be very far away. In any case the European Central Bank […]
European Commission vice President, Ollie Rehn, responsible for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro, delivered a speech in the European Parliament on the “Social pillar of the European Monetary Union-EMU”, which was very ill-received by the legislators. The Parliamentarians yesterday went as far as to comment bitterly in a resolution they issued afterwards, saying […]
Regional unemployment statistics in the European Union as published today by Eurostat, the EU statistical service, show clearly that the wide differentiation of this crucial variable calls for an appropriate modulation of policies designed to counter different growth/recession records. The European Central Bank is currently supplying ample and almost zero cost liquidity to Eurozone’s core […]
As the European Sting predicted early yesterday morning, the European Council meeting of 22 May, which regrouped once more the 27 EU leaders, turned out poor results on both subjects that occupied its agenda, namely ‘energy’ and ‘taxation’. Sting writer Maria Milouv wrote, “the European Council of the 27 EU leaders has only ‘energy’ and […]
While the European Council of the 27 EU leaders has only ‘energy’ and ‘taxation’ in its agenda today, with poor results expected on both accounts, the hot issue of the European Banking Union will probably consume most of the time in the side meetings. The enactment of the EBU has become now the main point […]
In tomorrows’ European Summit the 27 leaders of the European Union will have as main item in their agenda the fight against tax evasion and fraud. Reportedly without concrete results. According to the President of the Council, Herman Van Rompuy, this affair costs to member state budgets around €1 trillion every year. If only a […]
In Eurozone the confrontation between ‘austerity lovers’ and ‘relaxationists’ presented a new and course changing sequel last week, with German heavy artillery fire towards Brussels and Paris. The German Federal Minister of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble, accused the Brussels Commission and personally the President Manuel Barroso for delaying the realisation of EU programmes to fight youth […]
Eurozone trade in goods with the rest of the world in March 2013 left a record surplus of €22.9 billion, according to an announcement released by Eurostat, the EU statistical service. Yet the single euro money area is stuck in a long-term recession and high unemployment trap, without visible prospects for an exit. Francois Hollande, […]
Yesterday the world was informed that Eurozone is stuck into recession, after the Eurostat, the EU statistical service, announced that the euro area GDP receded once more during the first quarter of this year. However, this was not news for those who follow closely what is happening in the single euro money zone. Only some […]
It is a disgrace for the European Union’s political elite to consciously block the internal exchange of information between the member states authorities and banks on matters related to tax evasion and fraud. This is exactly what the 27 EU minister of Finance did yesterday in the Ecofin Council in Brussels. This unbelievable political decision […]
The efforts to reach an agreement between the three most important EU bodies, the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission over the Multiannual Financial Framework 2014-2020, for the Union’s proper spending power, will test not only the cohesion of the EU but also the abilities of the ‘austerity lovers’ to wreak their policy options. […]
Once more the world got together in the G7 group of the industrialised nations and asked Germany to spend more in order to help the rest of the Eurozone and the globe start growing again. The last time was in Washington during the Spring Conference of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, where […]
The Ecofin Council, the EU body that regroups the 27 Ministers of Finance, probably the most powerful institution of the European Union, is to conduct its regular meeting this Monday and Tuesday 13 and 14 May. On its agenda the main item will be a Commission’s proposal for a crucial Directive, establishing a framework for […]
