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The next European Council which is to take place in Brussels on Wednesday 22 May will be pivotal for the European Monetary Union (EMU), that is the Eurozone. Despite the fact that according to high-ranking Council officials there won’t be any decision on the EMU this month, there is evidence that the 17 Eurozone leaders […]
Retail trade sales are to be found in the core of effective demand in every advanced economy. Being the driving force behind consumer spending they are considered as the main indicator for the general course of the economy, that is if it grows or recedes. Unfortunately for Eurozone and for the European Union in general […]
Only some weeks after the European Union consumers learned that they were eating low quality and contaminated with phenylbutazone horse meat, having paid for it as if it was prime quality beef, the Commission chooses to release its proposal for a new Directive, providing for less controls and higher fines and charges. The new legislation […]
Mario Draghi, in a historic speech delivered yesterday in his home country, bravely surpassed the limits of his office as President of the European Central Bank, and upon receiving an honorary degree in political science, from the Luiss “Guido Carli” University in Rome, he warned the European leaders that in order to safeguard the European […]
Thank god it will not be any more the economists to set the course of economic policy in Eurozone but the people and the politicians. Whatever bad things one may think about politicians, there is one thing that nobody can deny; they can hear the people. In this case the theory of Reinhart – Rogoff proposing […]
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, released yesterday its spring forecast for the economic prospects of the Union in 2013-2014. There are three issues to watch in the released text and also in what Olli Rehn, Commission Vice-President for Economic and Monetary Affairs had to say in a press conference in Brussels. Firstly […]
The reduction of European Central Bank’s basic rate from 0.75% to 0.5 % was the less important news from Bratislava, Slovakia, yesterday where the governor of the central bank, Mario Draghi, presented the decisions of the bank’s Governing Council and answered questions from journalists. Not even the possibility of a new interest rate cut soon […]
The new Italian Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, after his government got full approval from the country’s legislators in two days and two trips to Berlin and Paris, managed to confirm the reputation of Rome as the catalyst of historic European developments. The Treaty of the European Union was signed in the eternal city. In less […]
A cascade of negative Eurozone statistics yesterday wouldn’t let the euro area social partners celebrate at ease today the 1st May labour day, because it is now proven beyond reasonable doubt that the seventeen member state euro money area is heading fast, towards a new and long recession, unless the applied austerity policy mix is […]
Dr Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German minister of Finance, drew yesterday his chauvinist rhetoric one step further, by denying the proposal that an increase of consumption demand in his country, could help the exports of the ailing Eurozone countries like Spain, Greece, Portugal, Italy and others. His outright denial was unfair, because he was in the […]
Three countries losing more economic grounds and one new prime minister was last week’s stock taking in Eurozone. Meanwhile the real economy and more so the Small and Medium Enterprises in the south of Eurozone were found in a much worse position during the last six months ( Oct 2012- Mar 2013), in relation to […]
The International Monetary Fund in its World Economic Outlook (WEO) report published this week states that while drafting it, the Fund’s economists were forced to create a new category of economic recovery or rather stagnation, to include in it only the euro area. In the preface, the Fund economists state plainly that “what was until […]
After Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, questioned loudly last Monday the one-sided character of the severe austerity policies currently applied in a number of Eurozone countries, yesterday it was the turn of Commission’s vice President Ollie Rehn, directly responsible for this tough strategy, to argue openly and clearly in favour of a relaxation. […]
It is probably the first time in the annals of the European Central Bank that its president and vice president went so close as to almost announce the next interest rate reduction. Yesterday ECB’s Vice-President Vitor Constancio, presented the central bank’s Annual Report for 2012 to the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the […]
Algirdas Šemeta, the European Commissioner responsible for Taxation Audit and Anti-fraud announced yesterday in very low tones the creation of a new consultative committee in Brussels, under the name of “tax good governance platform”. This was a very disproportionate outcome, after the widely advertised Commission’s initiative to crack down on tax evasion in the European […]
The European Union dignitaries could at least have waited for the American Secretary of State, John Kerry, to leave Brussels before offering him yesterday our European dignity as a gift, for his first official visit to the EU capital city. The day that Kerry set his foot on Brussels, the European Council revoked the obligation […]
As it turns out real total unemployment exceeds by far the already dreadful percentages estimated by the national statistical services of the EU countries. According to a press release issued by Eurostat, the EU statistical service, in the EU of 27 member states apart from the tens of millions of the “normal” unemployed, there is […]
This week the European Commission, and in order to be fair and precise, the European Commissioner Tonio Borg, tried once more to convince 500.7 million European consumers that the horsemeat and the Phenylbutazone scandal didn’t reveal any loopholes, in the EU food quality control systems. In a European Commission Press release issued at the beginning […]
The statement that unemployment constantly increases in the European Union has become a banal observation during the past three crisis years. When however it comes to long-term unemployment, comprising workers without a job for more than one year, the end result can be that the labour force of this country or region is reduced by […]
The European Parliament yesterday held the European Central Bank accountable for the lack of dissemination to the real economy of the cheap liquidity the central bank has accorded to commercial banks. The resolution adopted during the Parliament’s annual evaluation of the ECB’s activities, addresses both the ECB’s monetary policy responses to the Eurozone crisis and […]
IMF’s research department published yesterday its latest report on World Economic Outlook (WEO), with good news for the global economy and bad news for Eurozone. Actually, Olivier Blanchard, IMF’s chief economist and director of its Research Department, was quoted as saying that because of Eurozone’s problems, “We have moved from a two-speed recovery to a […]
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 […]
How many of you took your stunning black Audi A6 3.0 liter for a ride on the evening of the 11th of April? Do you remember the moment you switched on the LED driving lights and you felt an unprecedented bliss thinking that you are not only rich but you are also protecting the environment? […]
The informal Ecofin and Eurogroup councils that took place in the Dublin Castle this weekend had only one victim; the bank depositors. Tax evaders got away, with Algirdas Šemeta the EU Commissioner responsible for Taxation and Anti-Fraud, running after them brandishing only his “appetite for progress and action”. In reality no real progress or action […]
The three EU independent authorities which supervise the financial sector of the Union, namely the European Banking Authority (EBA), the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), collectively known as the three European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs), issued yesterday their first joint report ringing the bell of Eurozone […]
The powerful EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, announced yesterday its proposal for a new legislation targeted at strengthening the protection of home businesses and products from external competition. It’s a clear effort to help the Union’s economy overcome a deepening recession. The new legislations will be in force early in 2014, after being approved […]
The European Commission announced yesterday that 13 member states of the EU are in the danger area of macroeconomic imbalances. The bell tolls about Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Italy, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In must be noted that the three countries (Greece, Portugal, Ireland) plus Cyprus which already apply rehabilitation […]
According to a European Central Bank report which was published yesterday, the average household in south European countries like Cyprus, Greece, Spain and Italy possess more net wealth than their peers in the north (net wealth is defined as the difference between total assets and total liabilities). The obvious conclusion is that they can endure […]
During the 9th European Regional Meeting of the International Labour Office (ILO), which currently takes place in Oslo from 8–11 April, a study was presented showing that in the European Union the risks of social unrest have exploded over the past few years growing with the highest tempos in the world. Obviously this is a […]
The fact that the Eurozone does not have a standard procedure to deal with failing or about to fail banks and the national bankruptcy laws of the 17 member states are far from offering a relevant solution, has prompted the two most competent persons in the Union to describe the way such dealings will be […]
The governor of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, speaking yesterday in his regular monthly Press conference after the Governing Council meeting, was rather straight forward on two crucial fronts. First, he left to be clearly understood that if the now prevailing unfavourable economic conditions in the Eurozone continue, with recession dragging on and the […]
According to a Eurostat study on people at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion (AROPE), the ongoing economic and financial crisis has seriously affected the relevant indicators. Eurostat is the statistical service of the European Union. AROPE is the headline indicator to monitor the EU2020 Strategy poverty target. According to Euroastat it reflects the share of the population […]
Eurozone unemployment rate peaked in February 2013 at 12% but this number says nothing about the real structural problems of the single money zone. The burning issue is the fast growing divergence of unemployment opportunities between the surplus countries in the North and the over indebted member states in the South, plus Ireland. According to […]
