The European Sting is Your democratic, independent and top quality political newspaper specialized in European Union News. Unique Features: iSting & Harry Sting
The European Central Bank during the last two years made profits of €2.11 billion, by exploiting the misery of the five Eurozone countries in financial distress. Of that money, €1.2bn came only from Greek sovereign bonds, that is from the Greek taxpayer and there aren’t many of them. The information is supplied by the ECB […]
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, […]
Yesterday, the Presidency of the European Council came out triumphantly announcing an agreement with the European Parliament, over the so called ‘Two Pack’ Commission’s proposal, to ‘improve’ budgetary and economic coordination among Eurozone countries. The Irish minister of Finance, Michael Noonan, president of the ECOFIN Council, said he achieved that on behalf of EU member […]
It was the symbolic date of 12/12/12 that the international NGO, Center for International Environmental Law, decided to publish a legal opinion denouncing as 100% illegal the European Commission’s proposal for a new regulation on ship recycling. This coincided with the legal analysis by the former chief counsel of the European Commission , Dr. Ludwig […]
The recent collapse of the European Union emissions trading system (EU-ETS) revealed the flimsy grounds on which the EU has built its policy against the climate change. The idea was to make polluting expensive but not much so. How thin were the foundations of this system started to clearly emerge, when the economic crisis knocked […]
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 […]
Eurostat, the EU’s statistical service, released data on Eurozone’s foreign trade showing that during 2012, euro area trade in goods recorded a surplus of €81.8 billion, outperforming the most optimistic predictions. This is not however the only good news for Eurozone external accounts for last year. Traditionally Eurozone records also a hefty surplus in international […]
The North Atlantic economic volume, comprising mainly Eurozone and Britain on the one side and US and Canada on the other constitute the largest almost uniform playfield. Of the two sides, however, the more dependant on the rest of the world is the American one and more precisely the US, with its huge double deficits, […]
The horsemeat scandal is still running free all over the European Union. Yesterday, a pompously named EU Commission group entitled, “Standing Committee of the Food Chain and Animal Health” (SCoFCAH), unanimously agreed in an extraordinary meeting, that the measures proposed by Commissioner Tonio Borg are adequate to counter the health and the fraud problem related to […]
At last the European Ombudsman, Paraskevas-Nikiforos Diamandouros, announced an independent investigation on European Commission’s personnel, who take up highly paid positions in the private sector, after retiring from the service, or leaving the service earlier. This is called the “revolving doors syndrome”, meaning exactly that. The relevant announcement issued yesterday the Ombudsman’s spokeswoman, Ms Gundi […]
The usually slow-moving European Commission over issues like free trade agreements, this time didn’t lose its time and President Manuel Barroso announced yesterday that, “the European Union and the United States have decided to initiate internal procedures to launch negotiations with the aim of reaching a ground-breaking free trade agreement: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment […]
Yesterday Commissioner Olli Rehn speaking at the regular monthly meeting of the European Financial Affairs Council (Ecofin), which regroups the 27 EU ministers of Finance, made a completely wrong evaluation of Eurozone’s economy present status, despite some quite superficial references to the real causes of the ongoing crisis. Let’s see all that in details. His […]
On April Fools’ Day 2012, the European Citizens Initiative (ECI) came into force and marked the starting point of the first collections of signatures to reach the one million benchmark. The first to accomplish this task are the Organisers of the Right2Water initiative. Incidentally, the European Commission issued an announcement saying that its services will […]
The prospective drafting of a bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the European Union and the United States is developing into a major issue and as things evolved last week, it seems that this may lead the EU into a new division, between France on the one side and the free trade lovers Britain and […]
Driven by the stubbornness of the British PM David Cameron, who was effectively supported by the austerity loving German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the EU Summit of 7-8 February agreed yesterday on the Union’s budget. Theoretically their decision binds EU spending for the seven year period of 2014-2020. The European Parliament however is of a completely […]
Europe had a very interesting day yesterday. Let’s see why. First was the British PM who delayed the EU Summit for five hours, then an agreement was announced to reduce the Irish sovereign debt by €20 billion and finally it was Mario Draghi, who helped contain the hike of the euro vis-à-vis the dollar, just […]
“No, the euro is not overvalued, if the long-term tendencies are taken into account”, said yesterday Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Zaimpert, in Berlin, as if the rest of the Eurozone was not existing. He added that the long-term competitiveness cannot be achieved through monetary measures and accommodating exchange rate policy. Seemingly the European Sting was […]
At last Francois Hollande said it. The French President in a strong statement yesterday said the Eurozone must have an exchange rate policy for the euro. It was high time that Hollande said that, because no other Eurozone leader has the weight to demand such a ground-breaking monetary policy change. So far all European Central […]
A strange combination of the expensive euro (undermining external competitiveness) and worsening market conditions for sovereign borrowing by south European countries, are increasing the pressures on the four crisis stricken Eurozone member states, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. In this way the positive developments of dropping risk premiums that prevailed since the beginning of the […]
According to a Eurostat analysis of EU27’s household final consumption expenditure, the Baltic countries and Greece are still suffering most from the economic and financial crisis. The two authors of the report, Christine Gerstberger and Daniela Yaneva, stress that consumption is a key indicator of citizens’ well-being, with housing, energy, transport and food accounting for […]
Yesterday the European Sting wrote that the Vítor Constâncio, Vice-President of the European Central Bank was asking for more taxpayers’ money to support careless “systemic” banks in case they fail. Possibly he could have longed to deny this “accusation”. To this effect he will get the floor here below to defend himself. In a speech […]
One after the other all the major EU Commission programmes widely advertised for their efficiency are being judged by the Court of Auditors as ill implemented and falling short of targets. Today it’s the municipal waste management, yesterday was the humanitarian aid to Africa and tomorrow God knows what. Mind you that the kind of […]
Yesterday at the European Parliament in Brussels, during the closing session of the Parliamentary week devoted to the European Semester (EU economic governance – fiscal treaty), a joint group of EU parliamentarians and members of national parliaments concluded, that the under construction closer economic and monetary union calls for more democratic control. The MEPs and […]
With Eurozone’s fiscal consolidation and financial supervision having being concretely scheduled for accomplishment within this year, investors and financial markets relaxed their fears over a possible disintegration of the single money zone and returned even to the Greek bond market. On the political front however still remain some dark spots over two anchor countries Italy […]
Yesterday László Andor, European Commissioner responsible for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion delivered a speech to an ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation) conference on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the organisation. The speech was entitled, “Europeans want and deserve a monetary union with a human face”. This is a decent description of […]
The developing countries, led by the industrialised nations of Asia, are playing a fast growing role in the world economy and may soon overshadow the developed triangle of US-EU-Japan. Actually they have already overtaken them in key sectors. According to the UNCTAD’s Handbook of Statistics 2012 the share of emerging countries in “the most heavily […]
The European Commission will be represented in force at the African Union (AU) summit of African heads of state and government to be held on 27–28 January. Among other dignitaries from Brussels and other EU capitals, EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs will be also present in this African summit. But what will he be carrying […]
Yesterday a press release of Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union, revealed that during the third quarter of 2012 Eurozone recorded a positive foreign trade balance in goods of the order of €30.5 billion. It’s even more interesting however that during the same period the balance of trade in services left an impressive […]
During this months’ European Economic and Social Committee’s plenary session, EU Council president Herman Van Rompuy and EESC members held a very important debate on the current guidelines of the European Council and future efforts to reinforce the social dimension of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Obviously the EESC members wanted to cover the […]
The defeat in the Lower Saxony election of the German governing coalition led by Angela Merkel’s CDU and comprising as a junior partner the pro-business party of Free Democrats (FDP), may change the political landscape in the entire European Union. It has already prompted Philipp Rösler to offer his resignation from the leadership of FDP, […]
An International Labour Office (ILO) report published today entitled “Global Employment Trends 2013: Recovering from a second jobs dip”, estimates that unemployment in all 185 member states of the organisation, will rise again this year by 5.1 million and by another 3 million in 2014. The ILO is the international organization responsible for drawing up […]
Yesterday the European Commission approved “temporarily” the recapitalisation of a Portuguese bank Banif with €1.1 billion. The Commission will take a final decision on the compatibility of the capital injection with EU state aid rules after the assessment of the restructuring measures will be proposed by Portugal. Presumably those restructuring measures will be layoffs […]
On the agenda of the Economic and Finance Ministers Council, the Ecofin, which is to take place in Brussels tomorrow there are two ground-breaking items. First on it is the Single Supervision Mechanism (SSM) for the EU banking industry, meant to audit and supervise over the 200 “systemic” banks of the Eurozone, under the guidance […]
