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Judging from their first days in office, the new leadership of the European Union appears functioning on a much more ‘political’ platform than their Barroso-Rompuy predecessors. Actually Jean-Claude Juncker the one month old President of the European Commission had cautioned us all about that in his inaugural speech. Nevertheless, nobody had thought that Donald Tusk, […]
With a brief report, an Expert Group formed by the EU Commission and mandated to study the issue of “a debt redemption fund and eurobills”, undermined the prospect of a Eurobond issuance, by refusing to formulate a policy proposal. This is the story of the long time debated subject of the issuance of common and […]
The seriousness of approach, the magnitude of the interest and the pertinence of the proposal the European Union adopted yesterday to end the stalemate in Ukraine can be seen in the kind of money the EU sets aside for this country. José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission stated yesterday that the Union can […]
In the shadows of fume of the protest fires in Kiev’s Independence Square, the 32nd EU-Russia summit is expected to take place in Brussels this Tuesday. It will end with a working lunch, without an official dinner being held. The EU side dropped it as an indication of deep concern about Moscow’s role in Ukraine. […]
Yesterday Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych held talks with the leaders of the opposition as he promised to EU President Manuel Barroso during their telephone conversation earlier on the day. But this was all Yanukovych did to fulfil his promise to the EU leader. After many hours of talks, the leaders of the Ukrainian opposition coming […]
Last Wednesday the European Commission presented a ground-breaking communication for a “European Industrial Renaissance”. With it, the EU’s executive arm “is urging Member States to recognise the central importance of industry for creating jobs and growth and to mainstream industry-related competitiveness concerns across all policy areas”. The truth is, however, that industry doesn’t play the […]
During the weekend, the new wave of pro-EU protests in central Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, against the government’s last minute decision to drop out from an agreement with the European Union and instead sign one with Russia, shows the deep division between the pro-western and pro-Moscow parts of the population of this country. For one […]
Yesterday, it was a difficult day in Brussels with the EU’s Eastern Partnership under stress, because of the violent suppression of the pro-western street protests in Kiev. This same day the Russian President Vladimir Putin – the architect of Ukraine’s changing sides and joining Moscow’s Eurasian Union – chose to go to Yerevan to meet […]
The 350,000 to 500,000 people who protested yesterday, even violently at times, in the centre of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, belonged, theoretically, to the three opposition parties, which had organised the rally. Unquestionably however, all Ukrainians believe that President Viktor Yanukovich – who decided at the last minute to turn down an Association Agreement with […]
It took four days to European Union two presidents to grasp the magnitude of the Ukrainian full U-turn, with Kyiv signing the Moscow led customs union, after cashing in the advance of EU’s financial aid. The unprecedented complete turnaround of Ukraine’s foreign policy took place last Thursday and the President of the European Commission José […]
Less than 24 hours after a widely advertised Press conference held by Barroso, Rehn and Andor, where all of them were talking about “strengthening the recovery”, recovery in Eurozone was reported as fading away, being one decimal point away from total freezing that is zero, or numerical death. It is as if reality wanted to […]
Yesterday, the European Commission, on the occasion of the presentation of its reports on the ‘European Semester 2014’, the “Annual Growth Survey’ and the ‘Third Alert Mechanism Report’ on macroeconomic imbalances in EU member states, seized the opportunity to deepen and elaborate on its criticism, directed against the economic policies applied by Germany. Also yesterday, […]
Yesterday, the European Commission in Brussels announced that euro area growth prospects are sluggish, and downgraded the projected rate of GDP increase for 2014, from 1.2% to 1%. Also yesterday President Manuel Barroso, while speaking in Saint Paul’s Church in Frankfurt, where the first democratically elected Parliament of Germany was convened, called on this country […]
During the last two days the European Parliament intervened very actively, not only in the economic and budgetary policies of EU proper, but also in the way the 28 member states are formulating their fundamental financial choices, while drafting the 2014 government budgets. For one thing, this morning the plenary House is debating and presumably […]
The Ecofin council, a regrouping of the 28 ministers of Finance of the European Union, yesterday confirmed the creation of the first pillar of the European Banking Union, by approving the regulation for the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) to be built under the roof of the European Central Bank. This was a rather typical procedure, […]
If restoring global confidence relied on G20 efforts to fight tax evasion and control money market funds (MMFs), then the earth could end up being a totally unsafe and risky place. Who can deny that it is like that today? Tax evasion grows fast and the same is true for financial profiteering. This last development […]
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 […]
The Council of the European Union and more precisely the Permanent Representatives Committee, echoing directly the dictums of the 28 EU governments – without having consulted with the European Parliament – reached between them an agreement on the 2014 European Union budget. Needless to say that the resources the Council offers to the Union for […]
From both sides of the Atlantic Ocean two European Commissioners, Michel Barnier from Washington and Vivian Reding from Heidelberg, while addressing yesterday quite different audiences, sent out converging messages criticising the US. They both expressed novel views vis-à-vis EU–US relations in general, which can be interpreted as hardening of Commission’s position in reference to on-going […]
Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, the Prime Minister of Iceland, visited the European Union yesterday and was received by its two presidents. The Icelander first went to the Berlaymont, the Commission’s headquarters. There he was rather surprised. It was the first time that Manuel Barroso was so blatant, almost rude, with a visiting PM. Commenting on the […]
The European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are planning to challenge once more the supremacy of Germany in the Ecofin Council and bring back the issue of the single bank resolution authority. The clash over the character of this cornerstone building-block of the European Banking Union is some weeks old […]
Apart from the largely hypocritical cries by European politicians mainly in Brussels about civil rights breaches, the only concrete and immediate implications that the American PRISM scandal could have had on EU-US relations refers to the Free Trade and Investments Agreement that the two sides are about to negotiate. For one thing European citizens are […]
Last Friday 28 June the Commission welcomed the selection of route for the Azeri natural gas flow to Europe that the Caspian country’s producers made on that same day. Of course it is the ‘Southern Corridor’ through Greece and Albania and under the Adriatic Sea to Italy, then to many EU countries. It’s the Trans […]
With major breakthroughs in two key policy areas, the European Banking Union and the EU budgets for the period 2014-2020 materialising in the early hours of Thursday 27 June, the 27-28 June Summit of the 27+1 EU leaders couldn’t offer anything more. It degraded into a procedural affair. In relation with those breakthroughs the European […]
A careful reading of the invitation letter the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, addressed yesterday to the 27 EU leaders for their 27 and 28 June 2013 meeting in Brussels reveals a lot about the European Monetary Union. This letter should be read in parallel with the announcement for today’s continuation of […]
Azeri officials are visiting Athens today to announce their choice of the ‘Greek corridor’ for the flow of their natural gas towards the central European Union countries, to reach them after crossing also the Adriatic Sea in a deep water pipeline to Italy. Let’s folow the facts. Very early last Monday morning the European Sting […]
Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan was in Brussels on Friday 21 June for a good reason. The giant state oil and gas company of his country, Socar, has reportedly agreed with the Greek authorities to acquire the National Natural Gas System Operator (DESFA) S.A. of Greece, owner and operator of the country’s natural gas […]
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”. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Early research even from the 1970s has proved that investments in education give the highest returns compared to placements in physical capital. This is true for public and private education expenditure alike. The problem is that those returns are for one thing cashed in during a very long period of time and politically their positive […]
European Commissioner László Andor responsible for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion delivered an inspired speech entitled “Countering the crisis: fixing Europe’s monetary union and upgrading EU employment policy“, during an event at the London School of Economics. His idea about the European project is included in the very title of this speech that is connecting […]
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