Eurozone: New data show recession and debt closer to explosion

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 […]

Education expenditure in the EU not hurt much by crisis

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 […]

Population in crisis hit EU countries will suffer for decades

The positive relation between economic growth and the size of population is one of the best established principles in economic theory. There is no doubt then that today’s birth rate and future GDP are positively related, despite the fact that the dynamism of the correlation between those two crucial variables, seems to vary according to […]

The banks dragged Eurozone down to fiscal abyss

For a long time now economic analysts and commentators have been arguing that government support to financial institutions was the main culpable party of excess fiscal deficits in the Eurozone and the European Union as a whole. Those are direct subsidies under the form of capital injections, quite different from the support to lenders from […]

Inegalitarian taxation on labour haunts Europe’s social model

At a time when labour is under serious pressures and threats in the entire European Union, taxation on labour wages continuous not only being the main source of government income but always increasing. Despite the fact that unemployment has reached historic records in the euro area, at 12.1% in March with one out of two […]

More unemployment and lower wages to make European workers competitive?

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 […]

EU is officially in recession

Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union, confirmed yesterday with its regular third estimate, that during the last quarter of 2012 the Gross Domestic Product fell by 0.6% in the Euro area and by 0.5% in the EU27, in comparison with the previous three-month period of the same year. Eurostat’s third regular GDP estimation […]

The miserables and the untouchables of the economic crisis

The worsening of social conditions for the poorer part of the population, in the years of the still ongoing financial and real economy crisis, is an easily predictable development. However it is a revelation and a pity to observe the difference of the degree and the way recession badly affects some, and at the same […]

European Union: More taxes out of less income

In the fourth year of the ongoing financial and real economy crisis, with government social spending severely cut and bank credit to households and businesses continuously shirking, tax increases remain the only sure thing in life. According to a study by two Eurostat authors, Elisabeth Joossens and Laura Wahrig, taxes in absolute terms surpassed the […]

Young and unemployed the perfect victims of ‘vultures’

Slowly, but surely, unemployment in Eurozone keeps rising, posing growing pressures on economic policy planners all over the European Union. The problem has taken devastating dimensions in Eurozone countries applying the EU-ECB-IMF financial rehabilitation programmes (Greece, Portugal and Ireland), or self-imposed austerity measures as in Spain and Italy. More particularly in Greece, Spain, Portugal and […]

How wealthy people transmit this advantage to their children and grand children

Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical service, published data on poverty and social exclusion risks for EU citizens in 2011, showing completely disappointing results. The interesting thing, however, is that Eurostat didn’t release similar data for previous years for comparison reasons. Given that the much-advertised by the Brussels EU bureaucracy, “Europe 2020 strategy”, has set as […]

EU crisis aggravates structural differences, threatens cohesion

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 […]

Eurozone’s sovereign debt not a problem anymore?

Understandably sovereign debt statistics for Eurozone and the EU have become most crucial over the past five years, not only for the implicated countries but also for the global financial community. Until recently a bad spell over Greece’s prospects concerning its government debt could send all and every world market to a downwards spiral. And […]

It’s a lie Eurozone isn’t competitive

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 […]

Trade surplus up production down in Eurozone

Despite the apparent slow-down of the world economy and the drop of external demand for Eurozone products the first estimates by Eurostat, the EU statistical service, show a hefty trade surplus of €13.7 billion for the 17 countries single money zone in November 2012. Not all news however was positive for Eurozone in November. Industrial […]

Brazil: A strategic partner for the EU

Brazil is one of the largest democracies of the world, and the offshore oil findings of the past few years, have helped the country become not only self-sufficient in hydrocarbons but also draw millions of its people out of poverty. The country is grouped by OECD to the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China), constituting the […]
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