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A genuine Turkish bazaar took place last Sunday in Brussels during the meeting of the EU heads of state or government with the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The horse-trading was about what it will cost the EU to stem of the flow of immigrants who pass through Turkey on their way to Europe. Finally […]
Greece is obliged by today or the latest tomorrow Friday morning to submit to its Eurozone partners a new program with more severe austerity and deeper reforms, if the country wants to stay in the Eurozone. Alas, this is exactly the program the Greeks rejected last Sunday in a referendum. In case the Athens proposal […]
Today’s Eurogroup summit of the 19 euro area heads of state and government is convened by Donald Tusk, the President of European Council in order to bluntly present Alexis Tsipras, the Greek PM with a final ultimatum; ‘comply or leave the Eurozone’. Of course this initiative was not Tusk’s, given that his mandate is rather […]
Last weekend the leaders of the G7 countries in reality acknowledged their impotency or probably unwillingness to effectively confront the expansion of the destructive and unlawful activities of the “too big to fail” banks and the shadow banking sector. After that, they decided that Ukraine and Greece have to go on bleeding in order not […]
The resumption of hostilities in south-eastern Ukraine is blamed by the West to the Russian President Vladimir Putin. Moscow reportedly wants to help the pro-Russian separatists who prevail in the Luhansk and Donetsk region to gain control of Mariupol a key port in this area on the Black Sea. However, the heavy fighting that took […]
This newspaper has been very reluctant in endorsing the widely accepted view that Eurozone has left behind its stagnation if not recession phase. The reason is that despite the GDP increases by a few decimal points – not more than three – of a percentage unit, inflation kept falling for more than twelve months until […]
With the Minsk Agreement the West and Russia finally got what they wanted or close to that from Ukraine, not minding much about leaving the miserable country in ruins, its map ruthlessly chopped and the economy in a perfect chaos. On the one side the EU or rather Berlin and Paris plus Washington and on […]
Germany and France are alarmed at the prospect that the Americans could turn Ukraine into an unbelievable inferno, by overtly delivering heavy armaments to Kiev. In such an event implications on Europe’s security will be vast. The French President François Hollande and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel rushed to Moscow last Friday and met the […]
Last weekend’s G20 Summit in Brisbane Australia in a direct way ineradicably mapped the abyss now dividing the West from Russia. American and European leaders including Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and David Cameron threatened Russia with more sanctions, meant to completely cut her off from western markets and besiege her economy, if Moscow doesn’t stop […]
The EU Commission has correctly translated the ideas emanated from the Brussels’ European Council of 23-24 October and accordingly adjourned confrontation with France and Italy over budgetary deficits and extra investment spending for 2015. European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen responsible for financial affairs and the euro seems to have read very carefully the Conclusions […]
The 10th Asia-Europe meeting (ASEM) in Milan, Italy, concluded last Friday after two full days of work. The meeting was established in 1996 and it has since become a key forum for new cooperation proposals between Europe and Asia. Russia-Ukraine question has probably been the this edition’s hottest topic under the spotlight, as Milan summit […]
The whole world knows that the European Union has for decades been powered by a strong force; the Berlin – Paris axis. At times, when this relationship broke down, the EU came to a standstill. Obviously now this is again the case. Towards the end of last month the newly appointed French Prime Minister, Manuel […]
Not surprisingly, European Commission’s quarterly review on ‘Employment and Social Situation’ and its “Annual Report on European SMEs 2013/2014” which were published last week, both conclude that economic recovery is still quite uncertain, while small and medium businesses are always in contraction, constituting the main impediment to growth. Despite all that, and as if economic […]
Last Wednesday, just two days before Eurozone’s finance ministers met for informal talks in Milan, the news had come in: France will not achieve a 3% EU budget deficit target this year. During a conference in Paris, the French finance minister Michel Sapin said that the country’s budget deficit will be around 4.4% of GDP in 2014 […]
It seems that a confrontational paranoia is engulfing our world. The British Prime minister is waging an aggressive campaign (which may end up being self-destructive) against the candidacy of Jean-Claude Juncker for the Presidency of the Commission. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel is encountering this British challenge with an all-out offensive having organized a continental […]
Last Sunday evening, the verdict was in. The party of the right, for many the right party, won the municipal elections in a background of large abstention. Already the first round, had left the left party in a bad shape. This was confirmed in the second round, as the Socialist Party suffered an electoral defeat […]
This morning the German Federal Statistical Office issued a Press release revealing that the country grew by a mere 0.4% last year. This is almost half than the 0.7% GDP increase that Germany recorded in 2012. Along the same line of developments, Eurostat, the EU statistical office, published a Press release estimating that the Eurozone […]
The Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Linas Linkevičius, whose country is currently holding the rotating president of the EU Council, during the workings of last Saturday’s informal meeting of the 28 Foreign Affairs ministers in Vilnius supported so openly and provocatively the US positions on Syria, to the point that only his tiny and deeply anti-Russian country […]
The creation of a real European Banking Union, built to serve all Eurozone member states on equal terms found yesterday a new strong supporter. Yves Mersch, a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and former Governor of the Central Bank of Luxembourg speaking yesterday at the UniCredit Business Dialogue in Hamburg, […]
The European Commission is about to honour once more its title as ‘Guardian of the Treaties’. This fundamental Commission’s mandate obliges the EU’s executive to always promote more rather than less Union. In this respect after the French President Francois Hollande and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed in Paris last week, to support a […]
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 […]
Safeguarding the basics of the Franco-German unity, which functions as the powerhouse of the European Union, had another victim. The French President Francois Hollande and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed yesterday in Paris to undermine the effectiveness of the European Banking Union. Instead of a strong central and financially independent bank resolution authority in […]
Economics is primarily a social not a mathematical science. Forgetting that may lead mathematicians to create toxic investment products like complicated derivatives, which have no other purpose than to cheat people. This misunderstanding may also lead executives like László Andor, EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, to talk about ‘labour market’ as if […]
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, […]
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 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 […]
The “Spring Summit” of the 27 EU leaders on 14-15 March unfolding currently amidst the Brussels winter scenery, will be forced to challenge the presently followed economic policy orientation of austerity, under the pressure of major developments. Obviously the Italian elections results and the ensuing political stalemate, set a new background for every political economy exercise […]
European Commissioner Ollie Rehn, of Finnish origin (not finished, at least not yet), who has become the EU’s champion of austerity, will find it increasingly difficult to defend his Castle of Miser over the coming months. Yesterday, speaking in an interview to a daily newspaper of his country (on demand?), he playfully unleashed thunders against […]
The Italian political stalemate which threatens the financial stability of this country and risks to shake the Eurozone through the contagion effect, has not prompted Germany to relax its tough position vis-à-vis the euro area debt crisis and the severe austerity measures favoured by Berlin. As a matter of fact, Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German minister […]
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