SURE: Commission proposes additional €3.7 billion to six Member States to protect jobs and incomes

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission. The Commission has proposed to the Council to grant an additional €3.7 billion of financial assistance to six Member States under SURE, the €100 billion instrument designed to protect jobs and incomes affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposals follow formal requests for additional […]

The new crisis is already creeping into the financial system

Unquestionably, everything is wrong in the international financial system, even though the major central banks have actually donated trillions to the banking ‘community’. The US central bank, the Fed, has lent almost free of charge $4.5 trillion to the American banking hub. On this side of the Atlantic Ocean, the European Central Bank has done […]

EU Commission says falling labour remuneration leads to deflation and damages growth prospects

  The social situation in the European Union keeps degrading and in many countries it has compromised the social cohesion. Yesterday the EU Commission published its quarterly review on “Employment and Social Situation”, with the unbelievable conclusion that, “The recent economic recovery has not yet been able to create new jobs and the social situation […]

How much more social deterioration can the EU people endure?

The Council of the European Union responsible for Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer affairs couldn’t avoid recognizing that the social scenery in the EU is deteriorating fast as 26.8 million jobseekers unable to find a job and 25% of the European population at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Mind you that more than […]

The financial crisis always prefers the south of Eurozone

It’s very interesting to study how incomes and consumption in the worst hit countries coped with the financial crisis and the concomitant severe austerity measures imposed by the ‘troika’ of auditors/lenders. The European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund formed this ‘troika’ in 2010, to deal with the risk of insolvency […]

How Eurozone consumers spend their income when they have one…

Eurostat, the EU statistical service, presented on 30 August a statistical survey on the euro area headline inflation and its four main components. Together with it Eurostat published a valuable table showing the weight of each of the twelve items that compose the inflation index and its four main components. By the same token however […]

Lies and reality about incomes and wealth in the EU

The European Central Bank in April this year produced a statistical paper on the distribution of real household wealth in Eurozone countries. The study argued that in terms of net wealth the average German household appears much poorer than their counterparts in the crisis hit countries of south Europe, that is Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Italy […]

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 […]

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 […]