The European Sting is Your democratic, independent and top quality political newspaper specialized in European Union News. Unique Features: iSting & Harry Sting
The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) worries about the “effectiveness of EU policies in bringing young generations back into the labour market”, and quite rightfully so. A steady stream of statistics confirms the assessment that the European economy has entered into a long-term stagnation and very low inflation period without visible exit from it, […]
At last there are signs of relaxation of Eurozone’s tight fiscal constrains to growth. Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Greece are not the only Eurozone members that display now a de facto rejection of the strict financial confines imposed on them by Brussels since 2010. France too and other EU member states seem quite reluctant […]
It’s been already three days since the final results of the EU Elections entered our homes and we had some time to digest and discuss about them. No matter how you would like to see it, Italy has surprised Europe once more. This is not exactly a positive thing for a country that is in […]
László Andor, Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion while delivering the opening address at the conference on Social policy innovation yesterday in Brussels, must have known that Eurostat, the EU statistical service, was to announce almost simultaneously that the rate of employment of people aged 20-64 fell to 68.3% in 2013, for a fifth […]
Mario Draghi, the ECB President, was more than explicit last week, that the European Central Bank will live up to its duty and do in June whatever it takes to help the Eurozone economy grow again and push inflation a bit upwards, back in line with the institutional target, which is below but close to […]
Every year, with the advent of spring temperatures get high and the conditions of the sea improve. This is not just good news for the European citizens, hungry for some mild climate after months of snow and rain, but actually what thousands and thousands of immigrants are waiting for to sail towards Europe, leaving the […]
The completion of European Banking Union project last month, the most important undertaking of the EU after the introduction of the common euro currency, is undoubtedly the result of a long negotiated compromise, and as such it has many drawbacks. Firstly, it doesn’t recognize the fact that Eurozone’s mega-banks were the main culpable party for […]
Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, speaking at the high-level conference on “Monetary Policy in the New Normal” organised by the IMF in Washington D.C., on 13 April 2014, described in detail the unconventional monetary policy tools the Eurozone’s central bank is about to use, in order to affect (reduce) interest […]
It has become a bad joke to hear the European Central Bank’s Governing Council repeating monotonously that the inflation target for the euro area is below, but close to 2%. Most of the time, the same or the next day the EU’s statistical service (Eurostat) releases data confirming that Eurozone’s inflation is below 1% and […]
The European Parliament once more confirmed its reputation as the authentic channel transiting the social and the economic realities the European people have to endure to decision makers. Yesterday, the MEPs disagreed with the Commission President Manuel Barroso and Dimitrios Kourkoulas, the Greek deputy Foreign Minister speaking for the Council Presidency, that economic recovery was […]
Eurostat, the EU statistical service, published last week data on the evolution of tax revenues for the EU member states. A first reading reveals two very interesting developments. Both are connected to the economic crisis which hit Eurozone in 2009-2010. In 2010 tax revenues decreased as a result of the crisis. However, despite the fact […]
Yesterday morning, Eurostat, the EU statistical service, reserved a pleasant surprise to the European decision-makers by announcing its estimates for economic growth during the last quarter of 2013, with all four big Eurozone economies found in the positive part of the chart. Of course this development was not a surprise for Germany, but for both […]
This morning the European Union clearly showed its complete disappointment, with last Sunday’s result of a referendum held in Switzerland, where with a narrow majority of 50.3%, the people of this country approved a “mass immigration” initiative, imposing quotas on European Union citizens entering the Alpine Confederation. The narrow approval of this new law is […]
Yesterday, Eurostat, the EU statistical service, published an update of unemployment statistics for the European Union covering the period up to December 2013. In that month 26.200 million men and women in the EU-28, of whom 19.010 million were in the euro area (EA-17), were unemployed. Eurostat estimates that “Compared with November 2013, the number […]
Cecilia Malmström, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs presented yesterday the first EU Anti-Corruption Report. The Commission estimates that corruption costs €120 billion a year to the European economy. This could be a very low approximation of reality though, because the vast majority of EU citizens believe that among politicians at national, regional, local and EU […]
Government deficit decreased substantially in the third quarter of last year and reached -3.1% of the GDP in Eurozone. This is just one decimal point away from the 3% benchmark, set by the Treaty of Maastricht and the strict EU economic governance Regulations (the famous ‘two’ and ‘six’ packs). The gap between government income and […]
Eurostat, the EU statistical service, announced late yesterday evening that in December unemployment remained at the persistently high level of 12% since October, while inflation took a new downwards turn to 0.7% in January, from 0.8% in December. It’s difficult to say which one of the two developments is more alarming. On both accounts Eurozone […]
The tourism industry is undoubtedly a flourishing sector of the EU economy. However it suffers of an increased sensitivity to events like the 11 September 2001 catastrophe, which can harm its potential on a global scale. Even an airplane accident can undermine its activities for a long time. That’s why it is considered as a […]
Everybody knew it but ‘The Independent on Sunday’ said it this weekend; Nigel Farage’s UKIP political formation is the first choice of the Brits. The newspaper published a poll giving 27% to UKIP, 26% to Labour and 25% to Conservatives. Not to forget that last year this party got almost one-quarter of the English vote […]
The European Parliament launched an investigation on the functioning and the legitimisation of the troika, made up by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The three institutions between them undertook to bail out, guide and audit the economies of four Eurozone member states which reached a point of no […]
When the ‘troika’, made up by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund was atypically formed first in spring of 2010 to bail out and audit Greece, its widely advertised purpose was to inflict an internal devaluation on this country. Later on the troika undertook to perform the same task […]
On 22 January the European Commission will present a Communication on an EU wide project, under the grandiose name of “European Industrial Renaissance”. Despite its name, the Communication doesn’t seem to have a strong connection with reality. Even the early pre-announcement of this Communication released on 20 December contains elements of futility. It says “While […]
According to a European Central Bank Press release published on 3 January 2014, Eurozone banks further reduced their overall outstanding balance of loans to the private sector during November 2013. Given that industrial multinationals and big services firms do not rely on bank loans for their financing, it’s mainly the SMEs that have been deprived […]
There is no end to EU Commission’s approvals of state aid and government bailouts of hundreds of EU struggling banks, as if the extensive fair competition legislation of the Union is valid for every other sector of the economy at the exception of banks. In the latest incident, the EU competition authorities actually looked the […]
Only 0.2% of the non-financial companies are large (more than 249 employees), the rest are either micro firms (up to 10 employees, 92.5%) or small and medium enterprises (10 to 249 employees, 7.3%). Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union, regularly publishes data on enterprises broken down by size classes, which provide information on […]
Unemployment in Eurozone remained unchanged last August at 12% in relation to July, when it had slightly receded, compared with the 12.1% in June. This marginal reduction of unemployment in July was hailed as an indication that Eurozone is about to abandon its long term recession, an estimate also based on a marginal increase of […]
While the political scenery in Italy and Greece – the two key countries in Eurozone’s fight against sovereign excessive debt – could be termed as critical, their economic prospects do not seem discouraging at all. In this respect Italy gained a positive assessment from the IMF last week. The Fund’s report points to the zeroing […]
The European Court of Auditors (ECA) in a report that was published yesterday reveals that the EU spends billions to help the rural economy restructure but with poor results, delivering “only limited value for money”. EU spending on agriculture be it production and producer subsidies or supporting structural investment plans has being traditionally criticised not […]
Benoît Cœuré a French economist, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and former head of French public debt office, delivered a revealing speech on ECB’s programme for Eurozone state bond purchases in the secondary markets, known as Outright Monetary Transactions initiated in September 2012. Cœuré said that OMTs arrested and neutralised […]
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”. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Proportion of the population at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion, 2011 Social exclusion and poverty has been a constant danger for a very large part of our modern western societies. It is understandable that while the economies grow this danger recedes and the opposite is true in recession. To measure however the danger of social exclusion and […]
