The EU Commission by serving the banks offers poor support to European mainstream political parties

The 2008-2012 financial aka banking crisis and its devastating repercussions on the European Union, with deep recession and skyrocketing unemployment, are the main reasons why the EU political and economic establishment shivers ahead of the 22-25 May elections fearing a possible disastrous result. Eurosceptic extremists, nationalists and harlequins may occupy an increased part of the […]

Commission sets moderate greenhouse gas reduction targets for 2030

Yesterday, the European Commission took the middle, not ambitious path, on the burning issue of climate protection. It chose to propose rather conservative targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and energy production from renewable resources, easy to achieve and not demanding extra efforts in the investments front. To this effect, early yesterday, José Manuel […]

EU presses India for a free trade agreement

India is the most populous democracy of the world and over the past thirty years had to overcome a universe of political and economic problems. For decades the country followed an inward looking politico-economic strategy, keeping its trade and investment borders almost shut to the rest of the world. Its vast size permitted that up […]

EU: Centralised economic governance and bank supervision may lead to new crisis

In the first Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) of the year on January 22, the two first and more important items on the agenda were the “enhanced economic governance and policy coordination” (the “two-pack” economic governance) and secondly the “financial regulation and bank supervision”. On both accounts the Council made giant steps forward setting […]