This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission. The European economy is set for its seventh consecutive year of growth in 2019, with all Member States’ economies due to expand. Growth in the euro area was stronger than expected in the first quarter of the year due to a number of temporary […]Summer 2019 Economic Forecast: Growth clouded by external factors
July 11, 2019 by Leave a Comment
This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission. The European economy is set for its seventh consecutive year of growth in 2019, with all Member States’ economies due to expand. Growth in the euro area was stronger than expected in the first quarter of the year due to a number of temporary […]EU Budget: A Reform Support Programme and an Investment Stabilisation Function to strengthen Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union
June 1, 2018 by Leave a Comment
This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission. For the next long-term EU budget 2021-2027, the Commission proposes to create a Reform Support Programme and a European Investment Stabilisation Function. Both proposals are part of the broader agenda to deepen Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union and make use of the EU budget […]How Europe beat the financial crisis – and the risks it still faces
May 18, 2018 by Leave a Comment
This article is brought to you based on the strategic cooperation of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Kalin Anev Janse, Secretary General, European Stability Mechanism (ESM) Ten years after the financial crisis, what is the most important news for me, coming from the other side of the channel? It is that Europe is booming – […]The Commission sees ‘moderate recovery’ but prospects deteriorate
November 9, 2015 by Leave a Comment
The European Commission released last week its “Autumn 2015 Economic Forecast”, advertising ‘moderate recovery’ for the European Union and the euro area. Understandably, the Commission wouldn’t dig deeper in the economy, to highlight the negative aspects of the present status and the subdued prospects for next year. For a number of important reasons the executive […]Greece’s future solely in the hands of Tsipras; he can direct the poor country any way he likes
July 9, 2015 by Leave a Comment
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 […]Can Greece’s democratic institutions keep it in Eurozone?
March 16, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Paris, Washington and Brussels categorically reject the idea of a Grexit, while Berlin is still loudly insisting that the Eurozone can weather at a cost Greece’s secession. Behind closed doors though, the German decision makers are also not at all sure about that. Greece’s exit from Eurozone has lately become the talk of the town […]Bundesbank’s President Weidmann criticises France and the EU. Credibility at risk?
December 16, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Just a few days have passed since an official report by the Directorate General for Economics and Finance Affairs of the European Commission told the world that French economy is stagnating, and the second economic power of the Eurozone is still under the spotlight. It’s time for the Bundesbank to raise the voice against – […]How much more political is the new EU leadership? Does this include personal bend?
December 4, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Judging from their first days in office, the new leadership of the European Union appears functioning on a much more ‘political’ platform than their Barroso-Rompuy predecessors. Actually Jean-Claude Juncker the one month old President of the European Commission had cautioned us all about that in his inaugural speech. Nevertheless, nobody had thought that Donald Tusk, […]France breaks budget promises once again and the EU’s finance offices are shaking
September 16, 2014 by Leave a Comment
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 […]Germany openly seeks more advantages for its banks
May 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Commission proposal for a Bank Resolution and Recovery Directive divided deeply the Ecofin council in its yesterday’s Brussels meeting. Again the division took the form of North versus South or rather Germany & Co against everybody else. Mr Wolfgang Schauble, the German Federal Minister for Finance, insisted that the line of funds to be […]Eurozone plans return to growth
May 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment
After Dr Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German minister of Finance stated that it was a fair decision by Brussels to give France two more years to straighten up its fiscal accounts, the climate in Eurozone has changed from winter to spring. Up to now Paris was at odds with Berlin over the severe austerity policies imposed […]Eurozone governed by an obscure body and gray procedures
March 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Eurogroup, the crucial European decision-making body, regrouping the 17 EU ministers of Finance of the countries using the euro, which has led the south of Europe to the worst economic recession after WWII and introduced the haircut on bank deposits, the until this week most secure financial asset, is an informal forum, who’s decisions […]The Italian crisis may act as a catalyst for less austerity
February 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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 […]
