At a time when the Eurozone banks have received for free €4.5 trillion of taxpayers’ money and at least another €3 trillion from the ECB at close to zero interest rates, the Commission dares to ask the pension funds and the Internet to replace the banks in financing economic growth in the crisis stricken and […]EU Commission: The banks are not obliged to finance the real economy
March 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment
At a time when the Eurozone banks have received for free €4.5 trillion of taxpayers’ money and at least another €3 trillion from the ECB at close to zero interest rates, the Commission dares to ask the pension funds and the Internet to replace the banks in financing economic growth in the crisis stricken and […]A new proposal breaks the stalemate over the Banking Union
January 29, 2014 by Leave a Comment
According to the European Commissioner Michel Barnier, the Eurozone member states, who participate in the Eurogoup and the ECOFIN councils are ready to soften their position in the negotiations with the European Parliament, to lift the deadlock over the creation of the Banking Union. This is a step forward in resolving the stalemate around the […]The mother of all fights about inflation, growth and banks
January 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reading two accounts by two different people, about what happened in the Eurogroup meeting yesterday in Brussels, gives a clear indication of what will be decided in the ECOFIN Council today. Ollie Rehn, Vice-President of the European Commission and member of the Commission responsible for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro, and Jeroen Dijsselbloem, […]War of words in Davos over Eurozone’s inflation/deflation
January 27, 2014 by Leave a Comment
During the last two days, Friday and Saturday, of this year’s Davos gathering of the rich and powerful, an intense debate about Eurozone’s inflation or rather deflation, divided once again the Old Continent between Germans and…anti-Germans. Ollie Rehn, the Finn European Commission Vice-President and Commissioner responsible for finance and the euro, said that the currently […]The European Parliament x-rays the troika’s doings
January 14, 2014 by Leave a Comment
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 […]A day that Berlin and Brussels would remember for a long time
December 17, 2013 by 1 Comment
It was not by accident that the President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi chose the right time to ring the danger bell against a “bad Banking Union”, while speaking yesterday in the Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. Obviously, he wanted to be heard by the new German government which is expected […]The Eurogroup offered a cold reception to IMF’s director for Europe
December 10, 2013 by 2 Comments
Yesterday’s Eurogroup was devoted rather to the…IMF than to the burning issues of Eurozone, like bank recovery and resolution and deposit guarantee schemes. Probably the reason for this change was that Reza Moghadam, the IMF’s European Department director, was present and his main criticism of Eurozone’s economy was that it suffers from “weak banks and over-indebted […]Commission deepens criticism on German economic policies
November 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday, the European Commission, on the occasion of the presentation of its reports on the ‘European Semester 2014’, the “Annual Growth Survey’ and the ‘Third Alert Mechanism Report’ on macroeconomic imbalances in EU member states, seized the opportunity to deepen and elaborate on its criticism, directed against the economic policies applied by Germany. Also yesterday, […]Commission Vice-President Rehn exaggerates Eurozone’s growth prospects
November 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday the European Commission published its autumn 2013 economic forecast for the EU and the Eurozone. Apart from downgrading the growth prospects in relation to last spring projections, Ollie Rehn, Commission vice-President, while presenting the package, used slightly different estimates than the ones contained in the full report prepared by the Directorate-General for Economic and […]EU Commission: Germany can make Eurozone grow again just by helping itself
October 23, 2013 by 1 Comment
On the political level, the European Commission and the IMF have been warning Germany for months now about its inextricable over stretched internal fiscal and incomes double consolidation. Now the Commission comes back with an excellent economic paper, which employs a structural multi-country model and assesses the negative impact of fiscal consolidation measures undertaken in […]The untold story of who caused and who pays for the economic crisis
August 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Olli Rehn, Vice-President of the EU Commission responsible for the economy and euro and Yves Mersch, member of the executive board of the European Central Bank both delivered speeches yesterday in the European Forum Alpbach 2013, set in the breathtaking Alpine landscape. A very convenient excuse for an escape to Tirol. The European Forum Alpbach […]The Banking Union divides deeply the European Union
June 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
As the European Sting predicted the ‘Friday battle at Ecofin’ Council was not about the specific country recommendations of the Commission, or about the seven-year extension of the loans to Portugal and Ireland, nor on the direct bank recapitalisation instrument. It was the very issue of the creation of the Banking Union and its core […]It’s a lie Eurozone isn’t competitive
January 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday a press release of Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union, revealed that during the third quarter of 2012 Eurozone recorded a positive foreign trade balance in goods of the order of €30.5 billion. It’s even more interesting however that during the same period the balance of trade in services left an impressive […]
