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The European Union is once more hit by migration. Last Sunday, around 800 illegal immigrants are believed to have died when their ship sank on the way from the Libyan coast to the Italian Island of Lampedusa. As a result, the EU foreign and interior ministers gathered in Luxembourg earlier this week to discuss about the migration crisis […]
It’s a bit awkward to consider a drop of the unemployment rate by one decimal point of a percentage unit as economic growth, and call it a reversal to the positive region, as some Brussels dignitaries and bureaucrats do. Incidentally, the euro area unemployment rate fell to 11.3% in February, down from 11.4% in January […]
Last week the European Court of Auditors (ECA) published a report on the “risks to the successful implementation of the EU Youth Guarantee”. The ECA review, while noting that according to the Commission the available funding for this much advertised EU project is estimated at €16.7 billion for the 2014-2020 period including national resources, it […]
Even without having spent yet a single euro the European Central Bank’s program of sovereign bond buying of €60 billion a month has had an enormous impact on world financial markets. It suppressed the euro dollar parity from the unbearably high levels of 2014 (1.39 on 9 March 2014) to 1.08510 last Friday, the lowest […]
Ahead of the 18-19 December Summit of the 28 EU leaders, the European economy dives deeper in recession and disinflation. Brussels sources estimate that November inflation plunged again to 0.3% from 0.4% in October, widely diverging from the institutional target of below but close to 2%. There is more to it though. According to Eurostat, […]
The fact that Scotland’s vote for independence was a milestone in the separatist movements’ history within the European Union was already clear. In the last weeks everybody was looking northwards as it was evident that any decision by the Scots would have changed the path and probably the weight of the regionalist parties inside the parliament houses […]
The Budgets Committee of the European Parliament (EP) announced yesterday that they approved financial aid to the Netherlands, Greece, Romania and Spain, whose workers were laid off as redundant due to globalisation or the financial crisis. It seems that the applications of the authorities of each country to the EU were fruitful, however it remains […]
Indisputably, one of the most crucial barriers to economic growth is the lack of adequate financing for SMEs, across the European Union. Indeed, the problem is more acute in the hardest hit by the financial crisis countries like Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland. In some other member states this setback is chronic. The SMEs […]
Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union estimated on Tuesday that the euro area unemployment rate was 11.6% in May; stable compared to April but reduced by 0.4% to last year’s measurements. The agency mentions that 18,552 million men and women were unemployed in May 2014; a decrease of 636.000 compared to May 2013. […]
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 […]
The European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the infamous ‘Troika’, officially declared that Portugal has successfully completed the assistance program and now as a financially self-sustainable country she can address herself to the markets, whatever this last term means. Towards the end of April, Portugal sold a €750 million bond […]
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 […]
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 […]
The European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion László Andor, speaking in a Conference on working conditions yesterday in Brussels, revealed that during the past few years the working conditions in the EU have greatly deteriorated, despite the ambitious targets set for the 2020 EU Strategy. According to Eurostat data: *Around 60% of temporary […]
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 […]
The fate of the Youth Guarantee scheme, constituted to help the under 25s to get a job or a training within four months after leaving the education system, is very characteristic of the importance attached to labour matters by the European decision makers and the Brussels bureaucracy in particular. According to the European Economic and […]
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 […]
Last Monday, Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank appeared in his last hearing in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament, before the present legislature dissolves in view of the May elections. In his introductory speech he seized the opportunity to underline a few things that some European […]
Yesterday, the European Commission after acknowledging that unemployment will continue ravaging more than half of Eurozone in the foreseeable future and predicting for this and next year a 0.1% ‘strengthening’ of the quite anemic growth rate, it found the courage to state that, “Recovery is gaining ground in Europe”. A lot of courage and probably […]
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 […]
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 […]
Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of IMF, is not renowned for her social concerns and sensitivities. Yet, while speaking last week at the National Press Club, in Washington DC, about “The Global Economy in 2014”, among other important policy proposals for the world to exit the era of the “seven weak years”, she didn’t forget to […]
Gender distribution in selected labour categories, age 15-74, EU-28, 2012 (Eurostat graph) Eurostat, the EU statistical service, revealed that the true unemployment rate in Eurozone during the third quarter of 2013 was much higher than the ‘officially’ recognised percentage of 11.5%, according to the definition of UN’s International Labour Organisation. Including the three forms of […]
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 […]
According to a Commission‘s new ‘on-line state aid to banks benchmarking tool’ published on 20 December, between October 2008 and December 2012 the EU member states provided €591.9 billion (4.6 % of EU 2012 GDP) of capital support (recapitalisation and asset relief measures) to the financial sector (banks). It was not only that. The same […]
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 […]
