Is Eurozone heading towards a long stagnation?

“The euro area seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 12.1% in October 2013, down from 12.2% in September”. These are the first two lines of a brief announcement issued yesterday by Eurostat, the EU statistical service. One decimal of a percentage unit in a statistical survey conducted by a sample of thousands to draw conclusions for a […]

A sterilised EMU may lead to a break up of Eurozone

Ahead of the ‘The European Employment Forum’ which takes place in Brussels today and tomorrow and according to its organisers is ‘the annual networking forum for everyone involved in employment and enterprise within the EU and beyond’, there was an increased activity over the burning issue of jobs and unemployment in Europe. To this effect, […]

Inflation down to 0.7%, unemployment up at 12.2%: Bad omens for Eurozone

Eurostat, the EU statistical service, estimates that euro area inflation in October fell to 0.7% from 1.1% in September. It was 1.6% in July and then fell to 1.3% in August. This is an alarmingly fast deceleration of consumer price dynamism, threatening Eurozone with real disinflation, way below the 2% benchmark set by the European […]

Eurozone and Britain heading in different directions

Eurostat, the EU statistical service, confirmed yesterday that its ‘flash estimate’ of September inflation at 1.1% is correct. In a brief Press release, the Service announced that, “Euro area annual inflation was 1.1% in September 2013, down from 1.3% in August. A year earlier the rate was 2.6%. Monthly inflation was 0.5% in September 2013”. […]

EU regional differences betray an unjust arrangement

Predictably, regional statistics on employment, incomes and the risk of poverty could mirror in a more accurate way, how the economic crisis has affected the more deprived and the moret affluent regions of the European Union. National averages can serve well the comparative analysis between EU’s member states. Regional data however would go deeper in […]

Eurozone: Uncertain future with unemployment ravaging the South

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 […]

Job vacancy data reveal better prospects for Britain, stagnation in Eurozone

Job vacancy statistics is not a widely used analytical tool despite the fact that is follows more accurately a number of vital social and economic variables, like the robustness of growth or the steepness of fall of economic activity. They are also indicative of the structural effectiveness of labour market workings, of the efficacy of […]

Can Eurozone’s uncertain growth answer the challenges that lie ahead?

Bit by bit the much advertised resumption of economic activity in Eurozone fades away. The fall of unemployment rate by just one decimal point to 12.1% in June and the increase of GDP during the second quarter of this year by 0.3% fuelled overoptimistic estimates that Eurozone has definitively left behind the lowest part of […]

Europe turns out more jobs this summer

In July 2013, for a second month in a row, unemployment rates remained unchanged in both Eurozone and the EU28 at 12.1% and 11% respectively, according to a Eurostat Press release issued today. Eurostat is the EU statistical service. The same source notes that, “26.654 million men and women in the EU28, of whom 19.231 […]

New phenomena in the EU labour market

Everybody feels that the economic crisis haunting Eurozone increases the divergence between its northern and southern segments. It’s Eurostat however, the EU statistical service, that gave solid proof to this general feeling. Eurostat writer Martin Teichgraber undertook the task to analyse the impact that this crisis has on the labour market, in a paper entitled […]

ECB will be the catalyst of Eurozone’s reunification

Today Thursday the new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is expected to confirm from Nottingham, a historic city in east Midlands, that the central bank of Britain is not to raise its basic interest rate from the currently very low level of 0.5%, “until the Labour Force Survey headline measure of the […]

Berlin to pay at the end for Eurozone banks’ consolidation

The most valuable asset of Eurozone households, their homes, continue losing large parts of their value in this unending economic crisis, which has brought to knees more than half of euro area countries. It’s a tragic combination. People after losing their jobs watch their homes to lose value every day, and if they have a […]

Civil society organisations disenchanted with “Youth Guarantee”

Since 2008, when the EU financial crisis first broke out, 1000 young people join every day the ranks of the unemployed, according to the European Economic and Social Committee. The EESC issued recently a note strongly criticising the Commission’s proposal entitled “Youth Guarantee project”. This proposal was adopted by the European Council of the 27+1 […]

EU to spend €6 billion on youth employment and training futile schemes

Yesterday the European Sting observed that the European Council of 27-28 June had no purpose. The truth is that the two crucial issues which haunted all the EU institutions for months were solved elsewhere. Firstly, the agreement on the draft directive for bank resolution and recovery was struck at the Ecofin council during the first […]

The Europeans with a job diminish dangerously

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”. […]

How distorted is the EU labour market by this crisis?

Once more Eurostat, the EU statistical service, went a step forward and produced deep socio-economic analysis with labour market data, than sheer statistical tables. Without colouring its statistics with ideology, the choice of the variables to analyse and present betray a scientific strictness accompanied however with increased susceptibility towards inequality and exclusion. This time it […]

Economic recovery won’t tackle youth unemployment problem

Eurozone unemployment rate rose by one decimal point in April reaching 12.2%, from 12.1% in March. This development does not constitute a strong indication that recession in euro area is getting worse. For one thing the rise of the rate of people without a job is very slight and falls in the margin of the […]

Poverty and social exclusion skyrocket with austerity

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 […]

Eurozone: There is a remedy for regional convergence

Regional unemployment statistics in the European Union as published today by Eurostat, the EU statistical service, show clearly that the wide differentiation of this crucial variable calls for an appropriate modulation of policies designed to counter different growth/recession records. The European Central Bank is currently supplying ample and almost zero cost liquidity to Eurozone’s core […]

Eurozone cannot endure any longer youth marginalisation

The 3239th EU Council meeting was devoted to Education, Youth, Culture and Sport and as usually the Presidency, this semester held by Ireland, very happily presided over it. The Irish Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairí Quinn T.D. said “I am particularly pleased that we have adopted these Conclusions today. There are still too many […]

The inhumane face of crisis mirrored in numbers

The discussion and the argumentation about the unbelievable fall of living standards of the most deprived part of the population in the European Union during the crisis years is more or less an assertion, based on what every one of us sees and hears in one’s own personal social circle. Unemployment percentages tell only part […]

Eurozone: The cycle of deficits, debts and austerity revisited

A European Union Member State’s government budget deficit may not exceed -3 % of its gross domestic product (GDP), while its debt may not exceed 60 % of GDP. If a Member State does not respect these limits, the so-called excessive deficit procedure is triggered. The procedures against member states for excessive deficit or debt […]

Appalling overall unemployment in Eurozone at 20.6%

As it turns out real total unemployment exceeds by far the already dreadful percentages estimated by the national statistical services of the EU countries. According to a press release issued by Eurostat, the EU statistical service, in the EU of 27 member states apart from the tens of millions of the “normal” unemployed, there is […]

More unemployment and lower wages to make European workers competitive?

The statement that unemployment constantly increases in the European Union has become a banal observation during the past three crisis years. When however it comes to long-term unemployment, comprising workers without a job for more than one year, the end result can be that the labour force of this country or region is reduced by […]

Is the EU’s enlargement over-stretched?

The myth that the European Union is a seamless economic volume is belied not only after the latest developments, with Berlin and Paris working hard to institutionalise the fragmentation of EU’s financial markets. The dysfunction is also depicted by hard-core macroeconomic and labour market statistics. Again it’s not only the huge differences in the relative […]

EU’s social crisis and unemployment to deteriorate

During the 9th European Regional Meeting of the International Labour Office (ILO), which currently takes place in Oslo from 8–11 April, a study was presented showing that in the European Union the risks of social unrest have exploded over the past few years growing with the highest tempos in the world. Obviously this is a […]

Is Eurozone heading for disinflation?

It will be very interesting to hear what the governor of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, has to say tomorrow in his monthly Press conference, about the fast falling inflation rate and the even faster growing unemployment in Eurozone. Unless he sticks to the letter of ECB’s Statutes and insists, that unemployment does not […]

Can Eurozone stand economic and financial fragmentation?

Eurozone unemployment rate peaked in February 2013 at 12% but this number says nothing about the real structural problems of the single money zone. The burning issue is the fast growing divergence of unemployment opportunities between the surplus countries in the North and the over indebted member states in the South, plus Ireland. According to […]

Young and unemployed the perfect victims of ‘vultures’

Slowly, but surely, unemployment in Eurozone keeps rising, posing growing pressures on economic policy planners all over the European Union. The problem has taken devastating dimensions in Eurozone countries applying the EU-ECB-IMF financial rehabilitation programmes (Greece, Portugal and Ireland), or self-imposed austerity measures as in Spain and Italy. More particularly in Greece, Spain, Portugal and […]

Is the EU denying its social character favouring a banking conglomerate?

It’s very annoying or probably preposterous to watch the European Commission playing with peoples’ misery. How else can one explain, that the executive arm of the EU after having observed in its yearly review on “Employment and Social Situation in 2012”, that living conditions in Europe have become unbearable for a fast increasing part of […]
Go back up

The European Sting – Critical News & Insights on European Politics, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Business & Technology – europeansting.com