SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | David Smith writes: “the inflation baloon’s still up in Britain”. The question now is… who ‘suffers’ more, the UK or 15 of the EU members that have inflation below 1%?
ISTANBUL | By Orhan Kemal Cengiz Radikal at via Presseurop | The recent report on progress in negotiations on Turkey’s accession to the EU finally deals sensitively with the issue and should trigger a calm debate among the Turkish public on its relationship with the Union, writes the star columnist of the influential “Radikal” daily newspaper.
PARIS | By DPA | Protesting students of Paris high schools hold a banner reading “Valls out”, for Interior Minister Manuel Valls during a demonstration in Paris, on Thursday in anger over expulsion of immigrant families. Photo:AP
LONDON | By Michael Burke at The Guardian via Presseurop | After three years of public sector spending cuts, Ireland looks set to exit the EU-ECB-IMF bailout programme on December 15, but at what cost? The country remains mired in depression and the economy is now hollowed out. (Illustration: “Informal Meeting of ECOFIN Ministers in Dublin” by Eoin Kelleher).
LONDON | By BARCLAYS | The Portuguese government presented yesterday the draft Budget Law for 2014. Fiscal measures to be deployed amount to EUR3.9bn (2.4% of GDP), about 0.4% of GDP above the EUR3.3bn announced in May when the cabinet approved additional austerity measures to meet revised fiscal targets for this year and next (EUR1.4bn in 2013 and EUR3.3bn in 2014).
PARIS | By Ludovic Lamant at Mediapart via Presseurop | Disagreements between the European Commission and the IMF on how to end the debt crisis in Europe continue to grow. Starting in Brussels, it is possible to envisage the careful dismantling of the group.
LONDON | By BARCLAYS | EU Finance Ministers adopted the regulations that pave the way for a single bank supervision in the euro area. As we had expected, however, they failed to make significant progress on a single resolution mechanism. As long as the banking union remains incomplete, the link between banks and sovereigns will not be fully broken and financial fragmentation will continue to prevail.
LONDON | By Sigrún Davíðsdóttir | Thinking back to five years ago, Iceland was forced to take the right decisions, not saving the big banks. But that was perhaps the easy decision: after all, the major part of creditors in these banks were foreigners. Later on, frantic attempts were made to save the very Icelandic banks, i.e. Saga Capital, VBS and some saving societies. Now, the idea is to tax estates where foreigners are ca. 90% of creditors whereas other failed financial companies are not taxed. “Fuck the foreigners” was a policy after the collapse – and it still seems to be the only policy five years after the collapse.
MADRID | By Tania Suárez | European Red Tape has been subject to a lot of criticism due to its harsh conditions. A British Government report released on Tuesday claims that “EU regulation is strangling economic growth.” PM David Cameron said it was time for Brussels to “commit to more concrete measures to get rid of the unnecessary regulation which holds our businesses, and Europe, back.”
BERLIN | By von Dietmar Neuerer at Handelsblatt via Presseurop | Following an intiative by the German government, European environment ministers opted on October 14 to postpone sine die, a vote on stricter rules for CO2 emissions from passenger cars, which mainly targeted large German saloon cars, explains Handelsblatt.