Is austerity to blame?
MADRID | Cuts and tax rises cannot be considered by all means as negligible. Bur their real impact on disposable incomes does amount to a rather modest share, on average.
In Europe
How British tabloids fuel euroscepticism
PRAGUE | The EU has ruled on the curves of cucumbers, forbidden hairdressers from wearing heels, and even financed a porn film. These urban legends about decisions taken in Brussels are as endless as they are false. And they all get the kiss of life in the same place: the British tabloids.
Prisa, the Spanish economy and Brussels’ impossible deficit targets
MADRID | The European Central Bank must change course, too, so market credit costs drop to a range at which peripheral governments will not suffer as much as they do now. Brussels and Berlin may stubbornly be strangling the eurozone because they cannot see the wood from the trees.
The Basque secret against the crisis
By Inigo Arzac, Business Development Director for Latin America and Spain for Globalscape Software | The Basques offer us an ancient example that provides lessons for today that should be studied and remembered.
The Ying and Yang of Economic Policy
By David Denton | The Richter Scale | The UK QE has merely allowed the banks to off load UK government debt and replace this with other government debt, helping to keep bond prices high but having no impact on the real economy, other than to keep interest rates artificially low.
Portugal must learn to love austerity
LISBON | The Portuguese Constitutional Court’s rejection of some proposed austerity measures is the latest setback for Portugal’s government. However, this is an opportunity truly to reform the state and end the current impasse.
Margaret Thatcher and the EU: Neither a saint nor a sinner
By Dr Simon Usherwood, University of Surrey | It cannot be denied that her view of the integration process was largely negative, but her political instincts about what was possible – as against her core beliefs about what was right – seemed to have been most at play.
Long live the Republic of Europe!
By Ulrike Guérot | Robert Menasse | Whether political leaders or citizens, the pragmatics have failed to build a prosperous and wholly democratic EU. Now it’s the turn of the dreamers. Today, they are the true realists, write political scientist Ulrike Guérot and writer Robert Menasse.
Can the City afford going the Thatcher way?
LONDON | The Swiss approach sounds exactly like the type of relation the eurosceptic Iron Lady wanted for Britain regarding the EU. But the path is punctuated by so many partial surrenders that it almost looks not worth the effort, the City appears to think.
Britain has marginalised itself: why?
By Jon Worth, partner at techPolitics LLP | Data protection is a Single Market issue, and isn’t the UK still supposed to support the EU’s Single Market?