FRANKFURT | By Holger Schmale via Presseurop | Out on the campaign trail, the Chancellor has been stressing the track record of her government. It’s a strategy that she hopes will keep her above the political debate and steer her away from controversy. Excerpts.
MILAN| By Fabrizio Goria via Presseurop | Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel seems assured of victory, the German elections will be revelatory. The results should bring answers to a number of open questions concerning the future of the economy and of European institutions.
HAMBURG | Via Presseurop |The Merkel government demands southern countries make far-reaching reforms, but denies responsibility for the consequences of the crisis. It is a harmful attitude for Europe as Germany prepares for its legislative elections, warns philosopher Jürgen Habermas. As he puts it, “Germany is not dancing on the volcano; it is asleep on it.”
VALENCIA | By XTB analysts Miguel A. Rodriguez | Among all the obstacles that the European economies find in their way to recovery there is one particularly intractable: the Eurozone’s central bank itself. The ECB has proved to be too slow, and extremely fearful to display its powers.
BARCELONA | By Enric Fernandez | Both institutions and culture have a lot of inertia. There is no doubt, however, that this is much more the case with culture. Implementing a cultural change is surely impossible in the short term.
BARCELONA | By Oriol Aspachs and Joan Daniel Pina, at CaixaBank research department | To date it is the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has set the pace of Europe’s construction. Without purporting to be a great leader, Germany is fulfilling this role.
MADRID | By Francisco López, via consensodelmercado.com | Telefonica had an important reason for its well-timed U-turn: the Spanish corporation wanted to conquer a mature market with scope for expansion.
MADRID | The agreement for the acquisition of KPN’s German subsidiary, E-Plus, includes a total payment of 5 billion euros in cash and a stake in the resulting company of 17.6%.
By Beate Reszat | German financial institutions and their regulators have developed a high level of bad-bank sophistication. But there’s still room for unpleasant surprises.
LONDON/MADRID | Financial analysts in Madrid noted today the positive surprise of a recovery tendency among Eurozone peripheral economies, particularly those of Italy and Spain.