EU Finance Ministers Debate New-Look Euro: Weigh Mixed-Bad Economic Outlook

Yahoo ^ | Friday May 13, 2005 | Robert Wielaard

[demlosers]

EU Finance Ministers Debate New-Look Euro Coins; Weigh Mixed-Bad Economic Outlook

LUXEMBOURG (AP) -- EU finance ministers, opening a two-day meeting Friday, sought to make sense of a mixed bag of economic data from the euro zone, with Germany posting its strongest growth in four years but Italy sliding into recession.

"This is a very serious problem," Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean Claude Juncker said upon arriving at the meeting he was leading.

EU Finance Commissioner Joaquin Solbes said "growth in Germany was good news [1% 1Q GDP], but Italy is bad news."

And Gerrit Zalm, the Dutch finance minister whose economy shrank by 0.1 percent in the first quarter, said he expected the economic data to improve for the rest of the year, despite high oil prices.

Germany's economy grew 1 percent in the first quarter from the previous quarter, breaking out of the 0.1 contraction of the last quarter of 2004 and expanding at twice the 0.5 percent rate that economists had forecast.

Yet the government cautioned the pace would slow for the rest of the year. And Italy's economy shrank by 0.5 percent in the first quarter.

The EU economy has been buffeted by high oil prices and an expensive euro in the past year.

The finance ministers were considering a new design for euro coins to meet concerns by the EU's newest members in eastern Europe that they are missing from the map shown on the coins.

The euro became the currency of 300 million Europeans in 12 nations -- Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and Finland -- in 2002.

Euro bills show a map of the 25-nation EU, but coins show only the 15 nations that formed the bloc until May 1, 2004, when Cyprus, Malta and eight East European nations joined.

The newcomers are unlikely to join the euro soon, but want a redesigned coin now. Last month, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which curbs their currency fluctuations and is a waiting room for entry into the euro.

The finance ministers were also considering joint EU strategy to finance development aid and debt relief for poor nations.

The aid -- notably for African nations whose populations are being decimated by poverty and disease -- has shifted to the top of world leaders' 2005 to-do list.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose country chairs the G-8 group of the world's most industrialized nations, wants rich nations to raise development aid through an "International Finance Facility" that would double financial assistance to Africa from US$50 billion (euro39 billion) a year.

The aim is to turn United Nations Millennium Development Goals -- which call for a halving of poverty by 2015, boosting the fight against AIDS and educating some 100 million children not now in school -- into a reality. Blair wants the plan adopted at a G-8 summit in Scotland in July.

French President Jacques Chirac has proposed a variety of international taxes -- on fuel for airplanes and oceangoing ships, on air tickets and on international financial transactions -- to raise tens of billions of dollars a year. Critics say its success hinges on the readiness of the entire international community to impose such taxes.

The finance ministers will also discuss the EU's funding in the 2007-2013 period -- a controversial issue that Luxembourg, which holds the EU presidency, wants settled at a June 16-17 EU summit in Brussels, Belgium.

Six net payers to the budget -- Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, Austria and the Netherlands -- want annual spending in 2007 to 2013 kept to 1 percent of the EU's gross national income, well below the 1.14 percent proposed by the EU executive Commission.

This week, a European Parliament panel sent to the full EU assembly a plan to limit spending to 1.07 percent of gross national income. The assembly's vote will be crucial because it must approve the future funding arrangement.

[BigFinn]

Thought this was of interest.

Revelation 17:3-5

This is one of the Euros coins.

[demlosers]

French President Jacques Chirac has proposed a variety of international taxes -- on fuel for airplanes and oceangoing ships, on air tickets and on international financial transactions -- to raise tens of billions of dollars a year. Critics say [tax and spend pundits] its success hinges on the readiness of the entire international community to impose such taxes.

Which will further kill your economies.

[Leo Carpathian]

The EU economy has been buffeted by high oil prices and an expensive euro in the past year.

Have a sale on Eeeeuros, give people more of them, problem solved.
...or tax the rich, take away their businesses (nationalize them) and run the economy as professors figured it out. 5-year plans, 2 months vacations, abort all the children, legalize homomarriages, welcome hard working muSlimes - way to ultimate Euuuparadise.

[expat_panama]

And along with this bad news about Europe's economy, we also have good news about ours.   Maybe we're doing something right after all....