Free Republic

Not much has been heard from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair lately. But in recent days, he has waded into the debate surrounding the next EU Commission president. In an interview, he also predicts that the British will vote to stay in the European Union. […] “I believe that Britain ultimately will vote to stay in Europe. In the end, the British understand the folly of leaving Europe. I don’t accept that the British are as anti-European as everyone says. It is a matter of fact that no-one has ever won an election on a platform of hostility to...

Before the European Parliament election last month, voters were told the poll would also determine the next Commission president. In a silent putsch against the electorate, Angela Merkel is now impeding the process. She fears a loss of power and Britain’s EU exit. […] … Merkel had hardly begun her speech last Friday before she got right to the point. With her hands set on the podium in front of her in the Regensburg University auditorium, she said: “I am engaging in all discussions in the spirit that Jean-Claude Juncker should become president of the European Commission.” German news agency...

France will miss its European Commission debt targets this year and in 2015 because of its excessive taxation of companies and high spending on healthcare and pensions, the EU’s executive said today (2 June). Under EU law, governments must not run budget deficits higher than 3% of economic output or gross domestic product (GDP). If they do, they fall under the excessive deficit procedure, which could lead to fines. […] European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro Olli Rehn blamed France’s expected failure on weaker growth forecasts for 2015 and the fact that some stability measures were...

The European Union must pull closer together and establish a strong military presence, so it can act as a “moral anchor” to the United States, the economist Kenneth Rogoff has warned. Speaking ahead of next week’s European elections, Mr. Rogoff, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said the EU should strive to become more “like a single country”. […] He added: “It would be a very good investment of German taxpayers’ money to write down debt in the periphery countries. There are a lot of ways to do it. You can be very opaque about it. The...

One of the standard arguments about Britain’s membership of the European Union is that it’s vital that we stay in because so much of our trade is with other European Union countries. Implicit in this is the claim that this is a result of our being in the EU. The dropping of trade restrictions resulting from the Single Market rules for example. The problem with this argument is that it depends upon an empirical claim: that Britain’s trade with the European Union countries has increased since the foundation of that Single Market. And it turns out that that doesn’t seem...

Ten years since Malta accessed the European Union, the country’s business community has been provided with the necessary platform to expand their produce and improve their opportunities, but while the majority of companies have flourished amid increasing competition, some failed to meet EU standards. In the wake of Malta’s milestone anniversary, Sunday newspaper Illum interviewed four business directors – all of whom voiced their delight at how the local business community improved since May 2004. Famalco’s Business Director Hermann Mallia, Saint James Hospital Director Maria Bugeja, Impressions Managing Director Ron Mifsud and the CEO of Malta Business Bureau Joe Tanti,...

One of European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s most important duties is watching his mouth. One ill-considered utterance is enough to sow panic on the financial markets. But during a press conference earlier this month, Draghi allowed himself a telling slip. Speaking to gathered journalists at the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Draghi twice almost uttered a word he has been at pains to avoid. “Defla…”, Draghi began, before stopping himself and continuing with the term “low inflation.”Yet despite Draghi’s efforts, the specter of deflation was omnipresent in Washington during the meetings. And it...

European lawmakers on Thursday eased the way for cartel victims to claim compensation from companies under new rules that also shield price-fixing whistleblowers from being the main target of million-euro lawsuits. The green light from the European Parliament came nine years after the European Commission broached the idea, seeing it as an additional tool, on top of fines, to deter companies from breaking antitrust laws. According to the Commission, only one in four cartels and antitrust infringements faced damages claims in the last seven years. Its 2010 estimate put the cost of unrecovered damages of infringements at over €20 billion...

MEPs on Tuesday (15 April) overwhelmingly approved the creation of a new authority and fund for failing banks—a missing element to the so-called banking union aimed at minimizing the public cost of future financial crises. The final vote on the creation of a €55 billion fund financed by the banks themselves passed with 570 MEPs in favor, 88 against and 13 abstentions, while new rules in cases where public money needs to be used for winding down banks also gathered a similar majority: 584 votes in favor, 80 against and 10 abstentions. One key concession won by MEPs from governments...

German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has said discussions on revising the treaty to secure the eurozone’s architecture will begin after the May EU elections. “After the EU elections, the debate about treaty change will be back on the table. The federal government will plead for institutional improvements, at least in the eurozone. The monetary union needs a joint finance- and economic policy, with corresponding institutions,” Schäuble said in an interview with Handelsblatt published on Thursday (27 March). He repeated his call for a eurozone parliament and a permanent chief of the Eurogroup, the informal gathering of eurozone finance ministers. …

The Italian mob’s annual budget is bigger than that of the EU, with most of the money spent outside Italy, the country’s foreign ministry says. “Organised crime has an annual budget of more than €200 billion,” said Giovanni Brauzzi, security policy director at the Italian ministry of foreign affairs, on Tuesday (25 March). “They invest only 10 percent of this budget in Italy; the rest they invest in countries in Europe and elsewhere. They have good friends everywhere,” he added. The EU’s annual budget for 2014 in comparison is around €140 billion. …

European Union nations on Thursday agreed on a sweeping policy to fight tax evasion after tiny Luxembourg dropped its reservations to new rules which render its secretive banking culture more transparent. Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel confirmed at Thursday’s summit of EU leaders “the willingness of the government to take that road,” a key step to scrap the banking secrecy for foreigners. […] The legislation proposes an EU-wide automatic exchange of data on bank deposits to allow governments to identify and pursue tax evaders with foreign accounts on home soil. Van Rompuy said it would “close down loopholes, promote automatic...

Germany’s highest court ruled on Tuesday that the European bailout fund, the ESM, was in line with the country’s constitution, throwing out numerous objections by euroskeptics. Confirming a preliminary ruling dating from September 2012, the Federal Constitutional Court said it saw no obstacles to Germany taking part in the €500-billion European Stability Mechanism, set up to bail out troubled countries and their banks. Nevertheless, in the ruling, presiding judge Andreas Voßkuhle insisted that it must be “the Bundestag [lower house of parliament] which retains sole responsibility over Germany’s public income and spending, even with regard to its international and European...

Ireland’s economy suffered a shock decline in the final months of 2013, posting negative growth for the year and casting a pall over the country’s full return to the financial markets. Data from the country’s Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Thursday (13 March) indicated that its gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter, turning a year that had been expected to yield modest growth into a 0.3 percent recession for the year as a whole. […] Analysts attributed the decline to the so-called pharmaceutical patent cliff, with a sharp drop-off in revenue from pharmaceutical sales...

Less than a hundred days before the European Parliament elections, French citizens are less and less attracted by the EU project, according to the latest opinion polls, with a quarter now in favor of quitting the eurozone and reintroducing the franc, EurActiv France reports. 42% of surveyed French citizens think that the country’s EU membership is a good thing, a six-point decrease compared to April 2012, according to the survey by OpinionWay for TV news channel LCI and Le Figaro newspaper. […] Another fundamental EU policy, the free movement of persons, is also increasingly disliked by the French. A survey...

London’s financial services center would lose access to the wider European Union should Britain quit the bloc, the EU’s justice chief said on Monday, warning that such a move would reduce its status to that of an offshore center. Viviane Reding’s blunt comments come amid a heated debate in Britain over its future in the 28-country European Union and will reinforce fears in the City of London that a departure from the EU will hurt its position as a global financial capital. “The City would most definitely lose its unhindered access to the (EU’s) single market in the case of...

Germany's Constitutional Court ruling last Friday marks a significant escalation in efforts to rein in the European Central Bank. The ruling's message? Either the European Court of Justice has to stop bond purchases or German justices will. It is also a clear indication that Germany's highest court is extremely skeptical of the ECB. Draghi's 2012 announcement that the ECB would embark on unlimited sovereign bond purchases from ailing euro-zone member states, the court found, is incompatible with European law. The ruling notes that OMT "exceeds the mandate" of the ECB and "encroaches on the responsibility of the member states for...

Corruption across the EU bloc is costing taxpayers billions, as member states fail to tackle the problem head on, according to the European Commission. The Brussels executive on Monday (3 February) published its first ever bi-annual anti-corruption report on each of the 28 EU countries, citing public procurement and obscure political party financing as among the most pervasive problems. […] Public procurement contracts, equivalent to one-fifth of the total EU economy, are said to be the worst affected with up to a quarter of their value lost to corrupt practices. …

Two of the largest banks in northern Europe have announced they will boycott Israeli banks because they operate in “occupied territories”, the Walla! Hebrew-language news website reported on Saturday. The two banks in question are the Swedish Nordea Bank, which is the largest bank in Scandinavia, and the Norwegian Danske Bank, which is the largest bank in Denmark. […] The Walla! report comes on the same day that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry threatened Israel that a failure in the peace talks would lead to global boycotts and delegitimization of the Jewish state. …

Germany’s constitutional court is expected to rule this spring on the legality of the European Central Bank’s bond purchases, a scheme that has eased the eurozone crisis by calming markets. Udo Di Fabio, who served as constitutional judge between 1999-2011, told an audience at the Berlin-based Stiftung fur Familienunterhmen on Wednesday (29 January) that the court is “deliberating at the moment if the ECB can buy bonds at all.” According to EU laws, the ECB is prohibited from direct government funding, meaning direct bond purchases when a national government tries to sell debt on the markets. But in the past...