Free Republic

The spread of illiberal ideology is threatening the euro, but it is an illusion that leaving it would offer an easier path, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Saturday. Warning that a half-finished monetary union could be at risk in the next crisis, Draghi made the case for sweeping changes in how the currency bloc operates and spreads around financial risk. “The fascination with illiberal prescriptions and regimes is spreading; we are seeing little steps back in history,” Draghi said in Pisa, Italy. “Only by continuing to make progress, freeing up individual energies but also fostering social equity,...

Germany, a country of 82 million, welcomed from 800,000 to over one million migrants and unvetted “refugees” in 2015. Mrs Merkel, who last month announced she was controversially stepping down as leader of her party but not as Chancellor of Germany despite previously saying the two roles go hand in glove, said ceding power to a superstate is a better form of patriotism. She told the event, titled ‘Parliamentarianism Between Globalisation and National Sovereignty’: “In this day nation states must today – should today, I say – be ready to give up sovereignty. “But of course in an orderly procedure.”...

“I’m not so much afraid of German power; it’s German inactivity I’m starting to fear,” said Radoslaw Sikorski, then Poland’s foreign minister, while speaking in Berlin in 2011. You would never have heard a sentence like that before 1990, says German historian Andreas Rödder — certainly not coming from Poland. The national-conservative PiS party is now in power in Poland, and the words coming out of Warsaw are very different these days. But the ambivalent relationship between Germany and its eastern European neighbor, expressed by Sikorski back then, still exists. “There’s a new expectation that Germany will take the lead...

German conservative Manfred Weber, who is running to take over the European Union’s top job next year, said on Monday that turning the European bailout fund (ESM) into a European Monetary Fund (EMF) should be a priority. […] “The political picture behind that is that in the last eurozone crisis, we asked for the IMF’s (International Monetary Fund) help. Barack Obama was the president then, so partnership was possible. In future crises, which we can’t exclude happening, I as a European don’t want to be dependent on the White House.” …

Faced with the upsurge in xenophobia in Europe, MEPs want to take firm action against neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups, which currently benefit from a certain level of discretion in several countries. EurActiv France reports.Xenophobia is fueled by neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups in Europe, which should be banned as a matter of urgency, the European Parliament demanded on Thursday (25 October). MEPs have adopted a resolution condemning the surge in the number of incidents related to hatred and intolerance in Europe. The resolution also calls for action to be taken against small far-right groups which fuel the rise in xenophobia. According...

Eurozone failures mean Iceland should stay out of the EU, its prime minister told EU Observer. She would also quit NATO if she had her say. “I don’t think we should enter the EU right now. I don’t think there is any reason to apply,” Katrin Jakobsdottir said in an interview with this website, as Iceland’s new government prepared to celebrate its first anniversary in power. “Personally, I’m critical towards the economic policies of the EU — the creation of the eurozone without any real centralized policies on taxes or fiscal policies,” she said. “The European Central Bank has become...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced she will give up leadership of her center-right Christian Democrat Union (CDU) party after 18 years in the post, German media has reported. Merkel announced during a meeting with officials that she will not seek to run for re-election at the party's convention in December. But she made clear that she wanted to remain as chancellor, a position she has held since 2005, CNN affiliate RTL reported, citing party sources. Angela Merkel's Bavarian allies lose majority in crushing vote The announcement is a sign of Merkel's weakened power within her own party, and waning...

Large-scale repatriations by US multinationals following tax reforms under President Donald Trump meant total foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Republic fell sharply in the first six months of 2018. New figures show that FDI in Ireland went into reverse in the first half of the year as many US companies moved to repatriate accumulated foreign earnings from their affiliates abroad. According to statistics from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), total FDI inflows to the State declined by $81 billion (€71 billion). With $2 billion of that accounted for by new investments, the figure for capital...

Iran awaiting European guarantees on the sale of Iranian oil and banking relations, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA). […] “We are still waiting for Europe to take action on the sale of Iranian oil and the preservation of banking channels,” the Iranian foreign minister said. Zarif also defended the European Union’s decision on Thursday to provide €18 million ($21 million) in aid to Iran to offset the impact of U.S. sanctions, part of efforts to salvage the 2015 deal to limit Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. […] The top U.S. envoy...

The U.S. ambassador to Germany urged Berlin on Tuesday to stop Iran withdrawing large sums of cash from bank accounts in Germany to offset the effect of new U.S. sanctions imposed after Washington withdrew from a 2015 nuclear deal. Richard Grenell, a longtime critic of the accord, told the mass-circulation daily Bild that the U.S. government was extremely concerned about Tehran’s plans to transfer hundreds of millions of euros in cash to Iran. “We encourage the highest levels of the German government to intervene and stop the plan,” Grenell said. […] Bild first reported on Monday that German authorities were...

US president Donald Trump’s threat to hit car imports with punitive tariffs risks sparking global retaliation against as much as $300 billion of US products, Brussels has warned. The warning is the first time that the European Commission, in a written submission to the US Department of Commerce seen by the Financial Times, has set out a detailed response to Mr. Trump’s threat to slam punitive tariffs on imported vehicles, with EU capitals increasingly convinced that the unpredictable US president will act soon. Mr. Trump on Sunday said that the EU was “as bad” as China when it came to...

A leading German think tank says Donald Trump is right that tariffs between the United States and Europe are asymmetrical, but urges negotiations to lower import taxes across the board. US President Donald Trump may actually have a point when it comes to unfair taxes on US goods coming into Europe. That is the finding of a new study by a leading German think tank. Where they differ is how to deal with it: The group urges new talks to lower tariffs across the board, instead of engaging in a tit-for-tat escalation in new taxes. “The EU is by no...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday struck back at US President Donald Trump’s repeated complaints over the US trade deficit. Merkel pointed out the United States actually runs a significant account surplus with Europe if one factors services into the equation. She went on to say that the current accounting systems for global trade needed to be updated to also take services into account. “Trade surpluses are calculated in a relatively old-fashioned way nowadays,” she told an audience of businessmen at the Christian Democratic Union’s Economic Council Conference in Berlin. “If services are included in the trade balance, then the...

France called on Friday for more ambition from Germany in reforming the eurozone, saying Europe faced a “now or never” moment with rising external threats from the United States and China. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, speaking in German to a business conference in Berlin, offered the first official response from Paris to European reform proposals sketched out by Chancellor Angela Merkel in a weekend newspaper interview. He welcomed her support for the idea of a eurozone investment budget, one of French President Emmanuel Macron’s key demands, but said France and Germany had “a way to go” to reach...

Europe’s top monetary official criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to put tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as a “dangerous” unilateral move. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said that the “immediate spillover of the trade measures … is not going to be big.” But he said such disputes should be worked out among trade partners, not decided by measures initiated from one side. “Whatever convictions one has about trade … we are convinced that disputes should be discussed and resolved in a multilateral framework, that unilateral decisions are dangerous.” “There is a certain worry or...

Berlin must work with Paris to improve and deepen the European Union, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel urged as his Social Democrats weigh renewing a coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel. France and Germany, once bitter enemies, “have a joint responsibility to develop all of Europe further,” he told AFP, highlighting “reform of the economic and monetary union” as a top priority. Historically, the two countries have been the powerhouse of the economic integration project that became the European Union; but French President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to shore up the 19-nation euro single currency area and deepen European integration are on...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is considering joining French President Emmanuel Macron at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week in what could turn into an epic clash of competing world views with U.S. President Donald Trump. Merkel, who has been struggling to put together a government since a German election in September, had been expected to skip the annual gathering of leaders, CEOs, bankers and celebrities in the Swiss Alps for a third straight year. But after clinching a preliminary coalition agreement with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) on Friday, German officials said Merkel could travel...

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Wednesday urged Germany to plow more investments into major European projects and allow wages to rise, as part of Berlin’s contribution to boosting growth in Europe. “France has taken on its European responsibilities, in reducing its public spending and reforming its economy. We expect Germany to join the movement, by adopting more offensive wage policies and investing more,” he told Die Zeit weekly at a time when Chancellor Angela Merkel is battling to form a new coalition government. Le Maire’s call comes at a sensitive time for Merkel, as public spending is a...

French President Emmanuel Macron has offered a very special gift to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, during his trip to China — a horse from France’s famed Garde Républicaine. The nine-year-old gelding bred in Normandy, named Vesuve de Brekka, is trained and ready for use. […] The tweet says the horse is “a symbol of our friendship.” Macron hopes for big things in return. On Tuesday, the second day of his visit, Macron said the two nations should “settle on an economic and geopolitical plan for the affairs of our world.” …

Last week, the finance ministers of Europe's five biggest economies — Germany, France, the UK, Spain and Italy — wrote an anxious letter to their American colleague, US Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin, and copied it to all senior Republican politicians in the Congress and Senate. The letter's thrust: The draft US tax bill, if passed as written a week ago, would represent a break with global fair-taxation rules as applied to corporations, and represent a thinly disguised form of trade war. "The United States is Europe's single most important trade and investment partner," the finance ministers wrote. "It is important...