Free Republic

Europe “must take its fate into its own hands” faced with a western alliance divided by Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday. “The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days,” Merkel told a crowd at an election rally in Munich, southern Germany. “We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands,” she added. While Germany and Europe would strive to remain on good terms with America and Britain, “we have to fight for our own destiny,” Merkel...

Core EU powers France and Germany vowed Monday to accelerate eurozone integration, with a new bilateral panel to work out ways to kickstart the reform process. “We’ve been talking about progress in eurozone integration for years, but things are not moving fast enough,” said France’s new Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire in Berlin after talks with his German counterpart Wolfgang Schäuble. “We have now decided to get things going more quickly and further in a very concrete manner,” he said. Schäuble agreed that “we are convinced that Germany and France must take a leading role” in strengthening the European Union...

Despite the turbulence of the Weimar years, Germany has followed a steady capitalist economic model since the end of the Second World War. But that doesn’t mean people like the idea, a new study shows. Contrary to the US, where belief in capitalism is as entrenched as hot dogs and baseball, Germany has always had a more complicated relationship to the philosophy of competitive markets. This is, after all, the country that gave us the founding communist thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. And a study published by Statista and YouGov on Tuesday shows that only 16 percent of Germans...

With Germany raking in more taxes due to strong economic performance, the leader of its liberal party has suggested state officials are enriching themselves at the cost of the taxpayer. “The greed of the state has taken on kleptocratic characteristics,” Christian Lindner, head of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) told Handelsblatt on Wednesday. A kleptocracy is a form of government in which officials corruptly use public funds for personal gain. “The yearly tax intake of the state is set to be €100 billion higher in 2020 than this year, if we don’t act. For the FDP, it is clear that...

... In Berlin, Macron’s proposals were met with a combination of skepticism and fear, especially among Merkel’s conservative base. Though no country has benefited more than Germany from the currency union, many Germans remain convinced that much of the rest of Europe — particularly the Mediterranean states — is trying to pick its pockets. The Greek bailouts, which cost Germany little in the grander scheme of things, only hardened that impression. In fact, for much of the German establishment, Macron’s ideas are nothing less than an open invitation to raid Berlin’s treasury.

DAVID Cameron has blasted the bully-boys of Europe with a sensational Winston Churchill-style "Up Yours". The PM vetoed a new treaty and kept Britain out of a dodgy deal to save the euro. But his bulldog spirit left the nation facing an unknown future and risking an EU backlash. The PM last night defended his historic veto of an EU deal intended to save the euro — despite infuriating pro-Europeans. Jubilant Tory MPs hailed his decision as a massive step towards Britain's EXIT from the European Union. His stand in Brussels was the first time a British Prime Minister has...

The 17 eurozone states and six other EU countries agreed early Friday to create a new treaty that will allow them to introduce stricter fiscal rules in the hope of containing a worsening debt crisis, but Britain's prime minister immediately threatened to block the new accord. The failure to get agreement among all 27 members of the European Union at a summit meeting in Brussels reflected in large part a deep split between France and Germany on the one hand and Britain on the other. France and Germany are the two largest economies in the eurozone; Britain does not use...

Here is today's ACTION ITEM: ISSUE: According to an article by Wes Vernon of NewsMax.com, "World Government is pounding on our door and demanding that the U.S. surrender its sovereignty and let the United Nations take over our lives. Worldwide taxes would be imposed by people in far-off lands elected by no one." This is not conspiracy theory. This is fact. It is happening right now. Global taxation is the centerpiece of a four-day United Nations conference this week in Monterrey, Mexico. The gathering is to consider recommendations of a special High Level Council. American Policy Center (www.americanpolicy.org) has issued...

A closed-door meeting of left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was held on January 16, 2003, in Washington, D.C. to consider how to apply international financial pressure through a global tax on the U.S. Bruno Jetin, a representative of ATTAC France, spoke to the gathering and acknowledged in private conversation that his group works hand-in-glove with the French Communist Party and the "Socialist parties on the Left." A representative of the embassy of France in the U.S. was listed as a participant. ATTAC stands for the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens. The International ATTAC Movement...

Gordon Brown said today that there's growing support for a tax on financial transactions to ensure banks shoulder the cost of any future crisis. The British prime minister, who on Wednesday introduced a one-time 50pc tax on bankers' bonuses, said that "global taxes will not be introduced unless all global financial centres are able to come behind them, but I believe there's global support for that." Governments around the world are shouldering ever greater debt as the cost of rescuing the financial system and the downturn combine to drive up their borrowing. Mr Brown first mooted the idea of a...

Some 183 organisations from 42 countries have come together to issue a plea to world leaders to impose a tax on financial transactions to help meet the costs of the economic crisis. The group is the largest coalition yet to demand that a tax is levied on international financial transactions. Members include Britain's Robin Hood Tax campaign, supported by the TUC, Friends of the Earth and ActionAid. Their plea comes ahead of the summit of leaders of G20 economic powers in the South Korean capital Seoul on November 11-12. The issue of measures needed to stabilise the world economy and...

BRUSSELS—A junior minister in the French government has predicted there will be an EU financial transactions tax by the end of 2012 in remarks likely to annoy fellow EU countries on many levels. EU affairs minister Jean Leonetti spoke out on the subject on the French LCI news channel on Wednesday (4 December), saying: "It's on the agenda of the next EU summit, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have decided it and it will be put in place before the end of 2012." … The European Commission last September put out detailed proposals on a tax designed to capture €57...

The idea is age-old, but its time may soon be coming. A tax on financial transactions could help to stem short-term speculation on the markets. French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to push the tax through in Europe—if necessary even without Britian, which has doggedly resisted such measures. Sarkozy picked up a new ally for the plan this week as well: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also willing to venture going it alone to implement the tax exclusively within the 17 members of the euro zone. It would not directly apply to London, Europe's most important financial center. Ironically, it was...

BRUSSELS—A six-point plan drafted by France and Germany has suggested corporate tax "coordination," an EU financial transactions tax and the redeployment of EU funds in troubled countries as ways to spur growth and jobs. Following Standard & Poor's recent downgrade of nine euro-countries, including France, in which the ratings agency warned that austerity and budget cuts are not the way out of recession, Paris and Berlin have teamed up once more and drafted a six-page paper called "Ways out of the crisis—strengthen growth now!" The paper—seen by EUobserver—is supposed to be discussed at the EU summits on 30 January and...

The EU commission is revising its impact assessment of a proposed financial transactions tax (FTT), which included a worst-case scenario leading to job losses. The responsible commissioner now says original projections were "misused" and the overall impact will be positive. "The commission services are carrying out a fine-tuned economic analysis," a spokeswoman for commissioner Algirdas Semeta, in charge of taxation, told this website on Friday (3 February). The revised impact assessment is expected to focus on the positive impact of a 0.1 percent tax on primary markets and 0.01 percent on the much larger and more speculative market for derivatives....

Member states remain thoroughly divided on the merits of a financial transactions tax (FTT) following a discussion on Tuesday (13 March). A small group forging ahead with the plan is not an automatic process either. With 12 finance ministers taking the floor for a political discussion on the controversial idea, the debate cemented the well-known public positions of several countries—from the no-go of the UK and Sweden to Germany's outright support and several shades in between. "We need a decision in the foreseeable future," said German minister Wolfgang Schäuble, adding that he prefers an agreement among all 27 member states....

EU finance ministers meeting in Brussels yesterday (13 March) asked the Danish presidency to consider compromise alternatives to the financial transaction tax (FTT) after a number of countries voiced concerns about the proposal. Nine countries—France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Finland and Greece—signed a letter to Denmark on 7 February calling for progress on the introduction of a FTT before the end of its EU Council presidency. The UK and Sweden oppose a FTT, also referred to as a ‘Tobin tax’, but some other member states positions’ remained unclear until yesterday’s meeting. The finance ministers of the Czech Republic,...

The European Commission has defended its proposal to introduce a financial transaction tax (FTT), saying that it could substantially reduce member states' contributions to the EU budget. José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, said today (22 March) that the use of an FTT to finance part of the EU budget would give the EU the funds it needed to pay for priority programs on jobs and growth.He told a conference of MEPs and national parliamentarians from across the EU in Brussels that if the EU's budget was funded by an FTT, it would cut national contributions by half. …...

The citizens' initiative—a participative democracy tool coming into effect at the end of this week—could be used to pressure EU politicians into accepting a financial transactions tax (FTT), the European Parliament President has said. "I don't know if the next citizens' initiative would make the crisis disappear; I hope so. But a citizen's initiative to introduce the financial transactions tax could even increase the pressure on those who are still reluctant," Martin Schulz said at a press conference on Wednesday (28 March). His words come just as Germany—until now among the most ardent supporters of such a tax—appeared to concede...

While the leaders of member countries were meeting in Brussels at an extraordinary summit on growth, the European Parliament approved the tax on financial transactions, known as Tobin tax, by 487 votes (152 against, with 46 abstentions). “The joint resolution of Parliament—whose opinion on the subject is only advisory—approves a proposal from the European Commission presented in September 2011,” reports La Tribune, mentioning that it will not come into force before the end of 2014. …Nine countries, including Germany and France, are defending bringing in the tax, but others, like Britain, are opposed because they fear it will provoke financial...