Free Republic

Greece’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has spelled out the negotiating strategy of the Syriza government with crystal clarity. “Exit from the euro does not even enter into our plans, quite simply because the euro is fragile. It is like a house of cards. If you pull away the Greek card, they all come down,” he said. “Do we really want Europe to break apart? Anybody who is tempted to think it possible to amputate Greece strategically from Europe should be careful. It is very dangerous. Who would be hit after us? Portugal? What would happen to Italy when it discovers...

The European Commission is hoping that a new global reporting standard will eradicate tax evasion and tax fraud in the wake of the latest revelations in Switzerland. “We are hoping that the coming into force of this new agreement at the very latest by 2018 will put an end to tax evasion and fraud by the use of secret bank accounts,” European Commission spokesperson Vanessa Mock told reporters in Brussels on Monday (9 February). The EU and Switzerland negotiated an agreement on the taxation of savings back in 2014. The plan is to unravel the Swiss tradition of banking secrecy...

The national airline of Cyprus has ceased operations after the European Commission ordered that it must repay €65 million in illegal state aid. The Commission ruled that the airline, which has been losing money for some time and is 94% government-owned, must pay back €65 million of the €103 million that it received in state aid in 2012 and 2013. The airline has been receiving money from the government since 2007. …

The eurozone experienced negative inflation for the second month in a row, according to a flash estimate published today (30 January) by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office. Inflation is expected to be at −0.6%, with consumer prices falling further than economists had forecast. The fall represents the biggest decline in prices in the history of the euro. […] The drop was driven by the fall in energy prices (−8.9%, compared with −6.3% in December). […] The deflationary spiral comes as Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), is trying to tackle deflation with a policy of...

Last year Austria's largest bank, Erste Bank, sent shudders of Credit Anstalt through the European Banking System. This year it is Austria's 3rd largest bank that is scaring investors senseless. On the heels of the Swiss National Bank's decision to un-peg from the Euro, Raiffeisen Bank's Swiss-Franc-Denominated mortgage worries have resurfaced (along with Russian/Ukraine writedowns) and nowhere is that more evident than the total collapse of the bank's bonds (from over 95c to 65c today). Even after the ECB Q€ (and some apparent intervention to weaken the Swissy) bonds kept free-falling. Perhaps, The Freedom Party's demands for a bailout will...

The long-anticipated collapse of the euro is here. When European Central Bank president Mario Draghi unveiled an open-ended quantitative easing program worth at least 60 billion euros a month on Thursday, stocks soared but the euro plummeted like a rock. It hit an 11 year low of $1.13, and many analysts believe that it is going much, much lower than this. The speed at which the euro has been falling in recent months has been absolutely stunning. Less than a year ago it was hovering near $1.40. But since that time the crippling economic problems in southern Europe have gone...

The European Central Bank will plough €1.1 trillion into the eurozone economy in a last-ditch attempt to breathe life into the European economy. At its monthly governing council on Thursday (January 22), the bank’s governing council agreed to start buying up to €60 billion of government bonds from March in an unprecedented quantitative easing program. The program is open-ended, and will run until September 2016 at the earliest. Speaking at a press conference following the governing council meeting, ECB president Mario Draghi said that the bond-buying program would remain in place “until we see a sustained adjustment in the path...

The German central bank, or Bundesbank, said Monday that it stepped up the repatriation of its gold reserves from overseas storage last year. “The Bundesbank successfully continued and further stepped up its transfers of gold,” the central bank said in a statement. “In 2014, 120 tonnes of gold were transferred to Frankfurt from storage locations abroad: 35 tonnes from Paris and 85 tonnes from New York.” Germany’s gold reserves are the second-biggest in the world after those of the United States and totaled 3,384.2 tonnes this month, according to the latest data compiled by the World Gold Council. …

It sounds at first like a crazy thought experiment: One morning, every resident of the eurozone comes home to find a check in their mailbox worth over €500 ($597) and possibly as much as €3,000. A gift, just like that, sent by the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt. The scenario is less absurd than it may sound. Indeed, many serious academics and financial experts are demanding exactly that. They want ECB chief Mario Draghi to fire up the printing presses and hand out money directly to the people. The logic behind the idea is that recipients of the money...

Inflation in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, slowed to just 0.2 percent in December, its lowest level in more than five years, and averaged 0.9 percent for the whole of 2014, according to new figures released on Monday. […] Using the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP)—the yardstick used by the European Central Bank—inflation in Germany was even lower at 0.1 percent in December, way under the ECB’s annual inflation target of just below 2.0 percent. The chronically low level of inflation across the single currency bloc has fueled concern the region could slip into deflation—a sustained and widespread drop in...

The European Union’s executive Commission said Monday that membership in the euro bloc is “irrevocable” but left it open to what extent Greece could renegotiate the terms after elections on Jan. 25. Greece’s left-wing Syriza party leads the polls ahead of the elections and is in favor of changing the conditions of the country’s international bailout deal. That would likely anger the rest of the eurozone, which has given Athens the bulk of the rescue loans. […] EU spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt said Monday that if the Greek elections call for a need to reconsider the conditions of Athens’ membership within...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is prepared to let Greece leave the eurozone if Greeks elect a government that jettisons the country’s current austerity course, according to German media reports. The report in the Der Spiegel daily, which cited sources close to the German government, comes as polls show a radical leftist party leading the field three weeks ahead of a snap election in Greece. The Syriza party of Alexis Tsipras has pledged to reverse reforms imposed by Greece’s international creditors and renegotiate its bailout deal. …

EU development ministers met today (12 December) in Brussels and adopted a “perspective” to boost the role of the private sector in the field of development cooperation. But leading NGOs warned that placing the private sector at the center of EU development policy “shows ministers have failed to acknowledge its limitations”. EU ministers adopted Council Conclusions, which contain strong language in favor of engaging more with the private sector. Ministers state that the private sector “is emerging as an increasingly active player in the development field”, and describe its role as “key” for implementing the future sustainable development goals. Ministers...

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has indicated he will try and get around member states’ veto powers over fiscal issues when he proposes new laws to clamp down on tax avoidance. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he said he may use a majority vote to get a forthcoming law on the automatic exchange of tax rulings (letters that give companies favorable tax conditions) passed. “I have not excluded that we change the rules using a qualified majority (of member states). I will leave the technical and legal aspects aside now, but it would affect aspects of administrative...

A top level economic report on Thursday urged European heavyweights France and Germany to implement urgent economic reforms, warning that Europe risked falling into a “stagnation trap”. “In France, we fear lack of boldness for decisive reforms. In Germany, we fear complacency,” said the report, drawn up by two leading economists for the French and German governments. In a hotly-awaited set of proposals to jumpstart the traditional Franco-German motor that drives the European economy, Henrik Enderlein and Jean Pisani-Ferry concluded: “France and Germany spend a lot of time on joint declarations and initiatives. We miss action.” […] “We think the...

China’s central bank unexpectedly slashed interest rates on Friday to re-energize the world’s No. 2 economy, joining a growing list of major economies that are trying to encourage growth in the face of a global slowdown. On top of the rate cut, Chinese authorities promised to inject credit into the financial system if needed. Meanwhile, the president of the European Central Bank said Friday he was ready to step up stimulus for the 18-country eurozone economy, whose performance continues to disappoint. And Japan’s government this week delayed a tax increase after the country slipped back into recession. News of China’s...

Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem has acknowledged that the Dutch government drew up plans for what to do if the single European currency had collapsed during the summer of 2012. In an interview with RTL television on Tuesday, Dijsselbloem said there was a plan to return to the Dutch guilder in a worst-case scenario. …

The European Central Bank on Thursday (6 November) formally made public a letter showing that the eurozone bank threatened to pull emergency bank funding if Ireland did not enter a bailout and undertake austerity measures in 2010. The letter, signed by the then-ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet, speaks of “great concern” about the solvency of Irish lenders—which had loaned heavily to the overheated construction sector—and the extent to which the whole eurosystem was exposed. It then says that the ECB would cut off emergency funding to Irish banks unless Ireland meets four conditions, including getting a bailout and undertaking “fiscal consolidation,...

ECB ready to pump €1 trillion into euro zone economy Central bank ramps up efforts to rescue single currency bloc from deflation risk The European Central Bank is ready to inject up to €1 trillion of new liquidity into the euro zone economy as it ramps up efforts to rescue the single currency bloc from the risk of Japanese-style deflation, Mario Draghi confirmed yesterday. The ECB president also said the central bank’s governing council was unanimous in its commitment to use further unconventional tools, including quantitative easing, should economic conditions deteriorate. He added that the central bank had stepped up...

The European Union is accused of “breathtaking hypocrisy” for continuing to demand that David Cameron pays a £1.7 billion bill despite its own auditors failing to give a clean bill of health to more than £100 billion of spending by Brussels. According to the annual report of the European Court of Auditors, seen by The Telegraph, £5.5 billion of the EU budget last year was misspent because of controls on spending that were deemed to be only “partially effective” by experts. The audit, published this morning, found that £109 billion out of a total of £117 billion spent by the...