Valentina Pop | Brussels | May 24

euobserver - EU leaders have tasked council chief Herman Van Rompuy with drafting a plan on deepening the eurozone's economic union, potentially via an inter-governmental treaty.

After more than five hours of talks on the need to strengthen growth policies while sticking to the already strengthened deficit rules, EU leaders on Wednesday night (23 May) agreed to come back to these issues at a formal summit on 28 June.

"Our discussion also demonstrated that we need to take the economic and monetary union to a new stage. There was a general consensus that we need to strengthen the economic union to make it commensurate with the monetary union," Van Rompuy said during a press conference at the end of the meeting.

Nikolaj Nielsen | Brussels | May 23

euobserver - National Roma integration strategies submitted by member states to the European Commission fail to fully assess the needs of Europe's largest minority.

Speaking to reporters in Strasbourg on Wednesday (23 May), EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding said the desperate situation of Roma is "a wake-up call for leaders."

EU leaders in June 2011 had backed a European Commission plan to end the centuries-old exclusion of the continent's 10 to 12 million Roma minority. Most live in Bulgaria, followed by Slovakia, Romania and Hungary. Access to education, jobs, healthcare and housing are among the four policy priorities.

The interview was conducted by Martin Hesse and Thomas Schulz | May 24

Speigel Online - In a SPIEGEL interview, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman argues that this is not the time to worry about debt and inflation. To save the euro zone, he argues that the European Central Bank should loosen monetary policy and the German government should abandon austerity.

Kim Willsure | Athens | May 21

Guardian -

Greece's leftwing leader tells Paris audience that other EU countries will be next if they fail to oppose radical austerity drive

"Greece is a link in a chain. If it breaks it is not just the link that is broken but the whole chain. What people have to understand is that the Greek crisis concerns not just Greece but all European people so a common European solution has to be found," he told a press conference in Paris. (Image: Oneiros)

"The public debt crisis is hitting the south of Europe but it will soon hit central Europe. People have to realise that their own country could be threatened.

"We are here to explain to people in Europe that we have nothing against them. We are fighting the battle in Greece not just for the Greek people but for people in France, Germany and all European countries."

"I am not here to blackmail, I am here to mobilise," he said.

John O'Brennan cuts to the heart of the Eurozone crisis, outlining the political consequences of issuing aloof, one-size-fits-all austerity requirements from afar:

The European crisis is as much a crisis of politics as economics. The current paralysis of the Greek political system demonstrates the point very clearly. EU policy has actively contributed to this crisis by effectively sealing off discussion of the political problems thrown up by austerity.

Budgetary policy is at the core of traditional democratic politics in Europe but the management of the euro zone is increasingly being effected not through democratic institutions but via a centralised and depoliticised form of technocratic fiat. The “stability” narrative has triumphed over the need for legitimacy as the crisis in Europe has deepened.

Ivan Krastev, the eminent political scientist, argues that we have now arrived at a point where national governments have politics but are no longer in control of policy, including budgetary policy, which is moving via the fiscal treaty and other measures to the EU level.

On the other side of this divide the European Union has policies but no politics, since decisions are increasingly being made by technocratic managers rather than directly elected representatives of the European public. The euro zone crisis has thus amplified an existing problem – the absence of both a European citizenry and a transparent European level political process.

The whole thing. Read.

h/t RCW.

Not sure exactly when I said it, but I did predict that Greece would exit the Euro. I also said that it should leave the Euro sooner, rather than later and do so on its own terms. Now elite opinion has decided it's okay for Greece to exit. Mostly because the neoliberals have already raped the economy there. You heard it here first.

Howard Schneider & Anthony Faiola | May 14

WaPo - Political deadlock in Greece rattled world markets Monday, reviving fears that the fractious Mediterranean country could spurn an international bailout, abandon the common European currency and risk a fresh round of world economic turmoil.

European stock indexes fell, with Greece’s market now at a 20-year low, while the euro currency continued a recent decline against the dollar. U.S. stocks also fell.

Ian Traynor | May 13

Guardian Online - Europe is braced for a crucial 48 hours of high-stakes summitry likely to decide whether Germany and France can strike a grand bargain aimed at dispelling growing pessimism over the chances of the single currency surviving in its current form.

While eurozone finance ministers are to meet on Monday in Brussels, apparently at a loss over how to respond to political paralysis in Greece and a worsening crisis in Spain, all eyes are on François Hollande, the new French leader, who is to go to Berlin for his first face-to-face meeting with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, as soon as he is s

Douwe Miedema & Sarah White | London | May 11

Reuters - Banks are quietly readying themselves to start trading a new Greek currency. Some banks never erased the drachma from their systems after Greece adopted the euro more than a decade ago and would be ready at the flick of a switch if its debt problems forced it to bring back national banknotes and coins.

From the end of the Soviet Union - which spawned currencies such as the Estonian Kroon and the Kazakh Tenge - to the introduction of the euro, they have had plenty of practice in preparing their systems to cope with change.

Planning behind the scenes has been underway since Europe's debt crisis erupted in Greece in 2009, said U.S.-based Hartmut Grossman of ICS Risk Advisors who works with Wall Street banks.

"A lot of the firms, particularly in Europe and also here, have been looking at that for a long time," said Grossman, who added that the latest Greek political crisis had brought matters "to a little bit of a head".

"But there really has been contingency planning at all of the financial institutions for that to happen ... Greece leaving the euro zone is not a new idea," he said.

I alluded yesterday to the elections in Greece, in which the EU plan to bailout the nation in exchange for austerity measures to be put in place was symbolically rejected and a new government elected.

Well, it's more than symbolic now.

A Greek political party leader who has vowed to rip up the terms of Greece’s international bailout was handed the mandate to try and form a government after Antonis Samaras of New Democracy failed to forge an agreement.

Christopher S Rugaber | Washington | May 7

AP - The head of the International Monetary Fund is calling for indebted European countries to reduce spending only gradually to avoid further slowing their economies.

Christine Lagarde says in a speech in Zurich that countries should avoid cutting too steeply when their economies are contracting.

Governments "should not fight any fall in tax revenues ... caused solely because the economy weakens," she said.

Greece and other European countries have been trying to reduce their debt loads as a percentage of their economies. When they have cut deficits, their economies have shrunk. That makes it harder to reduce their deficits as a percentage of their economy, which some have agreed to as part of an international bailout.

Austerity should be "gradual and steady," Lagarde says.

Really, what changed her mind?

Al-Jazeera (May 4) - from Nikolas Kosmatopoulos's provocative Op-Ed just prior to this Sunday's elections, May 5:

Urban myth has it that a slogan by the Spanish protesters in Puerta del Sol fuelled the spark for the Greek Tahrir - Syntagma Square - in spring 2011: "Be silent or you will wake up Greece".
 

The "Greek crisis" has had at least two side effects so far: it demonstrated that official politics has no vision whatsoever, and that mainstream journalism has no shame...

While workers and pensioners throughout the country are deprived of basic means for survival, both parties ask them to be patient and make sure they do not die until May 6.

In the face of all this, it appears essential to ask whether, instead of drafting an electoral program, it would be more useful to craft everyday programs of population mobilisation against elite-driven violence and misery.

Read the entire piece (photo: BBC).

Apr 19

DW - The EU parliament has approved a contentious data sharing deal with the US. Washington hopes that data of passengers flying in from the EU will help in the war on terror. Critics warn it's a violation of privacy.

..The US hopes to use the data in its fight against terrorism and international crime.

The data, which is to be gathered by air carriers during flight reservations and check-in, is to include a passenger's name, address, phone number and credit card details, But it will also include information that some may consider to be more sensitive, such as meal choices based on religious grounds or requests a passenger makes for assistance due to a medical condition.

Under the PNR deal, the data will be stored for up to five years though after six months, the passenger's name is to be masked out. After five years, the information will be moved to a "dormant database" for up to 10 years, where access to it by US authorities will be far stricter.

assistance due to a medical condition?

Washington had threatened massive sanctions should the EU fail to agree to the deal. MEP Alexander Alvaro warned that Brussels in fact had been blackmailed into giving the green light. "The US have said that should we not agree, they would strip airline carriers of the permission to land on US airports. And this threat has been enough to make the EU agree despite the flaws in the deal."

They so should have called their bluff on this

Toulouse, France | March 31

RFI - Over 20,000 people demonstrated in the south-western French city of Toulouse in defence of the local language, Occitan, on Saturday. Supporters of Socialist François Hollande pledged that he would act to endorse Europe-wide actions in defence of regional languages if he becomes president in May.

Green presidential candidate Eva Joly and MEP José Bové joined the demonstrators, as did the Socialists Senate president Jean-Pierre Bel and Toulouse mayor Pierre Cohen.

“In many places regional languages are threatened,” Joly said, calling for them to be taught in junior schools.

Florian Gathmann & Stefan Simons | Mar 31

Speigel Online - Angela Merkel initially refused to receive French presidential candidate François Hollande when he offered a meeting recently. But as his victory against Nicolas Sarkozy seems more likely, the German Chancellery has made its first contacts with the Socialist Party politician's camp. After all, Berlin and Paris must stick together.

Jon Henley | Volos, Greece | March 16

The Guardian - A determination to 'move beyond anger to creativity' is driving a strong barter economy in some places

In recent weeks, Theodoros Mavridis has bought fresh eggs, tsipourou (the local brandy: beware), fruit, olives, olive oil, jam, and soap. He has also had some legal advice, and enjoyed the services of an accountant to help fill in his tax return.

None of it has cost him a euro, because he had previously done a spot of electrical work – repairing a TV, sorting out a dodgy light – for some of the 800-odd members of a fast-growing exchange network in the port town of Volos, midway between Athens and Thessaloniki.

Vladimir isachenkov | Moscow | Mar 13

AP - Russia and the United States have failed to narrow their differences over a planned U.S. missile shield and stand practically no chance of reaching a compromise at the NATO summit in Chicago in May, a top Russian official said Tuesday.

Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Washington is going ahead with its plans for a missile shield in Europe without considering Russian concerns.

The U.S. says the NATO missile shield is aimed at deflecting potential missile threats from Iran, but Moscow fears that it will eventually grow powerful enough to undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent.

"I think it would be very difficult to achieve any success at the summit," Antonov said. "As of today, there is no document for the leaders to approve."

NATO has said it wants to cooperate with Russia on the missile shield. But it has rejected Russia's proposal to run the shield jointly.

Without a NATO-Russia cooperation deal, President Dmitry Medvedev has sought guarantees from the U.S. that any future shield is not aimed at Russia. He has threatened to aim missiles at the U.S. shield if no agreement is reached.

Angela Diffley | March 12

RFI - French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement on Sunday that he will suspend France’s participation in the Schengen open borders agreement unless it is reformed by May 2013 has caused surprise in France but the idea is already actually under discussion in Brussels.

France, Italy and Germany all asked the European Commission to examine ways of reforming the Schengen accords at the onset of the Arab Spring, when large numbers of north Africans, particularly Tunisians, arrived in Italy and many subsequently moved on to France.

Brussels civil servants are likely to propose that Schengen countries would be able to re impose border controls in the event of a massive influx of illegal immigrants or if the country in question was unable to cope.

Berlin | Feb 26

AFP - Germany's interior minister on Saturday came out strongly in favour of debt-stricken Greece leaving the eurozone, arguing that this would improve its chances of becoming competitive again.

"I do not mean that Greece should be kicked out of" the 17-nation eurozone, said Hans-Peter Friedrich in an interview with news magazine Der Spiegel, "but to create incentives for an exit that they cannot turn down."

"Outside European monetary union Greece's chances of regenerating itself and become competitive are definitely bigger than if it remained inside the eurozone," said Friedrich.

Friedrich was speaking ahead of a vote by German lawmakers on Monday on a further 130 billion euros ($175 billion) in loans for Greece.

Under a plan hammered out by eurozone finance ministers, Greece would receive up to 130 billion euros in direct loans by 2014 in return for tough new austerity measures and tighter EU-IMF oversight of its economy.

Dave Lee | London | February 11

BBC - Thousands of people have taken part in co-ordinated protests across Europe in opposition to a controversial anti-piracy agreement.

Significant marches were held in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta).

Around 200 protesters gathered in central London outside the offices of several major rights holders.

Bamako | Feb 10

CBS News -

The United States says it has postponed a major military exercise in Mali because the Malian army is busy responding to attacks from Tuareg rebels.

A Tuareg separatist group began attacking towns in Mali on Jan. 17, and has targeted at least seven localities across the country's vast north.

The exercise, called Flintlock 2012, was due to bring African, European and U.S. troops together to train later this month.

One of the main aims of the Flintlock exercises is to build counterterrorism capacity in African armies.

** US, Malian military medics train to save lives
** Malian president grilled by angry army wives on TV
** Mali contends with new Tuareg rebellion as food crisis looms
** Insight: Arms and men out of Libya fortify Mali rebellion
** Mali army tries to fend off Tuareg rebels as crisis grows (BBC map)

Greece and her debt is back in the news, ahead of a possible default on bonds valued at 14.5 billion euros next month.

Greece is asking for 130 billion euros to give it some stability going forward. The bone of contention is apparently pension reform. 300 million euros stand between Greece and 130 billion euros.

Go fig.

This is not the first time Greece has been in imminent danger of collapse. Just two years ago, you may recall, in the face of violent opposition from her people, Greece agreed to an austerity program to avoid default (and forcible ejection from the EU).

. . . working out?

Jan 26

Speigel Online - The European Union embargo on Iranian oil will only come into effect in six months, but the leadership in Tehran wants to act first: Exports to Europe are set to be halted immediately. It is a move which could mean added difficulties for struggling economies in southern Europe.

It's a move which has tit-for-tat written all over it, but one which could nonetheless have a serious impact: The Iranian government wants to present a bill to parliament this weekend calling for an immediate halt to oil deliveries to Europe. The move, with most reports citing the Iranian news agency Mehr, has come about in response to the EU agreement to impose sanctions against Iran, which were announced earlier this week.

The sanctions banned any new contracts for buying oil from Iran, but allowed existing deals to continue until July in order to give countries time to find other sources. But that process is now at risk after the latest move from Tehran, a step the Iranian government had already threatened.

"If this bill is passed, the government will be forced to stop selling oil to Europe before the actual implementation of their sanctions," said Emad Hosseini, spokesman for the Iranian parliament's energy commission, reportedly said. The bill is set to become law on Sunday.

The EU sanctions allow for oil deliveries from Iran until July 1. Any pre-empting of this timescale by Tehran could prove problematic for countries like Italy, Greece and Spain, who would need to urgently find new suppliers.

China, meanwhile, a major importer of Iranian oil, has also criticized the EU sanctions. The Xinhua news agency quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday as saying: "To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches."

tit for tat? lmao

Cornelius Rahn | Dec 28

Bloomberg - The European Union plans to extend the mandate of its naval anti-piracy operations in Somalia to include attacks on installations and boats used by pirates, Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung reported, without saying where it got the information.

The EU’s political and security policy committee has assigned the commander of the “Atalanta” anti-piracy mission the task of revising rules to enable onshore operations, the newspaper said.

Why this so slow walk to war?