From Gideon Rachman's blog April 17, 2011

What do the following stories have in common?

1. France has started to block trains from Italy to intercept illegal migrants from North Africa.

2. A Eurosceptic party has made big gains in the Finnish general election.

Continue reading: “The European Union in deep trouble”

Posted in EU |
From FT.com April 6, 2011

Another eurozone country has been humbled by its banks. Earlier this week, Portugal’s banks were threatening a bond-buyers’ go-slow unless the caretaker government sought financial help from other European Union countries. After being beaten up in Wednesday’s debt auction, Lisbon has waved the white flag. The country’s caretaker leaders have now admitted that Portugal will need outside help.

There is no denying that Portugal faces deep problems. The yield on the country’s five-year bonds had touched 10 per cent. On Wednesday, it was forced to pay 5.9 per cent simply to secure one-year money.

Continue reading: “Banks 1, Portugal 0″

Tags:
Posted in Economic governance, Euro |

FT video: Eurozone crisis nears crux

March 24, 2011 6:07 pm by Financial Times

Portugal’s prime minister has resigned on the eve of an EU summit that is supposed to move towards a “grand bargain” to bolster the eurozone and strengthen its crisis prevention ability. The currency bloc is in a bind. Lex’s Edward Hadas and Vincent Boland discuss just how bad it is and what might come next.

Continue reading: “FT video: Eurozone crisis nears crux”

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Posted in Economic governance |

Europe’s hidden billions – FT Twitter chat

December 2, 2010 12:03 pm by Financial Times
European structural funds investigation

European structural funds investigation

We have a live Twitter #hashtag chat with Cynthia O’Murchu, FT reporter, on our EU structural funds special investigation. The chat takes place today from 1pm-2pm London time (2pm-3pm Brussels time). Join us over on Twitter and search under #ftchat.

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Posted in EU, EU Commission |
From Westminster Blog: The latest on UK politics December 1, 2010

By Jo Johnson, British MP and former editor of the FT’s Lex column

As it’s prediction season, here goes… My crystal ball, for what it is worth, foretells political and economic union between France and Germany, perhaps within the next 12-24 months. Europe needs a gamechanger, one that creates an insurmountable firebreak against the speculators. Crises have historically been the motor of European integration and a full union, much like the panicky one Britain offered France in June 1940, might look tempting. It would provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial and economic policies, finally fulfilling the founding fathers’ dream of “ever closer union”.

Continue reading: “Europe needs a gamechanger”

Posted in Economic governance, Economic growth, Euro |

FT video: Ireland faces pressure to take EU aid

November 16, 2010 5:17 pm by Financial Times

Brussels bureau chief Peter Spiegel says Ireland and Portugal face a grilling on their budgets at the meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels, and that pressure is building on these countries to take rescue aid, as fear of debt contagion across the eurozone increases.

Tags:
Posted in Economic governance, EU, Euro |

FT World Weekly podcast

November 11, 2010 5:48 pm by Financial Times
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Posted in EU, Foreign policy |

Twitter chat with Tony Barber on the euro

October 13, 2010 11:26 am by Financial Times

The FT’s “Saving the Euro” investigation will culminate in a live “hashtag” chat on Twitter between 1pm and 2pm (GMT) this afternoon with the author, Tony Barber, former Brussels bureau chief.

The three-part series discusses how global leaders in April moved to save the single currency from collapse with tense high-level meetings in Washington DC, charted the origins of the recent debacle right back to the formation of the single currency, and analysed the future of the euro as a currency in a zone that suffers from clashing visions on centralisation and fiscal discipline.

Ask Tony about the series, his thoughts on the future of the euro, or bring your own thoughts to the discussion, by logging on to Twitter and searching for “#FTchat”. Or click on http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23ftchat

Posted in EU, Euro |
From FT.com October 12, 2010

“Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.”

Penned more than three decades ago, Jean Monnet’s insight on the European Union, which the French statesman was so instrumental in founding, has certainly stood the test of time.

Today, with the crisis of April and May still reverberating around the eurozone, the future of Europe’s economic and monetary union will be shaped by the extent to which policymakers embrace, or shrink from, closer integration in response. Few know this better than Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director and former French finance minister, who laid out the alternatives in a speech last month in Brussels.

Posted in Economic governance, EU, Euro |
From FT.com October 11, 2010

In Europe’s capitals they still talk of the evening when George Papandreou, Greek prime minister, confessed to his fellow leaders that his nation was corrupt. “He was very impressive and very honest. He basically said: ‘My country is a corrupt country from A to Z,’” recalls one European Union policymaker present at the dinner in Brussels on December 10 2009 where Mr Papandreou bared Athens’ economic soul.

Posted in Economic governance, EU, Euro |
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Contact the Brussels blog team: Peter Spiegel, Joshua Chaffin, Alex Barker and Stanley Pignal.

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Peter Spiegel is the FT's Brussels bureau chief. He returned to the FT in August 2010 after spending five years covering foreign policy and national security issues from Washington for the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, focusing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He first joined the FT in 1999 covering business regulation and corporate crime in its Washington bureau, before spending four years covering military affairs and the defence industry in London and Washington.

Joshua Chaffin is one of the FT's EU correspondents, covering areas including policies on trade, the environment and energy. He has worked in the FT's Brussels bureau since late 2008 and before that was an FT correspondent in New York and Washington DC.

Alex Barker is EU correspondent, covering the single market, financial regulation and competition. He was formerly an FT political correspondent in the UK and joined the FT in 2005.

Stanley Pignal is Brussels correspondent for the Financial Times, covering EU justice, home affairs, social developments, telecoms and the Benelux region. He joined the bureau in January 2009, having previously worked for the FT as a corporate reporter in London.

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