Angela Merkel

EU summit: What to watch for in the austerity debate

March 14, 2013 10:22 am by Peter Spiegel

Germany's Angela Merkel at Thursday's cabinet meeting, where new budget targets were decided.

After last month’s tension-filled EU summit – an all-night affair to agree the EU’s €960bn seven-year budget – the two-day gathering beginning today is expected to pale by comparison to a considerable degree. “A bit boring is not a bad thing on this occasion,” said one senior diplomat involved in pre-summit negotiations.

Although Hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán is expected to address the international press today following his government’s controversial passage of constitutional amendments which critics claim may violate the rule of law, the only real issue that could potentially generate much heat inside the gathering is the ongoing austerity versus growth debate that has been swirling since last month’s Italian elections.

There has already been some shadow boxing on the issue between France’s François Hollande and Germany’s Angela Merkel ahead of the summit – with Hollande making the case for France to get a one-year pass on its EU deficit targets, while Merkel conspicuously announcing her own intention to get to a balanced budget a year earlier than required. Read more

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Posted in Fiscal policy |

Will Lagarde’s euro plan become Europe’s?

June 22, 2012 10:51 am by Peter Spiegel

IMF chief Lagarde, left, with the EU Commission's Olli Rehn at last night's meeting in Luxembourg

For those trying to figure out what the highly-anticipated EU treatise to be unveiled at next week’s summit on the future of the eurozone will say, it’s worth having a closer read at the International Monetary Fund report presented last night to eurozone finance ministers at their gathering in Luxembourg.

The concluding statement presented by Christine Lagarde, the IMF chief, contains almost all the elements being weighed by EU leaders who are writing the report, and Lagarde was quite open about the fact she actively consulted two of the institutions involved in its drafting: the European Central Bank and the European Commission. Indeed, Olli Rehn, the commission’s economic honcho, explicitly endorsed the report at a press conference last night.

The most likely areas of consensus are in Lagarde’s three long-term recommendations for a eurozone banking and fiscal union, though several of them remain controversial, particularly in Berlin, and it remains unclear whether the four EU institutions drawing up their plan will be as willing to confront the German government as head-on as the IMF has. Read more

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Posted in Euro |

A year after Fukushima, a Lithuanian holdout

March 6, 2012 10:52 am by Joshua Chaffin

Next week marks the one-year anniversary of the tidal wave that unleashed a disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear facility and forced a profound shift in Europe’s nuclear debate.

Within weeks of the disaster, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, decided to switch course and phase out the country’s nuclear plants – a move that was subsequently copied by Switzerland and Belgium.

Talk of a nuclear revival that once filled the air in Italy and other member states – encouraged by the industry and supportive governments – has been dashed. Even in France, Europe’s nuclear champion, public opinion has turned increasingly negative.

But in spite of Fukushima, one European Union member state has lost none of its nuclear ardour: Lithuania. Read more

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Posted in Energy, Environment, EU, Foreign policy |

Merkel, Barnier and the doomed DB-NYSE merger

February 3, 2012 4:42 pm by Alex Barker

Angela Merkel and José Manuel Barroso talk on the sidelines of Monday's EU summit.

The Deutsche Börse and NYSE Euronext exchange mega-merger is dead, the objections of competition officials prevailed, but it followed a tremendous political tussle in Brussels, full of intrigue and skulduggery. Here are some of the snippets from the final days:

The Merkel change of heart: A great mystery in this merger case was the deafening silence from Berlin. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was always said to be on the verge of intervening on behalf of the German exchange. But opportunities to say something came and went. Her reluctance was put down to coalition divisions and a complicated political picture in Hessen, the home state of DB.

But in the final days, Merkel did have her say, at least in private. Read more

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Posted in EU Commission |
From The World December 8, 2011

eurocoasterWelcome back to our live coverage of the eurozone crisis. By Tom Burgis and Esther Bintliff on the  newsdesk in London, with contributions from FT correspondents around the world.

All times are GMT. This post should update automatically ever few minutes, but it may take longer on mobile devices.

Europe’s leaders gather in Brussels today for another crunch summit. This time, we’re told, it’s different. Expectations are running high for a new grand bargain to restore sanity to the eurozone’s finances and chart a course out of the debt crisis. We’ll bring you all the build-up, plus:

  • The European Cental Bank’s interest rates decision and press conference from Mario Draghi, the ECB president under pressure to deploy more of the central bank’s resources to shore up the euro
  • The meeting of centre-right European leaders in Marseille, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy of France, the two key players in the euro drama
  • The unveiling by the European banking authority of the individual capital needs of Europe’s banks

 Read more

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Posted in EU, EU Commission, Euro |
From The World December 5, 2011

Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel prior to their meeting at the Elysee Palace on Monday. Photo: Remy de la Mauvinere/AP 

Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel before their meeting at the Elysee palace on Monday. Photo: Remy de la Mauvinere/AP

Welcome back to our live coverage of the eurozone crisis. By Esther Bintliff on the world news desk in London, with contributions from FT correspondents around the world.

This post should update automatically every few minutes, but it may take longer on mobile devices. All times are GMT.

16.15: One of the areas where Angela Merkel appears to have backed down is around the role of the European Court of Justice, reports Joshua Chaffin, our correspondent in Brussels:

Ms Merkel had wanted the ECJ – the European Union’s highest court – to become the ultimate enforcer of new budget rules for the eurozone countries.

 Read more

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Posted in EU, Euro, Fiscal policy |

EU summit: Merkozy gang up on Silvio

October 23, 2011 11:57 am by Joshua Chaffin

France and Germany may be divided over the key issues on the agenda of today’s European Union summit. But President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel have found common ground in the need to hammer Italy over its heavy debt load.

The leaders of the EU’s biggest and most powerful member states called in Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, this morning for a pre-summit tongue-lashing. The message they delivered, according to one diplomat familiar with the discussion, was that Italy must deliver “specific and convincing reform measures soon.” They communicated a similar message to Berlusconi at a gathering on Saturday evening held by the centre-right European People’s Party.

Sarkozy also expressed his displeasure with Italy’s refusal to make way for a Frenchman on the European central bank’s executive board, according to the diplomat. France is due to lose its seat when Jean-Claude Trichet steps down as ECB president at the end of the month to be replaced by Mario Draghi, the outgoing president of the Bank of Italy. Berlusconi infuriated the French this week when he declined to free up a seat on the powerful decision-making committee by refusing to name current board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi as Draghi’s replacement. Read more

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Posted in Economic governance, Fiscal policy |

The return of Gerhard Schröder

September 6, 2011 4:59 pm by Peter Spiegel

Gerhard Schröder’s unexpected re-emergence as a voice for European fiscal integration may or may not change minds in increasingly eurosceptic Germany. But in our half-hour interview, the former chancellor made a pretty heart-felt case that the country’s leadership should be pressing ahead with pro-EU economic policies, even if they are unpopular.

Given the limited space we have in the daily newspaper, we thought Brussels Blog readers might be interested in a fuller account of his views on the issue. As we noted, Schröder was careful not to directly attack his successor, Angela Merkel, for her recent handling of the crisis – something done last month by Helmut Kohl, who unlike Schröder is a member of Merkel’s own political party.

But he did take a more subtle dig. He made the case that politicians need to push through unpopular policies if they believe in them – and then noted he paid the price for reforms in German labour and social benefit policies, collectively known as Agenda 2010, which are now credited with leading to an economic turnaround. Read more

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Posted in EU, Fiscal policy |

Is the Sarko-Merkel plan anti-Commission?

August 18, 2011 10:41 am by Peter Spiegel

Merkel and Sarkozy at their post-summit news conference Tuesday evening in Paris

The letter Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel sent yesterday to the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, contains a lot of ideas that have been discussed previously in Brussels and not gone very far, raising questions as to how much of the new Franco-German agenda can actually be implemented.

But reading between the lines of the letter, one theme that has gone almost unnoticed is the seeming sidelining of the institution that is supposed to be at the centre of European integration: the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch headed by José Manuel Barroso.

Suggesting that Van Rompuy head regular summits of eurozone heads of state as “the cornerstone of the enhanced economic governance of the euro area” is only part of the seemingly anti-Commission tenor of the plan. Read more

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Posted in Economic governance, EU, EU Commission, Euro |

Bad week for Europe’s centre-right…and centre-left?

March 29, 2011 12:31 pm by Peter Spiegel

In today’s paper, my Berlin-based colleagues Quentin Peel and Gerrit Wiesman note that it’s been a bad week for the eurozone’s most high-profile centre-right leaders: Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy both saw their parties trounced in regional elections, and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi was back in court.

But what remains unclear is whether the traditional centre-left can capitalise on the faltering conservatives. If recent evidence is any indication, it’s not a clear-cut trade-off at all. Indeed, in eurozone countries where governments have either recently fallen or are likely to do so soon – Ireland, Portugal and Finland – centre-right parties are ascendant. Read more

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Posted in EU |
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