Am I being a little harsh with Jean Claude-Trichet? Perhaps, it is a hard (if not impossible) job he has on his hands. And in this post I did try hard to think about credible arguments in favour of the recent rate rise.
New arrival on the European economics blogging scene Claus Vistesen argues that [...]

Are the good times and the good life still going to continue to roll in the Italy of the twenty first century? This is the core question the Economist’s Europe editor John Peet asks in the latest Economist Survey: Italy, Addio, Dolce Vita. As Peet says:
Italy is approaching a crunch. Rather like Venice in [...]

Well the eurozone government deficit problem has hit the agenda with a thud again in the last few days. Yesterday the FT ran a story about how the ECB has decided that it will not accept government paper (bonds) in the future from any country which has not maintained at least an A- rating [...]

If you had long suspected that under the Bush administration the CIA was running secret prisons around the world, now you know. It wasn’t just the one in Thailand, which was closed in 2003, and the annex at the tip of Cuba, closed last year.
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most [...]

Things are looking up a bit for Serbia’s economy.
The 1990s were a lost decade for Serbia. GDP declined sharply in the first half of the decade. A modest recovery in 1995-8 was wiped out by the NATO bombing. Per capita income in 2000 was just about where it had been in 1989… [...]

So, President Basescu is unhappy.
This is not unusual. President Basescu is often unhappy. You’d think that, having won the election last December against Prime Minister Nastase, he’d be at least content. But Basescu is a scrapper, and he’s always looking for a fight, and in recent weeks he’s found one. It’s [...]

Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel has just said that Macedonia has “real chances” to become the next candidate for EU membership.
This would be no big deal — the Slovenes have long had a soft spot for the Macedonians — except that Rupel is wearing two hats right now; he’s also Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE. [...]

Just a quick update on Croatia’s EU candidacy.
Eight countries have signed a letter to British PM Tony Blair supporting Croatia’s membership. The letter was presented to Blair — who currently holds the rotating EU Presidency, and will until January 1 — in the recent confence at Newport, in Wales.
The signing countries were Austria, Greece, [...]

This is the opinion of Hamburg State Interior Minister Udo Nagel, as interview for an article which appears in the English version of Der Spiegel today. The context for the quote is the implementation of a decision taken at a conference of German state interior ministers last November which determined that Afghanistan was now [...]

The IMF has just published Chapter One of the autumn 2005 edition of the World Economic Outlook. The key section on the eurozone economies can be found between pages 25 and 29 (including the interesting Box 1.3). The Table where you can find the information on German debt projections is on page 15, and there [...]