Everyone’s been terribly worried about France. First of all, last autumn’s carburning outbreak saw a lot of people who really ought to know better gathering to hail the end of days and the Islamofascist conquest of Eurabia, or something. Now, the students are out on the streets to protest the government’s new labour laws, and [...]

The Berlin Institute for Population and Development published a study this week detailing falling population in certain parts of Germany, particularly economically depressed parts of eastern Germany, the Ruhr valle and the Saarland. In eastern Germany one of the developments that has been discussed on afoe it becoming clear: Deferred or deterred childbirth in the [...]

I don’t suppose it’s much of a secret that Turkey is one of the main ‘growth tigers’ in the ambit of the EU. The big issue is, I suppose, just how sustainable Turkey’s growth is. Well the World Bank is on the story, and now has a Country Economic Memorandum entitled Promoting Sustained Growth and [...]

Following up on the points made in this post and this one, former EU competition commissioner Mario Monti has a comment article in today’s FT (behind the firewall unfortunately, but his point is clear from the extract):
The single market, a key pillar of the European Union since its foundation, is in danger. Several member states [...]

I am sure some people must sometimes feel I am exaggerating when I try to explain the rather dire straits which I feel the Italian economy has fallen into. If you are one of those people I would ask you to take a good look at the latest data release:
Official statistics published on Wednesday showed [...]

Do you want to save the Euro? Well one idea for how to do it has been proposed by University of Missouri-St Louis history professor John Gillingham: reissuing the 12 national currencies that were replaced with just one, while at the same time retaining the euro as a parallel currency that finds its market value [...]

It all started with the Catalan Statute, then there was this piece, then Wolfgang Munchau joined in. Today comes the news that:
“The European Union’s top competition regulator will this week issue formal antitrust charges against Telefónica, alleging that the Spanish telecommunications group has abused its dominant position in the fast-growing market for broadband services.”
And there [...]

Methinks the first serious test of the eurosystem is now looming on the horizon. The title of this post refers to an earlier point made by Nouriel Roubini. The FT this morning is reporting that:
“The German cabinet will on Wednesday endorse a 2006 budget that breaks the European Union’s fiscal rules for the fifth year [...]

Yes gentle readers, les jeux sont faits. Italy has entered the election season, and this time the game is for real. The outcome of this election, and the decisions which are subsequently taken will be important not just for Italy, but for the whole EU, and the stakes are not small ones: the whole [...]

Guy of these pages recently spoke to a “source” who has an interesting counter-take on the Italian economy and the Italian government’s debt problem to that frequently discussed here. Apparently, the feller says, there’s no chance of “an Argentinian-style blowout” because of the low levels of private debt.
The source is essentially arguing that Ricardian equivalence [...]