April 26, 2024

You are here: Home / Archives for europeans

E.U. and U.S. Open First Round of Trade Talks

July 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON — American and European Union trade officials sought on Friday to put the best face on their just-opened negotiations over a potentially sweeping transAtlantic trade agreement. But there were signals that an accord might not be reached as quickly as politicians had hoped, and that some of the trickier issues will remain problematic.

“We are very interested in moving expeditiously in this negotiation, so we’re going to move quickly, but we’re also going to move carefully,” Dan Mullaney, the chief U.S. negotiator, said at a joint U.S.-European Union news conference. “It’s important to us that we arrive at a deal quickly, but it’s even more important that we get the agreement right.”

Significantly, neither he nor his European counterpart, Ignacio Garcia-Bercero, specifically confirmed the deadline of year-end 2014 for the negotiations that politicians on both sides had previously described.

While more than a dozen working groups on each side will continue to communicate by e-mail, video conference and other means as they lay out the complex framework of the proposed pact — the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership — the next big round of meetings will not be held until sometime in October, and will take place in Brussels.

Furthermore, Mr. Garcia-Bercero said there would be no “harmonizing downwards” of European standards, which suggested that some of the thorniest issues — like Europeans’ aversion to American genetically modified food or hormone-fed beef — might resist early solution.

Mr. Mullaney, asked about discussions of “cultural” topics, said the talks had been inclusive and “covered the waterfront.”

It was unclear whether he meant to suggest that no subject had been ruled off-limits — including exports of films and other audiovisual products — which the French trade minister, Nicole Bricq, has insisted cannot be part of the talks.

Still, both sides attempted to give a positive cast to the negotiations. A deal would potentially bring huge benefits to economies that already account for about half of global economic output and one-third of world trade. Both sides have predicted a significant stimulus to their job markets and economies — by up to 1 point of gross domestic product — and a regularization of standards that may force competitors like China to follow their lead.

“The first round has confirmed that both sides are committed to a high level of ambition,” Mr. Garcia-Bercero said, adding that “both of us see this agreement as having potential to deliver something that will be transformative.”

The fact that this first round took place on schedule suggests the importance that American and European political leaders place on it. Many in Europe, and notably many Germans, favored a postponement after recent revelations of secret American surveillance programs aimed at Europeans. But Germany, with its huge export industry, is expected to be a prime beneficiary of any trade deal.

The surveillance question arose repeatedly at the news conference. Asked whether the two sides had exchanged assurances that they would not spy on each other, drawing a laugh but no explicit denial, Mr. Mullaney noted that the two sides were in separate talks on surveillance and data security, adding, “It really hasn’t come up in these discussions.”

Both of the chief negotiators said they were working to keep the talks transparent, as many nongovernmental groups have insisted.

Ira S. Shapiro, a lawyer who was a trade negotiator in the Clinton administration, said it would be difficult to judge the talks’ prospects until late in the process, noting that “the toughest issues tend to be resolved only at the very end.”

And each of those issues has its own committed advocates and stakeholders.

“Every trade barrier that countries maintain has behind it some very significant political, economic or cultural reasons,” Mr. Shapiro said, “so dismantling them doesn’t come easily.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/business/global/eu-and-us-open-first-round-of-trade-talks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Inside Europe: As Crisis Drags on, a Loss of Hope

January 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

“This ends through war,” said Mr. Bass, the founder of Hayman Capital Management in Dallas. “I don’t know who’s going to fight who, but I’m fairly certain that in the next few years you will see wars erupt, and not just small ones,” he told a recent conference.

But while many investors have, like Mr. Bass, bet heavily on chaotic default in countries like Greece, three years of dogged diplomacy in Europe have so far disproved the doomsaying.

And while some popular protests have erupted into violence, notably in Greece, the mystery for many analysts is why Europeans have not fought harder against increasing job losses, social spending cuts and tax increases. Unemployment in Greece and Spain has reached 25 percent.

Mr. Bass bases his apocalyptic view on his calculation that credit market debt has reached 340 percent of global output. The world, he says, has never lived in peacetime with such a burden.

He says some societies will not withstand the social strain when trillions of dollars of debt have to be restructured, inflicting losses on millions of investors.

War in the euro zone — which Mr. Bass does not expect to survive in its present form, if at all — looks far-fetched, to put it mildly.

The European political elite demonstrated in 2012 its determination to preserve the euro. Prophecies that doom has merely been delayed could well prove yet again to be wide of the mark.

But it is reasonable to ask how much those caught in the cross-fire between creditors and debtors will stand for, as the euro’s battle for survival drags on.

Take Portugal, now into a third year of recession, where the president has asked the Constitutional Court to rule on the legality of unprecedented tax increases.

José Adelino a political scientist at Lisbon Technical University, said Portugal “got drunk on Europe” during the boom years. “Now for the first time we have the feeling that we have nowhere to go,” he said. “For 2013 the Portuguese lack a sense of mission. There is a recognition of collective powerlessness.”

In other words, with scant prospect of a swift return to growth, the risk in 2013 is less of outright conflagration in the single-currency area than of a fraying of social and political ties and an insidious erosion of hope.

Jean-Dominique Giuliani, who heads the Robert Schuman Foundation, a pro-European research institute in Paris, says difficult reforms must continue because the crisis shows no sign of going away.

“Changes will now be constant and will demand a great deal of populations, overturn societies, surprise political leaders and unsettle experts,” he said in a commentary on his group’s Web site.

Charles Robertson, chief economist at Renaissance Capital in London, is among those wondering how much more voters are prepared to sacrifice. He expects Greece to quit the euro this year and says Spain might follow by the end of 2014.

Spain has already endured one year of unemployment higher than 25 percent but will probably have to manage three more to meet the financial targets set by its international creditors.

“No economy (as far as we are aware) has ever sustained this unemployment rate and maintained a peg to a fixed exchange rate,” Mr. Robertson wrote in a report.

Most damaging of all, he said, was the absence of hope: “For households, wages are still likely to fall to boost competitiveness. Households are deleveraging and defaulting, not borrowing more to fuel consumption.”

A vibrant black market and a still-generous welfare state mean unemployment is probably sustainable at higher levels, and for longer, than ever before, Mr. Robertson acknowledged.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/business/global/as-crisis-drags-on-a-loss-of-hope.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Official Warns Britain Against Leaving European Union

December 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, the body that groups the 27 E.U. member states, said that the European Union had benefited tremendously from British membership and that Britain’s departure would be like seeing “a friend walk off into the desert.”

But Mr. Van Rompuy also suggested that the strategy developed by Prime Minister David Cameron to restore dwindling public support for keeping Britain inside the bloc was likely to fail.

In an interview published Friday in The Guardian, a British daily, Mr. Van Rompuy said that renegotiation could undermine the one part of the European Union that Mr. Cameron says he values most: the single market under which around 500 million Europeans can do business without barriers.

“If every member state were able to cherry-pick those parts of existing policies that they most like, and opt out of those that they least like, the Union in general, and the single market in particular, would soon unravel,” he said.

The intervention from Mr. Van Rompuy highlights the fact that other nations are likely to resent a process under which Britain seeks to retain the parts of E.U. membership that it likes, while rejecting the rest. In order to renegotiate British membership terms, all other member states would have to agree on the changes.

And, if that sort of discussion begins, other countries may make demands too, including some that could weaken the single market which seeks to establish a level playing field on trading issues.

“All member states can, and do, have particular requests and needs that are always taken into consideration as part of our deliberations,” Mr. Van Rompuy said in the interview. “I do not expect any member state to seek to undermine the fundamentals of our cooperative system in Europe.”

Mr. Cameron argues that, to persuade euro-skeptical British voters to stay in the European Union, the country should loosen its political and social policy ties to the Union and refocus them around Europe’s single economic market. He wants to renegotiate the terms of British membership and seek approval for the result of that negotiation from the public, possibly in a referendum.

Britain formally joined in the process of European integration in 1973, when it acceded to the European Economic Community. Two years later, after a change of government and negotiations on the terms of membership, it held a referendum in which around two-thirds of those who voted elected to stay.

One theory in Britain is that the euro debt crisis presents a new opportunity to re-fashion the process of European integration because the 17 countries that use the single currency may need to rewrite the Union’s governing treaties in order to become more closely integrated. That could give Britain the chance to negotiate its looser relationship simultaneously as part of a grand bargain.

Mr. Van Rompuy suggested, however, that such a rewriting of the treaties might not happen because it might not be necessary.

“The treaties allow a considerable degree of flexibility and much can be done without needing to amend them,” he told The Guardian. “It is perfectly possible to write all kinds of provisions into the treaties, but amending them is a lengthy and cumbersome procedure needing the unanimous agreement of every single member government and ratification.”

Mr. Van Rompuy’s comments come at a sensitive moment, ahead of a widely anticipated speech by Mr. Cameron, expected in mid-January, during which he might make the promise of a referendum explicit. Many of his own lawmakers now want Mr. Cameron to promise a straight “in or out” vote, though he has so far resisted.

The political mood within Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party has hardened against engagement with Europe, partly because of the rise in popular support for the U.K. Independence Party, which has campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union and for tighter immigration controls.

UKIP is expected to do well in the next elections to the European Parliament in 2014, which will be held under a proportional electoral system that favors smaller parties. The party is unlikely to win many, or even any, seats in British parliamentary elections, expected the following year, because these will be fought under a first-past-the post system that tends to favor mainstream parties.

The smaller party could, though, take enough votes from the Conservative Party to deprive it of the seats it will need to form the next government.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/world/europe/eu-may-unravel-if-uk-quits-official-says.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

State of the Art: Online Music, Unshackled

July 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Well, the recording executives may, in fact, be big greedy dunderheads. But over the years, little by little, they’ve tried to make online music sales fairer and more convenient.

Today, Web music services are spread across the entire range of the price/convenience/permanence matrix. Some offer music that’s free and legal, but you can’t choose exactly which songs play (Pandora.com). Some let you download song files to own forever for 79 cents to $1.30 each (iTunes and Amazon.com). Some let you rent music — that is, listen to all you want for a flat monthly fee, but you’re left with nothing when you stop paying (rdio.com, Napster.com, Rhapsody.com).

And some services are illegal.

This month, though, the world took a great step forward toward the holy grail: free, legal, song-specific and convenient. After years of pulling out its corporate hair in tufts while negotiating with the music companies, Spotify has finally brought its service to the United States.

If that means nothing to you, then you’re clearly out of touch with the Europeans. For three years, they’ve been going crazy over Spotify. It’s a beautiful, polished, iTunes-like program that offers full access to 15 million songs — a bigger catalog than Napster’s, Rhapsody’s, MOG’s or Rdio’s. All the big record companies have signed on to this crazy experiment: Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI. (The usual “we’re afraid of the Internet” bands are missing, like the Beatles, Metallica and Led Zeppelin.)

The sound quality is excellent. (It’s 160-kbps Ogg Vorbis format, if that means anything to you). The music starts playing almost instantly. With a click, you can share your playlists with friends on Twitter or Facebook, or see what they listen to most. A whole ecosystem of Web sites has cropped up where people can share, rate and recommend music and playlists.

And there’s one more big attraction. Let’s see … what was it? Oh, yes — it’s free.

It’s true. For the first time in Internet history, you can now listen to any track, any album, right now, legally, no charge. No wonder it took a while to persuade the record companies.

Now, there are some restrictions. The big one is the ads: every 15 minutes or so, you hear an ad spliced in between your songs (usually for Spotify’s premium plans, described in a moment). And you see banner ads in the Spotify software. If you sign up now, you can listen to all the music you want this way for the next six months — but after that, you’ll be limited to 10 hours of free music a month.

The final footnote on the fantasy of free music is this: you need an invitation to join. That, obviously, is a speed bump intended to prevent Spotify’s computers from blowing up when 300 million hyperventilating Americans arrive simultaneously.

You can request an invitation at Spotify.com, or you can get one from someone who has one of the paid plans. Various corporate sponsors will be giving away invitations to the free service, too (Coke, Motorola and Reebok, for example).

Even so, for millions of people, that’s still a better deal than anyone has offered before. Like some new song on the radio? Go home and listen to the whole album, or that band’s entire catalog. Tired of your hipster Facebook buddy talking about the latest buzz band and leaving you clueless? Fire up Spotify and listen to his playlists. Considering seeing a musical? Listen to the cast album first.

For penny pinchers, this free and easy way to call up any song, instantly, is a giddy new entertainment option.

Better yet, the Spotify software on your Mac or PC automatically recognizes and displays your existing music collection stored in iTunes or Windows Media Player — even your playlists. You can manage your own songs, and incorporate them into playlists, right alongside the 15 million offered by Spotify. It’s not as full-featured (or as cluttered) as iTunes, but the essentials are here: you can search, sort, organize and get recommendations for music.

Now, in Europe, 84 percent of Spotify’s 10 million listeners do it the free way, tolerating those occasional ads. But it’s easy to imagine that there are some people who say, “Jeez — I’d happily pay, say, $5 a month to get rid of those ads, that 10-hour limit and the invitation waiting list!”

That’s why Spotify offers the $5-a-month, no-ads, no-limits, no-invite plan (called Unlimited).

And surely there’s another group of hardcore music lovers who say, “That’s great, but I’d pay even more if I could listen on my phone. Preferably even when it’s offline, like on a plane or the subway.”

That’s why Spotify offers the $10-a-month, no-ads, no-limits, no-invite, sync-to-your-phone, download-too plan (called Premium).

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7ccba1187932ceb332b36d6bcde1c7f4

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

Shares Down on U.S. Debt Talks

July 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Wall Street equities fell about 1 percent at the start of trading on Monday on the lack of progress American political leaders were making on a deal to raise Washington’s debt limit and avoid a default.

With concerns easing over Europe’s debt crisis after last week’s bailout package for Greece, investors focused on whether the White House and Congressional Republicans could raise the debt ceiling by the Aug. 2 deadline. A default would mean the United States government could not pay all its bills starting next month, including interest and principal on Treasury bonds.

By midmorning, the Dow Jones industrial average had recovered somewhat and was down 66.38 points, or 0.52 percent, to 12,614.78. The Standard Poor’s 500-stock index lost 0.49 percent to 1,338.43 and the Nasdaq dropped 12.68 points, or 0.44 percent, to 2,846.15.

Though many investors thought a last-minute deal to raise the $14.3 trillion borrowing limit would eventually emerge, the failure to come to a deal could leave a lasting effect on investor sentiment. A big worry in the markets was that only a short-term deal would be reached, with a promise to revisit the issue later. The problem is that next year is an election year.

“Common sense decrees that some kind of an increase is likely at the 12th hour, but as with the Europeans, the inability to act more quickly and more decisively is confidence-sapping,” said Kit Juckes, an analyst at SG Securities.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 0.19 percent, at 5,923.71 points, while the DAX in Germany was up 0.17 percent to 7,338.73 points. The CAC 40 in France was off 0.42 percent, at 3,826.41 points.

The dollar has been drifting downward as the negotiations have dragged on, but it has not come under sustained selling pressure. By late morning, it was trading 0.1 percent higher against the euro, at $1.4335.

Analysts said that could change, though, if the debt impasse lasts longer.

Greece was expected to be placed temporarily in default of its debts as part of the rescue deal agreed to by European leaders last week. Moody’s Investors Service, which downgraded Greek debt again on Monday, said a Greek default was almost 100 percent certain because it would involve private creditors, but markets had anticipated as much for weeks.

Earlier in Asia, the Nikkei 225 in Japan closed down 0.8 percent, at 10,050.01 points, while Hang Seng index in Hong Kong lost 0.7 percent, to 22,293.29.

The Shanghai composite index slid 3 percent, to 2,688.75 points. That was its biggest one-day loss in six months, as railroad-related shares plunged after a high-speed train crash this weekend killed 38 people, raising doubts about the rapid expansion of the rail network.

Oil was trading around the $100 a barrel mark. Oil for September delivery was down 44 cents, at $99.43 a barrel, in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=82b7bb2570c75227796fefb9ecd7dec0

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

Europe Agrees to Give Billions to Greece

July 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

BRUSSELS — European finance ministers staved off an imminent Greek default Saturday, agreeing to release a vital installment of financial aid to Athens, while delaying a deal on a second large rescue for Greece, possibly until September.

After a two-hour conference call, the 17 euro zone ministers said they would sign off on an 8.7 billion euro ($12.6 billion) loan that had been expected as part of a 110 billion euro package agreed upon last year. The board of the International Monetary Fund is expected to approve its current contribution, 3.3 billion euros, in the coming days.

Without the loans, the Greek government faced the prospect of insolvency within weeks. The euro zone ministers’ decision followed two votes in Greece’s parliament to approve a tough austerity package, a condition for international assistance.

But, with Greece struggling to restore its finances, European finance ministers also need to put together a second package of loans to help it through 2014. This is expected to amount to 80 billion to 90 billion euros. Though that was discussed Saturday night, the ministers gave few details in a statement, and one official briefed on the talks but not authorized to speak publicly said that completing the new bailout would “not be easy.”

“They are going to have to work really hard, and we don’t expect an agreement before the next meeting of the euro zone ministers on July 11, and possibly not before September,” the official added.

Saturday night’s decision ends weeks of tense diplomacy between the euro zone nations and the I.M.F., which said it required assurances that the Europeans would backstop Greece’s finances for the next 12 months before it could release any more aid. Some countries, including the Netherlands, were reluctant to give such a guarantee without knowing that private sector investors would also play a substantial role in the new bailout.

But, when it became clear that a second bailout would take much longer to put together, the dispute ended with an opaque declaration from the ministers and with no details about the potential scope of the new rescue.

“The precise modalities and scale of private sector involvement and additional funding from official sources will be determined in the coming weeks,” the euro zone ministers said in a statement.

That seemed to satisfy the I.M.F.

“This commitment — together with the recent parliamentary passage of the necessary fiscal measures in Greece — will enable the I.M.F.’s executive board to consider the completion of the fourth review and the release of the next tranche,” Caroline Atkinson, the I.M.F.’s chief spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Greece’s finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, described the ministers’ action as “a development that boosts our country’s credibility on a global level.”

“What is now critically important is the timely and effective implementation of parliamentary decisions so that we can gradually emerge from the crisis for the benefit of the national economy and the Greek people,” the minister said in a written statement on Saturday. He was referring to two votes in Greece’s parliament earlier in the week that approved a new raft of deeply unpopular austerity measures.

Talks with European banks on a voluntary debt rollover have proved complex enough that they may drag on well into the summer. One consideration is the need to create the package so that rating agencies do not classify it as a default — a blow to confidence that would undermine efforts to prevent contagion.

According to Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, German banks are willing to roll over around 3.2 billion euros of Greek bonds maturing to 2014. France has a plan to involve its banks though the total amount has not been disclosed.

Though Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, had set a July 11 deadline for a deal on the second package, Greece’s next financing deadline does not arrive until September.

Speaking in Warsaw, Jacek Rostowski, the finance minister of Poland, emphasized the need to spur economic growth in Greece, in addition to cutting government spending.

Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9e056c99b6e76e88ded7423349fba552

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

Puncturing Greece’s Dream for Sharing Its Pain

June 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

It would be a “restructuring without a haircut,” in the view of the plan’s proponents, who enthusiastically described it to Mr. Papandreou in a series of secret meetings earlier this year. The result, ideally, would be to ease the weight of the Greek debt on the economy, clearing the way for renewed growth, while keeping the bankers and credit ratings agencies on board.

In many ways, the plan was a dreamy alternative to the grim calculus of Europe’s demands for more austerity from Greece in return for more loans. And Mr. Papandreou went so far as to ask a political ally and the plan’s two proponents, a British and a Greek economist, to lobby Europeans in its favor.

But, according to economists who participated in the discussions, the Greek finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, was opposed, arguing that Germany, to say nothing of the E.C.B., would never go for it. And while a number of economists contend that Europe will ultimately have to develop some sort of plan for restructuring Greece’s debt, Athens has shelved any such notion for now as it moves toward another bailout to keep the country out of bankruptcy.

“It was a nice idea, but not defensible in current circumstances,” said Daniel Gros, the head of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, who took part in one of the meetings with the prime minister to discuss the plan’s merits. “If there is one person who can not propose something like this it is the Greek prime minister — it would have to be a German.”

This week, Mr. Papandreou is struggling to persuade his increasingly disruptive party members that Greece must agree to another round of austerity measures to qualify for a second portion of loans from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, including closing down public-sector enterprises, selling more assets and ramping up the tax take. The new package will be submitted to Parliament on Thursday and a vote is expected before the end of the month.

Signs are growing, however, that the patience of the long-suffering Greek public is wearing thin. Mr. Papandreou’s approval ratings are below 30 percent and, as uncertainty builds, Greeks continue to take money out of the banking system.

Mr. Papandreou’s interest in a plan to transfer much of its debt to the rest of Europe may well have been a passing fancy. And Mr. Papandreou’s chances of persuading Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the E.C.B, to take on even more debt on top of the nearly €200 billion, or $292 billion, it already is exposed to were always going to be a long shot.

“The prime minister is in favor of the proposal,” said Vasso Papandreou, a former top financial advisor to the prime minister and an influential member of Parliament within the governing Socialist party, known as Pasok, who has been openly critical of the government’s austerity plan. “This is not a Greek problem any more — it’s a European problem.”

Ms. Papandreou is not related to the prime minister.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said that Mr. Papandreou and other European officials had long supported a euro bond as one policy option, but that his current priority was to make the Greek economy competitive again.

“In search of the best solutions to effectively and permanently exit the crisis, the Prime Minister will continue to exchange views with his counterparts around the world as well as leading economists and academics,” he said.

The two architects of the idea have longstanding ties to Mr. Papandreou. They have characterized their sweeping plan, with a bit of cheek, a modest proposal.

Yanis Varoufakis, a political economist and blogger at the University of Athens, was a speechwriter and advisor to Mr. Papandreou from 2004 to 2006. Stuart Holland is a Europe expert and former high-ranking official in Britain’s Labour Party who was a longtime advisor to Andreas Papandreou, Mr. Papandreou’s father, who was once prime minister himself.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=91566b52caadf0902f00d5d11d9acc44

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,