Crisis-hit European finance ministers took their first steps on Friday toward punishing countries that don’t honor the rules on keeping national debts and deficits down, including cash penalties.
However, on the same day that the German parliament approved its share of a 750 billion euro (US$944 billion) eurozone rescue package, running to about 150 billion euros, ministers showed no appetite for a bid by Berlin to force heavily-indebted partners into bankruptcy.
The first meeting of a new “task force” convened by EU President Herman Van Rompuy also left the difficult question of possible treaty changes required to craft a tough new regime of “economic governance” across the 27-nation EU on the back burner.
After the biggest drop in more than a year on Wall Street triggered fresh turmoil on Asian markets, work will now begin on a first report not scheduled to be delivered to EU leaders until June 17.
The task force’s final report is not due until October.
Van Rompuy said there was “a very clear broad consensus on the principle of having financial sanctions and non-financial sanctions.”
He was referring to EU rules restricting deficit and debt levels, rules that lie in tatters in the wake of huge debts accumulated in Greece, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere, but European Commissioner for Economic Affairs Olli Rehn said the devil would lie in the detail, warning of “some difficult discussions” still lying ahead.
Van Rompuy said the task force — which includes most EU finance ministers — would also focus on finding ways to reduce divergences in competitiveness between individual European economies, while working to come up with “effective” crisis resolution management for the future.
However, the German proposal to declare the most insolvent economies bankrupt, as a condition for creating a permanent safety net, drew no immediate support, Van Rompuy said, adding that it remained a “long-term” possibility.
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde also said that the controversial plan “does not figure” among ideas being taken forward in the short term. Neither did the panel discuss a Belgian suggestion that eurozone debt be pooled and guaranteed by all.
Hot issues surrounding financial regulation, despite a sweeping package of reform being pushed through by US President Barack Obama’s administration, have already been left to national leaders to sort out at the June summit, days before a key G20 meeting in Toronto.
Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg had warned on his arrival that delaying action could cause further chaos on markets that have consistently punished signs of indecision.
“We need to be able to report earlier than in autumn, this cannot go on for months,” he said.
Britain stood well back from the fray — offering loose backing for the eurozone to resolve its own problems, but no ideas of its own.
British Prime Minister David Cameron met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, after seeing French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.
“There is no question of agreeing to a treaty that transfers power from Westminster to Brussels,” Cameron said.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
RSS