The European Commission and the EU’s biggest economy, Germany, are planning to create a “European IMF” that could rescue debt-hit countries like Greece, officials said in interviews on Sunday.
“The [European] Commission is ready to propose a European instrument like this that would have the support of eurozone members,” the EU’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told the Financial Times Deutschland.
Rehn said the financial aid would be linked to “strict conditions.”
“We are working closely on this issue with Germany, France and other EU member states,” he said in the interview, which was published yesterday.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble have also suggested the creation of a European version of the IMF.
The Washington-based IMF gives out emergency loans to countries with troubled finances.
“We’re not planning an institution that would compete with the IMF, but for the internal stability of the eurozone, we need an institution that has the experience and power of the IMF,” Schaeuble told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
“We should calmly discuss the consequences of the Greece crisis and should not rule anything out, even the creation of a European Monetary Fund,” he said in the interview, which appeared on Sunday.
“I will shortly be making proposals on this topic,” he said.
Weighed down by a deficit over four times the EU’s limit, Greece has initiated a raft of austerity measures, including sweeping tax hikes and deep cuts in public spending.
The emergency action has sparked protests and nationwide strikes that have affected air and ground transport, as well as schools and hospitals.
On an international level, the crisis has weighed heavily on the value of the common currency, the euro, on the financial markets.
Napolitano called for the creation of a European monetary fund to help eurozone nations in trouble during a visit to Brussels last week.
“The European Central Bank [and] the European institutions are aware that there’s something missing from our common tool box to tackle unforeseen and serious crises in one of the eurozone nations,” he said.
Socialists in the European Parliament have also called for the creation of a such a fund to be managed by the European Investment Bank (EIB).
Under their scheme, the EIB, Europe’s lending arm, would borrow from the market at a reasonable interest rate. Countries in crisis could then borrow these funds at a similar rate as others are able to do.
Such a system would protect the eurozone against speculative attacks and create conditions in which a sovereign default by any eurozone member state “is clearly judged impossible by the markets,” the European Socialists said.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
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