Sam Fleming

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The European Central Bank is expected to announce a pilot scheme for a digital currency this year as the EU seeks new ways of promoting the euro’s weight globally © FT montage/Getty/Bloomberg

EuropaUnión EuropeaEconomía

When more than 1,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Amsterdam in early February, they directed their ire at something that does not even exist: the digital euro.

The protesters voiced a kaleidoscopic array of objections to the European Central Bank’s plan to issue an electronic version of the continent’s single currency. Some feared the state would use it to track and control their spending, while others suspected a plot to replace cash. One protester told Dutch media she feared the authorities would stop her buying meat or alcohol.

Willem Engel, the event’s organiser who was a ringleader for Dutch opposition to Covid-19 vaccines, whipped up the crowd by telling them to “avoid companies that don’t accept cash”.…  Seguir leyendo »

Companies developing greener cars and batteries, better aviation fuel, and solar and wind power have been boosted by Joe Biden’s initiative © FT montage: Getty Images/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión EuropeaEconomía, ,

Donal O’Riain has been struck by the welcome his company received in the US — and it isn’t just the Christmas card sent by the Department of Energy official who is helping it secure federally supported loans.

The prospect of abundant government funding thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act is prompting Ecocem, an Irish low-carbon cement producer, to double a planned $120mn investment in California as it reorients spending towards the US instead of Europe, he says.

“They are rolling out the carpet for green investment — we were surprised at how personal the contact was”, says O’Riain, Ecocem’s founder and managing director.…  Seguir leyendo »

© FT montage: AFP/Getty Images

EuropaUnión EuropeaPolítica Inmigración, , , ,

Polina Sydorenko, a 19-year-old Ukrainian student, was brimming with both hope and trepidation when she returned to Kyiv in late August, after five months sheltering from the war as a refugee in Italy. Yet her plans to pick up the pieces of her disrupted life at a prestigious university in Kyiv were depressingly shortlived.

Just weeks after her return, the veneer of normality that had been temporarily restored to the capital was shattered as Russia launched new missile attacks on key Ukrainian cities and critical civilian infrastructure — the most serious since the war began. The university where she studied drama shut down again.…  Seguir leyendo »

© FT montage: AFP/Getty Images/Bloomberg/Stephanie LeCocq/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

EuropaUnión EuropeaEconomía

Emmanuel Macron had a simple message last week for French businesses preparing to sign punishingly costly energy contracts: don’t do it.

Companies should spurn the “crazy prices” currently on offer, the French president said, insisting that European governments would succeed in making markets work again and bringing costs back down to reasonable levels.

Aymeric Le Jemtel, chief executive of Veta France, a small company that manufactures cladding for buildings at a factory in northern France, finds it hard to share Macron’s confidence. The brick suppliers that Veta relies on across Europe have been raising their prices to offset the high cost of the natural gas they use to power their ovens.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europe’s fight to stay united over war in Ukraine

EuropaUnión EuropeaPolítica Exterior, , , ,

Marlies Jakob was one of dozens of ordinary Germans who took part in a phone-in show on Deutschlandfunk radio last week about sanctions against Russia. Her intervention should alarm policymakers from Paris and Brussels to Berlin.

Jakob said she was prepared to take cold showers and wear three sweaters in winter if that would stop Russia’s war against Ukraine. But, she insisted, “the opposite is true”, adding: “Thanks to sanctions . . . prices are rising and Russia is raking it in as never before”.

She wasn’t the only one to hold that view. A listener called Werner Bauer said people might support punitive measures against Moscow for now, but as soon as higher energy prices start to feed through “the mood will change completely”.…  Seguir leyendo »

European economy: Lagarde wrestles with an ‘impossible situation’

EuropaUnión EuropeaEconomía

The last time the European Central Bank raised interest rates in 2011 it was forced to reverse the move within months as the eurozone was plunged into a wrenching debt crisis. The market panic that followed only subsided after Mario Draghi, then head of the ECB, declared it would do “whatever it takes” to save the euro.

Fears of a similar outcome are front of mind for many as current president Christine Lagarde prepares the ECB’s first rate rise in 11 years. The move, to be announced on Thursday, will come alongside a new bond-buying plan that the central bank hopes will prevent rising borrowing costs from sparking another eurozone debt meltdown.…  Seguir leyendo »

Nato’s revival: will the resolve withstand an economic crisis?

InternacionalOTAN

For US president Joe Biden, it was “historic”. France’s Emmanuel Macron hailed it as “unprecedented for Europe since the second world war”.

“The most important conclusion that Vladimir Putin needs to draw from what’s happened the last few days here in Nato and previously in the G7 is that we are totally united”, said Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister.

The hugs, handshakes and bonhomie this week at Nato’s annual summit in Madrid and a G7 meeting in Germany represented a new high-water mark of western unity against Russia in response to the war in Ukraine — the apogee of an alliance rejuvenated by conflict on its borders.…  Seguir leyendo »

Who will pay to put Ukraine back together again?

Europa, , ,

The remains of Borodyanka’s music school have been cleared into several piles of twisted metal. Completely destroyed in fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, the rest of what is left of the building is now neatly raked dust.

Municipal workers have done a remarkable job of cleaning up the debris since Russian forces withdrew from the area at the end of March. But there is no hiding the devastation in Borodyanka, the most badly damaged of the towns north-west of Kyiv, which bore the brunt of Moscow’s failed attempt to take the capital after the invasion began on February 24.

The music school is on Central Street, where advancing Russian tanks met ferocious resistance from Ukrainian forces.…  Seguir leyendo »

© FT montage/Getty Images/Reuters/Bloomberg | Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi

Europa, , , ,

It was the third day of the war in Ukraine, and on the 13th floor of the European Commission’s headquarters Ursula von der Leyen had hit an obstacle.

The commission president had spent the entire Saturday working the phones in her office in Brussels, seeking consensus among western governments for the most far-reaching and punishing set of financial and economic sanctions ever levelled at an adversary.

A deal was close but, in Washington, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen was still reviewing the details of the most dramatic and market-sensitive measure — sanctioning the Russian central bank itself. The US had been the driving force behind the sanctions push.…  Seguir leyendo »

Can the EU and Poland step back from the brink?

EuropaUnión Europea

Addressing the European Parliament last week, the European Commission president proclaimed a “unity of purpose that is truly remarkable” within the EU in the face of Russian aggression on the Ukrainian borders.

Yet even as Ursula von der Leyen spoke, a European court ruling was raising the stakes in a dangerous confrontation between her commission and one of its biggest member states that has the potential to undermine the EU’s agenda just as it seeks to present a united front to its adversaries.

The European Court of Justice on Wednesday said that a new regulation seeking to protect the EU budget from rule of law violations by member states was legally solid.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukraine: EU wrestles with how to inflict sanctions ‘pain’ on Russia

EuropaUnión EuropeaPolítica Exterior, , ,

After Belarus sent a fighter jet to intercept a Ryanair flight carrying a young dissident, who was later arrested and detained, the EU hit back with sanctions designed to inflict a “substantial cost” on anyone who supported Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorial regime.

But there was a catch. It turned out that the sanctions imposed in 2021 on the lucrative petrochemicals and potash industries in Belarus applied only to new contracts, meaning that their impact would be gradual. And the penalties placed on potash came with specifications that excluded around 80 per cent of the commodity exported by the east European nation.

The Belarusian opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, warns of “regrettable” omissions in the package, which also included measures against the finance sector, and is demanding that new targets be added.…  Seguir leyendo »

© Maxim Guchek/BelTA via AP | Migrants sleep on the floor of a logistics centre in Grodno, Belarus, near the Polish border

ReflexionesSocial

When Alexander Lukashenko visited a group of migrants stranded on Belarus’s border with Poland after their attempts to cross illegally were blocked by Polish forces, he urged them to keep trying.

“If you want to go west, we won’t choke you, grab and beat you. It is your choice. Go across!” Belarus’s autocratic leader told the group, who had gathered outside a warehouse near Bruzgi — their temporary shelter as eastern Europe’s icy winter sets in.

“Go! That’s the whole philosophy. I know that what I said will not please everyone, especially abroad, but it is true, they should know the truth,” Lukashenko said in a visit on November 26 that was filmed and televised.…  Seguir leyendo »