EU – Page 74 – Slugger O'Toole

“What will be the end of this sorry saga?”

Pete Baker on March 30, 2011, 4:30 pm

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With tensions rising across Europe, Irish Life and Permanent suspended trading earlier today amid speculation that it would have to sell its profitable pensions and investments business, Irish Life, and its fund management business, Irish Life Investment Managers, after the publication of the bank stress test results tomorrow. That publication is also expected to result in further nationalisation of the Irish banking sector with the banks expected to need “as much as 30bn euros ($42bn; £26bn) in additional capital”. The BBC’s Robert Peston, …

Euro crisis: “The fix is not in. A line has not been drawn. And tensions are rising.”

Pete Baker on March 25, 2011, 7:59 pm

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What to make of the news emerging at the end of the two-day EU summit in Brussels? It depends. The RTÉ report tells us The EU is battling to stem a debt crisis that has raged for over a year and led Ireland and Greece to accept bailouts. It had promised to unveil a comprehensive solution at this summit that it hoped would reassure jittery markets. But the abrupt resignation of Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates on the eve of …

The corporation tax debate is finely balanced. Business needs to shape up

Brian Walker on March 25, 2011, 9:57 am

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Claire McNeilly presents a pretty good pull-together of the local debate on lower corporation tax in the Belfast Telegraph. In the FT John Murray Brown does the elementary sums. Assuming corporation tax is cut to the Irish Republic’s rate of 12.5 per cent, the Treasury paper estimates the block grant would have to be cut by £105m in the first year of the adjustment, rising to £270m, or 2.6 per cent of the block grant, after five years The onus …

Euro crisis: “If Portugal asks, we will be ready to intervene…”

Pete Baker on March 24, 2011, 6:59 pm

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To the apparent outrage of some, last night Taoiseach Enda Kenny agreed to defer seeking a conclusion to talks on reducing Ireland’s bail-out interest rate at the two-day EU summit in Brussels. At the IIEA blog, Karl Whelan argued After a lot of fighting talk about renegotiation during the recent election campaign, the new Irish leader Enda Kenny probably feels a certain amount of pressure to come home from this summit with a deal on the interest rate. My advice, for what …

“The photographs were posted on a social networking site by a Lurgan Sinn Féin member”

Pete Baker on March 22, 2011, 7:42 pm

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BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback couldn’t get anyone at the Ti Chulainn Cultural Centre in Mullaghbawn, nor anyone in Sinn Féin, to comment on this story in today’s Belfast Telegraph. We’ll wait to see if the Northern Ireland Children’s Commissioner can get any further. From the Belfast Telegraph report Children have appeared dressed up as republican paramilitaries and brandishing replica guns in a south Armagh community centre which has received hundreds of thousands of pounds in EU funds. The children, some of …

Ireland and default again

Mack on March 17, 2011, 12:53 am

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Yves Smith has a thought provoking article on her Naked Capitalism blog that I’ve only just got around to reading. It includes a useful, if cyncial, analysis of the raison d’être of the current stress tests / banking investigation being undertaken by BlackRock. Earth to base, this is a garbage in, garbage out exercise You can’t value loans against illiquid real estate by sitting around playing with models. Our Swedish Lex, who worked on the Swedish bad debt liquidation exercise, …

US dithering over Libya suggests the moment of overstretch has arrived

Brian Walker on March 16, 2011, 2:16 pm

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Just to lift sights out of the island for a bit, a pre-Paddy’s Day reflection on America that has nothing to do with Ireland. This it will be noted, is in accord with Ireland’s new found modesty about its own importance across the pond. To Europeans, not to mention pro-democracy Arabs, Obama’s silence over Libya is deafening. And yet Americans seem content with that, relieved perhaps that coverage of Gadaffi’s threatened roll-over of the Libyan revolution has been virtually wiped out …

Is corporation tax north and south on the brink of harmonisation?

Brian Walker on March 15, 2011, 8:01 am

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New Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s pitch for more time to pay back the bailout at a steady predictable level seems to have hit deadlock over the sacred cow of 12.5 % corporation tax, the Irish Times’ Arthur Beesley reports. Mr Noonan also said the Government was not for turning on the country’s corporate taxation rate, but French finance minister Christine Lagarde called for a “gesture” in return for lower bailout costs. “Without that we won’t budge on the interest …

“The result is a crisis in European democracy”

Pete Baker on March 14, 2011, 4:06 pm

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On the back of a survey of more than 5,000 people of working age in the UK, Germany, France, Poland and Spain, the Guardian editorialises on the future of the EU. They’re promising a month long series of articles mapping out the social, political and economic terrain. From the Guardian editorial The poll we publish today is taken from a sample of more than 5,000 people of working age in the five leading EU states – Britain, France, Germany, Spain and …

“Corporation tax is now mentioned as a quid pro quo”

Pete Baker on March 12, 2011, 1:15 pm

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Encouraging noises are one thing, but at the first EU late nighter of Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s tenure the BBC reports some possibly premature tweeting from EU President Herman Van Rompuy. In a message on Twitter, Mr Van Rompuy had initially said: “We have an agreement on the Pact for Euro.” The message was later amended to: “Update from ongoing meeting: Agreement in principle on the Pact for the Euro, but still discussing the other elements of the package.” A pact would …

Statutory debt limits a quid pro quo for easing Irish debt?

Mick Fealty on March 11, 2011, 2:15 pm

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Arthur Beesley on Enda Kenny’s European adventure (which given the times that are in it are more important than next week’s much reduced St Patrick’s day jaunt to the States): …one of Kenny’s prime tasks today is to convince his counterparts that his Government intends to make good on its pledge to doggedly pursue the fiscal path of rectitude and reform. In the first instance at least, this overrides debate on the interest rate and the banking debacle. Indeed, the …

Euro crisis: “Expect some late nights.”

Pete Baker on March 8, 2011, 11:35 pm

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More encouraging noises for the incoming Taoiseach from the European Union’s economic and monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn. As the Irish Times reports “I can see that there is a case to reduce the interest rates paid by Greece and Ireland,” the commissioner said. “In that context, it is important that we also look at loan maturities so that we can go beyond the hump of 2014 and 2015 and that also contributes to debt sustainability . . . The essential …

The knot is tied, how long will the honeymoon last?

Brian Walker on March 8, 2011, 11:34 pm

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Let’s face it , Fintan O’Toole could have been tougher on the incoming government. Maybe he thought they deserved a brief honeymoon. Does the sexual imagery give him away? His first verdict on the Programme for Government is as he puts it, a contrast between “a love potion and a chastity belt.” Fintan gives grudging welcome to the coalition’s political reform proposals, only to find them impotent in the face of the financial reforms he deems necessary, which the coalition will find “impossible.” If true, …

Forming the inevitable coalition is the easy bit

Brian Walker on March 6, 2011, 11:55 am

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No surprises here.. The new Fine Gael-Labour coalition government is planning to impose a property tax on family homes, to freeze income taxes and to review the universal social charge. Sources close to the negotiations revealed that Michael Noonan, the former Fine Gael leader, will be the next minister for finance The negotiators have also agreed to bring the exchequer deficit within EU guidelines by 2015 — a widely-expected compromise between Fine Gael’s proposal of 2014 and Labour’s preferred date …

Rehn: “I expect this issue of pricing policy will be looked at from the overall European perspective…”

Pete Baker on February 28, 2011, 2:43 pm

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The European Union’s economic and monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, has been making somewhat encouraging noises [for the new Irish government] ahead of a series of key European meetings for the incoming Taoiseach. From the Irish Times breaking news report “We look forward to continue supporting the Irish people and the next Irish government in the implementation of the EU- IMF program, which is key for Ireland’s economy and its revival,” Mr Rehn told reporters in Brussels. “We have the common …

“Theirs is a vote for equality…”

Pete Baker on February 27, 2011, 10:11 pm

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One of the new TDs for Louth, and still Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, Gerard Adams, has thanked all those who voted for his party. “I want to thank everyone who worked for Sinn Féin and all those citizens who voted for us. “Theirs is vote is a vote for equality, a real republic and a United Ireland in which citizens are cherished.” Which might come as news to those who thought they were voting to [unilaterally] …

Fine Gael and Labour should strike out now for a new deal

Brian Walker on February 27, 2011, 12:19 am

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With Fianna Fail now finally swept aide, will the two victorious parties dare make the one move that would weld them together in an instant and all Ireland with them? Only the most starry-eyed europhile would fail to give two cheers for the briefings emerging from Dublin that the about-to-be-born FG-Labour coalition really mean it. They will seriously try to renegotiate the bailout. They may yet confound the ranks of critics in advance who balked at standing themselves, Browne, O’Toole …

As Ireland votes, a note of optimism

Brian Walker on February 25, 2011, 10:38 am

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The Economist pronounces: It is true that Ireland will not soon pull itself from the economic bog. Recovery will be slow at best, particularly if an inflation-wary ECB starts to jack up interest rates. Unemployment is likely to stay in double figures for some time. Some fear that the cost of servicing the debts to the EU and IMF, and of feeding the insatiable maw of the banks, will eventually force Ireland into a debt restructuring. This would be a …

“Beards, fries, but no government…”

Pete Baker on February 18, 2011, 3:26 pm

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Crooked Timber’s Ingrid Robeyns ironically congratulates Belgium on setting a new world record without a government. As, indeed, do the Belgian people… 250 days and counting! Here’s a short CNN interview with Flemish comedian Geert Hoste And from a Guardian report On Thursday the word in Brussels was there would be fresh elections in April, a ballot likely to entrench the divide, deepen the crisis of political accountability and legitimacy, and result in yet further months of government-less squabbling. There is no talk of …

Ireland and the ECB: “We have political power and we should use it”

Mick Fealty on February 15, 2011, 8:47 am

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Brian Lucey in the Irish Times: I RECENTLY had coffee with a former colleague who is now working in the financial services industry in Germany. He was at pains to stress that the general tenor of the German press, even among the tabloids, was that although Ireland had been stupid, feckless, and perhaps somewhat arrogant, it was in general a well-run European country that was at least trying, painfully, to get out of the hole it had in part dug …