Time to Bin the Ban

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Photo by CardMapr.nl on Unsplash                 Having cancelled five national conferences because of Covid and then the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the UK Liberal Democrats finally took to the stage last week. Leader Sir Ed Davey’s speech met with strong applause, but when he delivered the line “If you…

EU-US Relations

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Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash The United States and the European Union share the most comprehensive and dynamic economic relationship in the world. That is the key message from a joint statement issued on Saturday by US President Biden and EC president Ursula von der Leyen. The long statement also  said the partnership is based on “shared…

Europe’s Looming Pension Crisis

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Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash President Emmanuel Macron’s stand-off with France’s trade unions over his pension reform plans are widely reported as a peculiarly French issue. That should read ‘wrongly’ reported because pensions are a looming crisis of disastrous proportions for the whole of Europe, writes Giles Merrit. Most EU countries’ state pension schemes are unaffordable, private…

Croatia Adopts the Euro and Joins Schengen

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Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash Today, 1 January 2023 Croatia adopts the euro as its currency and fully joins the Schengen area. The EU said last Friday that this “marks an important milestone” in the history of Croatia, of the euro and Schengen areas and of the EU as a whole.  “It follows a period of intensive…

Russian Invasion of Ukraine Exacerbates World Food Prices

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Photo by Simon Goetz on Unsplash The global food price crisis has only been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.  It is actually due to more structural and systemic problems in the commodities market, creating hunger and threatening people’s livelihoods, points out the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in its own initiative opinion, adopted at the December plenary. Fuelled…

Conspiracy of Silence

Brexit Disaster

Last week UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt unveiled an emergency budget to plug the £55 billion black hole in the nation’s finances. He accepted that the last seven years of growth would be erased and that the country will remain in recession for up to two years., writes Philip Bushill-Matthews . In the circumstances he had little…

The Risks of a Digital Euro

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) says it supports the European Central Bank (ECB) in its assessment of the risks and benefits of introducing a digital euro. The EESC believes the adoption of a digital euro will benefit everyone in the euro area by making payment transactions quicker and more efficient, but financial and…

Women in the Labour Market

Women and Work

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has this week debated the way to improve women’s participation in the labour market with EP Vice-President Evelyn Regner.  Following the debate, the EESC plenary adopted two opinions with recommendations for making EU legislation more effective in promoting women’s empowerment and supporting the societal role of family caregivers. …