A new wave of migrants began entering the European Union from Serbia Monday (24 August), as the leaders of France and Germany called for a unified response to the continent’s biggest migrant crisis since World War II.
On Monday, share prices dropped sharply all over the world due to fears of an economic crash in China. China’s stock exchanges had just experienced their worst slump in eight years. According to some commentators a global economic crisis can only be prevented by strengthening buying power. Others are urging the central bank managers to turn on the money printers in order to create growth.
After Sahra Wagenknecht attacked the EU and the euro, Die Linke leader Bernd Riexinger warned that institutions like the ECB have more power than elected governments. EurActiv Germany reports.
Greece’s radical left Syriza government on Tuesday (18 August) approved its first privatisation granting a concession of more than a dozen key regional airports to Germany’s Fraport-Slentel consortium in a deal worth 1.23 billion euros.
After the Greek parliament and the finance ministers of the Eurozone approved athird bailout package for Athens last week, the parliaments of other Eurozone states are due to vote on it this week. Some commentators see the reforms it entails as a historic opportunity for the country’s renewal. Others criticise the fact that almost all the money will go to banks and creditors.
In the refugee crisis the Greek island of Kos has become the focus of attention in recent days. The situation on the island has become increasingly dramatic, with many new arrivals being put up in a docked car ferry. Commentators point to Kos as proof of Europe’s failed asylum policy and discuss how to best help the refugees’ countries of origin.
When it comes to foreign affairs EU institutions cannot bypass national policies
What alarms the opponents of the Labour Party’s probable next leader? That he is not thirty years behind the times – but ten years ahead.
David Cameron has just celebrated his first hundred days as leader of a government that has moved quickly to consolidate its vision of a neo-liberal conservative age and making the most of what was expected to be a lacklustre but usefully diversionary Labour leadership contest. As in 2010, the consolidation has met with much success. But there is a difference: this tim,e it has been less an opportunity to set an agenda of Labour’s previous fiscal irresponsibility and much more a positive and rigorous insistence that austerity is essential and “there is no alternative”.
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