Switzerland invested the most money in the European Union (“the EU”) in 2016. With €55 billion, it was ahead of the United States (“the US”), which invested some €54 billion in the EU.
Globally, EU foreign investments fell by 41% last year. They went from a total of €476 billion in 2015 to €280 billion in 2016. This is according to an initial estimate by the European statistical institute, Eurostat, published on Tuesday.
The European Union faces a 20-billion-euro hole in its annual budget due to Britain’s withdrawal and rising costs in issues such as defense, EU Budget Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said Wednesday.
Oettinger warned that the U.K.’s departure, expected in 2019, will blow a hole of €9 billion to €12 billion in the EU’s roughly €150 billion annual budget.
“We won’t have the UK with us any more, but they were net payers despite the Thatcher rebate, so we will have a gap of 10 to 11 billion euros a year,” Oettinger told a press conference as he unveiled the commission’s proposals for the budget.
Greece’s international lenders prepared on Thursday to unblock as much as €8.5 billion in loans that Athens desperately needs next month to pay its bills, and to give some idea of what debt relief they may offer over the long-term.
One of the reasons why Greece’s bailout program has stalled over the past few months has been a disagreement between the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund on debt relief. The IMF, which has contributed financially to Greece’s first two bailouts but not the third, has wanted more information about what debt relief Greece may get before it gets more involved in the current program, which is due to end in the summer of next year.
Statistics agency Eurostat said 234.2m people were in work across the EU between January and March, of which 154.8m were in the eurozone area.
Employment grew by 1.5 percent on average in the eurozone and by 1.4 percent in the EU. Compared to the previous quarter, employment grew 0.4 percent in both the euro area and the EU during the first quarter of 2017.
Eurostat had previously estimated increases of 0.3 percent on the quarter and 1.1 percent on the year.
According to the latest reports, the European economy grew at a stronger pace than the US economy did. Do you agree that further trend is going to be the same?
I do not think so, though it is mostly because the US is likely going to pick back up again. What we saw in the first quarter, and this is something we have seen over the past few years, is that the US has a relatively weak first quarter. This could mean that growth is not going to be as spectacular as it has been over the past years in the United States. Nevertheless, I would say that, overall, the US economy is likely to pick up steam again in the Q2 and Q3. On the other hand, the Euro zone economy is performing quite steadily, while growth is sweeping quite robust at the moment. Still, I do not think that it will be able to keep up with the pace that we have seen in the United States. Currently, we expect the Euro zone growth to come in just under 2% over the year, while we think the United States GDP could hit 2.3% or maybe even 2.5% in 2017.
The idea of Italy leaving the eurozone, or ‘Italexit’, "does not have the slightest basis" in fact, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said Wednesday in a verbal tussle with a Dutch MP. Draghi repeated that the euro is "irrevocable, and that’s what the Treaty says".
Confronted with the possibility of the Netherlands quitting Europe’s monetary union by Eurosceptic MP Thierry Baudet, an angry Mr Draghi said: “The euro is irrevocable. This is the treaty. I will not speculate on something that has no basis.”
Highlighting the ECB’s role in the eurozone’s economic recovery, he said policies had helped create 4.5m jobs. “That’s the reality, the rest is speculation." In other remarks, Draghi said it was "up to the eurozone countries to prepare for the end of quantitative easing".
Greece has reached a preliminary deal with its creditors that should pave the way for long-awaited debt relief talks, the Greek finance minister said Tuesday. “The negotiations are concluded,” Euclid Tsakalotos told reporters, according to state agency ANA. After overnight talks, Tsakalotos said a “preliminary technical agreement” had been achieved ahead of a May 22 meeting of eurozone finance ministers, which is required to approve the deal.
Talks on the deal, which includes labour and energy reforms as well as pension cuts and tax rises, had dragged on for half a year mainly due to a rift between the European Union and the International Monetary Fund over fiscal targets.
The European Central Bank (ECB) made no changes to its record-low interest rates and announced no new measures on Thursday in what was its first policy decision of 2017. Specifically, the ECB left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a record-low 0.0%, in line with forecasts.
The central bank also held its deposit facility rate steady at -0.4% and its marginal lending rate remained at 0.25%.
Additionally, the Governing Council confirms that it will continue to make purchases under the asset purchase programme (APP) at the current monthly pace of €80 billion until the end of March 2017 and that, from April 2017, the net asset purchases are intended to continue at a monthly pace of €60 billion until the end of December 2017, or beyond, if necessary, and in any case until the Governing Council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation consistent with its inflation aim.
