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EU faces crisis as IMF warns Greek debts are on ‘explosive’ path
Greece's debts are going to mount unsustainably, the IMF believes, unless the country undertakes serious reforms - and receives more bailouts from its eurozone neighbours
Greece's debts are going to mount unsustainably, the IMF believes, unless the country undertakes serious reforms - and receives more bailouts from its eurozone neighbours CREDIT: MARKO DJURICA/REUTERS
Tim Wallace Szu Ping Chan Peter Foster, europe editor Steven Swinford, deputy political editor
7 FEBRUARY 2017 • 9:00PM
The EU faces a looming crisis which could threaten the sustainability of the eurozone as the International Monetary Fund has warned Greece’s debts are on an “explosive” path despite years of attempted austerity and economic reforms.
Global financiers at the IMF are increasingly unwilling to fund endless bailouts for the eurozone’s most troubled country, passing more of the burden onto the EU - at a time when Germany does not want to keep sending cash to Athens.
The assessment opens up a fresh split with Europe over how to handle Greece’s massive public debts, as the IMF called on Europe to provide “significant debt relief” to Greece - despite Greece’s EU creditors ruling out any further relief before the current rescue programme expires in 2018.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Eurogroup President repeated that position last night, saying there would be no Greek debt forgiveness and dismissing the IMF assessment of Greece’s growth prospects as overly pessimistic.
"It's surprising because Greece is already doing better than that report describes," said Mr Dijsselbloem, who chairs meetings of eurozone finance ministers, adding that Greece was on track for a “pretty good recovery at the moment”.
The renewed divisions over how to handle the Greek debt crisis has raised fresh questions over whether the IMF will be a full participant in the next phase of the Greek rescue - a key condition for backing from the German and Dutch parliaments.
As Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, fights a tough reelection battle, Germany is particularly reluctant to send funds directly to Greece, with populist parties in Germany arguing that the payments amount to an unfair bailout from hard-working Germans to less deserving Greeks.
The IMF split came as Mrs May last night comfortably defeated a Brexit rebellion in the Commons as MPs rejected Labour plans to give Parliament a "meaningful" vote on the terms of a final deal.
Despite suggestions that up to 30 Tory MPs could defy their party whip and back the Labour amendment just seven chose to do so.
Mrs May stemmed the rebellion after the Government pledged to hold a vote in Parliament on the deal before it is sent to the European Parliament.
However ministers said that MPs would have to "take or leave it", meaning that Mrs May is prepared to walk away from Europe without a deal if Parliament rejects it.
A fresh crisis over Greek debt could be triggered as soon as in July when Greece is due to repay some 7bn euros to its creditors - money the country cannot pay without a fresh injection of bailout cash.
Beyond the long-running concerns over Greek debt, Europe is currently locked in a fierce internal struggle over how to “refound” the European Union in the wake of Brexit and the apparent hostility now emanating from White House.
Mrs Merkel, the German chancellor, acknowledged the calls for change from within the EU yesterday while on a trip to Poland, but said she would argue that the EU should “proceed very cautiously” on the question of treaty change as it faced down a growing number of existential threats
Reluctant EU members, led by Poland, are calling for a return to the EU founding principles,
asking for a fundamental overhaul of the EU treaties that would return power back to nation states.
An EU ‘concept paper’ launched last week ahead of the 60th Anniversary celebrations of the Treaty of Rome next month has deepened divisions after it emerged that it did not contain a single mention of the member states, only the EU institutions, according to a senior EU diplomatic source.
Greek GDP has started to grow, expanding by an estimated 0.4pc last year, but it is on a very weak path. IMF economists expect the country to grow at less than 1pc per year over the long-term, which is too low for it to pay down its debts.
That means Greece’s “public debt remains highly unsustainable, despite generous official relief already provided by its European partners,” the IMF believes.
Even if the country successfully implements all of its planned financial and economic reforms - which has been a struggle so far - its debt is projected to fall to from 179pc of GDP a year ago to 160pc of GDP by 2030 “but become explosive thereafter”.
“Greece cannot be expected to grow out of its debt problem, even with full implementation of reforms,” the IMF warned last night.
Despite Eurogroup protestations that the Greek bailout was sustainable, the IMF estimates that by 2060 its debts will amount to a crushing 275pc of GDP.
The IMF said progress to date in turning the crisis around has been “significant” but also acknowledged that the deep cuts to public services and pensions had come “at a high cost to society, reflected in declining incomes and exceptionally high unemployment.” Unemployment is currently still stuck at above 23pc.
The IMF is very clear about who it believes should give Greece more money to try to turn this situation around. “Greece cannot restore debt sustainability through its efforts alone and needs significant debt relief from its European partners,” the IMF said.
Greek finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos said the IMF’s report “fails to do justice” to the strength of the economic recovery and the improvement in the government’s books.
The IMF also gives a “misleading representation” of the government’s reform efforts, he said.
maulaners in europistan, please reign in your kids stupidity before they end up dead. In desh, kids are well aware, in samstan they are regressing towards stupidity levels exhibited by europistan kids. The chances of death by violent stabbing in "normal" nations by refugees for now is not present though prior to the great migration circa 2011, the same could have been said for many western nations as well.According to police, the 27-year-old savagely stabbed his victim, identified as Soopika P., repeatedly in the head, neck and upper body. The young woman was left with no chance of survival.
German tabloid Bild reports Soopika was well known in Ahaus and was popular. One of her friends told the paper, “Many knew her, she was a really nice girl. Because her own family comes from India and she has very good English, she has been involved in refugee aid.”
There were reports that these marines were exchanged for India's entry into MTCR.IndraD wrote:Imagine if this had happened under Sonia regime !
Interesting. If that were true (and it could very well be), it means that in the future any entry into any gora chiknas onleeee club can be done with some forceful love at an opportune moment.ranjan.rao wrote:There were reports that these marines were exchanged for India's entry into MTCR.IndraD wrote:Imagine if this had happened under Sonia regime !
Apparently, it was a big issue with italians. I had worked with an italian a**hole, who was pissed off with indians because of this. The moment who got whiff of this in news..he went berserk for an hour cursing modi, indians and what not....they seem to smell CCD coffee and perhaps drink some with roaches too..LokeshC wrote:Interesting. If that were true (and it could very well be), it means that in the future any entry into any gora chiknas onleeee club can be done with some forceful love at an opportune moment.ranjan.rao wrote: There were reports that these marines were exchanged for India's entry into MTCR.
The big Q is where does India stand in this alignment? We too have wanted anew more multi-polar world order with India in an expanded UNSC ,plus MSG supplier membership,etc. China is the great enemy of India,which is whyw e're hedging our bets with a closer relationship with the US>Russia’s 1989 plea for a new world order was rejected, and so Putinism was born
Richard Sakwa
As the cold war ended, Mikhail Gorbachev wanted a new political community, with Russia as an equal partner. The west refused to countenance it
George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and John Major at a 1991 G7 summit
George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and John Major at a 1991 G7 summit. Gorbachev believed ‘the end of the cold war represented a moment when Moscow could work with the western powers to create a new political community as equal founding members’. Photograph: Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty
Friday 31 March 2017
Long before Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, the stage was set for Russia’s current confrontation with the west by the failure to achieve a transformed and inclusive peace order after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The arts thrive in Putin’s Russia – though they play a complex game of censorship
Natalia Antonova
Read more
Two incompatible narratives came into conflict after the Eastern Bloc began to crumble in 1989. For the west, nothing needed to change. The Atlantic community had effectively won the cold war, demonstrating the superiority of the western order, and thus all that was required was for Russia to join the expanded western community. The door was indeed opened, but the terms were not right. Boris Yeltsin made this clear, in an incoherent and contradictory manner. Putin ultimately made the same point, rather more forcefully. The west invited Russia to join an expanded Atlantic community, but Russia sought to join a transformed west and a reconfigured Europe, goals that remain active to this day.
For Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, the end of the cold war represented a moment when Moscow could work with the western powers to create a new political community as equal founding members. The historical west, with Nato and the European Union at its core, would, in the Russian idea, become a greater west, with Russia a founding member of a new political community. This was accompanied by various Gaullist ideas to establish some sort of pan-continental greater Europe, stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok.
But the Atlantic powers, fearing that Russia was trying to drive a wedge between its two wings in Europe and America, rejected these ideas. In practice, Russian and western views were not so far apart. What was required was some sort of reconciliatory framework, and it is this intangible but essential ingredient that has been missing in the post-cold war years.
Instead, the end of the cold war reinforced one side at the expense of the other, and without a transformation of world order. This means that in structural terms the cold war never really ended. Russia could have become part of the winning constellation, as Germany and Japan did after 1945, but that would have required some sort of admission of defeat, and that is something that no Russian leader, certainly not Yeltsin nor Putin, were ready to concede. Instead, the institutions and ideas triumphant at the end of the cold war enlarged, driving Russia into a strategic impasse.
A difference of intellectual emphasis became a political division, and the gulf between expansion and transformation defines the confrontation today. The existing order was simply enlarged, and thereby radicalised, rather than transformed. Instead of transcending the logic of conflict in Europe and in global affairs, it was perpetuated in new forms. In the end, Russia reacted by adopting a policy of resistance to what was considered a liberal political order that asserted its values not as an autonomous good, but as part of the enlarging power system itself.
Without the Soviet Union to act as a constraining force, the world order established after 1989 turned out to be effectively unipolar, with all of the dangers that attend such a situation. Neither Russia nor China is in a position, nor do they desire, to balance against the dominance of the American-led power system. What they do want is a more pluralist international order, rather than a single dominant power system. They wish to see the institutions of international society, notably the UN, the WTO and international financial institutions, work autonomously and impartially. Russian politicians repeatedly talk of the need to establish a more multipolar system.
The gap between the proclaimed values of the Atlantic order and its practical manifestations can also be formulated as the gulf between principles and practices (the problem of “double standards”). This provoked Russia’s critique of western practices in defence of its proclaimed principles. Just as Russia has long positioned itself as the defender of the “true Europe” against the alleged degenerate actual version, Russia today claims to be the chief exponent of genuine European values that it asserts the west as a whole has lost. Naturally, this presumptuous claim is rejected by the west. But for Russia, the assertion of some sort of distinctive values is broader than a return to obscurantist conservatism and part of the larger reassertion of cultural and civilisational pluralism and diversity. The values challenge is also a challenge to the power system established at the end of the cold war.
Russia is the house that Vladimir Putin built – and he’ll never abandon it
Dmitri Trenin
The attempt to change not just the balance of power between the hegemonic ambitions of different world orders, but to change the nature of hegemony itself was not achieved. Instead, Russia was subjected to various forms of “soft containment”, which has hardened over time. The crisis over Ukraine in 2014 was a symptom and not the cause of the breakdown in European security.
But the larger process of post-cold war adjustment and the emergence of an anti-hegemonic alignment of Russia, China and some other powers can hardly be called a new cold war. The original cold war was a regional confrontation with global implications, while the present seismic shift is a global process with regional implications. The anti-hegemonic powers now amplify Russia’s original demand at the end of the cold war in 1989: for a transformation of global politics based on a pan-continental peace order in Europe and a more pluralistic (and just) international system.
There is feeling here that Junker is bit outspoken. He come from a lil country and is handed big job. Some body has to calm him down. same for D Tuskchanakyaa wrote:When EU gets the taste of its own and its cuzzin-brother-across-the-pond's medicine...Ohio, Austin get ready for exit
Dozens of prison guards have blocked entry to a detention facility in a Paris suburb to denounce prison overcrowding and “degrading” working conditions. The protesters burned a pile of tires and wooden pallets.
The rally took place near a ‘maison d'arrêt’ – a type of prison in France which holds inmates awaiting trial or sentencing – in the Villepinte commune of the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on Thursday morning, local media reported.
The 22-year-old student, identified only as Shaden M., died in hospital on April 18, three days after the accident in the city of Cottbus, and the driver is being investigated for possibly causing death by negligence, Horst Nothbaum, spokesman for the prosecutor's office, said.
Two witnesses came forward 10 days after the accident to say that they had heard a passenger in the car that struck the woman yelling insults afterwards, including: "Go back to where you came from, then you won't get run over. Damn refugees."
Theresa May says EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker will find out she is 'a bloody difficult woman'
Ms May made the threat in the wake of reports that the EU Commission President called her Brexit demands 'delusional'
Joe Watts Political Editor
Theresa May has warned Jean Claude Juncker that he is about to find out how much of a “bloody difficult woman” she is following reports that he claimed she is delusional over Brexit.
The Prime Minister made the threat in an interview amid the on-going row, sparked by leaks from a private meeting between the Prime Minister and the EU Commission President.
Ms May also used the interview with the BBC to confirm that she intends to serve a full term to 2022 if she wins the election on June 8.
READ MORE
May's Brexit meeting with Juncker 'deeply worrying', says Labour
It comes after a German newspaper reported that in the wake of a meeting with the Prime Minister, Mr Juncker phoned Angela Merkel and said Ms May lives “in another galaxy” and is “deluding herself” over Brexit.
Responding to questions over the reports, she said: “I think what we've seen recently is that at times these negotiations are going to be tough.
“Now during the Conservative Party leadership campaign I was described by one of my colleagues as a bloody difficult woman.
“And I said at the time the next person to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker.”
The description of Ms May was first made by ex-chancellor Ken Clarke during last year’s Tory leadership contest, but the soon-to-be successful candidate later took ownership of it.
Leaks to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper suggested EU Commission President Mr Juncker knocked back Ms May’s plan to reach a deal guaranteeing citizens’ rights as early as June, because he believed the issue too complex to agree so soon.
Downing Street said it did not recognise the version of the meeting reported by the publication.
Ken Clarke caught on camera ridiculing Tory leadership candidates
While Ms May’s officials described the face-to-face as “constructive” just after it ended, Mr Juncker is reported to have said: “I leave Downing Street 10 times more sceptical than I was before.”
Speaking about the issue to the BBC, Ms May said: “What is I think possible and what we want to do is to be able to give reassurance to EU citizens living here and to UK citizens living in Europe.
“I've always said that there are complexities to this issue and lots of details that will need to be agreed. What people want to know is to have some reassurance about their future.
“I believe we can give that at an early stage. I've got the will to do this.”
Directly addressing the stories about the meeting she repeated her dismissal of them as “Brussels gossip”. She went on: “But what is important is that there is a key question for people when they come to this election.
“We've seen from all of this that these negotiations at times will be tough. Getting the right deal requires the right leadership. And there's only going to be one of two people sitting around that table. The twenty seven other EU countries on one side of the table and who is going to be there standing up for the UK? It's either going to be me or Jeremy Corbyn.”
Confirming her intention to serve a full term, she said: “I have no intention of doing anything other than serving the full term until 2022 because this is, as I say, an important time for our country and what we do over the next five years could change our country for the better for the future and truly make it a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few. That's what I'm in it for.”
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EUROPE REACTS: EU politicians tell May to RESIGN over Brexit chaos caused by election loss
EUROPEAN politicians this morning brutally put the boot into Theresa May over her disastrous decision to call a General Election which has brought “chaos” to Britain and thrown the entire Brexit process into doubt.
By NICK GUTTERIDGE, BRUSSELS CORRESPONDENT
PUBLISHED: 08:36, Fri, Jun 9, 2017
Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt called the election 'another own goal'
MEPs across the continent said the PM had gambled with the UK’s future and lost, expressing deep concern that the Conservatives’ shock loss of their majority will further delay the divorce talks with the clock already ticking.
Some even called on the prime minister to resign immediately, saying she had gambled with the futures of British citizens by calling the election only to lose in spectacular style.
Senior EU Commission officials insisted that the prospect of a hung parliament and coalition government would not affect their plans for Brexit, but admitted it may be weeks if not months before they know the new British position, eating into vital negotiating time.
Mocking German newspapers LAUGH at Britain for election debacle
Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt tweeted this morning: “Yet another own goal, after Cameron now May, will make already complex negotiations even more complicated.”
German MEP Manfred Weber, chairman of the huge centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) grouping, said UK politicians now had to ensure that Britain secures “a functioning Government” as quickly as possible.
And a Dutch liberal MEP pointed out that, alongside David Cameron’s decision to call a referendum on EU membership, the Tory party had taken two big gambles in the last year both of which it has lost.
Many jubilant MEPs retweeted messages mocking Mrs May for calling the election, playing on her "strong and stable" campaign line and comparing the election loss to a famous interview in which she said the naughtiest thing she had done as a child was running through wheat fields.
Mr Weber, a strident Brexit critic, said: "The EU is united, Great Britain is deeply divided. Prime Minister May wanted to achieve stability and brought chaos.
“The clock is ticking on Brexit. Therefore, the UK needs a functioning Government quickly. The proposed start date [for the negotiations] is now uncertain.”
He added: “We have great concern about the situation in Northern Ireland. The peace process must take no damage.
“Our position is clear: We want good cooperation with Great Britain, but Brexit means leaving the EU with all its benefits.”
But those are mostly Bakistani saar(right behind Martime Museum). I am still waiting for some usual suspect to emerge from there. I bought a company there and was stuck for 4 days to sign the documents in 2006.Mukesh.Kumar wrote:WTF! My XHU was from Barcelona. Many happy memories from walking round the Ramblas. What's happening.
Truth be told, just behind the Ramblas are pissfool ghettos. Five years ago when I had remarked that this was a time bomb waiting to explode XHQ had remarked that everyone knew but the politicians had messed it up.
True. But also a bunch of beedi-pseudo Indians. We were shopping round for the wedding lehenga when we landed up in a shop from a woman from W.Bengal. I had the distinct impression that she was beedi posting of ad Indian.rsingh wrote:But those are mostly Bakistani saar(right behind Martime Museum). I am still waiting for some usual suspect to emerge from there. I bought a company there and was stuck for 4 days to sign the documents in 2006.Mukesh.Kumar wrote:WTF! My XHU was from Barcelona. Many happy memories from walking round the Ramblas. What's happening.
Truth be told, just behind the Ramblas are pissfool ghettos. Five years ago when I had remarked that this was a time bomb waiting to explode XHQ had remarked that everyone knew but the politicians had messed it up.
Two explosions at a house in the town of Alcanar, 120 miles south of Barcelona, on Wednesday night were last night linked by police to the attack. Officers said the residents had been preparing explosives. At least one person died and more than 16 were injured in what was initially thought to be a gas explosion.
main suspect walked out of van after ploughing and vanished in crowd walking on footSecond terror attack in Spain at coastal resort of Cambrils
Five terrorists shot dead by police after ramming civilians
Attack comes after 13 people killed in van attack in Barcelona
Police name teenager they are hunting as suspected driver
Investigators fear terror cell had planned gas canister attack