As EU leaders emerged from their marathon negotiations on resolving their nations’ multi-faceted financial crisis, all proclaimed victory while speaking in ways designed to be well-received in their own countries.
As EU leaders emerged from their marathon negotiations on resolving their nations’ multi-faceted financial crisis, all proclaimed victory while speaking in ways designed to be well-received in their own countries.
Too sensitive to be aired extensively in public, a potentially crucial element in this week’s “make-or-break” negotiations on the eurozone’s debt crisis is a possible buy-in by the International Monetary Fund.
An open letter co-signed by Bertrand Collomb, chairman emeritus of the French multinational, Lafarge, who is a board member of the European Institute.
The letter calls on the leaders of the eurozone to move now -- to create a common treasury for the 17-nation group together with common supervision, regulation and deposit insurance. This fiscal convergence needs to be accompanied by a strategy that includes growth as the only way to surmount the debt problem, it states.
Amid ongoing international discussions about the Arctic sea as it unfreezes more of the year and opens for traffic, Russian maritime companies are starting to use its widening channels as a sea route that can shorten the distance between Europe and Asia during longer and longer parts of the summer as the polar ice pack recedes. Running along Russia’s shore, this expanding new “Northern Sea Route” is the sea-going version of the “over the pole” flights that have become routine for aircraft. [Here is a New York Times map of the NSR through the Eastern Arctic]
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