- Article Information
- Category: EA October 2013
- Created on 04 October 2013
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s re-election in September is good news for Germany and for Europe, but the election results are a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, Merkel garnered a greater percentage of the vote than any candidate since Helmut Kohl’s post-reunification victory in 1990, and she did so as a two-term incumbent weathering a global recession. This was a resounding victory for Merkel personally and a vindication of the economic initiatives that she championed in her first two terms as Chancellor. Few remember that just a decade ago, Germany was the “sick man of Europe,” suffering slower economic growth than its neighbors to the south. Then, at the end of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s term, Germany underwent a series of Reagan-Thatcher-style regulatory reforms (primarily of its labor-market rules) to stabilize unit-labor costs. The results were striking: Within two or three years, Germany had left its sickbed and was on its way to becoming the colossus of Europe. Merkel seized on this momentum when she came to office in 2005 and made Germany the undisputed, if reluctant, leader of Europe.
- Article Information
- Category: August 2013
- Created on 14 August 2013
By Ryan Barnes, Senior International Trade Specialist, U.S. Department of Commerce
Gibraltar, also known as “The Rock” for the iconic Rock of Gibraltar that towers over the western entrance of the Mediterranean, is a roughly two and a half square mile patch of land on the southern tip of Spain, straddling the Strait of Gibraltar that separates the European continent from Morocco. Once again, tempers have flared in London and Madrid, this time over Gibraltar’s plans to expand a reef in the Mediterranean, souring an otherwise sound partnership between the United Kingdom and Spain.
- Article Information
- Category: Roundtables
- Created on 04 June 2013
On June 4, 2013, The European Institute welcomed Philippe G. Nell, Head of the Americas Division at the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, to discuss the challenges that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will pose for Switzerland and its strong economic ties with both the EU and the U.S. Calling the TTIP “a huge development in global trade policy”, Mr. Nell outlined the main options for Switzerland: negotiating a free trade agreement with the U.S. after the conclusion of TTIP; negotiating TTIP membership after the fact; or lastly, seeking to eliminate specific TTIP disadvantages for Swiss access to the U.S. market through the Swiss-U.S. Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum or multilateral fora.
- Article Information
- Category: May 2013
- Created on 13 May 2013
By Inga Czerny, U.S. Correspondent for the Polish News Agency
The ongoing reform of the U.S. immigration laws opens the chance to resolve an issue, which for 20 years has divided Poland and the U.S.-- the tourist visa requirement for Poles traveling to U.S. Yes, Poland, once described by French diplomats as the U.S. Trojan horse in the EU, is one of only three EU countries (together with Romania and Bulgaria) that still are not a part of the Visa Waiver Program, which allows foreign tourists to visit the U.S. without a visa in advance. Why is that? Because the percentage of Poles who are denied visas or who remain in the U.S. for longer than their visas allow, exceeds the rigid legal limit of 3 percent.
- Article Information
- Category: May 2013
- Created on 03 May 2013
For Washington policy wonks it had become the equivalent of waiting for white smoke to emerge from the Vatican. But the selection of a new Pope came a lot more quickly in March than President Obama's appointment of his top international economic advisor Michael Froman as U.S. Trade Representative.
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