Daily digest: Finland throws sand in the machinery again

Posted on | September 22, 2011 | No Comments

Finnish player blocking a Greek player in a Handball tournament in 2008. Finland has nearly tipped the bailout for Greece, and now they veto against Bulgaria and Romania to become members of the Schengen-area. (by Oscar von Bonsdorff, on Flickr)

It has started to become a habit for the nordic country. First they want collateral for the Greek bailout, and this time with the Dutch, Finland is opposing Bulgaria and Romania to become part of the Schengen-agreement causing a lot of trouble for the polish presidency of EU. Bulgaria and Romania’s bid to become part of the Schengen-area will be debated in a meeting in Brussels today, but Finland and The Netherlands has already stated they will veto to bid because of concerns about corruption and organized crime in the countries. The polish presidency will propose a “two-step” compromise, which is also expected to fail.

While everybody else is trying to phase out their nuclear energy after the disasters in Japan this year, Russia recently announced that they will extend the life of a controversial generation of nuclear reactors like the one that exploded at Chernobyl in 1986.

Standard & Poors – one of the most powerful rating agencies – has lay their eyes on Italy. A couple of days ago they decided to downgrade the sovereign rating for the country struggling with debt. Yesterday S&P decided to downgrade ratings for seven of Italy’s banks. Unicredit, Italy’s biggest bank, escaped the downgrade but was put on negative outlook.

A high-ranked senior executive who worked along side French president Nicolas Sarkozy in a 1995 election campaign, is being questioned by police over illegal funding for that campaign. Sarkozy has recently been accused of using illegal finances in his 2007 electoral campaign.

“The Greek government must feel like the ancient Spartans – vastly outnumbered and under attack. But instead of 300 Spartans taking on more than a million Persians, in this battle Greece has new foes – the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” this is the beginning of business reporter at BBC Will Smale’s article on how Greece will meet its austerity targets.

Category: Daily Digest
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