The winner takes it all

Germany Wins

Germany stood strong against the IMF in the negotiations on the Greek payment. And they won. (Photo by Cameronparkins, on Flickr)

Monday late night the eurozone finance ministers, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank agreed to release the next tranche of money to Greece after three weeks of negotiations.

Additional they agreed that the eurozone countries should lower the interest rates on their loans to Greece. This can lead to loss of taxpayers money, but it will not be a direct loss, and will definitely not be presented as direct subsidies to Greece’s survival.

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Filed under: EUgonzo

This guy can be rather surprising

President Van Rompuy addresses to the press conference of the Eurozone Summit, Brussels, 23 October 2011

President of the Council of the European Union surprised this evening by calling off the the budget just after midnight. (Photo by European Council, on Flickr)

“Today we must decide on our Union’s budget from 2014 to 2020. Maybe this meeting will be long and complicated. Fortunately this issue only comes up every seven years!”

That’s how Herman Van Rompuy introduced the EU budget-meeting this night before presenting his new budget proposal.

Short after he set the EU summit on pause untill noon tomorrow, Friday, in a rather surprising move for the man who usually keeps the press and the EU leaders awake for late nights.

The government leaders from the member states and their delegates now have till friday noon to chew the new proposal and make up their mind before a marathon-meeting will take place tomorrow instead.

According to bureauchief at Reuters, Luke Baker, the new proposal from Rompuy “trims cuts to agriculture and cohesion funds, but keeps headline cuts to 80 bln euros”, and he continues.

“spending on EU administration and energy and telecoms infrastructure must have been cut”.

I’ll be back tomorrow with new updates.

Filed under: EUgonzo, Politics

Weekly Wrap Up:
Why you don’t want EU to be your boss

EU as a boss would be quite similar to the character Michael Scott in the TV-series “The Office”. (Press photo by NBC)

Quite a bit happened since last weeks wrap up.

A whole lot of budget talk – on the budget for 2013 and on the long term EU budget 2014-2020, and on the Greek budget.

On the other hand: Nothing really happende.

Let’s get started.

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Filed under: Weekly Wrap Up

Weekly Wrap Up:
Obama, budget and Greece

President Obama's Election Night Rally

Obama is elected for another term as the president of the United States of America. (Photo by WCHI News, on flickr)

Obama is elected for another term as the president of the United States. What does that mean for Europe?

In Greece the parliament will vote on new austerity measures. At the same time worker unions have arranged massive protests. But is there anyway around these austerity measures?

Finally, Angela Merkel and David Cameron is meeting today in London in order to agree on… well, just anything… before the EU budget summit later this month. Will there be a deal?

Here’s what you need to know in European politics this week boiled into Beyondbrussels.com’s Weekly Wrap Up.

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Filed under: Weekly Wrap Up