Like it or not, American leadership is back. If you ask Bulgarians, they are ecstatic that the US has dealt a heavy blow to a mafia system the EU tacitly tolerated.
“Borrowing in times of crisis to stabilise the economy makes sense, as long as the question of repayment is not forgotten.”
So says Bundestag president and former German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, a welcome, if unlikely, convert to Keynesian economics. Schäuble is one of Europe’s more divisive politicians, but in this case, it’s hard to argue with him.
It is very easy indeed to get addicted to the fruits of the magic money tree and forget that it needs to be replenished.
The fear of Schäuble, and a growing number of economists, is that the massive stimulus measures designed to pump cash into our economies without providing new goods and services to buy will drive up prices and cause inflation.
Ahead of US President Joe Biden’s maiden trip to Europe in mid-June, Germany and the United States are holding talks in Washington in a bid to settle the long-running row over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The timing of the German-American rendezvous is anything but coincidental.
Germany’s
Funke Media Group reported earlier this week that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s two top aides have been tasked with preparing a compromise deal on Nord Stream 2 – a pipeline meant to bring Russian gas to Western Europe – ahead of Biden’s visit.
A German delegation led by Merkel’s foreign policy aide, Jan Hecker, and her chief economic adviser, Lars-Hendrik Roeller, is holding a crisis meeting on Wednesday with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Trade Representative Katherine Tai in the Washington residence of the German ambassador to the US, Emily Haber.
Slovenian premier Janez Janša is hardly likely to make the shortlist of poster boys for EU integration. Yet thanks to the vagaries of the bloc’s six-month rotating EU Council presidency, the Future of Europe Conference, launched in May, will sit in his hands, and overactive Twitter account, from July until the end of the year.
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