This is the number of times the American Congress raised the debt ceiling in the last ten years. This is revealing systemic problems and, at some point, the incapacity of…
Crisis
is the amount that a new austerity plan is supposed to save to Italian public finances. The plan aims to bring Italy’s public deficit down to 0.2% of GDP by…
After a huge transfer-loan of €110 billion last year, Greece is once again pending on EU-IMF charity in order to avoid default, or at least, to benefit from a smooth default (assuming such a thing exists). Meanwhile, the Greek economy is paralyzed and tensions grow inside Greece as well as in other EU member states.
This is the amount of the public debt of Greece. Officials from the Eurozone are debating right now the possibility to accord additional money to the Greek government in a…
Portugal has undergone a huge change. There is a completely new political leadership: younger, better prepared, and much more open to the civil society. But even this “right wing” government lack the theory to understand the causes of the crisis Portugal currently faces, and thus seem unable to deliver real change.
After being seriously blamed by Italian Minister of finances Giulio Tremont last month, Switzerland finally finds itself largely approved on its private savings policy in the recently revealed by the EU Commission report on enforcement of taxation on savings regulation. As a matter of fact, France is the only EU country to accuse Swiss banks to implement mechanisms allowing some of the savings on Swiss bank accounts to avoid taxation in accordance with the agreement signed with the EU in 2004. The conflict opposing Switzerland and the EU on savings taxation lasts from several years now. Here is a brief history of the issue by Pierre Bessard, IREF fellow.
Moody’s rating agency warned on Friday on Italy’s public debt and mentioned the reviewing of Italy’s credit rating for a possible downgrade. This change, if it happens, would increase the government’s borrowing costs and have a very negative impact on public finances.
Portugal is the third EU country after Greece and Ireland to need financial bail-out in order to avoid bankruptcy of the State. How did things go so wrong and for what reason – is it only the fault of the international financial crisis, or – more probably – bad management of public finances from the Potuguese government? Ricardo Campelo de Magalhães answers those questions in the light of a detailed analysis of Portuguese fiscal policy.
IREF participated to the 8th European Resource Bank held in Yalta, Ukraine. Representatives from 50 think tanks joined the event and discussed the necessity to foster cooperation in order to…
This seems not totally unrealistic since, unlike other euro zone countries, Finland requires approval from parliament before taking part in EU bailouts. And without unanimous approval from EU member states, there will be no bailout…