UK and the EU will remain the “best of friends” but they will “not be as close as before” after Brexit, the new European Commission president has said. Speaking ahead of talks with the PM, Ursula von der Leyen warned it would be “impossible” to reach a comprehensive trade deal by the end of 2020.
Britain might be entering a full-blown recession that a no-deal exit from the European Union would compound, blowing a 30 billion-pound hole in the public finances, a budget watchdog said. The Office for Budget Responsibility said the economy probably flat-lined or might have contracted in the second quarter.
The nomination of Christine Lagarde as European Central Bank president on Tuesday has thrust the International Monetary Fund into an early, unanticipated search for a new leader amid a raging trade war that has darkened the outlook for global growth.
EU leaders are meeting in Brussels in a new effort to decide who should get the EU's top jobs, including a successor to Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker. Centre-right leaders from the EU's biggest political group played down the chances of agreement on Sunday on a new Commission president.
The head of the Ministry of Food and Environment (Magrama), Miguel Arias Cañete, highlighted the ”excellent results achieved by Spain in negotiating total allowable catches (TACs) and quotas for 2014.”
When former European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet called last June for the creation of a European finance ministry with power over national budgets the idea seemed fanciful, a distant dream that would take years or even decades to realize, if it ever came to be.
For 2011, the European Commission (EC) intends to maintain fishing quotas for hake in the waters of the North (Gran Sol and North Sea) and increase catches by 15 per cent in waters of the South (from the Bay of Biscay to the Gulf of Cadiz, including the coasts of Galicia and Portugal).
Ten European countries, fearing the impact on agriculture, are openly challenging the EU decision to resume trade talks with Mercosur which is to be officially announced next Monday when the opening of the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit in Spain.
Government deficits in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark and Finland have gone too far over the 3% of GDP reference value for the European Union and need to be brought down through stronger budget consolidation measures, concluded the European Commission in reports considered on Wednesday.
France and six other countries expressed concern before the European Union about the competition consequences for the farm sector in the event of an agreement with Mercosur.