“We’re optimistic about Sunday’s election and the future of Paraguay if we can agree on long term state policies, but something is for certain: democracy in Paraguay is here to stay” said Ricardo Caballero Aquino, Chargé d’affaires of the Paraguayan embassy in Montevideo who was also positive about future relations with Unasur and Mercosur.
Austria vowed to stick to its bank secrecy laws, defying renewed pressure to follow Luxembourg in revealing information on European Union depositors and criticized the United States and Britain for permitting tax havens.
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi urged indebted governments to move beyond spending cuts and tax hikes and introduce reforms that would boost growth and reduce the “tragedy” of unemployment.
Unemployment in the Euro zone reached a new high of 11.9% in January, as an additional 201,000 people joined the jobless ranks in the crisis-battered bloc, latest data showed Friday. The unemployment rate has been increasing relentlessly since the middle of 2011.
US multinational financial service corporation Morgan Stanley has declared that Spain has already got over the worst of the economic crisis and augurs that it “will become the next Germany” in the European Union. This however is challenged by the Financial Times, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and the IMF.
Britain’s future in the European Union would rest on a knife-edge if a referendum was held immediately, according to a research poll carried out for The Times: 40% of voters back an UK exit while 37% want to keep ties with Brussels and 23% do not know.
Germany and France have warned UK Prime Minister David Cameron that Britain cannot pick and choose EU membership terms after he pledged a referendum. PM Cameron said a poll would be held if the Conservatives were returned to power at the next general election, which is expected in 2015.
The European Union is the “most desired strategic partner” of Latinamerica, although with different intensity, according to a report from the International Prospective Institute, IPI, released on Monday in Madrid and ahead of the coming EU/CELAC summit in Santiago de Chile.
The European Union expects to advance cooperation and trade discussions with Mercosur late this month in Chile in the sidelines of the EU/Celac (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), said EU ambassador in Chile, Rafael Dochao Moreno.
The European Union will invest €1.4 million to control African swine fever on the Italian island of Sardinia in 2013. The island is the only place in the EU where African Swine Fever (ASF) is still present.