Tag: Europe

Euro collapse ‘possible’ amid deepening divisions over bail-out

It is feasible that the euro will not survive the current sovereign debt crisis sweeping Europe, one of the Treasury’s leading independent forecasters has said.

Under questioning from MPs on the Treasury Select Committee, Stephen Nickell, a member of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and a former Bank of England rate-setter, said a collapse of the single currency was “a possibility”.

Attempting to defy Germany, the eurozone’s powerhouse and the nation that will provide the bulk of any rescue fund, Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders called for the €440bn bail-out fund to be expanded, while Luxembourg Finance Minister Jean-Claude Juncker and Italian counterpart Giulio Tremonti outlined proposals for a joint European government bond.

However, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria on Monday pitched themselves against weaker member states by insisting the rescue package should not be increased. Finance ministers from the 16 member nations were debating the bail-out plans late into the night.

Mr Juncker and Mr Tremonti’s “E-Bonds” would be sold by a European Debt Agency, created as early as this month, to finance as much as 50pc of the issuances by EU members. For troubled members, like Ireland and Portugal, it could fund the entire bond issue.

However, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, quickly dashed hopes by rejecting the idea as unworkable and stating: “I see no need to expand the fund right now.”

As market fears revived, the cost of insurance for Irish, Greek, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish sovereign debt rose. Bond yields were also higher as institutions shunned governments.

Ireland, which faces a crucial vote on its debt reduction plans on Tuesday, offered some rare good news as the government appeared to have won sufficient parliamentary support to push the plans through and qualify for the €85bn bail-out package.

On the euro, Mr Nickell said: “There is a possibility it will collapse but at the moment it is not something to which I subscribe a very high probability.” Asked to estimate the probability he said: “1.7pc”.

Meanwhile, European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council member Nout Wellink said it is not the central bank’s task to rescue euro-area countries with funding problems.

“It’s not up to the ECB to save countries where governments run the risk of becoming insolvent,” Wellink, who also heads the Dutch central bank, said. “We are not here to take over, on our balance sheet, the risks of the national economies of Europe.”

Ten-year bond yields

Greece: 11.393 (+0.39)

Ireland: 7.916 (+0.1)

Portugal: 5.701 (-0.1)

Spain: 5.080 (+0.9)

Italy: 4.461 (+0.7)

The Telegraph

December 8, 2010
U.S. and UK raise terrorism threat level in Europe

(Reuters) – The United States and Britain warned their citizens on Sunday of an increased risk of terrorist attacks in Europe, with Washington saying al Qaeda might target transport infrastructure.

Picture from Daily Mail

The U.S. State Department issued a warning directed at American citizens travelling in Europe, without singling out any specific countries.

Britain raised the terrorism threat level in its advice for citizens travelling to Germany and France to “high” from “general.” It left the threat level at home unchanged at “severe,” meaning an attack is highly likely, and said it agreed with the U.S. assessment for the continent as a whole.

The moves came after a week in which a number of European officials had broadly confirmed media reports that new intelligence indicated possible attacks on the continent.

Western intelligence sources said militants in hideouts in northwest Pakistan had been plotting coordinated attacks on European cities, the plans apparently surviving setbacks from a September surge in drone strikes and an arrest.

The plot involved al Qaeda and allied militants, possibly including European citizens or residents, the sources said. In Washington, U.S. officials said Osama bin Laden and the top al Qaeda leadership were likely behind the plot.

Some security officials have drawn comparisons to the brazen Mumbai attacks in 2008, which targeted city landmarks including luxury hotels and a cafe and killed 166 people.

The U.S. State Department travel alert said public transportation systems and other tourism-related facilities could be targets, noting that past attacks had struck rail, airline and boat services.

“The State Department alerts U.S. citizens to the potential for terrorist attacks in Europe. Current information suggests that al Qaeda and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks,” it said.

“European governments have taken action to guard against a terrorist attack and some have spoken publicly about the heightened threat conditions,” it added.

“You should take these threats seriously, but right now I feel very safe in Paris,” U.S. tourist Tom Steier said.

The alert was posted on its website here

“A growing body of information on terrorist plotting — gathered over time — factored into the decision to issue the alert,” the U.S. official said.

CONSTANT REVIEW French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said France had taken the US warning into account: “The terrorist threat remains high in France … the alert level remains unchanged at red,” he said. That is the second highest level.

A spokesman for Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) declined to detail why the travel advice for France and Germany had been updated.

Reuters

October 4, 2010
Turkey Joins Europe, Electrically Speaking

Turkey may be frustrated in its bid to become part of the European Union, but by the end of September, it will join Europe’s electric grid.

Most electric systems in continental Europe — including those in countries like Poland and Romania — have synchronized currents, allowing electricity to flow easily from country to country. But other nations, including Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Finland and until now, Turkey, have remained separate.

Turkey has been trying to connect for 10 years. Like Europe, it uses an alternating current, with the electrons dancing back and forth 50 times a second, but its system has been out of phase with the European grid.

Now, after extensive work by General Electric to enable Turkey’s system to connect, the country will join up for a one-year trial, according to theEuropean Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity.

The synchronization will include careful monitoring of the alternating current around Turkey and the ability to remotely monitor and control power plants — or even to dump electrical load – if Turkey’s phasing strays too far from Europe’s. If the marching bands start to disagree altogether, the systems can separate again.

Turkey’s electric links run to Bulgaria and Greece, and they have recently been upgraded to carry more energy. A result will be one of the largest interconnected grids in the world, said Luis M. Perez, a General Electric engineer involved in the project.

The join-up also has potentially positive implications for the environment, Mr. Perez said in a telephone interview from Spain.

Turkey, he said, has a lot of hydroelectric projects. In a wet year, it may have more hydro power than it can use; now that power can be exported. And as Europe adds intermittent renewable sources, like wind and solar, a hydroelectric system can function as a convenient shock absorber, throttling back or starting up very quickly to offset variations from other power sources.

Synchronizing with Europe also has positive economic effects, because it will improve the stability of the Turkish grid, according to G.E. The company would not disclose the cost of its work there.

At some point, a technician will enter some keystrokes on a computer, and some electrical switches will move and make the connection to Europe. G.E. is not saying exactly when that join-up will take place.

The Newyork Times

September 8, 2010
Flights between TÜRKİYE and UK are cancelled

Flights across the north of Europe and UK have been grounded for a second day as volcanic ash from Iceland drifts across Europe, posing a potential threat to aircraft. Flights between Turkey and UK are also grounded due to the potential threat to aircraft safety.

Airports remain closed to passengers and air traffic control company NATS has warned restrictions are due to remain in place until 7pm at the earliest.

In a statement, NATS said: “The cloud of volcanic ash continues to cover much of the UK and the eruption in Iceland continues.The statement continued: “In general, the situation cannot be said to be improving with any certainty as the forecast affected area appears to be closing in from east to west.
“We continue to work closely with airports, airlines, and the rest of Europe to understand and mitigate the implications of the volcanic eruption.”

These reports clearly indicate that volcanic eruption will continue to effect thousands of passengers around the world.

Tolga Cakir

email: [email protected]

April 16, 2010
Turkey and Russia Conclude Energy Deals

By SEBNEM ARSU

Published: August 6, 2009

ISTANBUL — Russia and Turkey concluded energy agreements on Thursday that will support Turkey’s drive to become a regional hub for fuel transshipments while helping Moscow maintain its monopoly on natural gas shipments from Asia to Europe.

Turkey granted the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom use of its territorial waters in the Black Sea, under which the company wants to route its so-called South Stream pipeline to gas markets in Eastern and Southern Europe.

In return, a Russian oil pipeline operator agreed to join a consortium to build a pipeline across the Anatolian Peninsula, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and Gazprom affirmed a commitment to expand an existing Black Sea gas pipeline for possible transshipment across Turkey to Cyprus or Israel.

Energy companies in both countries agreed to a joint venture to build conventional electric power plants, and the Interfax news agency in Russia reported that Prime MinisterVladimir V. Putin offered to reopen talks on Russian assistance to Turkey in building nuclear power reactors.

The agreements were signed in Ankara, the Turkish capital, in meetings between Mr. Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who has joined Mr. Putin on several energy projects, attended the ceremony. The Italian company Eni broke ground on the trans-Anatolian oil pipeline this year.

While the offer of specific pipeline deals and nuclear cooperation represented a new tactic by Mr. Putin, the wider struggle for dominance of the Eurasian pipelines is a long-running chess match in which he has often excelled.

As he has in the past, Mr. Putin traveled to Turkey with his basket of tempting strategic and economic benefits immediately after a similar mission by his opponents. A month ago, European governments signed an agreement in Turkey to support the Western-backed Nabucco pipeline, which would compete directly with the South Stream project.

By skirting Russian territory, the Nabucco pipeline would undercut Moscow’s monopoly on European natural gas shipments and the pricing power and political clout that come with it. That may explain why Nabucco, which cannot go forward without Turkey’s support, has encountered a variety of obstacles thrown up by the Russian government, including efforts to deny it vital gas supplies in the East and a customer base in the West.

Turkey and other countries in the path of Nabucco have been eager players in this geopolitical drama, entertaining offers from both sides. Turkish authorities have even tried, without much success, to leverage the pipeline negotiations to further Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, while keeping options with Russia open, too.

“These countries are more than happy to sign agreements with both parties,” Ana Jelenkovic, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said in a telephone interview from London. “There’s no political benefit to shutting out or ceasing energy relations with Russia.”

Under the deal Mr. Putin obtained Thursday, Gazprom will be allowed to proceed with seismic and environmental tests in Turkey’s exclusive economic zone, necessary preliminary steps for laying the South Stream pipe, Prime Minister Erdogan said at a news conference.

After the meeting, Mr. Putin said, “We agreed on every issue.”

The trans-Anatolian oil pipeline also marginally improves Russia’s position in the region. The pipeline is one of two so-called Bosporus bypass systems circumventing the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, which are operating at capacity in tanker traffic.

The preferred Western route is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which allows companies to ship Caspian Basin crude oil to the West without crossing Russian territory; the pipeline instead crosses the former Soviet republic of Georgia and avoids the crowded straits by cutting across Turkey to the Mediterranean.

Russia prefers northbound pipelines out of the Caspian region that terminate at tanker terminals on the Black Sea. The success of this plan depends, in turn, on creating additional capacity in the Bosporus bypass routes. Russia is backing two such pipelines.

Mr. Putin’s offer to move ahead with a Russian-built nuclear power plant in Turkey suggests a sweetening of the overall Russian offer on energy deals with Turkey, while both Western and Russian proposals are on the table.

The nuclear aspect of the deal drew protests. About a dozen Greenpeace protesters were surrounded by at least 200 armored police officers in central Ankara on Thursday.

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow.

The New York Times

August 7, 2009
Net surveillance and filters are a reality for Europe, too

Yaman Akdeniz Lecturer in University of Leeds

The internet is playing such a key role in getting information out of Iran that attention has focused, once again, on how much Iran controls the internet within its borders. Iran controls the internet gateways into the country, and in 2006 the government outlawed any connection faster than 128kbps – until the policy met stiff opposition from business leaders and even members of the Iranian parliament.

It’s easy to point to countries such as Iran, which the Open Net Initiative says maintains some of the most extensive internet controls in the world, while overlooking the increasing filtering and surveillance of the internet in Europe.

Yaman Akdeniz, the director of Cyber-Rights and Cyber-Liberties, spoke at the recent Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum about the increasing number of websites blocked in Turkey. In 2007, the Turkish parliament fast-tracked legislation to regulate the internet, passing the bill in just 59 minutes. Supporters defended the legislation on the grounds that it would protect children. In two years, the number of sites blocked went from zero to 2,600.

But many of the sites being blocked have little to do with protecting children from inappropriate content. Blogger, Google‘s blogging service, was blocked temporarily because one blog was being used to distribute pirated videos of football matches. Richard Dawkins’s site was blocked over complaints from Turkish creationists, and Turkey is one of a handful of countries in the world that completely blocks YouTube, Akdeniz says. The Turkish government had asked YouTube to remove videos seen as defamatory to the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. YouTube’s owner, Google, offered to block Turkish users from seeing the offending videos, but the Turkish government demanded the videos be taken down from the global site.Of course, whether in Iran or Turkey, the filters are ineffectual.

The Turkish government may be able to block YouTube on computers, but they haven’t figured out how to block the service on Apple’s iPhone. But it’s not just on the edge of Europe, in Turkey. Let’s look to the heart of Europe, to Germany, which has just passed a law to crack down on child pornography sites by adding offending sites to a DNS blacklist.

German net activists launched an e-petition opposing the plan. They needed to get at least 50,000 signatures in six weeks for the petition to be read in parliament, but they needed only three days to get that number. When the petition was closed six weeks later, it had 130,000 signatures, making it the most successful e-petition.

Instead of using filtering technology, the internet community suggested targeting the offending sites. Using leaked blacklists – such as Germany was proposing – net activists were able to get 60 sites containing child pornography shut down, by contacting international internet service providers, the internet activist and blogger Markus Beckedahl said.

The German government backed down on completely blocking the sites after civil rights and even victims’ rights groups joined internet activists to oppose the plan. Now, internet users coming to a restricted site will see a government warning telling them viewing child pornography is a crime, but the user will still be able to access the site.

Child pornography is an easy target, and it has long been used as a rallying cry by internet censors. But we often don’t know what is being blocked.

Here in the UK, it is illegal to even look at the list of blocked sites kept by the Internet Watch Foundation. And while a crackdown on websites makes good headlines, net activists question whether the filtering works or tackles the issue of the exploitation of children.

“Instead of effectively investing time and efforts to have illegal content removed from the internet, the German government is choosing censorship and blocking – an easy and dangerous way out,” says Beckedahl.Akdeniz told Deutsche Welle, “In a sense, blocking access to these Web sites does not necessarily make the problem go away. We just push it off our computer screens — whether in Germany or the United Kingdom or any other country- but that doesn’t necessarily mean the serious problem of sexual exploitation of children and child pornography disappear from the Internet.”

Guardian

June 25, 2009