the monthly base salary of the most senior bloc officials is 18,370 euros, or $24,830.
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Bureaucracy's Salaries Defended in Europe - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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the highest-paid European Union officials paid taxes equivalent to about 25 percent of their gross salary.
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European Union officials generally pay low taxes,
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Ms. Merkel’s monthly base salary is 21,000 euros,
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Unlike European Union officials, the 27 members of the European Commission are political appointees. Their salaries are much closer to those of national leaders like Ms. Merkel, and in some cases may exceed them.
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José Manuel Barroso, president of the commission, is paid a monthly salary of 25,351 euros, a residence allowance equal to 15 percent of that salary, and allowances for expenses like running a household and schooling for children. The seven vice presidents of the commission earn basic monthly salaries of 22,963 euros.
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Europe Haggles Over New Rules Aimed at Saving Fish Stocks - WSJ.com - 0 views
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Fishermen currently discard nearly a quarter of Europe's total catch on average, and as much as 70% of the hauls in some areas, European Commission data show
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"The law has been made by someone who doesn't know fisheries," said fisherman Geert Luickx as he painted his boat here in this North Sea port. Without financial assistance, more crew, and a bigger boat, he said, he won't be able to comply with the new law.
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Commission data show 80% of stocks in the Mediterranean, including swordfish, and 47% of stocks in the Atlantic, including whiting off Scotland's western coast, are being exploited at levels that will lead to extinction.
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Much of this unwanted catch will likely be sold to fish farmers to feed high-value fish like salmon.
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though there are no legally binding targets for rebuilding fishing stocks.
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How to enforce the new discards law is also under debate. Installing video cameras on all vessels or employing observers to ensure fisherman follow the law has been proposed, but nothing yet has been settled. "We do not have the resources for this kind of enforcement,
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Organizations notes that Norway—which, along with Iceland, is one of two non-EU nations to ban discards—took 20 years to eliminate them.
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A European Energy Executive's Delicate Dance Over Ukraine - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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A European Energy Executive’s Delicate Dance Over Ukraine
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Major Western oil companies like BP and Exxon Mobil have extensive exploration deals in Russia that they fear could be jeopardized if the United States and European Union impose stiffer sanctions on the Putin regime.
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“This is by far the toughest time for European energy security that I have seen,” said Mr. Scaroni. “This issue might stop the supply of Russian gas.”
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The goal is to be able to ship gas to Ukraine at an annual rate of more than three billion cubic meters by the time the heating season begins in the autumn, increasing the flow to up to 10 billion cubic meters annually by next spring. Last year Ukraine imported nearly 30 billion cubic meters of gas, according to a recent report by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
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Part of his message is that, even though gas demand in Europe has been weak because of sluggish economies, imports from Russia actually rose last year by about 16 percent as other sources of supply including Norway and Algeria declined. Europe, he warned, is simply not prepared to do without gas from Russia.
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But with the gradual introduction of more competitive pricing in the European markets, the gas business has become much less attractive for ENI and other big gas middlemen. They are stuck with high-priced long-term contracts to a handful of suppliers like Gazprom and Sonatrach, the Algerian state-owned company, while their customers are able to secure gas at often lower spot market prices — assuming the gas is flowing.
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The pipeline would be a major new source of Russian gas for energy-hungry Europe. But European Union authorities have become deeply skeptical about the South Stream plan, seeing it as just another way of making Europe more dependent on Russian energy.
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Given the balance of interests, tighter sanctions by Western governments might more likely aim to stem the technology that Russia needs to increase its future production, rather than to cut off gas supplies to Europe,
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hose outages in 2006 and 2009 are a top reason that the European Union had already been trying to chip away at Europe’s dependence on Russia even before the Crimea annexation.
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One of the most acrimonious battles is between the bloc’s antitrust authorities and Gazprom. That standoff began in 2011 when the European Commission carried out surprise raids on natural gas companies across Europe, including Gazprom affiliates, seeking evidence of blocking access to networks, charging excessive prices and raising barriers to diversification of supplies.
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That is partly because powerful Eastern European countries like Poland argue that such clean-energy policies would impede their ability to reduce Russian dependence by mining more coal or developing their own shale gas resources.
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nd this month, the European Commission issued rules aimed at reducing the subsidies that governments use to support the wind and solar industries,
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The Cost of Protecting Greece's Public Sector - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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So today, for every seven private employees who have been laid off, only one has left the public sector.
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Greece’s creditors — the troika comprised of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — have made public-sector layoffs a condition for providing the next tranche of the biggest bailout in history.
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Public employment grew by fivefold from 1970 through 2009 — at an annual growth rate of 4 percent, according to according to a recent academic study by Zafiris Tzannatos and Iannis Monogios.. Over the same four decades, employment in the private sector increased by only 27 percent — an annual rate of less than 1 percent.
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According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, in some government agencies overstaffing was considered to be around 50 percent. Yet so bloated were the managerial ranks that one in five departments did not have any employees apart from the department head, and less than one in 10 had over 20 employees.
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Wages in the public sector were on average almost one and half times higher than in the private sector.
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Public sector wages account for some 27 percent of the government’s total expenditures.
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Will bank supervision in Ohio and Austria be similar? A transatlantic view of the Singl... - 0 views
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At the inception of the euro, it was thought possible to have a centralised monetary authority and decentralised bank supervision, but the inability to separate sovereign-debt problems from those of bank stability has led the leaders of the member states of the EU to agree to centralise supervision in the Single Supervisory Mechanism.
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The states retained their powers to supervise the small number of state-chartered banks that seemed little threat to the stability of the new more tightly regulated national system.
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What was not anticipated was that the more stable national banks would fail to adequately supply credit to the economy.
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States, not the federal government, regulated securities markets and insurance, leaving little oversight for interstate business.
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The 1930s New Deal reforms added more agencies, including the Securities Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, complicating political oversight by giving them distinctive missions,
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Yet, it was the trust companies, lacking access to emergency liquidity that caused the 1907 crisis to erupt and spread to the banks.
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To remedy these defects, the Federal Reserve System, established in 1913, was to act as a lender of last resort, bringing all systemically important institutions – national banks , large state banks and trust companies – under the federal supervision of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency or the Federal Reserve banks.
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Consequently, when onerous rules, such as the prohibition on branch banking prevented banks from financing the emerging giant corporations, markets, assisted by more lightly regulated trust and insurance companies, stepped in.
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But, they have not converged, especially with regard to state banks that often pressure state regulators.
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Surveillance of a bank is not dependent on the geographic scope of its operations, as in the US, but on its systemic significance measured in several dimensions and whether it receives financial assistance from the European Stability Mechanism.
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the ECB’s direct authority is more encompassing.
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The ECB will not be directly involved in crisis management and bank resolution, which will be the responsibility of the national authorities. This autonomy will not be incentive compatible until EU directives are adopted for a unified deposit insurance system and a funded single resolution authority.
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Oil tanker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
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Oil tankers are often classified by their size as well as their occupation. The size classes range from inland or coastal tankers of a few thousand metric tons of deadweight (DWT) to the mammoth ultra large crude carriers (ULCCs) of 550,000 DWT.
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The expense was significant: for example, in the early years of the Russian oil industry, barrels accounted for half the cost of petroleum production.[10]
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While a typical T2 tanker of the World War II era was 532 feet (162 m) long and had a capacity of 16,500 DWT, the ultra-large crude carriers (ULCC) built in the 1970s were over 1,300 feet (400 m) long and had a capacity of 500,000 DWT.[29]
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"Supertankers" are the largest tankers, including very large crude carriers (VLCC) and ULCCs with capacities over 250,000 DWT. These ships can transport 2,000,000 barrels (320,000 m3) of oil/318 000 metric tons.[46] By way of comparison, the United Kingdom consumed about 1.6 million barrels (250,000 m3) of oil per day in 2009.[47] ULCCs, commissioned in the 1970s, were the largest vessels ever built, but the longest ones have already been scrapped; only a few ULCCs remain in service, none of which are more than 400m long.[48] Because of their great size, supertankers often can not enter port fully loaded.[28] These ships can take on their cargo at off-shore platforms and single-point moorings.[28] On the other end of the journey, they often pump their cargo off to smaller tankers at designated lightering points off-coast.[28] A supertanker's routes are generally long, requiring it to stay at sea for extended periods, up to and beyond seventy days at a time.[28]
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As demand grew moderately in the United States and Western Europe, expanding economies such as China fueled exponential growth in demand.[60]
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The average one-year time charter rate for a 5-year-old tanker of 280,000 metric tons of deadweight varied from $56,500 per day in December 2005 to $53,000 per day in September 2007 with a high of $64,500 per day in September 2006.[59]
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Europe's Galileo GPS Plan Limps to Crossroads - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Galileo — first proposed in 1994, more than 20 years after America started its own system, and initially promoted as a big potential moneymaker — “can’t give a direct return on investment, but politically it is very important for Europe to have its own autonomous system,” said Mr. Magliozzi of Telespazio.
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It is also designed to be far more precise than the American version.
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Galileo has been financed almost entirely by the European Union since 2007. It is the first and so far only major infrastructure project managed by the European Commission.
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Critics mocked it as “the Common Agricultural Policy in the sky,” a reference to Europe’s program of subsidies for farmers, which eats up nearly 40 percent of the union’s total budget.
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A 2011 report to the European Parliament listed a catalog of troubles, noting that Galileo had been particularly blighted in its early years by a familiar problem: political pressure from individual countries to skew the project in favor of their own companies and other immediate interests.
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It quoted the OHB chief, Berry Smutny, describing Galileo as doomed to fail without major changes and “a waste of E.U. taxpayers’ money championed by French interests.” Mr. Smutny, who disputed the comments attributed to him, was fired by the company.
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Astrium won an initial Galileo contract for four satellites. But contracts worth $1 billion for 22 more satellites have all gone to OHB, now one of the primary corporate beneficiaries of Galileo. British companies have also done well, a boon that has helped erode Britain’s initial hostility to the project.
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Washington also asked why, when many European nations were increasingly unable to fulfill their military obligations as members of NATO because of defense cuts, they wanted to splash billions on a project that replicated an existing system paid for by the United States.
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They acknowledge that Galileo, most of whose services will be free like those of GPS, will not earn much.
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European Union Leaders Gather in Brussels Over Budget - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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He has threatened to veto any new budget that does not at least freeze spending,
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“Europeans who are attached to the European Union are now in a minority.” Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said they felt little or no attachment, up seven percentage points since 2010. In Britain, only 27 percent felt attached to the union.
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Ahead of this week’s negotiations, at least seven countries, mostly those that contribute more to Europe’s coffers than they get back in farm subsidies and other payments, have already warned that they may veto a budget that does not give them a better deal. Among these is Austria, where, according to Mr. Ehrenhauser, who sits on the European Parliament’s budgetary control committee, “there is a critical mass building against the European Union.”
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The rethink, which would have scrapped spending on agricultural subsidies, ran into heavy opposition and stalled
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All long-term budget decisions require unanimous approval by the member states, a rule first established when the grouping, then known as the European Economic Community, had just six members, not 27. The power of veto makes any major change to spending all but impossible and entrenches the status quo, no matter how unworkable or unpopular.
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“It is extremely difficult to change anything,” Mr. Sapir said. “Everyone is always fighting at the margins over narrow national interests. They try to make sure they get money for their own countries and that cuts go to other countries.”
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After months of arguments, two broad alliances have emerged. The first comprises countries like Britain, Germany and Sweden that are big net contributors and want to keep a tighter rein on spending. The second, known as the “Friends of Cohesion,” after a class of development grants aimed at less wealthy areas, includes Poland, Spain, Portugal and others that want to make sure the union’s largess does not dry up.
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The European Commission, however, has been far less forthcoming. It told Mr. Ehrenhauser that it could not give a breakdown of spending in recent years on wine because that would require “lengthy research” and “it cannot consider doing this at the present time because of other priorities.”
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Africa losing billions from fraud and tax avoidance | Global development | The Guardian - 0 views
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Africa losing billions from fraud and tax avoidance
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Africa is losing more than $50bn (£33bn) every year in illicit financial outflows as governments and multinational companies engage in fraudulent schemes aimed at avoiding tax payments to some of the world’s poorest countries, impeding development projects and denying poor people access to crucial services.
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African Union’s (AU) high-level panel on illicit financial flows and the UN economic commission for Africa (Uneca).
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In total, the continent lost about $850bn between 1970 and 2008, the report said. An estimated $217.7bn was illegally transferred out of Nigeria over that period, while Egypt lost $105.2bn and South Africa more than $81.8bn.
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Nigeria’s crude oil exports, mineral production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa, and timber sales from Liberia and Mozambique are all sectors where trade mispricing occurs.
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The bulk of Africa’s illicit transfers originated from west Africa, where 38% of all funds leaving the continent were generated. Profit-making activities in north Africa accounted for 28% of the flows, while southern Africa, central Africa and eastern Africa each made up about 10%, the report showed.
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Martin Feldstein: The Euro Zone's Double Failure - WSJ.com - 0 views
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but that they don't constitute an official EU treaty and therefore cannot be enforced by the commission and other EU institutions.
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Italy has a good shot at persuading investors that it has a favorable long-term budget outlook. Its fiscal deficit is now less than 4% of GDP.
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If the new government can now enact changes in labor rules and investment incentives that raise GDP growth to a 2% annual rate, Italy's ratio of debt to GDP could fall to 60% in less than 15 years.
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Greece cannot hope to get its deficit under control fast enough to stabilize its debt and attract private lenders. Instead of remaining a permanent ward of Germany and the IMF, Greece should default on its debt, leave the euro zone, and return to a more competitive drachma.
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But he should also make it clear that lending against private collateral should not be used by commercial banks to free up funds to purchase newly issued government bonds
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As Italy shows its determination and its ability to reduce future deficits, it should be welcomed back to the capital markets.
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At Anchor Off Lithuania, Its Own Energy Supply - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The price of natural gas in Lithuania was 15 percent higher than the European average last year, according to the European Commission. Only Bulgaria, where Gazprom has a near monopoly, paid more. Gazprom also has an ownership stake in Lithuania’s natural gas distribution network. Part of Lithuania’s electrical infrastructure is still controlled from Moscow, too, and it is not yet possible to connect the country to the European grid.
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Lithuania also does not use oil shale, which provides much of the electricity for Estonia, the third Baltic member of the European Union.
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Lithuania used to rely on nuclear power to supply most of its electricity. But as a condition of joining the union in 2004, the country agreed to shut down its Chernobyl-style nuclear power station at Ignalina.
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Klaipedos Nafta, a state-controlled oil terminal operator, is leasing the ship, formally known as a floating gas storage and regasification unit, from a Norwegian company, Hoegh, in a 10-year deal for 430 million euros, or $560 million.
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Lithuania would need to import L.N.G. at prices 5 to 10 percent less than Gazprom charges for its gas to ensure the project breaks even; Lithuanian officials said the price of L.N.G. imports could be as much as 20 percent less than Gazprom charges.
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“We will be able for the first time in our history to negotiate, because we have alternative sources,”
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But Mr. Masiulis said his greatest challenge was overcoming the Lithuanian bureaucracy and fending off attempts to give the project “a shade of corruption.”
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How Jean Tirole's Work Helps Explain the Internet Economy - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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How Jean Tirole’s Work Helps Explain the Internet Economy
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He also said that industries should be regulated differently depending on their distinct characteristics.
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Many Internet companies, for instance, give their products away free, which means that antitrust law built on pricing is irrelevant. But a result is they grow so fast that they can quickly become monopolies.
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“He’s helping us think about what is one of the greatest challenges of our time, how to deal with what feel like friendly monopolists,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor who studies Internet policy and antitrust. “Amazon, Google and the others give us all this stuff for free or lower prices, so we love them, but are they dangerous in ways we don’t always see?”
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In the 2002 paper with Jean-Charles Rochet, Mr. Tirole defined two-sided markets, or markets that “get both sides on board” by charging more to one set of customers in order to increase demand by others.
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In the tech industry, it explains why Google, Facebook and Twitter offer their services free – the more people who use them, the more advertisers they can attract. Likewise, Amazon lowered the price of its new phone to 99 cents in part because smartphones succeed when they have a lot of apps – and developers won’t want to build apps for Amazon’s phone unless a lot of people are using it.
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For regulators, tech companies have been a riddle in part because they do not follow the behavior of typical monopolies: Many do not charge for their products, and companies that offer entirely different products are nonetheless competitors. For instance, Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, argued in a speech on Monday that Google’s biggest competitor in search is Amazon and in mobile is Facebook — even though neither one is a search engine.
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“Inspired by him and others like him, our effort was to try to move beyond the traditional understanding of something like an aluminum cartel who just raised their prices on aluminum and everything got more expensive,” said Mr. Wu, who was a senior adviser to the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust matters.
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For consumers, the costs include absorbing advertisers’ ad spending by paying more for their products, being tracked and shown personalized ads, and giving up privacy.
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our end-users do not internalize the impact of their purchase on the other side of the market.”
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Arctic Shipping Soars, Led by Russia and Lured by Energy - 0 views
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Although the Arctic provides a shorter route around the world than the traditional course through warmer waters, it is not necessarily cheaper.
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The ships were expensive to build and operate,
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The first commercial Chinese vessel and first container ship to transit the NSR, the Yong Sheng, commissioned by state-owned Cosco shipping, arrived in Rotterdam on September 10 laden with steel and industrial machinery. Its 33-day journey from the Chinese port of Dailan was nine days and 2,800 nautical miles shorter than the conventional voyage through the Suez Canal
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The Arctic Council's 2009 report estimated that the NSR offers from a 35 percent to 60 percent savings in distance for ships traveling between Europe and the Far East. Ships also can circumvent regional conflicts and the risk of piracy near the coast of Africa or in the Straits of Malacca off Malaysia.
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Hiring charges for mandatory escort by Rosatomflot's icebreakers vary, but the average cost is about $200,000,
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the cost of escort through the NSR is roughly equivalent to that of passage through the Suez Canal.
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Because "container" shipping of goods, (as opposed to bulk shipping of raw commodities like ores and fuel), relies heavily on on-time delivery, Carmel thinks it unlikely the NSR ever will become a major pathway for this kind of global commerce.
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primary focus on the 22 percent of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and natural gas resources to be found in the far north.
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Just last month, Novatek signed a deal to supply China National Petroleum Corporation for 15 years with fuel sent from Yamal by tanker