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How Macron gave Italian populists a boostThe French president planned budget giveaways to appease protesters are music to Rome ears. Copy LinkCopiedShare via emailShare on XShare on WhatsAppShare on LinkedInFree article usually reserved for subscribersFrench President Emmanuel Macron | Philippe Huegen/AFP via Getty ImagesDecember 11, 20181:02 pm CETBy Silvia Sciorilli BorrelliROME 鈥?Europe s best friend, Emmanuel Macron, handed Italian populists a helping hand by announcing a spending spree of his own.During a 13-minute televised address to the nation on Monday night, the French president promised a minimum wage increase and tax cuts, including for low-income pensioners,聽in an attempt to appease the Yellow
stanley cup Jacket protesters. The announced measures could push France s budget-deficit-to-GDP ratio to 3.5 percent, well over the EU s 3 percent ceiling, according to an anonymous government source quoted by French daily Les Echos.Because of those very same rules, Italy faces the prospect of the European Commission launching against it an excessive deficit procedure EDP based on Rome s exorbitant public debt. The country s populi
stanley italy st government had announced that it would be increasing the budget deficit to 2.4 percent of GDP to fund election promises such as a basic income for all and a pensions overhaul.AdvertisementAdvertisement But but but, Macron said he s cutting taxes a
stanley official website nd increasing public spending ... does [Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre] Walw 2021: Cartoons of the year
Why Romania and Bulgaria are in the dog-houseThe Commission is struggling to find evidence of sustainable rule-of-law and anti-corruption reforms in Bulgaria and Romania.Copy LinkCopiedShare via emailShare on XShare on WhatsAppShare on LinkedInJanuary 29, 20154:40 am CETBy Andrew GardnerBulgaria and Romania have now entered their ninth year under unprecedented supervision by the European Commission, marked yesterday by the release of another report on their judiciary systems and efforts to fight corruption.With the reports now almost a ritual on the calendar, it is perhaps worth recalling why the Commissions
stanley quencher co-operation and verification mechanism CVM was created. A common European perception at the time that both countries entered the European Union in 2007 was that Romanias and Bulgarias judiciaries were bad and corrupt, their institutions uninterested in fig
stanley thermobecher hting corruption, their governments slothful in reform; the cumulative effect of this lack of law, political will, and change was and many in Romania and Bulgaria would agree with this to distance ordinary people from their judges, their politicians, their state and their Europe.In the case of Bulgaria, the Commission and the EUs other member states were worried by the links of gangsters to politicians, and so they began monitoring organised crime. The concern soon s
stanley thermos pread to Romania, with EU officials warning behind the scenes in 2009 that the economic crisis could result in organised crime capturing some Romanian s
