The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Angela Merkel

  • Merkel rules out more debt relief for Greece

    Merkel rules out more debt relief for Greece

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out cancelling any of Greece’s debt, saying banks and creditors have already made substantial cuts.

    But Mrs. Merkel told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper she still wanted Greece to stay in the eurozone.

    Greece’s left-wing Syriza party won last weekend’s election with a pledge to have half the debt written off, the BBC reports.

    Its finance minister said the “troika” of global institutions overseeing Greek debt was a “rotten committee.”

    The troika – the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – had agreed a €240billion (£179billion; $270billion) bailout with the previous Greek government.

    But new Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has refused to work with the troika to renegotiate the bailout terms and has already begun to roll back the austerity measures the creditors had demanded of the previous government.

    Meanwhile, European Union economic and financial affairs commissioner, Pierre Moscovici, told the BBC that Greece had to honour its previous commitments, although he said he wanted Greece to remain in the eurozone.

    Mrs. Merkel told the Hamburger Abendblatt: “I do not envisage fresh debt cancellation.”

    She said: “There has already been voluntary debt forgiveness by private creditors. Banks have already slashed billions from Greece’s debt.”

    Greece still has a debt of €315billion – about 175 per cent of gross domestic product – despite some creditors writing down debts in a renegotiation in 2012.

  • Putin tops Forbes powerful persons’ list

    Putin tops Forbes powerful persons’ list

    For the second year running, Russian President, Vladmir Putin, has been voted the world’s most powerful person by Forbes.

    In a list of the planet’s 100 most powerful people published on Forbes website, the man who strong-armed his way into possession of Crimea and waged an ugly proxy war in neighbouring Ukraine led a strong list that included 17 heads of state, governing nations with a combined Gross Domestic Product of about $48 trillion and 39 company chief executives that control over $3.6 trillion in annual revenues.

    Putin pushed into second place, United States President, Barack Obama, who had topped previous lists, except in 2010, when Hu Jintao, the former political and military leader of China, was number one.

    Chinese President Xi Jinping, who some have described  as his country’s most powerful ruler since Mao Zedong, is number three, followed by Pope Francis in fourth.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel placed fifth, while U.S Federal Reserve chief, Janet Yellen, moved into sixth position, followed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and European Central Bank chief, Mario Draghi.

    Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin are joint ninth and British Prime Minister, David Cameron, completed the top 10.

    There are 12 newcomers in the 2014 list, including two recently elected leaders – Narendra Modi of India and Egypt’s Abdel el-Sisi.

    Others are – Alibiba founder, Jack Ma and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State.

     

    The top 10 powerful people in the world

     

    S/N             Names                               Ages                Countries

    1               Vladmir Putin                      62                    Russia

    2               Barack Obama                     53                     U.S

    3              Xi Jinping                               61                    China

    4              Pope Francis                         77                   Argentina

    5    Angela Merkel                        60                    Germany

    6     Janet Yallen                            68                     U.S

    7    Bill Gates                                 59                      U.S

    8   Mario Draghi                            67                     Italy

    9   Sergey Brin                               41                     U.S

    9    Larry Page                                41                      U.S

    10     David Cameron                    48                     UK

     

     

  • Merkel would accept ‘UK exit’ from EU

    Merkel would accept ‘UK exit’ from EU

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly warned David Cameron she would rather see the United Kingdom leave the European Union than compromise over the principle of free movement.

    Der Spiegel news magazine quotes German government sources as saying she feared the UK was near a “point of no return.”

    Chancellor George Osborne dismissed the story as speculation about how Germany may react to a future UK policy shift.

    But he insisted ministers would act in the national interest in addressing public concerns about immigration.

    He told BBC Breakfast that concerns about abuses of the benefit system were causing “great unhappiness” but the UK would approach future negotiations in a “calm and rational” way.

    Mr. Cameron wants to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s continued membership before holding an in-out referendum.

    The prime minister has insisted that freedom of movement of workers would be “at the very heart of my renegotiation strategy for Europe.”

    But Mrs. Merkel is said by the magazine to have made clear she will withdraw her support for the UK’s continued EU membership if he continues to push for migration reform which requires fundamental changes to the principles of the organisation.

    The German chancellor’s warning to Mr. Cameron is reported to have come in a meeting on the fringes of the latest EU summit in Brussels last week.

     

  • Merkel wants hurdles removed to EU-Mercosur free trade pact

    Merkel wants hurdles removed to EU-Mercosur free trade pact

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel assured Brazil that she will do her utmost to bring to a successful end the 15-year-old negotiation of a free trade deal between the European Union (EU) and South America’s Mercosur trade bloc.

    Merkel, stopping in the Brazilian capital on her way to see the German soccer team play in the World Cup on Monday, said Germany and Brazil, the two largest economies in Europe and Latin America, had much to gain from more trade and investment.

    “We have a lot of interest in reaching a free trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union,” she said in a statement to reporters after meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. “I will do what is possible so that we can take a step forward and overcome the obstacles.”

    Merkel and Rousseff discussed expanded cooperation in scientific research and the energy sector, including renewable energy, and joint ventures to increase investment flows.

    But freeing up trade flows between the two countries has been held back by the drawn-out negotiations of a free trade accord between Europe and the Mercosur trade bloc formed by Brazil, Argentina,Uruguay, Paraguay and, more recently, Venezuela.

    Off and on talks have been held since 1999 and were taken up again in 2010 after a six-year freeze. Talks have floundered in the past over European agricultural subsidies and the opening of Mercosur industries to competition from Europe.

  • Ukraine crisis: NATO suspends co-operation with Russia

    Ukraine crisis: NATO suspends co-operation with Russia

    Nato foreign ministers have agreed to suspend all practical civilian and military co-operation with Russia.

    In a strongly worded statement, they condemned Russia’s “illegal” annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and praised the Ukrainian government’s “restraint”.

    Moscow is believed to have massed tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s eastern border in recent days, causing alarm in Kiev and the West.

    Nato’s top official said there was no evidence troops had been pulled out.

    On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel he had ordered a partial withdrawal of Russian troops.

    But Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters: “Unfortunately, I cannot confirm that Russia is withdrawing its troops. This is not what we are seeing.”

    Ministers from the 28-member bloc gathered in Brussels for their first meeting since Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

    They agreed to suspend Nato co-operation with Russia in a number of bodies but added that dialogue in the Nato-Russia Council could continue, as necessary, at ambassadorial level and above “to allow us to exchange views, first and foremost on this crisis. We will review Nato’s relations with Russia at our next meeting in June”.

    They are also looking at options including situating permanent military bases in the Baltic states to reassure members in Eastern Europe. Russia’s actions in Ukraine have rattled nerves in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were part of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

    Nato jets will take part in air patrols in the region later in a routine exercise that analysts say has taken on added significance due to the crisis. Several Nato countries, including the UK, US and France, have offered additional warplanes.

    Mr Rasmussen said Nato’s message was clear: it stood by its allies, it stood by Ukraine and it stood by the international system of rules that had developed in recent decades.

    He urged Russia to be part of a solution “respecting international law and Ukraine’s borders”.

    Answering questions from reporters, he said he expected Nato-Russia co-operation over Afghanistan – including counter-narcotics operations – to continue.

     

    Ukrainian ministers were also in Brussels to meet their Nato counterparts. And joint Nato-Ukraine statement issued after their meeting announced that they would intensify co-operation and promote defence reforms in Ukraine through training and other programmes.

    Speaking earlier, Mr Rasmussen praised what he termed the “exemplary restraint” shown by the Ukrainian government and military, and welcomed the advent of “solid democracy” in Ukraine.

    “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine challenges our vision of a Europe whole free and at peace,” Mr Rasmussen also said.

    But despite the uncompromising language, Mr Rasmussen concluded by saying: “The only path to follow is the political and diplomatic path.”

    In Moscow, the Russian foreign ministry warned Kiev against any attempts to join Nato, saying such efforts in the past had “led to a freezing of Russian-Ukrainian political contacts, a ‘headache’ in Nato-Russia relations and… a deepening split within Ukrainian society”.

    Meanwhile, Russian energy firm Gazprom has announced an increase of the price it charges Ukraine for gas from Tuesday.

    Gazprom’s chief executive Alexei Miller said the price of Russian gas for Ukraine had gone up to $385.5 (£231) per 1,000 cubic metres in the second quarter of 2014 from the previous rate of $268.5.

    Mr Miller added that Ukraine’s unpaid gas bills to Russia stood at $1.7bn.

  • German Chancellor Merkel fractures pelvis in skiing accident

    German Chancellor Merkel fractures pelvis in skiing accident

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel has fractured a bone in her pelvis in a cross-country skiing accident in Switzerland, her spokesman said.

    She will have to remain lying down as much as possible in the next three weeks and several visits will be cancelled, Steffen Seibert said.

    She also suffered heavy bruising in the accident, in the alpine Engadine region of eastern Switzerland.

    Ms Merkel was not skiing fast at the time, the spokesman added.

    He called the injury “severe bruising linked with a partial fracture on the left, rear part of the pelvis”.

    Immediately after the accident, during the Christmas holiday in December, Ms Merkel was not aware that part of her pelvis had been fractured, the spokesman said. It was a visit to her doctor on Friday that revealed the exact injury.

    He did not give details about how it happened. She was skiing near the resort of St Moritz.

    Ms Merkel still intends to chair a cabinet meeting on Wednesday – the first gathering of all her coalition ministers. She is now walking with the aid of crutches.

    But mostly she will be working from home. She has cancelled a trip to Poland this week and will not receive Luxembourg’s new prime minister Xavier Bettel in Berlin, the spokesman said.

    Ms Merkel’s injury comes just days after fellow German Michael Schumacher’s life-threatening skiing accident in France.

    The Formula One motor racing star, who retired in 2012, is in a medically-induced coma and has had brain surgery after slamming his head on a rock while skiing off-piste at the French alpine resort of Meribel.

    His injury has sparked much debate about speed on the slopes and the risks some skiers take.

     

  • Merkel injured in skiing accident

    Merkel injured in skiing accident

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel has fractured a bone in her pelvis in a cross-country skiing accident in Switzerland, her spokesman says.

    She will have to remain lying down as much as possible in the next three weeks and several visits will be cancelled, Steffen Seibert said.

    BBC reports that she also suffered severe bruising in the accident.

     

  • U.S ambassador summoned over mobile row

    Germany has summoned the United States ambassador in Berlin over claims that the U.S monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.

    Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle will meet U.S envoy John Emerson later in what is seen as an unusual step between close allies.

    Mrs. Merkel has demanded a “complete explanation” of the claims, which are threatening to overshadow an European Union summit.

    She discussed the issue with U.S President Barack Obama on Wednesday.

    President Obama told Mrs. Merkel the U.S was not monitoring her calls and would not in future, the White House said.

    However, it left open the question of whether calls had been listened to in the past.

    French President Francois Hollande had already called for the issue to be put on the agenda of the summit – where EU leaders are due to discuss Europe’s digital economy, economic recovery and immigration – following reports that millions of French calls had been monitored.

    BBC reports that other leaders are also likely to want further clarification from Washington over the activities of its National Security Agency (NSA) in Europe.