EU leaders to clash over austerity measures at summit as unemployment accelerates

The Telegraph ^ | 3/14/2013 | Bruno Waterfield in Brussels and Denise Roland

[bruinbirdman]

Germany and France will clash at a Brussels summit over the European Union's austerity policies today as official figures showed that unemployment was accelerating in the eurozone.

Anti-austerity protesters gather in Brussels ahead of an EU summit on Thursday

EU leaders are meeting at a regular European Council to discuss how growth can be balanced with the fiscal austerity measures taken to tackle the eurozone debt crisis.

Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, admitted that while the EU had made progress, in tackling the sovereign debt crisis that had threatened the euro, the situation in some countries had reached breaking point.

"Indebtedness of the public and private sectors has been reduced in a number of member states. Exports are increasing in several countries which had large trade deficits before. And this is certainly good news," he said.

"But, as I said earlier, the reality is that at the same time, this may co-exist with still worrying figures in terms of growth and, namely, on unemployment."

Figures published by the EU statistics agency Eurostat on Thursday showed that employment in the euro area slid 0.3pc in the fourth quarter of 2012, a 0.8pc fall year-on-year.

The new figures combined with Eurostat's most recent unemployment statistics showing that jobless rate had hit an all-time high of 11.9pc in January are a grim backdrop for EU leaders just as market turbulence over eurozone debt eases.

Figures showed that southern European Mediterranean nations continued to suffer the steepest drops in employment, with fourth quarter employment in Spain, Portugal and Greece dropping 4.5pc, 4.3pc and 6.5pc year-on-year respectively.

Mr Barroso insisted that the EU needed to stick to the austerity measures and "reforms that are indispensable for European competitiveness" but conceded that more needed

[gleeaikin]

EU austerity summit.

[Paleo Conservative]

Does that mean the participants don’t get limos?

[Son House]

If the EU leaders figure out Macroeconomics before the US leaders, the more you take out of the private sector, the smaller the private sector, they could be in for a huge Economic Expansion, and it’ll take the US many generations to ever “recover”, which was really retarded since 2009 because of Democrat economic policies that were never going to allow for a “recovery”, (Government Spending, Tax Credits(no real cuts) and a dependance on the Federal Reserve to print money to prop up the Democrat Economy).