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French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said Friday that Brexit advocates must choose between accepting the deal negotiated by London and Brussels for leaving the EU or risk “economic disaster” and blasted “a number of lying politicians in Britain”. “The choice now faced by British political leaders who have advocated Brexit is to renounce their absurd political promise or face economic disaster, with the British people the main victims,” Le Maire said at a Paris forum on reforming the World Trade Organization. “What does Brexit demonstrate? It shows that leaving the common European market has an exorbitant economic cost,” he...

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has called for Europe to become an “empire” to compete with the United States after the country’s President Emmanuel Macron called for an EU army to defend against the NATO ally. “It’s about Europe having to become a kind of empire, as China is. And how the U.S. is,” Mr Le Maire told Germany’s Handelsblatt. Adding that it would be a “peaceful empire,” the economics and finance minister touted the progressive government’s green credentials, saying that the European empire should “rel[y] on green growth. Neither China nor the U.S., who are leaving the Paris...

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has called for Europe to become an “empire” to compete with the United States after the country’s President Emmanuel Macron called for an EU army to defend against the NATO ally.

The French government insisted on Sunday that Washington should expect united retaliation from Europe to further tariff increases after Germany signaled it was prepared to negotiate. With Germany’s powerful car industry facing the threat of higher U.S. duties, Chancellor Angela Merkel said last Thursday she would back a lowering of European Union levies on imports of U.S. cars. “If tomorrow there is an increase in tariffs, like in the car industry, our reaction should be united and strong to show that Europe is a united and sovereign power,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said. “The question is no longer...

France’s economy minister Bruno Le Maire said Sunday that Air France employees must resume dialogue with bosses and restart efforts to improve the company’s competitiveness, otherwise the airline “will disappear”. “I appeal to the sense of responsibility of everyone involved: flight crew, ground staff, the pilots asking for unjustified pay increases,” he said on French TV news channel BFMTV. “Take responsibility — Air France’s survival is at stake.” Le Maire added that “the state is not there to pay off the company’s debts”. …

The EU will soon unveil a plan for taxing major internet companies like Amazon and Facebook by imposing a levy of two to six percent on revenues in every country where they operate, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday. “The range will be from two to six percent, but closer to two than to six,” Le Maire told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper. The European Commission has said it will present by end March an overhaul of its tax rules, which currently allow US digital economy giants to report their income from across the bloc in any...

French finance minister Bruno Le Maire called Thursday for the European Union to become a cohesive whole, as unified and ambitious as the United States, adding that it was time for Britain to face the consequences of Brexit. The remarks come as the EU emerges from a rocky period of rising nationalism and challenges to its unity. Talks between the EU and Britain, which voted last year to secede, deadlocked in Brussels on Thursday, leaving future trade relations in doubt. “I think what we need within the Eurozone is more unity and more ambition,” Le Maire said during an event...