Free Republic

French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday he viewed talks between US President Donald Trump and EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker as “useful”, but he was “not in favor” of a “vast new trade deal” between the European Union and the United States. “Europe and France never wanted a trade war, and the talks yesterday were therefore useful in as far as they helped scale back any unnecessary tension, and working to bring about an appeasement is useful,” the French leader said after a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in Madrid. “But a good trade discussion… can only be...

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union’s budget commissioner suggested on Wednesday the bloc would be ready to discuss mutual tariff cuts with the United States across a range of products, provided Washington lifts recent punitive tariffs first.

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...

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will offer the leaders of central and eastern Europe on Saturday expanded business ties at a summit in Sofia while seeking to reassure the EU that Beijing is not trying to divide the continent. Li, whose attendance at the seventh such “16+1” summit coincides with an escalating trade war between China and the United States, will also try to dispel growing doubts among some participants about the value of the annual meetings. China has promised billions for development projects in the region as part of its Belt and Road strategy to carve out new export markets,...

Berlin must work with Paris to improve and deepen the European Union, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel urged as his Social Democrats weigh renewing a coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel. France and Germany, once bitter enemies, “have a joint responsibility to develop all of Europe further,” he told AFP, highlighting “reform of the economic and monetary union” as a top priority. Historically, the two countries have been the powerhouse of the economic integration project that became the European Union; but French President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to shore up the 19-nation euro single currency area and deepen European integration are on...

European Union Council President Donald Tusk on Tuesday urged Britain to change its mind about leaving the bloc next year, as time to conclude a Brexit agreement runs short and EU leaders await more details on how the country sees their future ties. Britain is set to leave the EU on March 29, 2019, but the complex negotiations on its costly departure and future EU-U.K. relations must be concluded by October to leave parliaments time to ratify any agreement. […] “If the U.K. government sticks to its decision to leave, Brexit will become a reality, with all its negative consequences,...

Over 100,000 foreign nationals across all age groups were allocated a PPS Number in 2016, an increase of 13% on the year before. The latest report from the Central Statistics Office looked into the number of PPSN (Personal Public Service Number) allocations to foreign nationals over the past six years — from 2011 to 2016. It found that there was a total of 107,767 allocations to foreign nationals across all of last year. […] Just under 52,000 of all the allocations in 2016 registered some form of employment activity that year — marking a 4.1% increase on 2015. In terms...

Chancellor Angela Merkel says Germany wants friendly ties with Britain but won’t drop its insistence that London can only enjoy full access to the European Union’s internal market if it allows free immigration of EU citizens. […] Merkel argues that making concessions on free labor movement would create a dangerous free-for-all in the EU. She said Saturday that, although Britain is dear to Europe and she regrets its decision to leave the bloc, “we cannot work toward ultimately putting into question the whole European Union.” …

European Union leaders drew a stark line along the British Channel on Wednesday, telling the U.K. that it cannot keep valuable business links with its former continental partners in a seamless single EU market, if it doesn’t also accept European workers. The challenge cuts to the heart of the British vote to leave the bloc following a virulent campaign where migration from poorer EU countries was a key concern. It also sets the scene for the complex departure negotiations facing departing Prime Minister David Cameron’s successor, for which nominations opened in London Wednesday. Meeting for the first time without the...

Britain leaving the EU means trouble ahead for Germany — and its hardest task will be convincing the Brits to drop a self-defeating ideology, a leading foreign policy expert told The Local. German business has a lot of vested interest in British markets, explains Josef Janning, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in Berlin. And that means Germany will have its work cut out negotiating a settlement which gives Britain access to the single market after it leaves the European Union. […] Being integrated into the single market will mean the UK will have to “swallow the...

One of the standard arguments about Britain’s membership of the European Union is that it’s vital that we stay in because so much of our trade is with other European Union countries. Implicit in this is the claim that this is a result of our being in the EU. The dropping of trade restrictions resulting from the Single Market rules for example. The problem with this argument is that it depends upon an empirical claim: that Britain’s trade with the European Union countries has increased since the foundation of that Single Market. And it turns out that that doesn’t seem...

The European Commission is set to ignore attempts to delay the implementation of a proposed new data protection regulation (DPR) suggested at last week’s EU summit, claiming that the meeting’s conclusions have been misinterpreted. EurActiv has learned that the EU executive instead believes that a mandate to push forward with new rules by spring next year remains possible, and that this can be achieved even in the face of strong opposition from the UK. … The Parliament, and Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, have consistently tied the need for stronger data protection to acknowledge alleged privacy abuses arising from information leaked...

The United States and the European Union have signed up to a new transatlantic economic partnership at a summit in Washington. The pact is designed to boost trade and investment by harmonising regulatory standards, laying the basis for a US-EU single market. The two sides also signed an Open Skies deal, designed to reduce fares and boost traffic on transatlantic flights. But little of substance was agreed on climate change. However, EU leaders were pleased that the US acknowledged human activity was a major cause. Richest regions Economics rather than the environment or politics was the focus of the summit,...

Attorney says Bahamas faces too many risks By MINDELL SMALL,Guardian Staff Reporter mindell@nasguard.com Continuing to voice strong opposition to the proposed Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) attorney Paul D. Moss said The Bahamas faces too many risks if it signs on to it. Mr Moss is Chairman of the group 'Bahamians Agitating for a Referendum on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (BARF)' Over the past three years BARF has been seeking to highlight what it refers to as the "dangers" of not only the CSME but also the WTO and FTAA. BARF said it studied the three...