From Merkel to Tymoshenko: NSA spied on 122 world leaders, Snowden docs reveal

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From Merkel to Tymoshenko: NSA spied on 122 world leaders, Snowden docs reveal

Merkel, Hollande to discuss European communication network avoiding U.S.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday she would talk to French President Francois Hollande about building up a European communication network to avoid emails and other data passing through the United States.

Reuters: Top News

Merkel, Hollande to discuss European communication network avoiding U.S.

Merkel and SPD coalition talks enter final make-or-break phase

Merkel and SPD coalition talks enter final make-or-break phase
http://currenteconomictrendsandnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/c0fcd__p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif

Sun Nov 17, 2013 10:57am EST

* Merkel ready to cede on wages, SPD drops tax demands

* Industry worried about economy, SPD voters sceptical

By Stephen Brown

BERLIN, Nov 17 (Reuters) – Angela Merkel’s conservatives and Germany’s Social Democrats have forged a political marriage before and know each other’s ways, but as a new “big day” approaches, they are having to work hard to convince sceptical party members and the business world that they should give it another go.

Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and Bavarian allies were the clear winners in September’s election, taking 41.5 percent of the vote, but their former liberal partners in government lost all their seats, so the centre-right still needs to form a coalition with the humiliated centre-left.

After three weeks of negotiations on policy details, coalition talks enter the “hot phase” this week, and the knottiest problems must be resolved in a final session on Nov. 26 for the chancellor to have a new government by Christmas.

Both sides are making big concessions, but the conservatives want their landslide election victory reflected in the deal and the subsequent division of cabinet posts. Two conservatives spoke this weekend of “not letting the tail wag the dog”.

The SPD had its second-worst result of the post-war era, appealing to just 25.7 percent of voters, but doesn’t want to look like Merkel’s doormat.

“Forty percent of voters chose the conservatives’ platform. Support for the SPD’s ideas was much lower. This simple fact has to be reflected in the ‘grand coalition’ programme,” Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told Bild newspaper in a preview of Monday’s edition.

From the sidelines, the industrial sector frets about the coalition undermining Europe’s biggest economy.

Four big car manufacturers – Volkswagen, BMW , Daimler and GM’s Opel – wheeled out their bosses for a joint newspaper interview on Sunday to warn, in the words of Daimler’s Dieter Zetsche, that “if conditions in Germany deteriorate, we’ll have to think about moving production elsewhere”.

That will worry Merkel, known as the “auto chancellor” for her links to the sector, and SPD Chairman Sigmar Gabriel, whose party is close to the trade unions. Neither wants to put at risk the high employment rate and solid economic recovery.

After Gabriel told a party congress in Leipzig he wanted to “strengthen the economic competence” of the SPD, CDU Secretary General Hermann Groehe said this should mean “the coalition parties can work together to avoid putting German jobs at risk”.

TIME TO DELIVER

If the devil is in the detail, he will make himself at home in a draft coalition document up to 160 pages long, the product of 12 working groups. SPD delegates in Leipzig will be ploughing through it before deciding how to vote in a ballot of 470,000 party members due by early December.

In theory, a “no” from SPD members could hijack the whole process, which would likely result in a new election.

But the leadership of both camps, while talking tough, signalled that a deal would be reached by Nov. 26.

“If everything is in the coalition treaty, then, damn it, we should be in no doubt about the SPD signing it and enabling a majority,” said Gabriel on Saturday. “Now you have to deliver, dear conservatives.”

The SPD have dropped one of their main election positions – higher taxes on the rich – but dug in their heels for a blanket minimum legal wage of 8.50 euros an hour. Merkel – and most business leaders – would rather have wage floors established sector by sector, by employers and workers rather than Berlin.

But she signalled at a rally on Friday that she was ready to cede on wages and also meet the SPD halfway on its demand to grant dual citizenship for non-European Union residents, a big issue for Germany’s large Turkish community.

“If you put down red lines on every single point, you can’t carry out coalition talks,” said the pragmatic Merkel, who has moved her party further left in eight years in power, dropping conservative credos like nuclear power and military service.

Political scientist Everhard Holtmann sees a “window of opportunity for the grand coalition since the chancellor made it clear the conservatives are ready to make concessions on issues like the minimum wage and possibly also dual citizenship”.

The final 10 days of talks are still expected to be tense; conservative parliamentary leader Volker Kauder predicted “the major points of conflict will be decided in the last two days”.

He portrayed the negotiations so far as a victory for the Merkel camp, telling a Sunday paper that campaign commitments to block tax hikes, new debts or crisis tools making Germany liable for other euro zone states’ finances had prevailed.

Gabriel’s talk of opening up to future alliances with the hardline Left Party, which has been ostracised for decades, was described as unhelpful by conservatives, but Holtmann saw it as a sop to SPD left-wingers opposed to another grand coalition.

With major differences between the SPD and Left on foreign policy especially – the Left opposes NATO membership, overseas military operations and weapons exports – he said the alternative of the SPD, Left and Greens using their slim numerical majority in the Bundestag to get rid of Merkel remained “totally unrealistic”.

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Reuters: Bonds News

Read more about Merkel and SPD coalition talks enter final make-or-break phase and other interesting subjects concerning Bonds at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Merkel eyes third term in tight German election

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germans voted on Sunday in an election expected to hand Chancellor Angela Merkel a third four-year term, but she may be forced into an awkward coalition with her leftist rivals following a surge in support for a new anti-euro party.

Reuters: Top News

Merkel eyes third term in tight German election

Merkel fights for majority in tight German election race

German Chancellor Angela Merkel gestures as she address media during a news conference at Bundespressekonferenz in Berlin July 19, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Tobias Schwarz

By Noah Barkin

BERLIN | Fri Sep 20, 2013 9:42am EDT

BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel looked on track to win a third term in a weekend election in Germany but faced a battle to preserve her center-right majority and avert a potentially divisive coalition with her arch-rivals, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

The vote on Sunday is being watched across Europe, with many of Berlin’s partners hoping it will bring about a softening of the austerity-first approach Merkel has promoted since the euro zone debt crisis broke out nearly four years ago.

But the prospect of major shifts in her euro policy are slim, even if she is forced into a “grand coalition” with the SPD, whose candidate Peer Steinbrueck has criticized the chancellor for choking off growth in southern members of the currency bloc by insisting on spending cuts and painful reforms.

“Germany remains committed to euro zone membership, but public opinion and institutional constraints … limit the scope for any German government to drastically alter course towards more generous support policies,” analysts at Citi Research said in a research note.

Two days before the vote, a survey by Forsa for private broadcaster RTL showed Merkel’s conservatives — the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister Bavarian party the Christian Social Union (CSU) — 14 points ahead of the SPD, meaning she will almost surely return for a third term.

But her combined center-right bloc, which includes the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), was in a dead heat with left-leaning opposition parties, with both camps on 45 percent.

That makes the election in Europe’s largest economy too close to call.

Merkel could win a narrow majority with the FDP, her preferred partner, or fall short and be forced into difficult negotiations with the SPD which could last up to two months and result in big changes to her cabinet, including the departure of Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a key player in the crisis.

The wild card is a new anti-euro party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which polled 4 percent in the Forsa survey but is given a decent chance of vaulting above the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in parliament on election night.

That would doom Merkel’s hopes of continuing her current coalition and stir concerns about rising German euroscepticism, though its impact on government policy would likely be limited.

UNDECIDED VOTERS

Also complicating forecasts is a large group of undecided voters, estimated by pollsters at more than 30 percent.

“I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for,” Anja Brueckmann, a secretary who usually votes for Merkel’s CDU, told Reuters in Berlin. “I keep listening to all this talk from the politicians but no matter who wins nothing changes.”

Merkel, 59, would be only the third post-war German leader, after Helmut Kohl and Konrad Adenauer, to win three terms. After Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg and Andrus Ansip of Estonia, she is Europe’s longest-serving leader.

Hugely popular at home for her steady “step by step” leadership during five years of global and euro zone financial crisis, supporters have taken to waving “Mutti” (Mum) signs at rallies, reflecting her image as a caring mother of the nation.

She has presided over a robust economy and booming labor market. At 6.8 percent, the German jobless rate is roughly one-quarter that of Greece, which stands at more than 27 percent.

“Germany has had four good years. We accomplished a lot together,” Merkel said in a CDU campaign letter received by over 5 million German households on Friday.

Merkel’s critics deride her as a reactive, risk-averse leader whose policies have slavishly followed public opinion, instead of shaping it. They say Germany’s economic success is largely down to reforms introduced a decade ago by her predecessor, SPD chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany as the daughter of a Protestant pastor, became chancellor in 2005 after narrowly beating Schroeder.

Because of her razor-thin margin of victory, she was forced into the first ‘grand coalition’ between Germany’s two biggest parties since the 1960s. After winning re-election in 2009 with the FDP, she may have to look to the SPD again after Sunday.

This time the process may not be as smooth.

“The (SPD) lost 13 percent of the vote during its last partnership with Chancellor Merkel and is highly concerned about the potential long-term electoral repercussions of repeating the arrangement,” said Alex White of JP Morgan in London. “SPD leaders will push for the most advantageous possible deal, likely extending negotiations for a period of many weeks.”

In the talks, the SPD is expected to push for a nationwide minimum wage, a tax rise for higher earners and also key cabinet posts, including possibly the finance and foreign ministries.

(Additional reporting by Erik Kirschbaum, Stephen Brown and Gareth Jones; Editing by Gareth Jones)

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Reuters: Top News

Merkel fights for majority in tight German election race

Big Brother hält Deutschland besetzt - Snowden, Merkel und die NSA

Putin dismisses reports of spat with Merkel over looted art

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel attend a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, June 21, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Alexander Demianchuk

Reuters: Arts

Putin dismisses reports of spat with Merkel over looted art

Experts offer Merkel tips on how to cheer up the Germans

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C) inspects a flooded street near the Elbe river in the east German town of Pirna June 4, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Thomas Peter

By Stephen Brown

BERLIN | Wed Jun 5, 2013 1:24pm EDT

BERLIN (Reuters) – “Happiness experts” from all over the world offered Germany’s Angela Merkel tips on Wednesday on how to cheer up her citizens, often stereotyped as prosperous worriers who view their glasses as half empty rather than half full.

A forum on “What Matters to People – Wellbeing and Progress” heard from speakers whose common theme was that economic success alone does not bring happiness.

“We look at the stock exchange index or currencies on the news each morning and talk a lot about growth in terms of gross domestic product, but we often don’t prioritize what is really most important to people,” Chancellor Merkel said in an address.

Participants spoke about such varied routes to human contentment as keeping elephants off crops in southern Bhutan, mobile phone applications for organic farmers in Kenya or building bicycle paths in Colombia.

The shared conclusion was that once countries have developed enough to meet basic needs, economic indicators like GDP are less important than human relationships and mental health.

Merkel said that when Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006 she was “astonished to hear so many people think it always rains here and that Germans don’t know how to laugh”.

She tried to put a positive spin on Germans’ famed pessimism, saying that seeing the glass as half empty “could be a form of happiness, because they can see how to get it filled”.

Often herself the target of caricatures of dour German austerity and bossiness thanks to her push for budget cuts in the euro zone, Merkel was told that Germany’s Danish, Dutch and Swiss neighbors all tend to be happier than her compatriots.

British economist Richard Layard, editor of the World Happiness Report, said the main factor making people miserable was mental illness, and that only a third of Germans with anxiety or depression got treatment.

The forum heard from the head of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Commission, U.N. development experts, a Saudi writer on women’s issues, a Kenyan entrepreneur and a former mayor of Bogota.

Merkel’s interest might not have been purely academic, as she prepares for elections in September.

“The electorate will respond to politicians who actually identify the things that worry people – the trouble your child is having in a badly behaved classroom or the fact that your mother is mentally ill,” said Layard.

(Reporting by Stephen Brown; editing by Andrew Roche)

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Reuters: Lifestyle

Experts offer Merkel tips on how to cheer up the Germans

Merkel To Brussels On Fiscal Union: "Nein"

Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man blog,

Merkel: Let"s Rather Not

A German election is drawing close and it is evident in many small things that are happening lately. The latest is that Mrs. Merkel is now apparently distancing herself from her erstwhile demands to create a "fiscal union" and give the eurocracy in Brussels more powers. Incidentally, her change of heart comes shortly after her summit with France"s president Hollande, which indicates that the latter has probably let her know that France is none too happy with the idea either. Since this means that the drive toward more centralization will be slowed down, we take it as good news.

 

“German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come out against handing the European Commission more powers, in the clearest sign yet that she is reining in her ambitions to create a "fiscal union" in which euro members cede control of their budgets to Brussels.

 

The comments, made in an interview with weekly Der Spiegel, come days after Merkel held talks with President Francois Hollande in Paris and the two unveiled joint proposals for the future shape of the euro area, including the creation of a permanent president of the Eurogroup forum of finance ministers.

 

Merkel spoke out strongly in favour of closer fiscal integration last year, but France and some other euro members have deep doubts about ceding sovereignty — a step which would require politically sensitive changes to the EU treaty — and Berlin appears to have realized that this resistance is too great to overcome for now.

 

With a German election looming in September and a new anti-euro party threatening to eat into support for her conservative bloc, Merkel may also be adjusting her message for voters at home, many of whom are leery about ceding national powers.

 

"I see no need in the next few years to give up more powers to the Commission in Brussels," Merkel said in the interview, adding that she agreed with Hollande on EU member states cooperating more on economic issues.

 

"We are thinking for example of the labour and pension markets but also of tax and social policy. Economic policy coordination in Europe is far too weak, it must be strengthened and this is rather different to giving more competences to Brussels," she said.”

(emphasis added)

She still talks about the alleged need for "more policy coordination", but luckily handing more powers to the bureaucrats in Brussels seems to be off the table for now. It will be interesting to see how the bureaucratic caste ensconced in Brussels will react to these news.

 

"Frau Europa" becomes "Frau Deutschland" again.

Zero Hedge

Merkel To Brussels On Fiscal Union: "Nein"

Merkel coalition partner warns against higher state spending

BERLIN (Reuters) – The leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s junior coalition partner chided her over spending promises made ahead of September’s federal election and said now was not the time to abandon “economic sense”.

Merkel, whose center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) are well ahead in opinion polls, has signaled that more funds will be made available for families and for infrastructure projects if she wins a third term in office.

“I urgently advise staying in the realm of economic sense. Social policy promises like those now being proposed by the CDU have to be financially feasible,” Philipp Roesler of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Germany must not abandon its aim of achieving a balanced budget, said Roesler, whose pro-business party is a staunch advocate of fiscal discipline.

The top-selling Bild daily on Saturday put a price tag of 28 billion euros on Merkel’s spending promises and said it showed Germany’s election campaign had finally begun.

“The euro and financial market crises are already yesterday. Four months before the federal election the parties criss-cross the country promising citizens what they supposedly want to hear,” said Bild in a commentary in Sunday’s edition.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a close Merkel ally, denied in a statement to Reuters any weakening of government resolve to cut public debt, though he said he saw scope for some modest additional spending in priority areas.

In Sunday’s interview, Roesler criticized the European Commission’s decision to grant France and Spain more time to reduce their budget deficits, saying it sent a “wrong signal” that could harm confidence in Europe’s readiness to reform.

Strong economic growth, buoyant tax revenues and lower unemployment have helped Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, to reduce its borrowing costs despite the ongoing euro crisis. German public debt nevertheless remains well above the EU’s 60 percent ceiling at over 80 percent of gross domestic product.

In some good news for Roesler, an opinion poll conducted by the Emnid pollster for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper showed support for his FDP at 5 percent, just enough to win seats in the Bundestag lower house in September’s election.

The FDP has sometimes dipped below the 5 percent threshold in opinion polls, raising doubts over whether Merkel will be able to renew the current center-right coalition.

The most likely outcome if the FDP fails to get back into parliament would be a ‘grand coalition’ between Merkel’s conservatives and the main opposition Social Democrats (SPD) like the one she led from 2005 to 2009.

In Sunday’s survey, Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their Bavarian allies the Christian Social Union (CSU) remained steady at 40 percent, the SPD was on 26 percent, its Green allies on 14 percent and the former communist Left on 7 percent.

(Reporting by Gareth Jones; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Merkel coalition partner warns against higher state spending

Germany"s Merkel visits Pope, urges tougher market controls

By James Mackenzie

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Pope Francis on Saturday and, apparently responding to his criticism of a heartless “dictatorship of the economy”, called for stronger regulation of financial markets.

On Thursday, Francis appealed in a speech for world financial reform, saying the global economic crisis had made life worse for millions in rich and poor countries.

Merkel visited Rome for a few hours specifically to meet the pontiff and spoke with him privately in his library for 45 minutes, unusually long for a private papal audience.

She told reporters afterwards that the scandals and excesses criticized by Francis earlier in the week showed that vital checks and balances had not been functioning properly.

“Crises have blown up because the rules of the social market have not been observed,” she said, adding that tightening financial market regulation would be a main objective of the meeting of leaders of Group of 20 economic powers in September.

“We have made progress but we are nowhere near a point where we could say that the kind of derailment that leads to market crises could not happen again and so the issue will again play a central role at the G20 meeting this year,” she said.

“It is true that economies are there to serve people and that has by no means always been the case in recent years.”

Merkel, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, said she and Francis had spoken mainly about globalization, the European Union and the role of Europe in the world.

“Pope Francis made it clear that we need a strong, fair Europe and I found the message very encouraging,” said Merkel, head of the Christian Democratic Union, which has a strong Catholic component.

In his first major speech about finance since his election in March, Francis had also urged states to take greater control of their economies and protect the weakest.

Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany before the country was re-unified, said both she and Francis had “lived under dictatorships”, referring to the military junta that ruled the pope’s native Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

Merkel gave Francis, who lived briefly in Germany when he was a Jesuit priest, three volumes of poetry by Friedrich Hölderlin and 107 CDs of music by German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwaengler.

“I don’t know if you will have the time to listen to all of them,” she joked as she gave him the music.

(Additional reporting By Philip Pullella)

Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Germany"s Merkel visits Pope, urges tougher market controls