EU-FLAGTHE EU is deciding whether or not impose sanctions on Spain following its failure to meet deficit targets.

EU commissioners met today to discuss taking action against acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government, which has breached the country’s budget for the fourth year in a row.

Despite the potential sanctions, Rajoy announced on Wednesday that he is considering further tax cuts if re-elected.

The EU reprisals could also see the return of ‘toxic’ EU inspectors in Madrid.

The decision comes at an awkward time given the political instability in Spain following its failure to form a government since its hung parliament in December.

June will see the country’s second election in six months, with polls suggesting a similar result to the deadlock in December.

EU commissioner´s may postpone a decision so as not to interfere with the upcoming fresh elections.

Madrid analyst at Analistas Financieros Internacionales said: “The commission has to find the balance between enforcing the rules while avoiding jumping into the middle of the election campaign.”

While the EU has already relaxed Spain´s targets three times since 2009, to do so again may undermine the credibility of their rules.

Luckily for Spain, the EU may be cautious given that several other countries have also received warnings.

France, Italy and Portugal have all missed deficit and debt targets, but to date no country has been sanctioned, signalling a reluctance from EU commissioners to cross the sanction threshold.

Subscribe to the Olive Press

12 COMMENTS

  1. Proof positive that – the Eu’s not working, it’s completely dysfunctional. Does anyone have any idea how many electronic Euros it has created – somewhere between €2-3 trillion.

    Oh well, when the Euro Ponzi scheme crashes it will be cheaper to use new or relatively new pieces of Euro paper in the toilet, rather than go and buy the real thing but probably a bit hard on the rear end.

  2. Fred,
    could’nt agree more and with the UK, it’s State and personal debt, I think the personal debt stood at £1.8 trillion, that was last year. Italy’s State debt is horrendous but there is little or no personal debt, the there’s the Italian Bank non-performing loans @ €360 billion.

    Key in all this is the China enigma. No one except the ruling cabal there knows the real situation And once again it’s the ‘property thing’. Apartments are bought on credit with loans paid on like a concertina of cr/cards, some people have 40 or 50 – each one pays off the debt on the one before, when the music stops, that’s going to be something and the whole world Ponzi scheme will come crashing down. The trick will be to own ‘items of stable value’ aka the Weimar republic.

    Then the UK housing market and the £ will crash spectacularly as virtually all the financial structures in the UK (and worldwide of course) will be bankrupt, then if your holding negotiable items of stable value you will be able to buy a nice house for peanuts, the trick as always is timing – interesting times lie ahead.

    • With UK house price to earnings being upwards of 5.5 times generally and nearer 10 times in London something has to give we think, youngsters cannot easily get on the ladder. I remember 3 or 3.5 joint being the rule. But each time I think this, the Gov’t (whichever one) seems hell bent on maintaining a market which seems out of kilter. This includes their propping up of what was known as liar loans whilst penalising savers.

      Gov’t is scared stiff of a crash or major shake up but they hardly mention this, like if interest rates rose a little, many will be in deep mire. However, when we read yesterday that net migration to the UK last year was 330,000 this plays into their hands and keeps prices at high levels.

      We own property in the UK so it won’t matter if all houses were a £1 as we have no mortgage, but our daughter and her boyfriend just cannot get a property anywhere near where they were brought up or now live. I expect one day, a major shake-out will happen and Gov’t will blame previous Gov’ts, Mark Carney, the EU, and the local rector!

      • Regarding the net migration figures, let us not forget that out of the 330,000 – 184,000 were from the EU and so were not illegal, they were just exercising their right of free movement. If the UK wants to save core services, like the NHS for example, then it needs to concentrate on the immigration that is non-EU. The UK spends £300 million on EU-member patients, but it spends a massive £1.8 billion on non-EU patients. As one can quickly see, non-EU immigration is the real issue here, and of course that will not be solved by leaving the EU.

        • I realise the breakdown, I was giving the figure that was reported yesterday for net migration, however there also appear to be 2 conflicting figures of either 1 million or 1.5 million illegals hiding in the UK not in those figures, not sure how they count them if in hiding nor what the breakdown is!

          One thing for sure is that the UK, and England in particular with approx 400 people per sq km which is either the, or almost the, post densely populated country in Europe and whatever the figure is there is not enough housing.
          TV the other night showed a Romanian family got a private sector house rent paid and benefits within 3 days of arriving much to the ire of Brits wanting housing!

      • It’s certainly difficult to get accurate figures on illegal immigration levels, indeed there may never be any accurate figures. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed there were 535,000 “short-term EU migrants” who came to Britain in the year to June 2015, intending to stay for less than a year. These are not counted as part of the 880,000 mentioned above. The 880,000 is certainly an accurate figure, but we just don’t know how many will stay long-term.

  3. Why do we need so many foreign nurses – my wife retired after a lifetime working for the NHS and like all of her colleagues that I have met, they are all so sad at how the quality of the service has gone down and down. She retired as a teacher/lecturer in paediatric nursing.

    The intellectuals hijacked nursing with Project 2000. The way that trainees are selected is a shambles and a lot go into training because they get more money than being on the dole and stupidly they don’t encounter ‘blood and guts’ for 2 years at which time they drop out. So much tax payers money is wasted this way. You would thin that as part of the selection process they are confronted with ‘blood and guts’ at this stage, if you can’t handle that, the tax payers money is saved from that point.

    Lots of nurses and other health professionals, once they have their qualifications, then take off to countries where they can earn a lot more, completely insane. Of course we could track them down make an assessment of how much it cost the tax payer to train them add on some compound interest and send the country that benefits from our investment a bill, pay up or?

    You want the tax payer to train you at their expense then you sign a contract that the tax payer get’s a return on their investment of at least 10 years, if this was instituted then we would’nt need foreign health professionals – problem sorted.

    Of course I’m talking financial common sense and I’ve never seen that in the whole of my life as a UK citizen.

  4. The RCN has said migrant nurses and doctors greatly help the NHS. Tory cuts seem to be the greatest threat to the NHS, not the issue of how many migrant nurses there are. The recent doctors strike was against Jeremy Hunt’s policies.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.