EURACTIF

If Greece were to exit the eurozone, expansionary fiscal policies and successive competitive devaluations will not work, as they have not worked in the past. The root of the crisis is not austerity, but the fact that Greece essentially ceased its efforts to reform after the adoption of the euro, writes Nikos Chrysoloras.

Shareholders should have the power to curb bosses' pay and set caps on executive bonuses, the European Union's top regulatory official said on today (16 May), adding to pressure on banks and companies over excessive management pay deals.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said his country was “taken hostage” over the case of his imprisoned predecessor, Yulia Tymoshenko, which he said was overblown because of a “foreign plot” to prevent the country from getting closer to the EU.

Conservation groups have condemned a move by European agricultural ministers to tone down some of the most controversial environmental proposals in the next phase of the EU's farm support programme.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is opposing economic stimulus policies that rely on new debt, amid calls to relax austerity measures from centre-left opponents in Germany and newly elected French President François Hollande.

France's new president François Hollande arrived in Berlin for his first meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel only hours after his inauguration yesterday (15 May). The two expressed broad agreement over the necessity to kick-start the European economy but they also had to acknowledge differences over their concepts of growth.

The German Social Democrats have indicated to French President François Hollande that they will support him in adopting a European pact to boost growth, but that they would like to keep this separate from the fiscal compact treaty. EurActiv Germany reports. 

Greece abandoned a nine-day hunt for a government yesterday (15 May) and called a new election that may hand victory to leftists who might cut the nation's financial lifeline, pushing it closer to bankruptcy and out of the eurozone. 

The European Commission is planning to force energy, transport and financial companies to invest more in their cyber security and to report on breaches suffered, two EU officials said.

European healthcare systems are defying budget cuts and the bite of continent-wide austerity programmes to deliver improving performances, according to the sixth Euro Health Consumer Index.

Rules designed to beef up bank capital in the wake of the financial crisis were agreed by EU finance ministers in Brussels yesterday (15 May) after the UK won a concession enabling it to preserve control for national supervisory authorities.

European leaders’ boycott of the Euro 2012 football tournament in Ukraine is no great loss, but if they want to truly pressure Kyiv on human rights, they should use the full means at their disposal rather than symbolic posturing, argues Ky Krauthamer. 

Though a Socialist, François Hollande’s relations with Angela Merkel are likely to remain within the framework of France’s long-term ‘Gaullist’ strategy of maintaining European power in the world and French influence in Europe, argues George Friedman.

The European Commission today (15 May) gave defiant Chinese and Indian airlines one month to report their carbon emissions after they failed to meet their deadline, expanding a transcontinental feud over the EU’s Emissions Trading System.

Europe should focus on cutting carbon emissions instead of just repeating the existing EU green policy targets which expire at the end of the decade, Britain's energy and climate chief Edward Davey told a global energy and environment summit.

Almost half (48%) of the computer users in the EU admit they have acquired pirated software, according to a new report by the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

Europe's second-largest country faces an uncertain future, with both the opposition and the government unable to provide either genuine democracy or economic hope, making necessary the rise of an entirely new political leadership, argues Viktor Tkachuk.

EU ministers held an animated discussion in Brussels yesterday (14 May), evaluating the risks of “losing Ukraine to Russia” if too much pressure is put on the country over the treatment of imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The European Commission’s latest economic forecast ranked Poland as the fastest developing EU member state in 2012, although it revised the country's growth estimate downwards for 2013. But analysts appear much more optimistic than the EU executive and insist that the Polish economy will do even better next year.

Biodiversity has decreased by an average of 28% globally since 1970 and the world would have to be 50% bigger to have enough land and forests to provide for current levels of consumption and carbon emissions, the conservation group WWF said today (15 May).