France

European Union finance ministers meet in Madrid today to discuss how to curb swelling budget deficits as Greece moved closer to asking for emergency aid to finance the region’s biggest shortfall, Bloomberg reported. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou yesterday asked for a meeting with the EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, which agreed last week to back a 45 billion-euro ($61 billion) rescue package for the cash-strapped nation. Talks will begin in Athens on April 19.

Workers at a French timber subsidiary in Gabon held managers hostage in a French-style "bossnapping" to secure their pay demands, both sides said Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reported. The managers, including the new Chinese buyers of the firm, were released on Monday several hours after being held at their plant in the port of the capital Libreville. The dispute took place at the premises of Leroy Gabon and Pogab, which are both subsidiaries of the French plywood company Plysorol, which was placed in receivership last week by a French court.

France and Germany traditionally have been the “motor” of the European Union, but relations between the two countries are badly strained over the Greek debt crisis, which is just the latest example of a new German willingness to resist the demands of Europe and assert its self-interest under Chancellor Angela Merkel, The New York Times reported. The European Union is facing a serious crisis over financing and its currency, the euro.

Irish house prices may continue to fall for another 18 months according to Brian Lucey, professor of finance at the Trinity College School of Business, Finfacts reported. Lucey says in a commentary in the latest Daft.ie report that on the basis of a straight line projection of average declines in value since the peak, another 18 months of declining prices would be expected."That would be 50 months of house price falls, or just over 4 years, towards the lower end of historical experience.

Greece has run out of cash and it is fast running out of the ability to borrow at anything but the most punitive rates. Yet borrow it must, thus putting itself in an ever more precarious position, The Wall Street Journal reported. It is the originator of its difficulties, but, far from helping, those fellow euro-landers it turned to for salvation have merely exacerbated its problems. This became painfully apparent this week as the country's attempts to refinance its maturing debt managed only a grudging response, despite an interest coupon struck at an excruciatingly high 6%.

Germany and France on Wednesday called for an international bank levy as Wolfgang Schäuble, German finance minister, outlined plans to force his country’s banks to pay €1.2 billion into an insurance fund to cover bail-outs in a future crisis, the Financial Times reported. After a German cabinet meeting attended by Christine Lagarde, French finance minister, Mr Schäuble and his French counterpart called the initiative “a very useful contribution to the international debate” about financial regulation.

European Union leaders hold what is likely to be a tense and difficult summit on Thursday, divided over how to help heavily indebted Greece and struggling to maintain confidence in the euro, Reuters reported. Diplomatic efforts on the eve of the two-day summit failed to bridge differences over whether to offer a safety net to Greece, helping push the euro down to a 10-month low after Portugal suffered a debt down downgrade.

Michel Barnier, the European commissioner in charge of financial market regulation, said he would propose controls to curb speculative trading in credit default swaps, (CDS) a form of debt insurance that has been blamed for worsening Greece's economic problems, Telegraph.co.uk reported. His measures will target so-called naked selling of CDS, where insurance contracts are sold to buyers who do not own the debt. The cost of CDS on Greece rocketed when fears grew that the country could default on its debt.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the euro region is ready to rescue Greece should the government struggle to fund its budget deficit, arguing that the country is “under attack” from so-called speculators, Bloomberg reported. “I want to be very clear: if it were necessary, the states of the euro zone would fulfill their commitments,” he said in Paris yesterday after a meeting with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. “There can be no doubt in this regard.” While Greece doesn’t need assistance right now, “we have measures, we are ready, we are determined,” he said.

France has proven surprisingly stable in the European economic storm. As Greece struggles to avoid default or bailout, Spain and Portugal watch anxiously, Sweden falls back into recession, Germany argues about historically high budget deficits and Britain grapples with deficits and debt of Hellenic proportions, France looks solid and even wise to many, The New York Times reported.