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Thursday, April 18, 2013
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Roasting for Rehn over Cyprus at EP Angry MEPs ask: ‘you know how they treated the elected president of Cyprus?’ By Stefanos Evripidou and Peter Stevenson
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NGRY European lawmakers yesterday roundly condemned the handling of the Cyprus bailout programme, blaming the Eurogroup for its appalling communications, the Commission for not defending insured depositors, and some member states for their “colonial” approach to addressing eurozone troubles. During a debate in the European Parliament (EP) on the Cyprus bailout, MEPs accused the Commission and its troika partners, the IMF and European Central Bank (ECB), of creating a “fiasco” and “disaster”, with much wider implications than Cyprus. One went as far as to call for the disbanding of the troika. Taking the floor to open the debate, EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs Olli Rehn said the Commission would have preferred a more gradual adjustment for Cyprus but since member states were only committing €10bn this was not possible. “This (financial) constraint severely limited the options available,” he said. He went on to say that it was time to stop the blame game. Rehn acknowledged that the Cyprus agreement had been “very difficult, and not without mistakes”. He argued that the Cypriot authorities, member states and EU institutions had to find unique solutions to exceptional problems. “They had to do so without previously tested instruments and – in the final stages of negotia-
tions – under enormous time pressure.” Two key lessons can be learnt from the process, he said. “First, there must be absolute clarity about secured deposits. In this respect, the Eurogroup and Cyprus took rapid corrective action and underlined that secured deposits indeed are secured in Europe.” Rehn failed to mention that it was the Cypriot parliament that rejected the Eurogroup’s initial decision to tax all depositors big and small, forcing a second all-night meeting which led the eurozone finance ministers to change their position. “Second, the developments in Cyprus demonstrate the reasons why a Banking Union is a necessary element of a true European Monetary Union. We need a well-functioning Single Supervisory Mechanism with a single rulebook to prevent the emergence of an unsustainable banking sector like in Cyprus,” said Rehn. The EU commissioner noted that Cyprus’ problems was mainly an oversized banking sector- built up over many years. Poor practices in risk management heightened the banks’ problems while a lack of “adequate oversight” allowed the two largest Cypriot banks to build up “by far too concentrated risk exposures”. The Commission had alerted Cyprus on its problems as early as May 2011, he said. “Then, in November 2011, we communicated to the Cypriot authorities that a financial assistance programme would be unavoidable, unless the persistent economic problems were immediately addressed. “Eventually, Cyprus asked
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Honour: the coffin of the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher is carried through the streets of London to St Paul’s Cathedral yesterday, on a gun carriage drawn by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery
UK bids farewell to Iron Lady Thatcher at grand funeral By Sarah Young and Shadia Nasralla ROYALTY, dignitaries and admirers from all walks of life paid their final respects to Margaret Thatcher yesterday in the grandest funeral for a British leader in half a century - although a few boos from the London crowd were a reminder of her divisive rule. The right-wing former prime minister whom the Soviet Union christened the “Iron Lady” was bid farewell with military honours, patriotic hymns, cheers and tears. Her coffin was borne on a horse-drawn gun carriage then soldiers and sailors
carried her casket into St Paul’s Cathedral for a service attended by Queen Elizabeth and 11 serving prime ministers from around the world. Outside, thousands of supporters lined the route, some throwing blue roses in her path. Opponents chanted “Ding dong the witch is dead” and turned their backs on her coffin as it passed by - an indication of the divisions which Britain’s longest serving prime minister of the 20th Century still provokes due to the tumultuous change she brought. Thatcher sought to arrest Britain’s postwar decline with free-market economic policies which enraged her left-wing op-
ponents by smashing the unions and privatising Britain’s national assets. Her supporters view her as a champion of freedom while her opponents accuse her of destroying communities and ushering in an era of greed. “The storm of conflicting opinions centres on the Mrs Thatcher who became a symbolic figure, even an ism, but today the remains of the real Margaret Hilda Roberts are here at her funeral service,” the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, told mourners gathered inside St Paul’s. Tears ran down the face of Britain’s
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