A More Different European Council – 23 October 2011
The European Council has not just been postponed from 17 and 18 October to 23 October - it has been compressed from two days into a single one, and combined with a eurozone summit. I do not know whether you can imagine what it means for the huge and heavy European bureaucracy machine to have to change its plans underway. But it speaks about the seriousness of the situation more than any statements of European leaders. Not surprisingly, only an hour after the laconic message of European Council President Herman Van Rompuy this news was on the front page of The Financial Times and was reported by most European media, including euinside.
There are several reasons for that decision. The report of the Troika on Greece will not be ready until 17 October, but is expected to be by 23 October - that is why there will also be a eurozone summit to decide on the allocation of the next tranche of the Greek loan. This issue goes together with the agreement on the private sector participation in the second Greek package – there are increasing speculations that the possible loss of private Greek debt holders could reach 60 percent. This raises even more painfully the issue of the recapitalisation of European banks - another important decision the leaders will have to make. Within the next two weeks Paris's and Berlin's proposals to stop the crisis, announced by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday, have to be prepared, presented and approved. The leaders of France and Germany set a deadline by the end of this month, so a European decision can be presented at the G20 summit in Cannes in November.
euinside has also made urgent changes in the planned organisation so that we could follow the European Council live, as well as the euro area summit on Sunday, 23 October. We will also cover the finance ministers meetings on the eve of the Council. On 19 October we will hold the second discussion on EU's economic governance in the European Parliament in Brussels. And of course, we will inform you regularly on this site, in our Free Talk Corner, as well as on our pages in Facebook and Twitter. You can watch euinside's videos on our channel in the YouTube.
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| © The Council of the European Union