Monday 23rd of September 2024

someone has really screwed up the european economy.....

The EU is having a full-blown existential crisis. Someone has really screwed up its economy, and the culprit is conspicuously absent from a new report outlining the carnage. Are there no mirrors in Brussels?

 

Has the EU suddenly realized how much it has screwed itself over?
Mario Draghi’s ‘competitiveness report’ says the bloc’s economic situation is dire… but shies away from pointing out the culprit

BY Rachel Marsden

 

Former European Central Bank president and Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, has published a new “economic competitiveness” report after a year of work at the request of unelected ‘Queen’ Ursula von der Leyen’s ‘Royal’ European Commission. And it’s a real page-turner, one of the great mysteries of our times.  

One is left to breathlessly leaf through the 400-page document looking for a culprit responsible for the massive amount of economic carnage detailed by Draghi. “For the first time since the Cold War we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation,” he told reporters in Brussels. How about starting off by not actively self-sabotaging?

Draghi said that the bloc desperately needs to keep up with China and the US, but has been failing. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the EU readily jumped in to ride shotgun alongside Uncle Sam along regime change highway, but now finds itself kicking dirt on the roadside and wanting to make its own way. 

“Now conditions have changed,” Draghi said“World trade is slowing. China is actually slowing very much, but it’s become much less open to us, and actually it’s competing with us in global markets on all accounts. We’ve lost our main supplier of cheap energy, Russia. And now we have to start for our defense again for the first time since the Second World War.” Apparently, the jokers ruling Europe from the big top tent in Brussels are shocked to discover that they’ve been victimized. Who could possibly have done such a thing? 

Gotta love the use of the passive there“Lost” their cheap energy from Russia. Like it just fell out of their pocket like a set of house keys on the way back from the store. 

Listening to Draghi, you’d also think that the EU hasn’t actually adopted “de-coupling” from China as a strategy, egged on by Washington, which wanted Europe all to itself, before EU officials rebranded it a “de-risking” when they realized how stupid a move it would be to fully alienate China as the bloc’s top trading partner and customer. 

And now, oh gee, the EU has to start thinking about its own defense again, Draghi said, rather than just using it to shake free some natural resources from all the places with fortuitously-located terrorist problems. 

The Ukraine conflict has been an equally convenient excuse to make more weapons at taxpayer expense for the EU’s own defense after emptying out the old junk from its closets. Good thing, too, because making more weapons is about the only real easy answer for improving the economy right now, judging by the dire state of things outlined in this new report. Still, the EU can’t even do the military-industrial racket right. 

Draghi has pointed out that EU members are basically idiots for buying most of their weapons abroad, with nearly two-thirds coming from the US. Big mystery as to why Washington wants to keep the party going in Ukraine when it’s making bank by drumming up the need to ramp up weapons purchases for EU members under the guise that their former top economic lifeline and energy supplier (Russia) was suddenly a big threat to them. The bonus: making Europe more dependent on the US for pricier gas, too. 

The whole report is just loaded with gems, like this one: “If Europe cannot become more productive, we will be forced to choose. We will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions. This is an existential challenge...” 

Draghi’s going on about all these grand ambitions like leading new tech and being a climate and social icon, while European elites have been yelling at the plebs to turn down the heating and air conditioning to stick it to Putin and cheering mild winters like we’re living in the dark ages. Draghi also said that the EU needs another €800 billion ($890 billion), which is about 4.5% of the entire bloc’s GDP, just to be able to stay globally competitive. And that competitiveness can only be achieved by thoroughly unscrewing everything they screwed up over the past two and a half years through self-inflicted idiocy in the interests of impressing their girlfriend Vladimir Zelensky (aka president of Ukraine). 

Draghi also said that the amount of cash needed to make the EU competitive now is so massive that private investment just won’t cut it. And well, you know what that means. In related news, EU taxpayers, there’s a sale right now on Amazon France for €4 tubes of lube. 

But what if EU taxpayers don’t want to comply, because they’ve had enough of paying for all these screwups, as recent elections across the EU suggest, with anti-establishment parties surging. Well, here’s Draghi with a plea. Cue the violins: “Why do we care so much about growing. Yes, we have to finance these needs, and these needs are important, but why are they so important? Well, they are important because they have to do with our founding values, prosperity, equity, peace and democracy in a sustainable world. And the EU exists to ensure Europeans that they actually will benefit from these fundamental rights. And if Europe can no longer provide them to its people, it will have lost its reason for being.”

Okay, put the lube on ice, folks – he’s giving seduction a try. Queen Ursula will no doubt be along shortly to play the “bad cop.”

So basically, the EU’s ‘braintrust’ blew a bunch of cash and deregulated the economy “for Ukraine”, but now they need Europeans to be okay with handing over even more cash, because it’s totally for their own good. This time it’ll work out. Promise. Just like it did with that ex who you let crawl back into your life one too many times. 

Meanwhile, von der Leyen is talking about the need for economic supply security and Draghi is saying that the EU needs more friends. Ones that happen to have a ton of resources that they can cozy up to, preferably. And he’s also saying that some countries are already trying to do that on their own, but it would be better if the EU took charge of it. Draghi added that the bloc was “punching under our power.” 

More like it’s been punching itself right in the face, over and over again, if the EU’s recent policies and performance are any indication. 

 

https://www.rt.com/news/603975-eu-mario-draghi-report/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

no more tourists...

 

EU report shows Ukraine conflict damaging bloc’s tourism
The loss of Russian tourists has hit Finland and Cyprus especially hard, a European Travel Commission study suggests

 

The conflict between Moscow and Kiev has severely affected EU tourism in a market that was recovering from the Covid-19 slump, a major report shows. 

The loss of Russian and Ukrainian tourists, a drop in consumer confidence, and increased travel costs, all stemming from the conflict, have severely hit some of the bloc’s tourist destinations, according to a major European Travel Commission (ETC) study published in September.

Prior to the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Russian and Ukrainian outbound tourism accounted for 3% ($14 billion) of global spending in the industry, the study says. In Europe, Russian tourists made up 10-20% of incoming business in neighboring countries such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, and Moldova, as well as coastal destinations like Türkiye, Montenegro, and Cyprus.

Cyprus, the report notes, has suffered especially, losing nine-tenths of its Russian tourists – its second biggest market – and entirely losing the Ukrainian market. Finland lost its biggest tourist market in Russian tourists, causing “extreme difficulties for businesses, especially in the eastern part of the country,” the report says. Bulgaria similarly lost two of its priority markets, Russian and Ukrainian tourists.

The wider impact of the conflict was felt in slower economic growth, higher inflation, interest rates, higher oil prices, and the resulting hike in transportation costs, the report suggests. This was accompanied by lower demand for Europe as a travel destination due to the area being perceived as unsafe, especially for US and Canadian tourists, it adds.

Prior to the Ukraine conflict and the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent travel limitations, Europe was the most popular tourism destination for Russians, official statistics show. Finland and Estonia were the most popular EU destinations for Russians in 2019, followed by Germany, Italy, and Poland, according to outbound border crossing statistics from the Federal Security Service (FSB), as quoted by the media. 

Russians have traveled to Europe 13 times less in the first half of 2024 than in a similar period in 2019, recent FSB statistics suggest.

These statistics do not only include tourist trips, and do not include Russians arriving via other countries.

READ MORE: Germany to monitor visa applicants’ social media – UK watchdog

After the Ukraine conflict began, the European Council fully suspended the Visa Facilitation Agreement it had with Russia. This complicated the visa application process for Russians and made it more expensive. Some European states have stopped giving tourist visas to Russians entirely.

https://www.rt.com/news/604457-ukraine-conflict-damaging-eurotourism/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

MEANWHILE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/599742-russian-tourists-china-surge-turkiye/

Russian tourism to China surging – data