Boris Vujčić just secured a solid 87.1% majority from the European Parliament for his ECB Vice-Presidency. 🗳️
Compared to the rocky paths of recent nominees, this appointment has noticeably reasonably consensual.
Good luck to him! #ECB
🇨🇭Last weekend the Swiss voted:
73% in favour of right to use physical cash in the Constitution
62% to reject proposed reduction in public media budgets
I love the Swiss democratic system
www.politico.eu/article/swit...
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Martijn Jeroen Van Der Linden has an excellent short paper summarizing how the Parliament's focus on housing supply ignores academic evidence on the financialisation of housing, and offers several policy alternatives. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...
The report misses @jryancollins.bsky.social's key insight: bank credit is highly elastic (limitless), while land is inherently inelastic (scarce). When unlimited bank money meets a fixed supply of land, prices inevitably explode. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
🚨 The European Parliament is about to miss a critical chance to solve the housing crisis as it prepares to vote on the HOUS committee report. The report misdiagnoses the problem and pushes for deregulation. 🏗️🏘️
As Italy approves a decree to reimburse gas plants for carbon costs and gas prices jump 80%, it’s worth recalling that in 2018 both Italian and Spanish power prices were tightly linked to gas. Since then, Spain has largely decoupled, mainly thanks to renewables. Italy hasn’t.
A report by the French National Assembly has proposes to reinforce further the role of the ECB on climate change.
greencentralbanking.com/2026/03/03/f...
Just when a stronger euro would be helpful to attenuate the rise in oil & gas prices... #EURUSD
TTF natural gas prices jumped today by about 20% for deliveries this year:
[for following years increase is much smaller]
New: Drones are redrawing the map of war in Ukraine.
Relentless surveillance has pushed the battlefield 20km beyond the front, in both directions. Supplies arrive by drone; the wounded leave by robot.
This is the “kill zone” — and the future of warfare.
👉 ft.com/kill-zone
You mean the sense of panic? Yes we should be preoccupied by the ongoing far right rise, but panic is generally of little help.
My comment on this below. Same logic but political implications and risk of miscalculation are far worse in Lagarde's case.
bsky.app/profile/stan...
And last but not least, even if you want to avoid far right leaders having a say on future ECB appointment, there is a better way to do this: bsky.app/profile/luca...
Spreading such rumors suggests either a sense of institutional panic vis à vis the coming rise of the far right in Europe, or a deliberate act of favoritism from Lagarde towards specific national leaders.
It is a significant leap in cynicism—and a show of profound distrust in our institutions—to suggest that the entire European Council would be incapable of making a sound appointment without Macron and Merz personally in the room.
By nature, the collective decision-making of the European Council makes it far less fragile than a national appointment: it requires QVM among the 21 eurozone heads of states.
As a French citizen, I understood the logic behind François Villeroy de Galhau’s decision to step down early.
The appointment of a Banque de France Governor is essentially a one-person decision, making the process highly sensitive to a change in the Elysée.
But this is different.
Absolutely! And also, it's one thing for Villeroy to distrust Macron's successor at the Elysée for making a decent appointment, it's another level to distrust the whole group of 21 members of the European Council to be incapable of appointing a decent ECB President in the absence of Macron+Merz.
So much has been written on how to properly design eurobonds since 2011. By now, most if not all principle-based objections have been addressed. Dogmatic and stubborn stances cannot be maintained forever.
"Crédit Agricole did not sufficiently assess the materiality of its climate-related and environmental risks" by 75 full days after the deadline set after an investigation in 2024, the ECB said.
www.lemonde.fr/en/climate/a...
Extremely good summary of the implications of the US administration obsession for having a weak dollar on the global financial order:
www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/tru...
Mi artículo en @financialtimes.com.
Es el momento de que Europa cree un verdadero activo refugio y refuerce su soberanía financiera.
Un amplio mercado de deuda de la UE bajaría costes, impulsaría la inversión y elevaria el papel del euro. Hora de cruzar el Rubicón.
“Tradition is something that is a reflection of the reality of the past,” Nagel said when asked about the Bundesbank’s shift, stressing that Europe’s security has not been as threatened as today since World War II. “Now we have a different reality.”
#Eurobonds #StrategicAutonomy
🪙💶Nice to see this amendment being adopted by very large majority earlier today in the European Parliament 👏
#DigitalEuro #StartegicAutonomy
The German Bundestag is planning a major move away from dependence on Microsoft & Co. towards Open Source and digital autonomy. A significant step for German IT infrastructure.
www.heise.de/news/Operati...
Today, from around 18.00 CET, MEPs will discuss with
@ecb.europa.eu President Christine Lagarde in plenary.
Follow live: europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/h...
Wow big move.
A very clear and deliberate move to allow Emmanuel Macron to appoint the next governor, instead of leaving this gift to the next (possibly far-right) President.
Some lessons from recent US events are being taken...
💶 Is the Digital Euro essential for Europe's sovereignty?
Latest Clark Center poll shows 57% of European top economists agree: without a retail CBDC, Europe risks losing control of its monetary system to US Big Tech & stablecoins.
Full results: kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/digi...
#DigitalEuro
Good point.The question was actually "do you tend to".
The level of trust in France is "traditionally" low in France, but here it halved in just 6 months.
