Spain's new government announced Friday that it would cut employees' maximum severance pay from 45 days to 33 days' salary for each year of employment. Employment Minister Fatima Banez said the goal was to stem unemployment.
Renault boss Carlos Ghosn and Morocco's King Mohammed VI opened the carmaker's new factory near Tangiers on Thursday with great ceremony. The plant will have an initial capacity of 170,000 vehicles, expected eventually to reach 400,000. Yet the partly state-owned Renault has faced a storm of criticism over the project, seen by some in France as denying French workers jobs that were rightfully theirs.
Just how much more belt-tightening can the Greek population bear? As Greece's government prepares a new austerity plan, a condition for receiving a second vital bailout from the European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, protests have become a regular fixture in Athens. Greeks say they're being bled dry.
Marc Perelman meets Patrick Weil, Senior Fellow at France's CNRS research centre. He is the editor of a new book whose title we could translate as "80 proposals that do not cost 80 billion euros". It's a patchwork of new proposals on political reform, immigration etc… for the upcoming French presidential elections.
Unemployment in the 17-nation eurozone has risen to its highest level ever, hitting 10.4% in December, Eurostat data showed on Tuesday. It is the highest jobless rate recorded since June 1998, before the single currency was introduced in 1999.
The Fitch ratings agency downgraded five eurozone countries -- Italy, Spain and Slovenia by two notches and Belgium and Cyprus by one each -- on Friday, while lowering its outlook on Ireland amid persistent concerns about European debt.
Unemployment in Spain shot up to 22.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, the National Statistics Institute reported Friday. Spain is the eurozone country worst hit by joblessness, with 5.3 million people out of work at the end of December.
The 2012 World Economic Forum kicked off Wednesday in Davos with a keynote speech by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Some 40 heads of government and business leaders will discuss issues ranging from the eurozone crisis to Iran's nuclear programme.
Italy's cabinet approved legislation Friday to deregulate a number of service sectors and professions in a bid to increase competition, cut consumer costs, and stimulate growth in what is the eurozone's third largest economy.
In 1970's New York, "Serpico" was the cop who fought against police corruption. Today in Italy, it's the name of a computer system tackling tax evasion. With the country on the brink of recession, Rome misses out on over 100 billion euros a year in unpaid taxes. Yet for some Italians the system is less like a crime-busting policeman than Orwell's "Big Brother"; a dangerous intrusion into their privacy.
