Tag: IMF

The International Monetary Fund said yesterday (18 April) it had raised $320 billion (€244 billion) so far in a bid to boost its firepower to deal with the eurozone debt crisis, with Poland and Switzerland joining the effort. 

MEPs across party lines and the gender divide have mobilised against the planned participation of Dominique Strauss-Kahn - the embattled former head of the International Monetary Fund - in a talk-show to be hosted by young MEPs in the European Parliament.

Eurozone finance ministers are expected to approve a second bailout for Greece today (20 February), a move they hope will draw a line under months of turmoil that has shaken the currency bloc, although there is work to be done to make the figures add up.

Global leaders and businessmen urged Europe yesterday (16 January) to take fresh steps to resolve its deepening debt crisis, with a top executive of the IMF warning the continent will see a "downward spiral of collapsing confidence" if no further action is taken.

An EU official warned yesterday (3 January) that talks with Hungary over emergency funding could be frozen and the country faces possible legal action if its controversial new constitution breaches European treaties.

EU leaders decided last week to boost the International Monetary Fund's firepower with an additional €200 billion, but poorer East European countries are wrangling over their contributions. The EurActiv network contributed to this article.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrived in Germany today (6 December) in the first stop of a three-day tour of eurozone leaders to urge them to take decisive action to backstop their currency union and resolve a crushing debt crisis.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán requested 'precautionary aid' from the EU and the International Monetary Fund yesterday (21 November), saying Hungary was seeking "a kind of insurance policy" against possible future financing difficulties.

China cannot afford to have Europe fail: If help is needed, it will be considered through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But the priority remains to finalise the IMF quotas reform, Xie Duo, a senior official at China's central bank, said in an interview with EurActiv.

European leaders must be desperate to consider their main external partners, via the IMF, as the new solution to save the European economy. Should they accept this, they will enter world history as those who buried the European project and turned Europe into a second-rank actor, writes Maria Joao Rodrigues, a former Portuguese minister and adviser to the EU institutions.

The International Monetary Fund urged France yesterday (27 July) to take additional deficit-cutting measures to safeguard its AAA credit rating and to undertake structural reforms to improve flagging competitiveness.

The European Union warned Greek lawmakers yesterday (28 June) that their country faced immediate default unless they approve a hated austerity plan, as strikers began new mass protests against the EU/IMF-imposed measures.

The EU condemned yesterday (20 June) repression of opposition leaders and the media perpetrated by the regime in Belarus and imposed additional sanctions on the country's president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, known as Europe's last dictator. 

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso backed French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde for the International Monetary Fund, just minutes after she had announced her candidacy at a press conference in Paris today (25 May).

Ernst Stetter argues that a "convinced European" should succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the head of the IMF to boost confidence in the European economy and help maintain the trend towards to reforming global economic governance.

The International Monetary Fund released today (19 May) the resignation letter of its chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who faces charges of sexual assault and attempted rape. A few hours earlier, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said the next IMF chief should be from the EU.

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested and charged on Sunday (15 May) with sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid, in a scandal that appeared to wreck his hopes of running for president of France.

The euro zone requires automatic "haircuts" to accompany its bailouts as the currency union cannot be maintained without market discipline, writes Hans-Werner Sinn, an economist at the University of Munich.

It would be premature to write off the financial reforms undertaken as failures, writes Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of Bruegel, an international economics think-tank.

Ahead of the G20 meeting in Seoul, former South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan argues that amid a shift in thinking about state-market relations, leaders have to avoid looking inwards and squandering valuable opportunities, and instead make meaningful progress to revitalise and strengthen the IMF and global financial regulation.

The G20 sealed an accord branded as "historic" on Saturday (24 October) to reform the International Monetary Fund, in a grand bargain that will see Europe give up two seats on the Fund's Executive Board in return for greater responsibility from emerging economies on currency valuations.

Latvia holds its first election tomorrow (2 October) since a severe economic crisis and the vote could determine whether the Baltic state sticks firmly to its IMF-led programme of austerity measures and eventual euro entry in 2014.

The financial crisis is over but the world is currently divided into two groups: those countries that are recovering strongly and those that are lagging behind with new potential problems, writes Hans-Werner Sinn, professor of economics and public finance at the University of Munich and president of the Ifo Institute, in an August op-ed.

The current drive to cut government debt and spending in the euro zone could reduce the region's economic growth in the coming years, the International Monetary Fund said yesterday (21 July).