This Conference, jointly organised with the European Commission, is an associated event of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the EU. It will present and discuss the main findings of the 2012 edition of the European Competitiveness Report as well as recent related empirical evidence and their implications for industrial and innovation policies in Europe and Ireland. The Conference Programme and more information are available here.
An inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the 2008 banking guarantee is to be held. Judging by the previous inquiries we’ve had, I wouldn’t expect too much in the way of actual action, though previous inquiries (Moriarty, Morris, Mahon, Planning as examples) have produced lots of paper and lawyers’ fees as by products.
What should the scope of this inquiry be? And what would commenters like asked of the people likely to be involved in such an inquiry?
You might have thought that the disastrous but wholly unsurprising eurozone GDP numbers indicate that the bloc is in a bad way, and will continue to be so until the current macroeconomic policy mix is jettisoned.
Happily, Olli “Don’t mention the multiplier” Rehn has good news for us:
The current situation can be summarised like this: we have disappointing hard data from the end of last year, some more encouraging soft data in the recent past and growing investor confidence in the future.
Thank goodness for that.