EU leaders will agree this week to insert two sentences into the EU treaty to pave the way for the creation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) from 2013, draft conclusions of the summit showed.
The ESM is to open the way for private sector investors to take a loss in case of a sovereign debt restructuring, which will put market pressure on governments to conduct sound fiscal policies and prevent another debt crisis.
It would also provide financial support to eurozone countries which suffer liquidity, but not solvency problems, through a fund that is likely to be bigger than the current 750 billion euro (US$992.25 billion) bailout fund.
However, to create the ESM, Germany and France insisted that the EU’s highest law, the EU treaty, has to be amended so that its operations are not deemed unconstitutional by German courts.
The conclusions said leaders of the 27-nation bloc would agree to amend the treaty by adding the following sentences to the existing article 136: “The Member States whose currency is the euro may establish a stability mechanism to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole. The granting of financial assistance under the mechanism will be made subject to strict conditionality.”
The ESM will be based on the agreement reached by eurozone finance ministers on Nov. 28.
The leaders, who meet on Thursday and Friday in Brussels, will also agree that the ESM would replace the European Financial Stability Facility and the European Financial Stability Mechanism, which will be operational until June 2013. They would like consultations with the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Central Bank on the change to the treaty to end in March next year and for approvals in individual countries to finish by the end of 2012.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
RSS