German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday the euro was a “stable currency,” but in a veiled dig at Greece and other shaky economies, said some eurozone members must sharpen their competitiveness and fiscal rectitude.
The leader of Europe’s largest economy also gave fulsome backing to French Minister of Economic Affairs, Finances and Industry Christine Lagarde in her bid for leadership of the IMF, saying Lagarde was “ideal” for the job.
Merkel said the single European currency was not the root of Europe’s current travails.
Photo: EPA
“Let me tell you very clearly: We don’t have a problem with the euro as such,” Merkel said at a forum in Singapore. “It is a stable currency, particularly if you look at it vis-a-vis the [US] dollar.”
However, in an apparent reference to Greece and other eurozone members with debt problems, Merkel said the eurozone region had “a competition problem, a competitiveness problem.”
“So this is why we have said right from the start we need to boost competitiveness and we need to put fiscal responsibility and fiscal soundness at the very heart of our efforts,” Merkel said.
Improving economic competitiveness is key to overcoming the challenge facing the eurozone’s 17 members, Merkel said.
“Because the competitiveness of the member states in the euro area is too disparate, some of them are too weak as regards their competitive situation and the question is obviously how can we overcome this crisis,” Merkel said.
“A common currency actually requires also that competitiveness is not as unequal as it is now. There needs to be more cohesion and more convergence there,” she said.
The common European currency has benefited the German economy and Berlin remains committed to the euro, she added.
Merkel’s comments come amid growing expectations that the EU will provide new aid to Greece as the eurozone struggles to fix its finances despite a 110 billion euro (US$158.3 billion) bailout agreed with Athens and the IMF.
Support from Germany, the eurozone’s economic powerhouse, is vital in any further bailouts for its fiscally strapped neighbor.
On the IMF succession, Merkel said Lagarde was well qualified to head the body and urged emerging countries to give her an “objective” assessment amid calls for a non-European to lead the body for the first time.
The IMF is scheduled to publish a full list of candidates by June 17. The final selection is expected to be announced by June 30.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
RSS