Tag Archives: cyprus

Liberal Democrat MEPs call for Committee of Inquiry on Cyprus

Senior UK Liberal Democrat MEP Sharon Bowles has called for a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry should the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) Hearing on 25 April not answer the many questions hanging over the Cyprus affair.
 
Bowles, who chairs the influential ECON Committee said:
 

We will have an ECON Committee hearing on 25 April with the Troika and Mr Dijsselbloem, President of the Eurogroup to get to the bottom of the Cyprus bailout affair. If we find the answers insufficient the Liberal Group in the European Parliament will call for the immediate setting up of a Committee of Inquiry

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Posted in Europe / International | Also tagged and | 2 Comments

Cyprus bailout plan: good idea, badly implemented?

Cyprus’s parliament couldn’t have been much clearer in its rejection of the plan, negotiated between eurozone members, to bail out the country’s failing banks. As a result, Cyprus is now turning from Brussels to Moscow for a lifeboat, and it looks like a deal might be done. Russia is demonstrating once again that is never backward in coming forward to build (or buy) new strategic alliances.

Yet outside the markets pages of the Financial Times, the merits of the original plan seem to have been little-discussed, with the assumption being that the plan was a universally bad one. But actually the idea …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 23 Comments

ELDR: a caucus in the Caucusus…

When I was elected to the Liberal Democrat delegation to the Council of the European Liberal Democrats (ELDR), adventure was not necessarily high amongst my expectations, and trips to Dresden and Palermo last year were, whilst very nice, not particularly off the beaten path. And so, when it was announced that the Spring Council meeting would take place in Yerevan, I have to admit to an awakening of my passion for obscure routes and means of transport. So, why Yerevan, and what will be happening at the end of next week?

Sunday sees Parliamentary elections in Armenia, and this, combined with …

Posted in Europe / International and News | Also tagged , and | Leave a comment

Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece’s maiden speech

In recent weeks, LDV has been bringing its readers copies of our new MPs’ first words in the House of Commons, so that we can read what is being said and respond. You can find all of the speeches in this category with this link. Alert LDV reader and bureaucratic blogger Mark Valladares, himself a husband to a Lib Dem Peer, our party’s president Ros Scott, has drawn to our attention that we have more new parliamentarians in the Other Place, who are also making maiden speeches. So today, Baroness Hussein-Ece’s words are reproduced below.

Baroness Hussein-Ece: My …

Posted in Parliament | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 2 Comments
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