France has moved centre stage in the crisis, after EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn said that the country would fall into recession in 2013 and needs two more years to bring down its budget deficit.
Presenting the Commission's Spring Economic Forecasts on Friday (3 May), Commissioner Rehn described Paris's forecasts, based on a mere 0.1 percent growth rate, as "overly optimistic."
The eurozone's second largest economy would run deficits of 3.9 percent in 2013 and 4.2 per...
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Benjamin Fox is a seasoned reporter and editor, previously working for fellow Brussels publication Euractiv. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He heads up the AU-EU section at EUobserver, based in Nairobi, Kenya.