BERLIN, May 22 (Reuters) – Germany is banking on bilateral
deals to fight record youth unemployment in the euro zone,
agreeing to cooperate with several countries to bypass
pan-European bureaucracy.

On Wednesday, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and
Portugal’s Vitor Gaspar said Germany’s state development bank
KfW would help set up a Portuguese financial
development institution and would “provide technical as well as
financial support”.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German ECB board member Joerg Asmussen German expects growth in his country to pick up in the second quarter but warned on Friday that Europe’s largest economy risked becoming the “sick man of Europe” again if it did not carry out further reforms.

Germany earned that label a decade ago as it struggled with the cost of reunification. It has since become a rare island of prosperity in Europe, with unemployment of 6.9 percent which is close to the lowest levels in more than two decades.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Central Bank clashed with Germany on Tuesday over how quickly the euro zone should set up a full banking union, calling for it to be ready by mid-2014 after Berlin declared it wanted a slower pace.

European Union finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday are due to discuss plans for the banking union, which could help the currency bloc deal with failing banks.

BRUSSELS, May 14 (Reuters) – Austria edged closer to ending
bank secrecy for foreigners on Tuesday, bringing it into line
with the rest of the EU, saying it would not block talks between
the European Union and countries such as Switzerland over
sharing bank information.

Austria has been the last EU holdout on bank secrecy after
Luxembourg changed tack last month.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Central Bank policymaker Joerg Asmussen threw his weight behind demands by France and the European Commission for the swift establishment of a single supervisory authority and resolution regime for euro zone banks next year.

“We want a single European resolution regime, together with a single resolution agency and a single resolution fund that is financed by a levy from the banking industry. This should come into place in parallel with the single supervisory mechanism hopefully by the summer of next year,” Asmussen told reporters ahead of a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble signaled a softer stance on European banking union on Tuesday, saying that rather than waiting for a treaty change, governments should coordinate policies on closing banks.

A banking union is critical to Europe’s efforts to overcome the euro zone’s sovereign debt crisis. A first step involves creating a Europe-wide banking supervisor under the European Central Bank, to be followed by a scheme for bank resolution – closing or salvaging struggling banks.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives plunged to their lowest rating in seven months in a leading opinion poll on Sunday as a tax evasion scandal embroiled an ally and their Bavarian sister party faced questions about nepotism.

Support for Merkel’s Christian Democrats and Bavarian partner the Christian Social Union fell three percentage points from a week earlier to 37 percent, their lowest ranking since October, the Emnid poll for Bild am Sonntag newspaper showed.

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) – Inflation in the euro zone has fallen to a three-year low and unemployment has hit a new record, cementing expectations of an interest rate cut by the European Central Bank later this week.

With the bloc’s economy mired in recession, inflation tumbled to 1.2 percent in April, the lowest level since February 2010 and the biggest monthly drop in more than four years, the European Union’s statistics office Eurostat said on Tuesday.

BERLIN, April 30 (Reuters) – German consumer sentiment rose
to its highest level since October 2007 heading into May as
consumers count on rising wages and as a bailout for Cyprus, in
which depositors were hurt, undermining Germans’ traditional
tendency to save.

GfK market research group said on Tuesday its
forward-looking consumer sentiment indicator, based on a survey
of around 2,000 Germans, rose to 6.2 going into May, up from a
revised 6.0 in April.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s government expects the Constitutional Court to confirm an earlier ruling backing a euro zone rescue mechanism and EU officials said the European Central Bank’s plans to buy bonds of stricken states was outside its remit.

The Bundesbank, a stern opponent of ECB plans to purchase debt of struggling euro zone members, sent a 29-page report to the court in December, which was published in a German newspaper on Friday, outlining the dangers of the plan.