Europe in turmoil, Ukraine dam break.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today? Is Mario intro Normal, a former banker in New York, London, Zurich, and you give us an update what the heck is going on in Europe. Mario, give us an update.

0:12 Speaker 2 Yes, good morning, cats round table. Let’s just start off with the correction last week we’d mentioned about turkeiahs and their appointment of mister suspected appointment of mister Colleen as the foreign Minister of Turkey that in fact is not true.

0:25 He’s actually going to be the head of the Intelligence Service and the head of the Intelligent Intelligence Service is actually going to be the new foreign Minister. A gentleman by the name of Hakanfidan. He’s a very interesting person himself as well, speaks English fluently, spend time in the US.

0:41 He’s a former soldier, former academic, former head of the Intelligence Service, and he’s very close to mister President Erdowan. I suspect he’s also been picked because he obviously knows a lot of things from the intelligence world. And one of the things that’s going to be discussed at the upcoming NATO conference in later this summer is going to

1:02 be the discussion about admitting Sweden to NATO and who better than this gentleman to actually be part of that whole discussion and negotiation, given he actually has I suspect firsthand knowledge of terrorists. The Turkia claims Sweden is harboring the Curtis terrorists and therefore they want those people extradited to Turkia before Turkia agrees to allowing Sweden and to NATO.

1:28 Let’s roll over to Europe. The Eurozone now is actually in a technical recession that’s defined by two quarters of contraction economic contraction. Although the contraction is very mild, it’s still there. The ECB has announced, and rather it’s suspected that the ECB will go ahead and announce and increase in interest rates at its next meeting, and they will

1:52 most likely also stick to their guns and continue to increase interest rates even at the July meeting. That surprises many people, given that the eurozones in a technical recession, that the European Central Bank would actually go ahead and continue to increase interest rates. Another thing that’s come out of Europe which is interesting has to do with the

2:11 migration or immigration issue. They’ve now reached an agreement in the European Union countries that do not accept their allocation of migrants. For example, Poland and Hungary do not want any migrants. They’re going to have to pay twenty thousand euros per person that they do not accept the allocation of and they’re actually going.

2:34 Speaker 1 To be Does that come down to the fairs squid?

2:37 Speaker 2 You I suspect Poland and Hungary will gladly pay those amounts because they’ve been very adamant about not wanting to accept any migrants or immigrants coming from Asia, the Middle East and or Africa. There’s another thing as well. They’ve revamped the discussion with respect to asylum seekers and they’ve put everything now on a fast which means that before

3:03 these asylum seeker requests could take years, they’re now going to limit them to just under six months. And if people are not allowed to gain asylum, they are going to be actually shipped back to the countries they come from.

3:16 The only problem I see with that is we know from experience that Greece has tried to ship some Pakistani citizens back to Pakistan, but Pakistan refused to accept them, so they ended up having to bring the airplane back to Greece and in order to figure out what the next steps would be Wow, what else.

3:39 Speaker 1 Is the economy getting any better or just lingering?

3:45 Speaker 2 Well, it’s not a matter of getting any better or any worse. The reality is this war that’s going on in the Ukraine needs to stop. Short of that happening, we are going to continue to see Europe sofferre. Everybody’s concerned about what the energy prices are going to be in the second half of this year, in especially going

4:00 into the next winter. Given that the previous winner was very mild, this could see then prices go up. We’ve seen what the saoutis are doing with respect to the number of barrels putting in the market, or rather they’re limiting of them. So I think that it’s very difficult to say. The growth rates that everybody’s discussing and projecting

4:18 are nothing spectacular. Obviously they’re better than any type of a contraction. But now given Europe in a technical recession, it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the year plays out. There are a couple of things we should touch on before we close today, and they have to do with the Ukraine. Germany’s foreign minister had announced

4:37 not this previous week, but the week before that. It’s very that it’s not possible for a country that’s in the middle of a war to actually join NATO. And obviously this means that at the next NATO summit that’s coming up, it will be very difficult. Notwithstanding the fact that discussions were were undertaken in the past that said

4:56 Ukraine would be applying for membership into NATO at this upcoming name summit, that most likely this will now not be happening. We also know that the British Foreign Minister has said that targets within Russia now are legitimate for the Ukraine to hit. This is an interesting statement, not because Russia’s Medvedev has said that this now makes Britain’s

5:19 leadership legitimate targets as well, but because the British are saying that they believe Ukraine should be allowed to hit within Russia. But we know the United States has been adamant about saying that there are to be no attacks from the Ukraine into Russia. So here you have two NATO allies both pulling in a different direction. And this

5:40 is another reason why I don’t think these types of arrangements that NATO currently has are going to work in the long run.

5:48 Speaker 1 Under said well, Mario, thank you very much for giving us an upgain and what’s going on in Europe, and we’ll welcome you again next week.

5:55 Speaker 2 Thank you and enjoy your day.