Aurelia Butler

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union leaders reiterated on Thursday their political commitment to finishing the bloc’s banking union, but set no date for it, underlining the deep disagreements between governments on what needs to be done to get there.The EU’s banking union is now set up for the 19 countries sharing the euro but non-euro zone members of the 27-nation bloc can join too. The project is to make the euro zone’s banking system safer and more resilient to crises.Under the banking union, all the major euro zone banks have a single supervisor – the European Central Bank – and a single resolution authority that is to wind down failing euro zone banks in a uniform manner.What is missing is a single deposit guarantee scheme that would ensure that any bank in any euro zone country would always pay out to its clients deposits up to 100,000 euros ($113,300) – a guarantee that would help prevent bank runs even in a major banking crisis. Calls to complete the banking union mean setting up the deposit guarantee scheme, but euro zone finance ministers have made little progress. Leaders asked them on Thursday only to draft a plan to get there, rather than find a full solution now.The main problem is that, before any deposit scheme can be set up, Germany wants euro zone banks to be less in danger of collapsing in the first place.This means reducing their bad loans and exposure to the debt of a single issuer, such as the government of the country where they operate, so that they would not go under if the sovereign they are most exposed to cannot redeem its bonds.Limits on the amount of bonds of a single sovereign that a bank is to hold are hard to swallow for Italy, which finances a lot of its borrowing in local banks. Some other southern countries share Italy’s objections.($1 = 0.8826 euro) More

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -The town of Zeewolde, 50km east of Amsterdam, on Thursday approved plans by Meta to build the largest data centre in the Netherlands from which Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Instagram and Whatsapp can serve users all over Europe.The facility, which will use 1.38GWh of electricity and cover 166 hectares (410 acres) of farmland, is expected to run on green energy and provide the local economy a boost but has been criticised by some politicians and environmental campaigners.The centre is expected to create 400 permanent jobs in the town, which has a population of 20,000.While the country’s previous economic affairs ministry lobbied to attract data centres to the Netherlands, including major facilities by Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) that also run on renewable energy, politicians have recently begun questioning whether the number and placement of data centres should be determined by the national government.”Hyperscale data centres place an unreasonably large demand on the available renewable energy in relationship to their societal or economic value,” the parties forming Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s new government wrote in their governing pact published a day ahead of the Zeewolde council vote.”We will be sharpening the national coordination and admissions criteria for licensing.”Hendrik Visser, a council member for the VVD Party, acknowledged that there were drawbacks to having a large centre in the town, but said the benefits were greater for general development of the town.”To satisfy our online needs, data centres are simply necessary,” he said. “They have to go somewhere, and it’s probably not imprudent to build them here in Western Europe, centralized under our laws, and to see what they can mean in this case for Zeewolde.”Meta spokeswoman Melanie Roe said initial construction costs would be around 700 million euros ($795 million) and no date has been set yet for completion.The 800,000-strong population of Amsterdam are heavy users of data services provided by Meta, yet regional authorities have issued a ban on the construction of further data centres in the city due to strains on its electric grid.The Dutch Data Centre Association estimates that currently data centres make up about 3% of all Dutch electricity usage, but that may rise to 10% by 2030.($1 = 0.8812 euros) More

PARIS/HAMBURG (Reuters) -Airbus delivered the final A380 superjumbo on Thursday, to Dubai’s Emirates, marking the end of a 14-year run that gave Europe an instantly recognised symbol across the globe but failed to fulfil the commercial vision of its designers. Production of the world’s largest airliner – capable of seating 500 people on two decks together with perks such as showers in first class – has ended with just over 250 delivered to airlines compared with the 1,000 or more once predicted.Airbus, a planemaking conglomerate drawn together from separate entities in Britain, France, Germany and Spain to carry out their brainchild of mega-jets to beat congestion, pulled the plug in 2019 after airlines went for smaller, leaner models.The 123rd superjumbo delivered to Emirates, by far the largest customer, departed Hamburg in gloomy twilight before making a farewell lap of the port city and heading for the Gulf.Thursday’s handover was kept deliberately low key, partly because of COVID restrictions and also because Airbus is these days focusing its PR on environmental benefits of smaller jets.That is in stark contrast to the spectacular light show that revealed the new behemoth in front of European leaders in 2005.Emirates still believes in the superjumbo’s ability to lure passengers. Even though no more A380s will be built, it will keep flying them for years. Many airlines disagree and have axed the A380 during the pandemic. Airline president Tim Clark refuses to bow to sceptics who say the days of spacious four-engined jets like the A380 are numbered, as an airline seat becomes a commodity like any other.”I don’t share that view at all … And I still believe there is a place for the A380,” Clark recently told reporters.”Technocrats and accountants said it was not fit for purpose … That doesn’t resonate with our travelling public. They absolutely love that airplane,” he said.SHOWER TALKSThe A380’s demise left deserted one of the world’s largest buildings, a 122,500-square-metre assembly plant in Toulouse. Airbus plans to use part of it to build some of the bread-and-butter narrowbody models that dominate sales, like a deal with Qantas announced earlier on Thursday.But it is in Hamburg that some of the most striking features of the A380 evolved.Clark recalled how he huddled with Airbus developers in northern Germany to persuade Airbus chiefs in France to pay for the engineering needed to make in-flight showers a reality.”There was a lot of arm-folding and my friends in France were a little circumspect,” Clark said.”I had to sit with friends in the development unit in Hamburg having to build the showers, and then asked Toulouse management to see how it could be done, and so they bought in.”That innovation generated headlines but did not translate into sales needed to keep the A380 going. The plane was designed in the 1990s when travel demand was soaring and China offered seemingly unlimited potential.By the time the first delivery came in 2007, the plane was more than two years late. And when Emirates got its first A380 a year later, the emerging financial crisis was already forcing analysts to trim their forecasts for the biggest jets.Boeing (NYSE:BA) was meanwhile capturing orders for a revolutionary new 787 Dreamliner, to be followed by the Airbus A350.”There was a slowing down of appetite and enthusiasm. We didn’t share that view; we put this great (A380) aircraft to work,” Clark said on the sidelines of an airlines meeting. “We have what I think is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever flown.” More