The Bundesbank has announced plans to repatriate some of Germany’s gold reserves from abroad. At least half of the country’s gold would be transferred to Frankfurt by 2020, according to Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann.  Weidmann says 366 tons of gold worth €11.5 billion have been delivered to Frankfurt so far. “There are now about 1,400 tons or 41.5 percent of our gold reserves here,” the banker said.  In October last year Germany’s gold reserves stood to around 3,384 tonnes, worth about €120 billion, which is the second largest in the world after the US.  Weidmann added the rest of the gold will remain in New York and London, which he says are as safe as Germany. In case of emergency, these reserves would quickly be converted on the markets in these cities, the banker said.  The Bundesbank has been criticized at home for keeping a major part of Germany’s gold reserves abroad. Critics are demanding the complete return of the gold to the country. They regard the gold as insurance if a crisis comes, and the immediate physical availability would be the decisive criterion. When trying to move gold from New York in 2014, the Bundesbank met obstacles from US authorities when officials tried to inspect the German gold kept in US vaults.  “I’m no conspiracy theorist, but the Bundesbank should be able to audit the gold once a year like it does with reserves in Frankfurt,” Hans Olaf Henkel, a German member of the European Parliament, told RT.  Some even doubted the German gold is still physically there. “We are still missing … published lists of gold bar number, even though the US Federal reserve publishes this list for their own gold,” said Peter Boehringer, founder of the Repatriate our Gold Campaign.

The ECB is asking the great banks to review the risks of a potential Brexit     The European Central Bank (EC) has asked the major banks that it oversees to analyze the risks they would be faced with if Great Britain were to exit the European Union (Brexit), a source close to the situation quoted by Bloomberg says. According to the aforementioned source, the ECB is working individually with banks and it is also urging companies to be prepared for everything that could impact them, in the event of a Brexit. The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney recently warned that a potential exit of Great Britain from the EU would affect the country's financial City and would aggravate the threats to financial stability. Last week, Mark Carney said that if Great Britain were to leave the European Union, banks would probably move some of their businesses to the EU.  So far, some European banks, including "Deutsche Bank" AG (Germany) and "ING Groep" NV (Holland) have announced that they might move their employees from Great Britain if that country were to vote in favor of exiting the European block in the referendum scheduled for June 23rd. The British division of the biggest Spanish bank, "Banco Santander" SA, has informed, in its annual report concerning its financial results, that "it has evaluated the potential consequences of a potential British exit from the EU, and the potential impact of the market instability in the period before the referendum, respectively". At the end of last week, German publication Handelsblatt also wrote that lately, the possible consequences of a potential British exit would have on the financial markets and banks have been the main concern of the ECB.  Quoting a source from the ECB, the aforementioned newspaper notes: "The Brexit is the biggest threat to financial stability this year". (A.V.)

Another decision of the ECB shows that the concerns expressed at the level of the banking system, concerning the effects of negative interest rates on market profitability and liquidity, have been taken into account. The European Central Bank has also announced the launch of four new long-term refinancing operations (TLTRO II) with a four-year maturity and interest rates that "can reach the level of the interest rate for the deposit facility", starting with June 2016, as stated in the press release. The operations will be performed quarterly, and the last TLTRO operation will reach maturity in March 2021, according to statements by Mario Draghi. The amounts borrowed by banks as part of these operations depend on the amount of the loans in the portfolio, so as to allow the ECB to reach its goal, of boosting lending. That means that the ECB will pay banks to "refinance" over a long period of time, but the nature of the financial securities which will be accepted as collateral in the TLTRO II is not known. As part of the first refinancing operations only the securities with the highest rating have been accepted, but the conditions have been significantly eased over the last few years. Perhaps the prediction made by a German MP in 2012, who told Handelsblatt that "if the ECB keeps going that way, it will soon end up buying even old bicycles" will come true eventually.  In Mario Draghi's opinion, "the exhaustive package will exploit the synergies of the monetary policy instruments", and the accelerated rise of the European stock market indexes, along with the significant weakening of the Euro against the dollar seem to indicate the resurrection of investor confidence.  But how long will the exuberance of the synergies last when faced with reality? The rise of the stock exchanges petered out after a few minutes, and the Euro rose to 1.095 USD/EUR, from approximately 1.08 USD/EUR after the announcement of the monetary policy decision. During the press conference, the Euro rose even more, passing the level of 1.11 USD/EUR.  Mario Draghi once again mentioned the deflationary threat, as well as the need for structural reforms. In the press conference nobody asked whether the quantitative easing wasn't in fact the main hurdle to structural reforms.  As for the deflationary threat, Patrick Artus, the chief-economist of investment bank Natixis, recently wrote that "deflation represents a decline of the GFP deflator and not of the CPI". According to the definition found on the NBR website, the GDP deflator is "the index which measures the price variation of all the end-user goods and services created in an economy, over a specified period".

Europe faces a perfect storm of crises on a scale not seen since World War Two. Endless streams of migrants are testing political cohesion. The euro zone crisis remains deeply unresolved, with the richer north and poorer south eyeing each other suspectly. A resurgent Russia provides an external threat in a way not seen since the Berlin Wall fell. Ukraine is a stark reminder that limited conflicts are not unthinkable.  But major, widespread European conflagration? It might remain unlikely, but no longer as unthinkable as it once was.  Some even predict it. In recent months, several current and former U.S. and European officials have told me they privately believe a major European war is no longer unthinkable. One even said he actively expected it to happen.  My own country, Britain, faces its own rather raw choice in June this year, deciding whether or not to remain a member of the European Union. The UK will probably stay in, informed opinion says — although there is also a consensus that the worse the news flow from the continent, the more likely it is to leave. It is difficult to predict how events will unfold, or even what the greatest risks might be: the effects of mass migration, the dangers of growing tensions with a resurgent Russia, the ongoing lingering threat that the euro might unravel. The worst-case scenario might be all of the above happening at once, prompting a collapse into chaos and violence that could be extremely difficult to manage or recover from. Worries over the effect of the migrant crisis skyrocketed after the November Paris attacks, and perhaps even more after reported New Year’s Eve mass sexual assaults in Cologne and other German cities, some blamed on migrants. Russia, meanwhile, is increasingly accused by some U.S. and European officials of deliberately exacerbating tensions in Europe through propaganda and disinformation. At the end of February Philip Breedlove, NATO’s military chief and head of the U.S. European Command went so far as to accuse Moscow of “weaponizing” refugees by stoking the Syrian war to undermine European institutions and resolve. Russia’s agenda remains extremely opaque — particularly since this week’s announcement by Moscow of a withdrawal from Syria. Vladimir Putin could be trying to push Bashar al-Assad towards the negotiating table by threatening to cut support — or simply trying to muddy the waters still further. For sure, the unraveling of the EU — and even more so, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — would offer Moscow considerable short-term advantage. It would also be a catastrophe for vulnerable Northern European states such as the openly nervous Baltics. Ultimately, though, a truly chaotic collapse in Europe could threaten Russia’s interests as much as anyone else.

"I am concerned this Government I want to succeed ... it has become too focused on getting the deficit down."  He added that he chose to step down because he felt "semi-detached, isolated in a sense".  And he claimed he began to lose the ability to make the case for his way of doing things and felt he was losing his influence. "I progressively got more and more depressed that we were running to an arbitrary agenda with a welfare cap in it", he added.  "My concern as I have said ... it's all about how we are perceived and how that balance is right. My deep concern has been that this very limited narrow attack on working age benefits means we simply dont get that balance, we lose the balance of the generations."  "I would not need to do anything on Europe because I have as much freedom as I like ... Europe has nothing to do with this, that is a deliberate attempt to put something out there that discredits me" IDS tells Sky.  "If I was restrained on Europe this might have some logic but it does not ... I recognise this would happen, there would be an attempt to besmirch my ... it's not about Europe."   "I went through a lot of tough decisions last year," IDS adds, mentions tax credits, taper among other things. He says he realised he did not have the power to oppose "raids" on his DWP budget and says Number 10 briefing that the PIP cuts were to pay for tax cuts for middle earners were "wrong". That appears to have been the final straw.

The UN warned that Greece's capacity to assess asylum claims needed to be strengthened for the deal. Implementation was "crucial", the organisation said. But rights group Amnesty International was scathing, calling the agreement a "dark day for humanity".  An EU source told the BBC up to 72,000 Syrian migrants living in Turkey would be settled in the EU under the agreement.  They added that the mechanism would be abandoned if the numbers returned to Turkey exceeded that figure.  Also on Friday, Turkish officials said they detained 16 people smugglers and almost 1,800 migrants.  The operation was part of efforts to stop migrants reaching the Greek island of Lesbos, Reuters reported....European Council President Donald Tusk said there had been unanimous agreement between Turkey and the 28 EU members. It is hoped the plan will deter people from taking the often dangerous sea crossing from Turkey to Greece.  Mr Tusk stressed the deal was no "silver bullet" and was just one part of the EU's response to a crisis that has sharply divided the bloc's members. Mrs Merkel said she was satisfied but added "I have no illusions that what we agreed today will be accompanied by further setbacks". Prime Minister David Cameron has welcomed the deal, saying it could "significantly" reduce numbers of migrants crossing the eastern Mediterranean to enter Greece by boat.

Even the famously myopic British media now report what Mrs Merkel says as a matter of some note.

This partly reflects the fact she has been around for ten years, longer than any other European leader. But there is another reason, which goes to the forgotten heart of the debate about the European Union.  Who is boss? Who is in charge? Whose word counts? And how to deal with the obvious, the natural answer to those questions ever since the unification of Germany in 1871.

We don't talk about it, but it matters more than most of the froth and flotsam about this debate.

It is both right and proper that in this country the debate about EU membership is about our prosperity, security and without being too pompous, our destiny.

But in or out of the EU will not change the fact that the UK will continue to exist on the edge of a large continent with which we have long had a mingled history of occasional splendid isolation and equally irritated engagement.