In southern Spain the Socialist party won a closely-watched regional election in Andalucia, where it has governed since the restoration of Spanish democracy in the 1980s.  But Podemos from the radical left - the Spanish Syriza - won an impressive 15% of the vote; little more than a year after the party was formed.   The big loser in Andalucia was the centre right People's Party, which runs the government in Madrid, even though it came second overall.   The PP will be particularly concerned because the threat to the status quo doesn't come only from the left.  An upstart centrist party, Ciudadanos, also won 9% of the vote, attracting support from people disillusioned by business as usual.   So where does this leave the two main parties in Spain?   As recently as 2008, the Socialists and the PP between them won nearly 84% of the vote in a general election.   They won't come anywhere near that when the country goes to the polls later this year.   Podemos is still some way behind them. But it is indisputably on the rise.  But the FN still came second with more than 25% of the vote, pushing the governing Socialists into third place.   That suggests that support for the FN's anti-immigration, anti-EU message is more than a simple protest vote.  Even if the mainstream parties conspire to keep the FN out wherever they can in the second round of voting, the French elections are another sign that many disgruntled citizens are now ready and willing to look for alternatives.  Elsewhere on the continent there are similar stories.  The rise of the Five Star Movement in Italy or UKIP in the UK, or even the AfD (Alternative for Germany) in Germany, suggest that some political fault lines are moving.  The idea of a 'democratic deficit' has exercised many political minds, particularly among supporters of the European Union.   Parties like Syriza and Podemos want to redefine what the EU does.  But many protest parties want to destroy it.  Of course, the centre ground is not dead.   Well-funded party machines do not disappear overnight (even if supporters of the Greek Socialist party PASOK may beg to differ).   But traditional parties across Europe are under pressure as never before in recent memory.   And European politics has become fascinatingly unpredictable.

Prices have fallen across the eurozone for a fourth month, as economists warn that the currency union could fall into a deflationary spiral.   Official statistics showed that prices fell by 0.1pc in the year to March, a slower pace than the 0.3pc Eurostat reported for the previous month.

No economist polled by Bloomberg expected inflation any higher than zero in the year to March. The most pessimistic analysts predicted that prices would fall by 0.5pc in the period.   Jonathan Loynes, of Capital Economics, said: "The latest data ... do little to diminish the danger of a prolonged period of deflation in the currency union."

"The increase was driven entirely by higher food and energy inflation, no doubt partly reflecting the drop in the euro during the month," he said.  The euro area first entered deflation in December, forcing the European Central Bank (ECB) to deploy a €1.1 trillion (£800bn) bond-buying scheme in a bid to revive the economic area.  Purchases began in March at a monthly rate of €60bn as inflation has remained well below the ECB's target of close to 2pc.  Sandte, of Nordea, said: "For the next few months, we expect the headline [inflation] rate to hover around zero."   "Depending on the monthly changes in energy prices, the headline rate can easily fall back a bit deeper into negative territory," he added. The inflation data came as Eurostat announced that the euro area unemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage points to 11.3pc in February.

Compared with a year ago the jobless rate fell in 22 of the European Union's member states, and increased in six.

Athens makes another attempt at unlockng funds with reforms-for-cash plan with threat of default looming  - I've also been trying to convince my bank to nullify my mortgage and credit card debts, and all they have done is mess around with the payment period and made me sign bits of paper about how I intend to get out of debt. I desperately need some cash to settle my bar bill at the Dog and Duck and they won't even give me a few quid for that unless I write a list of reforms I am going to make. But, obviously, I can't be arsed to do that.  Went back to the bank again and they asked for that bloody list again. I will told them that I will arrange for some homeless people to sit outside the bank begging and annoying their customers. They ignored my threat and refused to give me any money.

They won't stop asking for a bl0ody list so we finally put one together with things like "Will put €1 in the swear box if any of us swear" and "will sell some old CD's at a car boot sale" and sent it to the bank written in Chinese in yellow ink. But they still refuse to give us any money.

I don't think they realise how desperate the situation is. I've told them that without a bailout we won't be able to pay our bar bill we will be barred from the Dog and Duck. And no-one wants to see that happen, do they?

Hopes of an breakthrough between Greece and its creditors before the Easter break are fading today.  After three days of negotiations over reform plans, Greek officials are heading back from Brussels to Athens without a breakthrough.   European Council president Donald Tusk has predicted that it could take until the end of April for Greece to satisfy its lenders that it has a credible economic program. Until then, the government must struggle on without bailout funding.  Greek officials are remaining upbeat, telling us that sessions took place in a “very good climate”, adding:   “Both sides agreed that the process of fact-finding currently underway in Athens should be intensified.”   But without any new bailout funds, Athens faces a struggle to meet debt repayments including the €450m owed to the IMF on April 9th.     Eurostat reports that unemployment across the euro area fell from 11.4% in January -- having revised up its previous estimate of 11.2%.  Unemployment across the wider EU dipped to 9.8% in February 2015, down from 9.9% in January 2015 and from 10.5% in February 2014.

According to Eurostat, the number of people unemployed in the euro area fell by 49,000 meaning 18.204m were out of work.  And, as usual, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Germany (4.8%) and Austria (5.3%), and the highest in Greece (26.0% in December 2014) and Spain (23.2%).

The European Central Bank is set to tighten the noose on Greece a day after the president of the Bank denied the institution was “blackmailing” Athens into agreeing to bail-out conditions.

According to reports, the ECB will move to officially ban Greek banks from increasing their holdings of the country’s short-term sovereign debt, in a bid to break a potentially toxic link between lenders and the stricken sovereign.   The restriction will place a further squeeze on the cash-strapped Greek government, which could run out of money to pay wages and pensions by the end of next month.  Speaking to the European Parliament on Monday, Mario Draghi denied the ECB was acting unfairly towards the Leftist government: “We haven’t created any rule for Greece, rules were in place and they’ve been applied,” said Mr Draghi.   The ECB has emerged as the chief disciplinarian among Greece’s three main creditors.  The central bank has so far rebuffed pleas to increase the issuance of treasury bills or to resume its ordinary lending to the country.  This toughened stance led to criticism from Athens who accuse the institution of “asphyxiating” the country.   In a letter addressed to the German Chancellor and Mr Draghi, Alexis Tsipras warned the Bank’s stance could turn a “small cash flow issue” into a “large problem for Greece and for Europe.”   Athens is also due to request a return of €1.2bn which was erroneously handed to creditors from a European rescue fund, as it races to avoid bankruptcy and make its debt obligations of €450m to the IMF over the next few weeks.   But the ECB’s fresh curb comes as depositors have rushed to withdraw their money from Greek banks. The Greek banks already hold dangerously large amounts of Greek government bonds, completely unjustified given the country's junk bond rating. They can only run this risk because the ECB is underpinning the Greek banks with ELA that is barely papering over their essentially bankrupt condition. The Syriza government is pressurizing the banks to accept further T-bills - having quite nakedly, politically, decapitated the leading bank directors and replaced them with their own quisling henchmen. More T-bills would only accelerate the banks' decline into default.  he ECB is not telling the banks not to hold the Greek T-bills it already has, but having asked them several times and had its requests ignored, is now ordering them explicitly not to buy any new ones. The ECB is the euro's central bank. It can give such an order. he Greek banks are not owned by Syriza. In its political desperation to hang onto power, it is cynically quite prepared to make life even worse for the Greeks just to try to make its polemic point.

Walk away Greece. The EU is humiliating your nation. Your problem solution approach is flawed.

You must default. The disruptions of a default will soon sort themselves out as your own currency takes over.  At the moment the old guard of the political elite of Greece and the EU are trying to dethrone the new government of Greece in order to bring about a change of government in Greece that will toe the EU line. Also it is the intention of the EU to influence the outcome of the upcoming elections of Spain and others by doing this.  The future of Greece is not the Euro. It is a new currency. The Euro has no future. It is a currency designed for only one nation and that is Germany. The German nation has skills and resources that most other EU nations do not have. This will always be the case and this thus creates an economic mismatch among countries other than Germany in the EU. Britain for example uses the pound stirling and survives economically as a result of this. The Euro would not suit the British economy, as the Euro does not suit the Economy of Greece.,,

Greece will neither choose to leave the Eurozone, nor will Greece be ejected from the Eurozone by the Eurozone mafia. There must be 'ever closer union'. There will be 'ever closer union'. The Eurozone is a means to an end. The end is a European superstate. It's vital to understand this.

If necessary, Greece will be crushed by the Eurozone mafia. Indeed, any Eurozone country foolish enough to think that it can escape the Euro currency is deluded.

The European institutions are run by political fanatics, with virtually no meaningful democratic accountability. These people will push on and on and on with this project - of creating a European superstate - at all and any cost.  I used to think that there was a certain level of accountability and rationality underpinning the Grand European Project. There isn't. The Eurozone/European Union is a soft-getting-harder-by-the-day tyranny. Like I said, Greece will be crushed in to remaining in the Euro come what may.

The European Commission has said it wants to abolish geo-blocking, the practice of limiting access to online services based on a user's location.   The EU’s internal market and geo-blocking “cannot coexist", the EU's commissioner for digital single market, Andrus Ansip, said Wednesday (25 March).  He listed a set of goals to feature in the digital strategy he will publish in May.

These include: “Better access for consumers and businesses to digital goods and services; Shaping the environment for digital networks and services to flourish; and Creating a European Digital Economy and Society with long-term growth potential”.

“Consumers and companies in Europe are digitally grounded. They cannot choose or move freely. In the 21st century, this is absurd,“ said the former prime minister of Estonia, one of the most digitally advanced countries in the world.  The commission’s digital agenda drives comes as, despite years of highlighting the issue, many of the borders that don’t exist offline, continue online.

These means that some services bought online, like access to films and tv series, are only available to see in the country in which they were bought.

The technical restrictions that companies have put in place to prevent that content being watched from another geographical location, is called geo-blocking.

The practice is also used to prevent having to buy copyright or broadcast licenses for other countries, or to divert online shoppers to a local website with a different price.

“There are two logics. The logic of geo-blocking and the logic of internal market. We have to make our choice. Those two, they cannot coexist”, said Ansip.  But Ansip said the practice is acceptable “in some cases”.  “When for example in one country online gambling is prohibited, then geoblocking is absolutely acceptable.”  “If there are differences in national legislations, and [geo-blocking] is the only possibility to protect people in the country, then it's acceptable. But deep in my heart I would like to say: I hate geoblocking. I think this is old-fashioned, this is not fair. We don't have to use that kind of instruments in the 21st century.”  Now that the commission has identified the main problems, it will spend the next six weeks determining how it wants to solve them, and deciding what legislative measures it wants to propose.  However, judging by other digital reforms that the commission has set out, it can expect to face some fierce resistance. Vested interests are set to lobby MEPs and national governments, who have the final say on the plans.

“I'm under no illusions. It will be an uphill struggle”, said Ansip.

A day earlier, the commissioner expressed disappointment over attempts by national governments to delay abolishing roaming surcharges, the extra costs that companies charge when customers use their phone in another country.  On Wednesday, he referred to the prolonged debate on the issue.

“We already proposed in the year 2006 to abolish roaming surcharges. Then [digital commissioner 2010-2014] Neelie Kroes continued with this job. Now [fellow digital commissioner] Gunther Oettinger and me, we are dealing with those issues. The question is: who will be the next one?”

"I hope we will be able to abolish roaming surcharges very soon already. And I hope, and I'm pretty sure we will be more successful in abolishing geo-blocking".

Ansip said he will present his strategy for a digital single market on 6 May.