European Institute

As leaders head to Toronto for a G-20 summit meeting this weekend, the stage is set for the EU and the U.S. to air their clashing views about the right priority for national fiscal policies at this stage of the crisis.

The meeting will thus be a sounding board – and little else. Major collective decisions are scheduled for the G-20’s subsequent meeting this fall in South Korea.

But a trans-atlantic clash of views has become increasingly strident about what fiscal strategy to adopt now amid signs of global economic recovery. The Obama administration is publicly urging Europe to copy the U.S. example of continuing to pump money into the system in order to spur economic growth. But key EU leaders – notably Germany – are publicly insisting that it is time to rein in deficit spending to tackle the accumulating (and already monumental) debt.

Greater budget discipline is a goal that all EU countries are pursuing, with tax increases (including in VAT rates) and often-drastic cuts in government spending. A country-by-country table of these measures being adopted by EU member states has been compiled by the European Institute and is available here as a survey current as of July 1.

A Pew Research opinion survey shows President Barack Obama maintaining his extraordinary popularity in Europe as a global leader – despite some political setbacks at home and abroad.

Ratings of America are overwhelmingly favorable in Western Europe. For example, 73% of French and 63% of Germans say they have a favorable view of the U.S. (Approval rates of America have also jumped sharply in Russia (57%), up 11 points, and in Japan (66%), up 7 points.) The new findings emerged from the latest edition of the annual Pew 22-nation survey of global attitudes. In most wealthier countries, he gets “an enthusiastic thumbs-up” for the way he has handled the world economic crisis.

The glaring exception is the U.S. itself, where as many people disapprove of his approach as approve.

For several years, the American chattering classes have boiled with feverish discussion about the rise of Islam in Europe and the terrorist threat nurtured by extremists in ghetto-like Muslim communities in European countries. Much of the tone and substance of this discussion about an ominously emerging “Eurabia” has come from books by a handful of prominent American political analysts who charge Europeans with placating the growing Muslim minorities on their soil and thus harboring and inciting Islamic extremism.

American foreign-policy experts have called for NATO to seek to join in any international re-arrangements for Kirighi, "With the violence around Osh continuing and a very real possibility that the conflict could expand to engulf parts of neighboring Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, NATO and the United States must immediately engage with regional partners to help restore security", according to a New York Times piece authored by a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow.