Viktor Orban joins a growing number of European leaders calling for a rethink of sanctions towards Russia. 8.08am BST Hungary is heavily reliant on energy imports from Russia and this year signed a 10bn deal with Russian power company Rosatom to expand Hungarys only nuclear power plant. Prime minister Viktor Orban said today: The EU should not only compensate producers somehow, be they Polish, Slovak, Hungarian or Greek, who now have to suffer losses, but the entire sanctions policy should be reconsidered. Why should we jeopardize the EU economy that begins to grow? If there is a crisis situation, it should be solved by other means than meaningless sanctions. Who profits from [the] EU economy decreasing, Russias economy having troubles and Ukraine economically on its knees? 7.44am BST My colleague Jennifer Rankin would disagree. She argues that Russians will pay the heavier price.The west has banned Russian companies from taking its credit or buying its most advanced technology. Russia, in contrast, has stopped its own people from eating food they enjoy and made their grocery bills more expensive just as the economy teeters on the brink of recession. It is impossible to predict how long this economic war will drag on, but we already know who is paying the biggest price. 7.42am BST The prime minister of Hungary Viktor Orban has called for a rethink of sanctions towards Russia. He said in a radio interview:The sanctions policy pursued by the West, that is, ourselves, a necessary consequence of which has been what the Russians are doing, causes more harm to us than to Russia. In politics, this is called shooting oneself in the foot. 7.37am BST Weve got the latest UK GDP data coming out at 9.30am, which should show the Britain faring considerably better than its European counterparts. Second quarter GDP growth is expected to come in unchanged at 0.8% on the quarter, and 3.1% from the second quarter last year, contrasting sharply with this weeks weak European numbers. 7.32am BST European markets are expected to open higher, after a slew of poor economic data from the eurozone yesterday. The news got into the territory of so bad its good, as investors started betting on more central bank support. Michael Hewson of CMC Markets writes:With prices falling sharply across the euro area, the siren calls for the European Central Bank to do more are starting to become deafening. With these calls for full blown QE getting louder and louder it would appear that markets are betting that Germany and the Bundesbank will ultimately bend to the will of the crowd, hence yesterdays drift higher.Evan Lucas, strategist at IG, suggested investors were refocusing their attention away from geopolitical risks and back to central bank policy, after weak US retail sales and downbeat gross domestic product reports across the eurozone highlighted that low interest rates would continue to support markets. Continue reading...
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