Euractiv - Jonathan Packroff / EU Single Market report: Letta wants to mimic US tax credits

• Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta, in charge of the long-awaited Single Market Report, wants to propose a tool resembling tax credits used by the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), he said on Tuesday (19 March). 

• Letta, tasked with authoring and presenting a high-level report on the future of the EU’s single market to EU leaders on 17 April, has laid out some ideas of what the report might entail to business leaders at a conference in Berlin on Tuesday (19 March). 

• In his speech, Letta highlighted the 27-country bloc’s faltering competitiveness against the US, which has been outperforming the EU’s economy in recent years. 

• To catch up, he would like Europe to mimic the US’s use of tax credits to incentivise domestic investments while simplifying administrative procedures.

The Washington Post - Susannah George, Loveday Morris, Kareem Fahim and Sarah Dadouch / Gaza cease-fire talks falter in Doha as Blinken arrives in region

• Starkly different visions of how to end the war in Gaza are at the center of thorny and slow-moving negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Doha this week, with officials warning that a deal to halt the fighting and release some hostages could be weeks away, or upended entirely if Israel moves ahead with a planned assault on the southern city of Rafah. 

• For months, Hamas has insisted on a negotiated end to the conflict, including a permanent cease-fire in exchange for the release of the hostages its fighters abducted from Israel on Oct. 7. Israel has vowed to continue the war until the group, which has controlled Gaza for 16 years, is eliminated. 

• Any suspension of hostilities would be temporary, Israel says. 

• “This is not a negotiation that will end in days — it will end, maybe, in weeks,” said an Israeli official briefed on the talks who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations.

Financial Times - Claire Jones and Kate Duguid / Federal Reserve sparks market rally as officials stick to rate cut plan

• Federal Reserve officials have indicated they still expect to cut interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point this year, sending US equity markets to record highs. 

• The market reaction on Wednesday came after the Federal Open Market Committee voted unanimously to leave rates unchanged at a 23-year high of 5.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent. 

• The central bank also sharply raised its forecast for US economic growth this year, while saying inflation would be slightly higher than expected. 

• The latest statement leaves the Fed on course to begin cutting rates as early as the summer, calling time on a mission to quell inflation that jumped as the US economy emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic.

   

The Guardian - Lisa O'Carroll / EU leaders urged to put economies ‘on war footing’ at Ukraine negotiations
 

• EU leaders are to meet in Brussels to discuss ways to radically increase military and financial support for Ukraine amid calls for member states to put their economies “on a war footing”. 

• Fuelled by what one diplomat said was a new “sense of urgency and immediacy” over the war in Ukraine, rhetoric on Moscow has notably hardened in the past few days. 

• On Thursday prime ministers are also expected to examine contentious plans to confiscate billions of euros in interest from frozen Russian assets and send the vast majority of the money to Ukraine. 

• Charles Michel, the president of the European council, said in a pre-summit letter to leaders: “Now that we are facing the biggest security threat since the second world war, it is high time we take radical and concrete steps to be defence-ready and put the EU’s economy on a war footing.”

Our opinion reads for today:

• Bloomberg - Jennifer Duggan / Ireland’s Next Leader Has a Tough Job: Hold Back Sinn Fein 

• Foreign Affairs - Gustavo Flores-Macías / The Costs of El Salvador’s Crime Crackdown