“…the break-up of the Eurozone now poses a larger threat to Poland than tanks, terrorism or missiles.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski

By STEPHEN FIDLER,CHARLES FORELLE and COSTAS PARIS

BRUSSELS—Euro-zone finance ministers agreed on Tuesday on details to expand the bloc’s bailout fund but acknowledged it would have less capacity to help troubled nations than once hoped, and suggested future efforts to resolve the worsening crisis would depend on the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund coming to their aid.

Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude Juncker, center left, with euro-zone finance ministers, including Germany’s Schäuble, center, Tuesday in Brussels.

An analysis presented at the meeting suggested the fund might raise between €500 billion and €750 billion ($700 billion to $1 trillion), according to a person familiar with the matter, far short of the €1 trillion or even €2 trillion that many had expected. After the meeting, officials didn’t give a figure for its expected size.

But such sums would fall shy of the amount that would be needed to convince financial markets there is enough in the pot to rescue Italy and Spain, as well as to support Europe’s troubled banks.

The rising debt-financing costs of Italy, represented at the meeting by its new prime minister, Mario Monti, were a major concern of the meeting, officials said, adding there were worries about the country’s heavy borrowing need of about €400 billion next year.

An IMF official said the Washington-based fund could at present provide €100 billion to help Italy, if it came to that. That means that to assemble a credible backstop, the Europeans would need to raise a substantial amount of money elsewhere

READ MORE AT WSJ

A recent UBS report sheds some light on why: They estimated that the financial crises and bank runs and uncertainty around leaving the Eurozone would cost small, weak countries like Greece 50 percent of their GDP in the first year and 15 percent in the years thereafter. And big, rich countries like Germany wouldn’t fare all that much better: UBS thought they’d take a hit of 20-25 percent of their GDP in year one, and 10-12.5 percent in the years after that.”

This is a topic I have been passionately observing over the last two years. As a family of Spaniards and Finnish in our household … we look with concern at the effects across the pond and within our backyards. Ignore the issue at your peril. The economic winds of unsustainable debt are blowing.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: euro is ‘unsaveable’
Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard tells Robert Miller why the single currency cannot work in its current form, and what he believes will happen to the eurozone next.

Engineering undergraduates demand work experience

A common refrain from Graduates seeking careers in Engineering? “It’s not fair!”

Engineering undergraduates demand more work experience, graduate schemes and graduate training, however throughout Europe and The United States, the opportunity to gain work experience through graduate jobs, i.e. internships has contracted along a similar trajectory as experienced, senior level, full-time openings.

A thousand engineering undergraduates from the UK’s top universities were surveyed recently by the leading graduate jobs site, TARGETjobsengineering.co.uk, and their No 1 problem with employers was the lack of work experience available to them.

The survey results were revealed at the annual TARGETjobs Engineering Forum, held at Imperial College on 28 July and attended by regular engineering employers like BP, Rolls-Royce, EDF Energy, Unilever and E.ON.

In a difficult job market, the engineering students surveyed felt that the glaring lack of work experience opportunities made it much more difficult to get a job interview or offer in their final year. They did all the right things by attending campus presentations and careers fairs but when it came to the crunch, they felt that employers favored students who had substantial relevant work experience. Many pointed out the irony of the situation where they were encouraged to get work experience by the same organizations who didn’t actually offer it to them.

A mechanical engineering student from Imperial College said:

Graduates need a chance to gain experience although they are being asked to have experience before they’re considered for a job. This isn’t fair.

And an electrical engineering student from Loughborough said:

Most students have no experience but most of the jobs ask for experience. It’s completely unfair and pushes a lot of people out of the engineering market.

This student’s fears are confirmed elsewhere in the survey, where 90 per cent of respondents said they knew other students who were actively considering working outside engineering after graduation – usually in the City where banks value the analytical skills of engineers. With the country’s focus on regeneration of the manufacturing sector, this is could have a negative effect on growth.

Students also called for more employers on campus and more direct involvement by employers in coursework. They are desperately serious about becoming more-rounded engineers but they want a level playing field and the chance to prove their worth.

Chris Phillips, Publishing Director at GTI Media and Chair of the TARGETjobs Engineering Forum, said:

I have never experienced such a consistent response from a student survey before. The majority of respondents were amazed and appalled at the lack of work experience being offered and the insistence by some employers that experience was a pre-requisite for applicants. The situation is improving, however, and most of the employers attending the Forum had already committed to extending their placement programmes.

• The surveys were live for six weeks from the beginning of June.
• There were 944 respondents to the student survey and 342 respondents to the recent graduate survey.
• TARGETjobs.co.uk is the leading graduate jobsite in the country, which contains over 500 graduate employer profiles and over 20,000 articles offering careers advice.
• It is published by GTI Media, the largest graduate careers media group in the world, which was founded in 1988 and currently employs 250 people across nine countries.
• GTI Media also produces a wide range of sector-specific publications, both in print and online, written by experts in their sectors helping graduates secure jobs.
• GTI Media distributes its products to universities across the UK and Ireland and is the publishing partner of 25 leading university careers services including London, Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Edinburgh, Warwick, Manchester, Nottingham, Durham and Trinity College Dublin.
• GTI is also the official publishing partner of the Association of Higher Education Careers Services, the professional association of careers services in Ireland, producing products under the gradireland brand.
• For more information on GTI Media visit http://gtimedia.co.uk

Footage from Paris Presentation: “Talent Branding & Community Pipelines through Social Media”

Answering Audience questions during the event in Paris where Dave Mendoza spoke on social networking, LinkedIn and Internet Search for recruiters.

Jorrit Blok, CEO, Otys closing Remarks

Interviewing Jorrit Blok

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