Europe: Politics in focus today - TDS

Analysts at TD Securities suggest that the EU Parliament votes today on Ursula von der Leyen's bid for Commission presidency.

Key Quotes

“Ms von der Leyen is scheduled to deliver her candidacy speech at 8am BST, followed by a morning of parliamentary debate, an afternoon of horse trading, and the vote taking place at 5pm BST. At the moment, it's not clear whether Ms von der Leyen has enough support for the vote to pass, and the fear is that if the vote fails, it blows up the EU Council's entire agreement from two weeks ago. However, we would note that we think Christine Lagarde's ECB nomination, the most market-sensitive position of the bunch, should be safe either way as the EU will not want that nomination to come across as politically motivated.”

“For data today we have Germany's ZEW index for July. We look for some further deterioration with the current assessment falling from 7.8 to 3.1 (mkt: 5.3) and expectations from -21.1 to -23.6 (mkt: -22.5).”