Unit 3. Abstract translation

Exercise 1. Make a summary of the news issue below and translate it into Ukrainian.

Analysis: Agendas clash in Irish rescue ballet

In the murky ballet over a financial rescue for Ireland, the agendas of the key players in Europe are often at odds, clouding the message to markets and deepening the sense of crisis in the euro zone.

The latest country in the currency bloc to come under bond market pressure over its finances, Ireland is resisting a push from some European officials to apply for assistance out of an avowed determination to preserve its sovereignty, but probably also due to electoral considerations.

The European Commission and the European Central Bank have an interest in an early resolution to prevent contagion causing a wider euro area meltdown, as it threatened to do at the height of Greece’s debt crisis in April.

Ireland’s position is different because it is fully funded to mid-2011 and does not need to tap the markets immediately. But its state-guaranteed banks, weighed down by bad loans granted during a property boom, are largely shut out of inter-bank lending and heavily reliant on ECB funds.

Dublin’s European partners have mixed motives, with fears of contagion balanced by domestic resistance in Germany to another bailout, and a tactical interest among weaker euro zone states in keeping market and EU attention focused on Ireland rather than on their own problems.

Here is a look at some of the avowed and unavowable motives of the players in Europe’s Irish stew.

The government says it is defending the independence of the Irish Republic, which celebrates 88 years of freedom from British rule on December 6, a day before a crucial austerity budget.

“It’s been a very hard-won sovereignty for this country and this government is not going to give over that sovereignty to anyone”, Batt O’Keefe, minister of enterprise, trade and innovation, told national broadcaster RTE on Sunday.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s battered cabinet is especially keen to avoid the humiliation of having to go cap-in-hand to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund before a crucial by-election on November 25, Irish politicians say.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan is putting the finishing touches to a four-year 15-billion-euro deficit cutting plan to be announced later this month. While EU officials are involved in those discussions, they would have more power to set the terms if Ireland were under an EU-IMF program now.

Like other countries on the brink, Ireland may be able to obtain easier rescue conditions by playing for time and using the contagion risk if aid is delayed to wring concessions.

The government may also want to pin the blame on Brussels or Berlin for unpopular spending cuts or humiliating tax rises such as any increase in Dublin’s iconic ultra-low 12.5 percent corporate tax rate.

Ireland’s opposition parties want Cowen’s administration to take the blame for the most unpopular austerity measures before they force a general election which opinion polls suggest they should win by a large majority. (Reuters)

Exercise 2. Make a summary of the news issue below and translate it into Ukrainian.