cannot discuss the number of questions that are part of our national competence would trash written a national motto does our colleagues so clear that for me they don't tell european commission has no medical mandate to negotiate with this organization they have a mandate to negotiate with the russian but i think that this mandate must be received because the reality is the following the require you to join our common for us to make a single economic space. as i said before we are seeing some progress there are now engaged in the mentation of the so-called common steps towards visa free travel that were launched last summit and there was progress made in the goods here sions on an upgraded you russian visa waiver agreement which i hope will be finalized soon. our goal remains visa free travel as you know there are still some technical issues that are important to fulfill

you mentioned those reports yes this was very serious work both by the russian administration and by the european union we stray sions we have to check all this but beyond the means to make this happen and i believe it is in the interest also of europe in fact i can tell you that. one of them potent. areas in which we are looking is tourism there are many tourists of russia going to eat european union and certainly does you know it is to have more tourists from from russia in fact there have been a lot more justice and days ago i was in the baltic summits where russia was also represented by vice prime minister should call of and all the prime ministers of the region were given goes the figures about the increase of visits it's amazing for instance the. the number of directions going to this noble finland we are here

very close to finland he said it is but because we are not systems that are already more flexible in terms of multiple entries we just same visit but i agree it's not enough we should go further and that's where we are working and it depends of course on the political will of all the twenty seven member states but also on some technical matters that have to be addressed by a russian will sort it is and i hope to see progress in the not distant future in this area that i know is very important for the russian citizens namely young citizens but not only also it is very much in the interest of the u.p.a. as a red state. thank you. chris. thank you but as you know that once accomplished when we were reporting a building in one of. these builders farmed fish it's

not. something something valuable when they were building this was it was hidden in the mines and seventeen it was brought up and we. offer it to our european colleagues to go and see as this valuable things that were promised the represents a sort of open media free to do it as well thank you. but i would just remind you what you were looking at there the twenty ninth of russian review summit in st petersburg is a two day event is just wrapped up as you've been watching it if you have been for the last fifty minutes or so it's something that takes place every six months in fact we heard from jose manuel barroso the european commission president also herman van room poit the head of the european council and of course president putin as well and i'm not going to bore you too much by going over the whole thing again but i will pick out some of the highlights over the next minute or two if you've only just tuned into us putin started off by talking about it being

a fruitful and productive meeting overall over the last forty eight hours and he said they were in agreement on all issues but they wanted to walk work towards a common aim and at the same speed as each other to deal with the issues facing russia and the e.u. right now with an heard in the introduction there from herman van rompuy talking about it's the best dynamics russia in the enjoyed for years he said also interestingly made comment about what's happening of course the biggest event within the european union at the moment the economic problems they're having particularly greece he said there's no way back for the euro only a way forward he reiterated in his words it will not fail. he said that greece what had to stay in the euro at least he wanted to see it stay in the euro but it had to abide by its obligations with some words about russia from herman van rompuy said that russia had made progress in its development of

civil society welcome the active implementation of what it was doing so far. a lot of the journalists there were expecting to hear a lot more about what was going on in syria now he did make a comment he said he deplored the situation in syria but we didn't hear an awful lot about that putin went on then to talk about the w t o in fact they all did russia's accession to the w.t. when it's ratified indeed which may be as early as next month. and that was it basically was an awful lot more they talked about but as i won't bore you with it you can find more about that online if you want to with r.t. dot com if you'd just been listing into the last fifteen minutes you want me to repeat it all you are watching r.t. of course my name is kevin owen thanks for being with us we got the sport coming up in about ten minutes time as a save you want to catch up with more of what happened there. you can more details online from us at r.t. dot com. now american economist and nobel laureate eric mask in speaks to us now to find out what he thinks is on the horizon for the troubled

world economy. ople are it in economics it's great to have you with us sara today it's a pleasure so i'll start with greece and the latest news we know that christie's public finance is practically paralyzed three cows that pensions and salaries won't be paid in june and then you have people and companies transferring their assets out of the country how much worse can actually be a cash crunch get well they won't be able to get to the seventeenth of june election we don't know the answer to that since since the election is. in the near future i suspect that they they can and will

through to the election but things could deteriorate and get even worse and in the meantime i see the the greek situation as a tragedy because so much of what has happened could have been prevented if europe were truly an integrated unity if the same steps had been taken on the fiscal side that is the public spending and tax side as were taken ten years ago on the monetary side so that there were there were it would be true. fiscal integration true centralization of fiscal policy. the. public debt problems that we see in greece but we also see spain italy and number of other countries would have

automatically have been solved by by virtue of have. thing a centralized europe according to me reports three billion in cash was withdrawn from greek banks. since last election in may and that's nearly two percent of all the cash greek band backs banks hold how sustainable is that well it was clearly such transfers that counts can't go on indefinitely without there being. a banking collapse but that's that's again a failure of. of europe look at what happened in the united states a few years ago during the financial crisis the federal government stepped in and bailed the banks out there partially nationalize them. europe could have taken similar steps and greece and and did not do so spanish banks

bankia has requested that because spain allowed in spanish banking history and have the spanish banks all soak up the already sure spain has had. some real problems too. and. while they have whether or not nearly. as serious trouble as as greece it's. it's bad and the austerity program there. is has only made things worse but just how much financial power. to national and the e.u. authorities have to support spain in countries that are in similar situation like italy for example if they wanted to. exercises more power on the level of the of the union they could do it there are lots of things

that could be done to ease the fiscal problem in spain and portugal one good idea which has been proposed and which i hope will be adopted at some point is the idea of a euro bonds to translates private debts and. or of national debts and so the european objects some fund managers are openly right now dumping the here assets and it's no surprise that it's running really logan's dollar. but is dollar a safe bet at this point i mean america itself has a huge gap and it's government up six its g.d.p. the dollar has always been a safe haven at times of economic uncertainty and i think it will continue to be a safe haven for for many years to come yes there is a. debt problem in the us in the

sense that it's the debt to g.d.p. ratio is higher than it normally is and that it's. if you extrapolate going for the current situation going forward. it looks as though the jet g.d.p. . debt to g.d.p. ratio will actually. continue to increase but in fact. the seriousness of this problem has been exaggerated so you don't look at it as a crisis i look at it as as a problem but as a fixable problem and not a problem that has to be solved immediately by any means like i think a much more important problem in the united states is to get three a con and a back to normal form that the still running out of something like eight percent which is too high the first priority should be getting the economy back to normal

and then to worry about. about solving the long term debt problem we talk about the ratings agencies i mean how much have they contribute to worsening the crisis because from what i understand and i may be wrong these are independent entities they have owners they trade stock markets why are they allowed to have so much power over the global economy i don't know that they do have so much power anymore i think that they did play a role several years ago this whole sequence of events started in the united states with what was called the subprime mortgage crisis and the rating agencies played a role making the subprime mortgage problem worse by overstating the the safety of investing in subprime mortgages by now.

i think we've learned to take what these rating agencies say with with less seriousness that was true. which isn't to say that they have no effect but i but i don't think that they have nearly the. power that they had a few years ago but you think they have contributed to worsening the crisis a little sure a little bit for example last summer. you'll remember that there was a somewhat artificial debt ceiling crisis in the u.s. and this led to a downgrading of u.s. debts. for a pull a two to double i. that didn't do the crisis any favor that there were there were there were some temporary turbulence as

a result of that i don't think in the long run. it did. serious damage but it was a but it was not. it was certainly not a positive step to ask you something if let's say two three men four years ago someone would have sat that you were already facing crisis of this scale probably people would laugh in your face like no of course not do you think do you think scholars missed something or is it just that the world economy the model of the world economy is running low and it's out of battery and just unable to deliver girls now i actually i don't think this crisis was missed i mean. the financial crisis of way. was was something of a surprise to many economists but the problem with europe were not at all because

that there were many economists many prominent economists who pointed out at the founding of the monetary union beginning at the last decade that there was a serious asymmetry between the way monetary policy and fiscal policy were being handled that monetary policy was centralized in the european central bank that fiscal policy was not centralized that in the long run this asymmetry was not sustainable so. it was not a big surprise where when the problems. the problems that this asymmetry generated actually. came to reality a couple of years ago leaving the euro doesn't really come with a guidebook but you're really good at game theory how does that actually happened how does a country leave a cat currency. how does that happen they'll have to adopt they'll have to either

go back to the drachma or adopt the dollar or adopt some other currency. these things have happened before countries that change currency and it's usually a somewhat bumpy process it's very rarely a smooth transition and it's not expected to be smooth in this case especially with volatile people like in greece right but but it can happen how rough can it get really if that happened it could be very bad for for greece like well like civil war revolution well. again you're asking me to make political predictions it could get very much worse economically. i mean. greece could go on. and so long term depression unemployment

could grow to astronomical heights it's already very high but it could it could certainly get higher. things are by no means currently as bad as they as they could get more do you think chris will be in one year's time from now this is a question which we don't know the answer to because it depends. on politics i think at this point given what has happened it's more likely than not that greece will leave the. i don't i can't say that with enormous confidence but. the size and seemed to be pointing in that direction like my skin thank you very much for this interview my pleasure.

well. it's technology innovation all the developments from around russia we've got the future covered. welcome to sports today plenty ahead including this. all alone maria sharapova becomes russia's sole remaining player in the french open after. sarah. i took the rough tiger woods ends the worst three tournaments run of his career with a stunning wind up the memorial. on. riverrun moscow plays host to the latest stage of the canoe world cup which also acts as an important prep tournament for russia's london two thousand and twelve olympic hopefuls. let's start with tennis where maria sharapova is the sole rusher remaining at the french open not suffer such

a crush start in straight sets to at least star irani on sunday because now it's over feeling to even pick up a game in the first set of their last sixteen encounter the twenty sixth seed furring better in the second but eventually went on six love seven by the romney who also knocked i to toss in a champion on the event of which i face germany's angelica kirk. meanwhile domenica said bulk of our produce the biggest upset of the tournament to date this slovak knocking i'd world number one victoria azarenka symbol can very easily securing you can have six still taking the second set on a high because it's the perfect. brings us to the men's game of her anger all swear both of the big guns in action on sunday made it see a free through to the last states world number one and top seed novak djokovic show how a scare on the telly and andreea separate the big stiff opposition to the two sets before djokovic finally concluded in the next. i was really

fortunate to do so to come through through this match i was fighting in when i was two so it's now i believe i could win a match and i think. you know the whole new pulls if you will you can really become from today's match. the only other man to make the quarter finals as yet didn't have the days i learnt roger federer needing to overcome a first set deficit to qualify or a damaged golf in the swiss third seed eventually winning five seven seven five six to sixteen the four against a twenty one year old belgian. golf where it's been a weekend to remember for tiger woods the former world number one winning their memorial tournaments for the fifth time tying jack nicklaus's p.g.a. tour when markets seventy three in the process tiger also doing it on a course nicklaus in fact designed the american started by raising a four shot deficit second of his three straight towards your mistakes vintage

tiger with this birdie on the sixteenth to the thirty six year old hit a perfect effort from the off par three hole tiger eventually seeing all three seventy me on remeron by two shots nicklaus himself on hand then to congratulate the winner fourteen time major champion woods no means to reach jack's mark of eighteen people between the age closer to dot in a fortnight's time when the u.s. open tennis golf. i mean i had a good today i really did i miss a shot today and that was some good stuff i needed it and you know the birdie no three last four which which was nice the time i was i think three or four back at the time and needed a push and. i finished it off and you know you guys better going to couple mistakes but it's so easy to do you know sixteen spikes order and i got away with one there and it was

a big swing. looking back to his best tiger let's finish on the water moscow this weekend played host to the final stage of the canoe sprint world cup but there was even more at stake than global bragging rights as archon krikorian explains. kurlansky arrow in canoe in canal is no stranger to hosting me. event center is one of the olympic venues and the nineteen eighty summer games in moscow it was here that f a strong the soviet union in german democratic republic reign supreme clinching four gold sit peace. thirty two years old has undergone a major innovation and was used to host the third and final stage of this year's illustrate cup it's been seen as a dress rehearsal for the world championships to be held here in two thousand and fourteen i think everyone has been very impressed by the quality of the facilities the finished his sectional had there were thing else around that so two years from

now watch i mention. it's crazy how many of her world how matters here is all of these things. the twenty twelve world cup program is one state shorter than usual due to the london olympics scheduled for the end of the summer so for many athletes this tournament was the last chance to find their best form ahead of the domestic championships which will ultimately determine all the olympic games but disciplines can add in team leader adam dunn cooler than is guaranteed in the olympic sport already but he found the motivation to see all of their position in the kayak one thousand meters final i'm very excited and honored to represent my country again was common for the london looking forward to being with you know her strong here in team a small but strong kenyan team and in my third olympics representing canada so much that the russian olympic squad will be named at the end of june after the domestic championships and it will be a tough choice for the team's coaches as the country will compete in eleven of the

twelve disciplines yury poster day and alexandra de chandra have been leading competitors for russia in recent months when goals of the most broke up states indicate to us that even they see room for improvement there is working regularly such as were here we were. first place in the duesberg we are first here in moscow and there's obviously a ferry but there are still some negatives to be eliminated from or four minutes to come on them we're going to get there with our team coaches medical staff and the rest of the bullets to cover. in the olympic year the results of the world cup events are often under the shadow of the world's biggest competition it applies to a huge variety of sports and rowing is no exception that's when the time comes the sports best will bed only lake hoping to create their own little bit of history.

artsy mosco. is all the sport for not know is here with all the news up top of the. i.

good luck. to build a new. mission to teach. is why you should. only.

syria's president. and his regime a big part of a plan. which will double the cost of. president.

you're watching r t with me kevin zero in and first syrian leader bashar al assad has flatly rejected any state involvement in the slaughter calling it a monstrous massacre the president went on the blame not the opposition but foreign backed fighters in syria who he said spreading chaos at his ref nationals says foreign intervention may be the ultimate goal. ten days after the terrible massacre in the syrian city of houla the world is still watching to see how this tipping point will shape the crisis while there is still at least some hope of a peaceful solution many analysts believe those hopes are fading fast the american british and french push for military intervention in syria is absolutely enormous we've seen hague of course.