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Diplomats point to the growing sway of the so-called “New Hanseatic League”, a wider Dutch-led group of hawkish finance ministers including those from the Baltic states and Ireland. Its main achievement has been to scupper French proposals to bolster the eurozone on the basis they could lead to fiscal transfers from stronger to weaker members of the single currency bloc.
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The New Hanseatic League, or the Hansa,[3] was established in February 2018 by European Union finance ministers from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Sweden through the signing of a two-page foundational document[4] which set out the countries' "shared views and values in the discussion on the architecture of the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union (EMU)." The name is derived from the Hanseatic League, a Northern European commercial and defensive league which lasted until the 16th century.