All eyes will be on Lionel Messi and his Argentina side on Saturday as they look turn around a dreadful start to the World Cup.
La Albiceleste were humiliated when they threw away the lead to lose 2-1 to Saudi Arabia in their opening Group G match at the World Cup.
The seven-time Ballon d’Or winner, who has yet to lift the World Cup trophy, didn’t hide from the embarrassment of Argentina’s defeat.
When asked about the team’s morale Messi replied: “Dead.”
It is not the first time that Argentina have lost their opening game unexpectedly.
In 1990, Argentina was on the receiving end of the one of the greatest shocks in World Cup history, losing to Cameroon.
However Argentina recovered to reach the final, before losing to West Germany.
If Argentina is to emulate that 1990 run, La Albiceleste will have to get past a stubborn Mexico, led by World Cup icon Guillermo Ochoa.
The Mexican keeper rose to fame over the last two World Cups, winning the Man of the Match award twice in 2014 with his superb shot-stopping.
Ochoa added to his mythic status this tournament when he saved a penalty from Robert Lewandowski in Mexico’s 0-0 draw with Poland.
Because Mexico and Poland drew, it is not quite do-or-die yet for Messi and Argentina, but they cannot afford to lose again if they want to progress from the group.
Having beaten Argentina, Saudi Arabia has become the story of the tournament.
The Green Falcons caused the biggest upset in the history of the World Cup by beating Argentina and after footage emerged of coach Hervé Renard’s impassioned half-time speech, they have become a surprise fan-favorite at the competition.
The Saudis beat the biggest team in the group, but the job is certainly not done.
Without injured midfielder Yasser Al-Shahrani their task will be much harder against a Poland side knowing it needs to pick up points, especially with a fixture against Argentina still to come
Poland themselves are desperate to make it out of the group, not least because that hasn’t happened since 1986.
No one wants that more than Robert Lewandowski. The striker will go down as one of the greatest goalscorers of his generation and is already both Poland’s most capped player and top scorer with 76 goals.
However, the Barcelona forward has remarkably never scored a World Cup goal. He played in all three games in Russia 2018 but struggled as the team ended bottom of their group.
He had a perfect chance to score in Poland’s opening Group G game against Mexico, but failed to convert his penalty.
France take on Euro 2020 semifinalist Denmark in the most intriguing encounter of the day.
After a sluggish start against Australia, France moved through the gears to thrash the Socceroos as Olivier Giroud equaled Thierry Henry’s record as the all-time top scorer for Le Bleu.
Questions hung over France before its campaign due to a number of with injuries, but Les Bleus quickly dispelled any anxiety as Kylian Mbappé and co. were at their terrific best.
Denmark won’t be a pushover, having already beaten France home and away in 2022.
The Danes, led by a fit-again Christian Eriksen, are touted by many as “dark horses” for the World Cup. But the team struggled against Tunisia despite coming inches wide from winning when Andreas Cornelius managed to miss the ball when he had a tap-in.
Saturday’s first match is between Tunisia and Australia.
The Socceroos got off to a terrific start against France taking the lead, before falling apart against the world champion.
And they will back themselves to get a win against Tunisia in a match where both teams need victory if they want to make it out of the group.
Europe, the world’s biggest consumer of chocolate, and West Africa, the leading grower of the cocoa beans used to make it, share a common goal to make the sector sustainable.
But they have opposing views on how to put an end to the social, economic and environmental harms caused by satisfying Europe’s sweet tooth, heralding a showdown over who will bear the costs of complying: Big Chocolate or cocoa farmers.
The EU is finalizing regulations that seek to ensure that chocolate entering the market is free from deforestation and child labor. At the same time, Ghana and Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producers, are demanding higher prices. That’s vital, they say, to make sustainable chocolate a possibility — and not a pipe dream.
The stakes are high: For the EU, cocoa is a test case for how companies and producers react when the bloc tries to impose higher standards. For producers, the push to set up a cartel could drive up prices in the short term — but also risks stimulating oversupply and ultimately causing a price crash that would deepen the poverty already suffered by most cocoa farmers. Chocolate makers, facing rising costs and greater scrutiny, may reroute supply chains to other cocoa-producing countries seen as less risky.
Doing nothing is not an option, said Alex Assanvo, who heads the joint West African initiative to support cocoa prices.
“We are not asking to pay them more, we are asking to pay them a fair price,” Assanvo told POLITICO in an interview. “If we believe that this is going to create oversupply, well then I don’t know, maybe we should stop eating chocolate.”
Bittersweet taste
Chocolate may be sweet but the industry that makes it is not. Most of the beans used to produce the world’s supply are grown by impoverished West African farmers; all too often from trees planted on deforested land and harvested by children. One problem drives the others. Poverty pushes farmers to chop down forests to produce more beans and profits and to put children to work as they cannot afford to pay wages to adult laborers.
To address this, Ghana and Ivory Coast, which produce 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, formed an export cartel in 2019 modeled on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). They introduced a $400 per ton Living Income Differential, which aims to bring the floor price up enough to cover the cost of production.
In public, big chocolate manufacturers and traders, including Barry Callebaut, Cargill, Ferrero, Hersey, Lindt, Mars, Mondelez and Nestlé, welcomed the initiative.
Yet behind the scenes many of the firms — which between them account for about 90 percent of the industry’s $130 billion in annual profits — have done everything possible to avoid paying the premium and to drive prices back down, according to the Ivorian Coffee-Cocoa Council (CCC), the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) and their joint Initiative Cacao Ivory Coast-Ghana (ICCIG).
The companies that responded to requests for comment from POLITICO said that they have paid the Living Income Differential (LID) since its introduction. The Ghanian and Ivorian trade boards and the ICCIG claim, however, that they have negated the LID’s value by forcing down a different premium, the origin differential.
Fed up, these countries boycotted the World Cocoa Foundation Partnership Meeting at the end of October in Brussels. They then gave the companies a deadline: commit to the premiums by November 20 or the countries would ban their buyers from visiting fields to carry out harvest forecasts and suspend their Corporate Social Responsibility programs – which sell well with ethically-minded consumers.
More harm than good?
Another proposed remedy comes from Brussels. Cocoa is one of the products to which the new EU legislation on due diligence — Brussels speak for supply-chain oversight and compliance — would apply.
Under this, large firms operating in the bloc will be forced to evaluate their global supply chains for human rights and environmental abuses, and compensate injured parties. In theory, this should reduce deforestation and child labor and improve the lot of farmers.
Yet, as European ambassadors thrash out the terms — and big players like France push for them to be watered down — concerns are growing that the legislation could turn out at best to be ineffective in practice, and at worst do more harm than good.
Cocoa farmers, and the NGOs that support them, have reason to be skeptical: Back in 2000, a BBC documentary exposed the widespread use of child labor on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast and Ghana. The resulting media pressure led to a proposal for legislation in the United States forcing companies to certify chocolate bars free of child labor.
Companies pushed back hard, Antonie Fountain, managing director of cocoa NGO coalition The Voice Network, told POLITICO. The proposal was dropped and companies committed instead to a voluntary plan to solve child labor, he explained: “And that turned into a two-decade failure of policy.”
The resulting patchwork of pilot projects failed to transform the sector. Despite an initial decline, nearly 20 years after the framework was introduced 790,000 children in Ivory Coast and 770,000 in Ghana are still working in cocoa, with 95 percent of them exposed to the worst forms of child labor, according to a 2020 report.
Deforestation has meanwhile accelerated.
Ivory Coast has lost up to 90 percent of its forest in the last half century. Between 2000 and 2019 alone 2.4 million hectares of forest was cleared for cocoa farms, representing 45 percent of the total deforestation and forest degradation in the country, according to Trase, a data-driven transparency initiative.
The government’s attempts to safeguard what remains are half-hearted and often undermined by corruption: In 2019 a quarter of Ivory Coast’s cocoa production was in protected areas and forest reserves, the Trase study found. This left the EU exposed to 838,000 hectares of deforestation from Ivorian cocoa. Commodity trader Cargill leads the pack, according to Trase, with its 2019 exports exposed to 183,000 hectares of deforestation.
Over the last decade companies have proposed corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives that aim to tackle both ills. For instance, Mondelez, the maker of Cadbury and Toblerone, recently committed $600 million to tackle deforestation and forced labor in cocoa-producing countries, bringing its total funding for environmental and social issues to $1 billion since 2010.
These sums are, however, puny by comparison with the profits earned by those firms, said Fountain. Mondelez returned $2.5 billion to investors in the first half of 2022.
Mondelez is “excited” about its investments, the firm said in a statement. But it is calling for more sector-wide actions and rethinking its incentive model. Cargill did not respond to a request for comment.
Social responsibility
The big numbers that companies cite about their CSR programs’ reach often boil down to one-off training sessions on productivity for farmers, Uwe Gneiting, senior researcher at Oxfam, told POLITICO. This was the case for 98 percent of the 400 farmers interviewed for research recently carried out by Gneiting and others from the charity into the impact of sustainability programs over the last decade in Ghana on farmers’ incomes.
The research finds that CSR initiatives, which companies use to tout their sustainability credentials to European consumers, have not meaningfully increased farmers’ productivity or profits, pointed out Gneiting. In fact, farmers end up shouldering the associated costs, because companies offer the training but do not pay for extra labor or the fertilizer that farmers need to put it into action.
Instead, Ghanian and Ivorian farmers have been hammered by the soaring cost of production and of living over the last three years, finds the new Oxfam research. Fertilizer costs have increased by more than 200 percent, said Gneiting, along with labor and transportation costs. That in turn has contributed to a decline in yields that have also been hurt by climate change, with weather patterns becoming increasingly unpredictable.
All of this has meant incomes have declined close to 20 percent since 2019, said Gneiting, which for farmers already living on the poverty line is “existential.” The decline would have been much worse, he added, if it hadn’t been for the Living Income Differential. Nonetheless, 90 percent of the farmers interviewed say they are worse off than three years ago.
Over the same period, as cocoa prices have fallen, companies have made “windfall gains,” said Isaac Gyamfi, director of Solidaridad West Africa. “The raw material became cheaper for them. But the price of chocolate didn’t change.”
Can Brussels sort it out?
To what extent the new due diligence directive will make a difference depends on the final text that was put to a meeting of EU trade ministers on Friday.
When the European Commission first came up with the draft it was seen as a game changer, but subsequent wrangling over the regulation’s scope has raised doubts. Last week, ambassadors from France, Spain, Italy and some smaller countries voted down the text in the European Council, seeing the value chain and civil liability provisions as too wide and too ambitious.
Two-thirds of Ivorian cocoa is exported to the EU and the U.K. | Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images
A European diplomat told POLITICO that France supported the proposed directive “very strongly,” and its view that it was important to concentrate on the “upstream” part of the supply chain was shared by a majority of EU member countries.
NGOs take the view that, while it’s positive that the EU is proposing broad legislation, there is a risk that it ends up replicating the mistakes that undermined the voluntary initiatives. One of these is the potential limitation of the companies’ due diligence obligations to “established business relations.”
“What you’re going to get is a whole bunch of companies that are going to try to have as few established business relations as possible, which just makes supplying commodities more precarious, rather than less,” said Fountain.
Analysis from Trase finds that 55 percent of Ivorian cocoa, two-thirds of which is exported to the EU and the U.K., comes from untraceable sources. NGOs working on cocoa and on other sectors due to be impacted by the new directive are calling for it to be applied to business relationships based on their risk rather than their duration.
The civil liability mechanism, which should guarantee compensation for people whose rights have been violated, has also come under scrutiny. The latest compromise proposal debated in the Council, seen by POLITICO, reduces the risk of companies getting sued by stipulating that a company can only be held liable if it “intentionally or negligently” failed to comply with a due diligence obligation aimed to protect a “natural or legal person” — not a forest, for instance — and subsequently caused damage to that person’s “legal interest protected under national law.” But, it states, a company cannot be held liable “if the damage was caused only by its business partners in its chain of activities.”
Earlier this year, the EU, Ivory Coast and Ghana and the cocoa sector all committed to a roadmap to make cocoa more sustainable, which, they agreed, includes improving farmers’ incomes. Yet it remains unclear whether this will be mentioned in the final draft of the due diligence directive.
“Sustainability cannot exist without a living income,” said Heidi Hautala, Green MEP and chair of the European Parliament’s Responsible Business Conduct Working Group. Hautala, who is among those pushing for the reference to a living income to be included in the final text, added that responsible purchasing practices are “a prerequisite for respect of human rights, environment and climate.”
Living income “needs to be a part of it because otherwise you’re in trouble,” agreed Fountain.
“If you don’t look at what does a farmer need in order to comply, if you don’t make sure that a farmer actually has the right set of income, then all you’re doing is pushing the responsibility for being sustainable back to the farmer. And this is what we’ve done for the last two decades.”
After six years of chaos and recrimination since Britons voted to leave the European Union, there are signs the country is showing an unexpected outbreak of common sense in its approach to the bloc.
In his first weeks in office, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — a Brexiteer himself — has sent clear signals that he wants a more constructive relationship with Brussels and Paris, and to avoid a trade war with Britain’s biggest economic partner.
Gone are the nationalist bombast of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the sheer havoc wrought by his successor Liz Truss crashing the economy in pursuit of a Brexit dividend. Instead, they have both given way to a sudden burst of pragmatism, as Sunak is seeking practical solutions to festering problems.
This change in outlook may be partly due to the realization that Europe needs to stand united in the face of a threat to its common security from Russian President Vladimir Putin — although that hadn’t stopped Johnson from bragging about how leaving the EU had supposedly freed the United Kingdom to be more supportive of Ukraine than France or Germany.
It may also be due to the dire economic straits Britain is in after the collapse of Truss’ short-lived experiment for a deregulated, low-tax Singapore-on-the-Thames. Or, perhaps, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s hard line on any EU deal with the U.K. has had a sobering effect. As may have the shift in British public opinion, which now thinks leaving the bloc was a mistake by a margin of 56 percent to 32 percent.
For whatever reason, it is a welcome start.
In just three weeks, Sunak has signed up to an EU defense initiative to make it easier to move armed forces around the Continent, he’s acted to improve Britain’s relations with Ireland, and he’s created political space for a possible compromise on the vexed issue of trade with Northern Ireland, which has bedeviled relations with Brussels since the U.K.’s exit from the EU.
At their first meeting, Sunak told United States President Joe Biden that he wants to have a negotiated settlement on the Northern Ireland Protocol in place by next April — the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday peace agreement. So, sustained pressure from Washington is starting to pay off as well.
The prime minister has also sought to thaw frosty relations with France, clinching an agreement with Paris to clamp down on migrants crossing the Channel from northern France in small boats. Europe’s only two nuclear powers have now agreed to hold their first bilateral summit since 2018 early next year, focusing on strengthening defense cooperation.
To be fair, after saying “the jury is still out” on whether Macron was a friend or foe of the U.K., Truss had already taken a symbolic first step toward reconciliation by agreeing to attend the first meeting of the European Political Community last month. The geopolitical grouping was dreamed up by Macron to bring the entire European family together — except Russia and Belarus.
What’s more, the torrent of Europe-bashing rhetoric from Conservative ministers has almost dried up — at least for now. Suddenly, making nice with the neighbors is back in fashion, if only to ensure they don’t turn the lights off on the U.K. by cutting energy exports when supplies get tight this winter.
The tone of contrition adopted by Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, once the hardest of Brexit hardliners, was one of the most striking signals of this new humility. “I recognize in my own determination and struggle to get the U.K. out of the European Union that I caused a great deal of inconvenience and pain and difficulty,” he told Ireland’s RTÉ radio recently. “Some of our actions were not very respectful of Ireland’s legitimate interests. And I want to put that right.”
Meanwhile, encouragingly, Sunak is reportedly considering deprioritizing a bill by ousted Brexit ideologue Jacob Rees-Mogg to review, reform or automatically scrap some 2,400 retained EU laws, standards and regulations by the end of 2023 — a massive bureaucratic exercise that has rattled business confidence and angered almost everyone. The prime minister now seems receptive to pleas from business to give the review much more time and avoid a regulatory vacuum.
A bonfire of EU rules would inevitably provoke new trade tensions with Brussels — and at a time when the Office of Budget Responsibility, Britain’s independent fiscal watchdog, has just confirmed the growth-shredding damage inflicted by Brexit.
This isn’t the end of Britain’s traumatic rupture with the bloc. Just how neuralgic the issue remains was highlighted when earlier this week, Sunak had to deny reports that senior government figures were considering a Swiss-style relationship with the EU to ensure frictionless trade. He vowed there would be no alignment with EU rules on his watch.
To paraphrase Churchill, it may not even be the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Puncturing the illusion of a deregulated fiscal paradise fueled by borrowing without new revenue has had a sobering effect on the U.K. — offering Sunak a political window of opportunity to start fixing EU ties. After all, the Conservative Party can’t afford to defenestrate yet another prime minister after Theresa May, Johnson and Truss, can it?
But beyond the conciliatory tone, the real test still lies ahead.
Sunak will have to confront the hard-line Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to push through any compromise with the EU on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
As the province remains part of the EU single market under the withdrawal treaty, any such deal is bound to involve some customs checks in Northern Ireland on goods arriving from Great Britain — even if they are scaled down from the original plan. It’s also bound to involve a role for the Court of Justice of the European Union as the ultimate arbiter of EU law. Both are anathema to the DUP.
But securing such an agreement would at least open the door to a calmer, more cooperative and sustainable relationship between London and Brussels.
Nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West.
Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer.
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” one senior official told POLITICO.
The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry. The Kremlin is likely to welcome the poisoning of the atmosphere among Western allies.
“We are really at a historic juncture,” the senior EU official said, arguing that the double hit of trade disruption from U.S. subsidies and high energy prices risks turning public opinion against both the war effort and the transatlantic alliance. “America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries.”
The EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell called on Washington to respond to European concerns. “Americans — our friends — take decisions which have an economic impact on us,” he said in an interview with POLITICO.
The biggest point of tension in recent weeks has been Biden’s green subsidies and taxes that Brussels says unfairly tilt trade away from the EU and threaten to destroy European industries. Despite formal objections from Europe, Washington has so far shown no sign of backing down.
At the same time, the disruption caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is tipping European economies into recession, with inflation rocketing and a devastating squeeze on energy supplies threatening blackouts and rationing this winter.
As they attempt to reduce their reliance on Russian energy, EU countries are turning to gas from the U.S. instead — but the price Europeans pay is almost four times as high as the same fuel costs in America. Then there’s the likely surge in orders for American-made military kit as European armies run short after sending weapons to Ukraine.
It’s all got too much for top officials in Brussels and other EU capitals. French President Emmanuel Macron said high U.S. gas prices were not “friendly” and Germany’s economy minister has called on Washington to show more “solidarity” and help reduce energy costs.
Ministers and diplomats based elsewhere in the bloc voiced frustration at the way Biden’s government simply ignores the impact of its domestic economic policies on European allies.
When EU leaders tackled Biden over high U.S. gas prices at the G20 meeting in Bali last week, the American president simply seemed unaware of the issue, according to the senior official quoted above. Other EU officials and diplomats agreed that American ignorance about the consequences for Europe was a major problem.
“The Europeans are discernibly frustrated about the lack of prior information and consultation,” said David Kleimann of the Bruegel think tank.
Officials on both sides of the Atlantic recognize the risks that the increasingly toxic atmosphere will have for the Western alliance. The bickering is exactly what Putin would wish for, EU and U.S. diplomats agreed.
The growing dispute over Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — a huge tax, climate and health care package — has put fears over a transatlantic trade war high on the political agenda again. EU trade ministers are due to discuss their response on Friday as officials in Brussels draw up plans for an emergency war chest of subsidies to save European industries from collapse.
“The Inflation Reduction Act is very worrying,” said Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher. “The potential impact on the European economy is very big.”
“The U.S. is following a domestic agenda, which is regrettably protectionist and discriminates against U.S. allies,” said Tonino Picula, the European Parliament’s lead person on the transatlantic relationship.
An American official stressed the price setting for European buyers of gas reflects private market decisions and is not the result of any U.S. government policy or action. “U.S. companies have been transparent and reliable suppliers of natural gas to Europe,” the official said. Exporting capacity has also been limited by an accident in June that forced a key facility to shut down.
In most cases, the official added, the difference between the export and import prices doesn’t go to U.S. LNG exporters, but to companies reselling the gas within the EU. The largest European holder of long-term U.S. gas contracts is France’s TotalEnergies for example.
It’s not a new argument from the American side but it doesn’t seem to be convincing the Europeans. “The United States sells us its gas with a multiplier effect of four when it crosses the Atlantic,” European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton said on French TV on Wednesday. “Of course the Americans are our allies … but when something goes wrong it is necessary also between allies to say it.”
Cheaper energy has quickly become a huge competitive advantage for American companies, too. Businesses are planning new investments in the U.S. or even relocating their existing businesses away from Europe to American factories. Just this week, chemical multinational Solvay announced it is choosing the U.S. over Europe for new investments, in the latest of a series of similar announcements from key EU industrial giants.
Allies or not?
Despite the energy disagreements, it wasn’t until Washington announced a $369 billion industrial subsidy scheme to support green industries under the Inflation Reduction Act that Brussels went into full-blown panic mode.
“The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything,” one EU diplomat said. “Is Washington still our ally or not?”
For Biden, the legislation is a historic climate achievement. “This is not a zero-sum game,” the U.S. official said. “The IRA will grow the pie for clean energy investments, not split it.”
But the EU sees that differently. An official from France’s foreign affairs ministry said the diagnosis is clear: These are “discriminatory subsidies that will distort competition.” French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire this week even accused the U.S. of going down China’s path of economic isolationism, urging Brussels to replicate such an approach. “Europe must not be the last of the Mohicans,” he said.
The EU is preparing its responses, such as a big subsidy push to prevent European industry from being wiped out by American rivals. “We are experiencing a creeping crisis of trust on trade issues in this relationship,” said German MEP Reinhard Bütikofer.
“At some point, you have to assert yourself,” said French MEP Marie-Pierre Vedrenne. “We are in a world of power struggles. When you arm-wrestle, if you are not muscular, if you are not prepared both physically and mentally, you lose.”
Behind the scenes, there is also growing irritation about the money flowing into the American defense sector.
The U.S. has by far been the largest provider of military aid to Ukraine, supplying more than $15.2 billion in weapons and equipment since the start of the war. The EU has so far provided about €8 billion of military equipment to Ukraine, according to Borrell.
According to one senior official from a European capital, restocking of some sophisticated weapons may take “years” because of problems in the supply chain and the production of chips. This has fueled fears that the U.S. defense industry can profit even more from the war.
The Pentagon is already developing a roadmap to speed up arms sales, as the pressure from allies to respond to greater demands for weapons and equipment grows.
Another EU diplomat argued that “the money they are making on weapons” could help Americans understand that making “all this cash on gas” might be “a bit too much.”
The diplomat argued that a discount on gas prices could help us to “keep united our public opinions” and to negotiate with third countries on gas supplies. “It’s not good, in terms of optics, to give the impression that your best ally is actually making huge profits out of your troubles,” the diplomat said.
Giorgio Leali, Stuart Lau, Camille Gijs, Sarah Anne Aarup and Gloria Gonzalez contributed reporting.
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Barbara Moens, Jakob Hanke Vela and Jacopo Barigazzi
The EU is in emergency mode and is readying a big subsidy push to prevent European industry from being wiped out by American rivals, two senior EU officials told POLITICO.
Europe is facing a double hammer blow from the U.S. If it weren’t enough that energy prices look set to remain permanently far higher than those in the U.S. thanks to Russia’s war in Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden is also currently rolling out a $369 billion industrial subsidy scheme to support green industries under the Inflation Reduction Act.
EU officials fear that businesses will now face almost irresistible pressure to shift new investments to the U.S. rather than Europe. EU industry chief Thierry Breton is warning that Biden’s new subsidy package poses an “existential challenge” to Europe’s economy.
The European Commission and countries including France and Germany have realized they need to act quickly if they want to prevent the Continent from turning into an industrial wasteland. According to the two senior officials, the EU is now working on an emergency scheme to funnel money into key high-tech industries.
The tentative solution now being prepared in Brussels is to counter the U.S. subsidies with an EU fund of its own, the two senior officials said. This would be a “European Sovereignty Fund,” which was already mentioned in the State of the Union address by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in September, to help businesses invest in Europe and meet ambitious green standards.
Senior officials said the EU had to act extremely quickly as companies are already making decisions on where to build their future factories for everything from batteries and electric cars to wind turbines and microchips.
Another reason for Brussels to respond rapidly is to avoid individual EU countries going it alone in splashing out emergency cash, the officials warned. The chaotic response to the gas price crisis, where EU countries reacted with all sorts of national support measures that threatened to undermine the single market, is still a sore point in Brussels.
European Commissioner Breton especially has led the pack in sounding alarm bells. At a meeting with EU industry leaders Monday, Breton issued his warning on the “existential challenge” to Europe from the Inflation Reduction Act, according to people in the room. Breton said it was now a matter of utmost urgency to “revert the deindustrialization process taking place.”
Breton was echoing calls from business leaders all over Europe warning about a perfect storm brewing for manufacturers. “It’s a bit like drowning. It’s happening quietly,” BusinessEurope President Fredrik Persson said.
The Inflation Reduction Act is a particular bugbear to EU carmaking nations — such as France and Germany — as it encourages consumers to “Buy American” when it comes to electric vehicles. Brussels and EU capitals see this as undermining global free trade, and Brussels wants to cut a deal in which its companies can enjoy the same American benefits.
With a diplomatic solution seeming unlikely and Brussels wanting to avoid an all-out trade war, a subsidy race now looks increasingly likely as a contentious Plan B.
To do that, it will be vital to secure support from Germany and from the more economically liberal commissioners such as trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis and competition chief Margrethe Vestager.
At a meeting of EU trade ministers on Friday, Brussels hopes to get more clarity from Berlin on whether they are willing to break their subsidy taboo.
France has long been calling for a counterstrike against Washington by funneling state funds into European industry to help industrial champions on the Continent. That idea is now also gaining traction in Berlin, which has traditionally been economically more liberal.
On Tuesday, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck and his French counterpart Bruno Le Maire issued a joint statement to call for an “EU industrial policy that enables our companies to thrive in the global competition especially through technological leadership,” adding that “we want to coordinate closely a European approach to challenges such as the United States Inflation Reduction Act.”
Apart from the trade ministers’ meeting on Friday, the idea will also informally be discussed among competition ministers next week. One official said European leaders will also discuss it on the margins of the Western Balkan summit on December 6 and at the European Council mid-December.
Hans von der Burchard, Giorgio Leali and Paola Tamma contributed reporting.
The Chinese telecoms giant is pushing out its pedigreed Western lobbyists, retrenching its European operations and putting its ambitions for global leadership on ice.
The reasons for doing this have little to do with the company’s commercial potential — Huawei is still able to offer cutting-edge technology at lower costs than its competitors — and everything to do with politics, according to interviews with more than 20 current and former staff and strategic advisers to the company.
Pressed by the United States and increasingly shunned on a Continent it once considered its most strategic overseas market, Huawei is pivoting back toward the Chinese market, focusing its remaining European attention on the few countries — Germany and Spain, but also Hungary — still willing to play host to a company widely viewed in the West as a security risk.
“It’s no longer a company floating on globalization,” said one Huawei official. “It’s a company saving its ass on the domestic market.” Like most of the other Huawei employees interviewed for this article, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe the company’s travails.
Huawei’s predicament was summed up by the company’s founder Ren Zhengfei in a speech to executives at the company’s Shenzhen headquarters in July. He laid out the trifecta of challenges the company has faced over the last three years: hostility from Washington; disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic; and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which upended global supply chains and heightened European concerns about over-dependence on countries like China.
“The environment we faced in 2019 was different from the one we face today,” Ren said in his speech, which wasn’t made public but was seen by POLITICO. “Don’t assume that we will have a brighter future.”
“We previously had an ideal for globalization striving to serve all humanity,” he added. “What is our ideal today? Survival!”
‘The moment globalist Huawei died’
As the company goes into hibernation in the West, it’s sidelining or pushing out the senior Western managers it hired just a few years ago to counter the U.S. assault on its business.
“Westerners were listened to,” one Huawei official working in Europe said. “This is no longer the case … No one is listening.”
Huawei’s Brussels office — once a key hub for the company to lobby against European restrictions on its kit — has been folded fully into European management, now headquartered in Düsseldorf.
The office this summer lost its head of communications, Phil Herd, a former BBC journalist who joined the company in October 2019 at the start of its pushback against political pressure in Europe. The office has also recently lost at least three other key staff members handling lobbying and policy. (Tony) Jin Yong, the chief representative to the Brussels institutions, is now in charge of government affairs across Western Europe and spends most of his time in the Düsseldorf office.
Employees sits in a meeting room inside Huawei Technologies Co. Cyber Security Transparency Centre in Brussels | Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In London, Huawei’s U.K. Director of Communications Paul Harrison left his role in October, with other officials leaving around the same time. Harrison joined Huawei from a senior news editing job at U.K. broadcaster Sky News in 2019.
In Paris, the company’s Marketing and Communications Director Stéphane Curtelin left his role in September, the local magazine Challenges reported. Before then, the Paris office lost its Head of Government and Security Affairs Vincent de Crayencour, a veteran French cybersecurity official with extensive government experience who joined Huawei in 2020. The company’s Chief Representative of the Paris Office Linda Han also left her role before the summer.
In Warsaw, the company’s local PR manager Szymon Solnica departed Huawei in September. “The crises I’ve dealt with on a daily basis in recent years were colossal ones,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing his departure.
Huawei officials speaking in authorized interviews dismissed the departures as regular turnover. “There is a fluctuation always in companies, not only in Huawei … Some people are leaving and some other people are coming,” a spokesperson for Huawei Europe said in an authorized interview last week.
But others in the company privately acknowledged the departures reflect a radical shift that began in September 2021.
“The moment Meng got off the plane was the moment the globalist Huawei died,” one official said.
As the daughter of the founder — and the presumptive heir to the company’s leadership — Meng had played a key role in the legal and public relations fight between Huawei and Washington. Since returning from Canada, she reached Huawei’s top ranks as deputy chairwoman at the company’s headquarters and triggered a corporate reshuffle at the top.
(Catherine) Chen Lifang, who led the firm’s global communications department during the height of American pressure, was moved off the board of directors and into a role on the supervisory board.
The global comms department is now represented on Huawei’s board by Peng Bo, known in Europe as Vincent Peng, the former president of Huawei’s Western Europe region. Peng’s ascendency is part of the company’s efforts to move its European operations closer to Shenzhen.
The agenda to streamline public affairs in Europe is led by Guo Aibing — a former journalist for Bloomberg News in Hong Kong. Guo was parachuted into Europe and is executing cuts and consolidation of the firm’s lobbying and communication across the Continent.
The company is also restructuring its activities in Europe. The company’s plans — previously unannounced — are to consolidate the entire Continent into just one area of operations, headquartered in Düsseldorf.
Hampers and gifts at the new Huawei store in Barcelona | Paco Freire/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Huawei currently divides the Continent into two markets: Western Europe, run from Düsseldorf; and Eastern Europe and the Nordics, with a top executive based in Warsaw.
The restructuring “will help us to bring more synergies within the whole European business operation; will bring more value more directly to our customers here in Europe,” said the Huawei Europe spokesperson.
Broadly, the company’s staffing levels, currently around 12,000 people, will remain “stable,” the spokesperson said.
The company is also retrenching elsewhere, according to Ren. “We will give up markets in some countries,” the firm’s founder said in his speech this summer. “For example, we will give up markets in the Five Eyes countries and India.”
The “Five Eyes” refers to an intelligence-sharing arrangement between the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. All five countries have banned or are in the process of banning Huawei and other Chinese companies from their critical infrastructure because of security concerns.
Instead, Huawei is concentrating on its domestic market, which accounts for a large proportion of global 5G and where Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia are struggling to maintain market share.
Trump effect
Huawei’s strategic retreat is remarkable for a company that until recently poured millions of euros into lobbyists and PR campaigns in an effort to expand and maintain its European foothold.
Throughout most of the 2010s, Huawei was considered by many in Europe to be a friendly face among the tech firms cuddling up to power. Peculiar in its approaches, yes, but cordial and — to many — beneficial to the Continent’s interests because it increased competition and cut the price tag on the next generation of telecoms networks.
The company became known for its generous gift bags, often including a Huawei phone, and lavish parties in glamorous venues featuring fancy buffets and dance performances — like its reception celebrating the Chinese new year at the Concert Noble in Brussels.
Glitzy bashes later became part of a supercharged response to political headwinds from Washington over concerns that the Chinese-built telecoms infrastructure poses a serious security and spying risk.
Those headwinds started blowing under U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration but reached hurricane force following Donald Trump’s election. By 2019, the company was under American sanctions, with Ren’s daughter Meng in Canada awaiting the result of a U.S. extradition request.
Keith Krach, a former under-secretary of state in the Trump administration, recalled how Washington was “hitting the panic button.”
He recalled asking European ministers about their relationship with China. “And they’d say, ‘Well, they’re an important trading partner’ and all that. And then they looked at both sides of the room, there’s nobody in the room, and whispered to me: ‘But we don’t trust them.’”
To navigate the geopolitical storm, the firm offered six-figure salaries to top operators across the Western world. It assembled a high-caliber team of former Western journalists and politicians with direct lines to places of power like the Elysée and Westminster, POLITICO learned from several who received such offers.
Initially, the gambit seemed to work.
Huawei’s message — that the U.S. itself posed spying risks and that Washington’s aggression was driven by economic interests — gained traction, particularly in places like Germany, where Trump proved a useful foil.
“The case that Trump made was almost more counterproductive,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. Huawei also received support from big telco operators, who saw value in the cheap equipment combined with responsive customer service.
By the beginning of 2020, Huawei seemed to have weathered U.S. calls for all-out bans. On January 28, then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave the company the green light to build part of the country’s 5G infrastructure. Just a day later, the European Union presented a plan to shift away from over-reliance on Chinese vendors but left the door open for Huawei to lobby national governments to keep market access for its technology.
Keith Krach said the U.S. was hitting the panic button | Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit
Then came the pandemic. With the coronavirus originating from Wuhan killing thousands, Trump ramped up his anti-China broadside in May 2020 with fresh sanctions against Huawei that basically cut off their supply of semiconductors.
By July, the U.K.’s Johnson completely reversed course and announced all Huawei equipment would have to be stripped from British 5G networks, even as the government estimated the move would delay the rollout of the technology and add half a billion pounds in costs.
Throughout 2020 and 2021, European governments including France, Sweden, Romania, the Baltic countries, Belgium and Denmark either banned Huawei equipment in key parts of the country’s 5G network or required its operators to wean themselves off its kit in the medium term.
Huawei’s smartphone business — once on its way to challenging Apple and Samsung in Europe — meanwhile was crushed by U.S. sanctions that cut its devices off from Android, the Google-owned operating system.
Putin changes the calculus
These setbacks were painful, but they weren’t yet considered fatal. Trump’s election loss and the ebbing of the pandemic in Europe seemed to offer an opportunity for a counteroffensive.
At the beginning of 2021, Huawei’s Brussels lobbyists were still optimistic that Europe’s hunger for cheap, speedy 5G installation would win out over security concerns. They even had meetings lined up in the European Parliament to make their case.
Those meetings got canceled on February 24, the day Putin launched his all-out invasion of Ukraine. For many in Europe, the risk-benefit calculation regarding Huawei had changed overnight.
“The biggest change I’ve seen came from the realization that we’re dependent on Russian gas — especially in Germany,” said John Strand, a telecoms analyst who has tracked Huawei’s market impact in Europe for the past years. “It begs the question: What’s worse, being dependent on Russian gas or on Chinese telecoms infrastructure?”
Under President Joe Biden, pressure on Huawei only increased, and Washington’s warnings now come from a more sympathetic messenger. In October, the European Commission issued a fresh warning against using Huawei technology to underpin 5G networks, and the U.K. government reaffirmed its requirement to strip Huawei equipment from British telecoms infrastructure.
The company’s travails have knocked the legs from underneath its lobbying efforts — and eaten into its market share.
Before the pandemic, the company regularly hosted European politicians, journalists and business leaders at its Shenzhen headquarters, a massive campus with buildings in different European architectural styles showcasing its global ambitions.
China’s zero-COVID policy made that impossible.
The company for years was the biggest spender at the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the world’s largest telecoms industry event. This year, the company’s on-the-ground presence was a pale imitation of previous showings, which it used to launch new products with razzle-dazzle and astronomical marketing budgets.
But perhaps no high-flying event illustrates the extent of the turnaround than the World Economic Forum in Davos, which once counted Huawei among its main sponsors. On January 21, 2020, just a week before Johnson sided with Huawei over Trump, Ren was onstage at the alpine resort, discussing the future of AI with “Sapiens” author Yuval Noah Harari.
The next year, the global gathering of political power players and financial titans in Davos was, thanks to the pandemic, canceled. When it reconvened in the summer of 2022, Huawei top chiefs missed the gabfest. Under Beijing’s zero-COVID policy, they couldn’t leave China.
Geopolitics hits the balance sheets
The firm still has a solid share in some big national markets, among them Germany and Spain, industry analysts say.
A 2020 study by Strand Consult — still the most comprehensive public overview of Huawei’s footprint in Europe — showed just how deeply the Chinese firm was ingrained in European markets: In 15 out of 31 countries Strand studied, more than half of all 4G radio access network equipment (RAN) came from Chinese vendors.
But in many of these markets, authorities have imposed measures forcing operators to phase out or at least significantly limit the use of “high-risk vendors” — commonly understood to be state-affiliated Huawei and the Chinese military-linked telecom ZTE — in coming years.
These are beginning to bite.
In the early race to implement 5G, Huawei outpaced its rivals in Europe. However, as of early last year — right as European officials were changing direction on 5G security — Sweden’s Ericsson overtook Huawei in market share of new European sales of radio access networks, according to proprietary figures compiled by boutique telecoms research firm Dell’Oro, shared with POLITICO by an industry official. Radio access networks make up the largest chunk of network investment and include base stations and antennas.
The latest update, from the second quarter of 2022, showed Ericsson at 41 percent, Huawei at 28 percent and Finnish Nokia at 27 percent. This includes new sales of base stations and antennas across 3G, 4G and 5G — some of which is part of running contracts with operators.
For 5G RAN specifically, the shift is even clearer: Huawei lost its initial position as market leader at the start of the rollout; it now provides 22 percent of sales, with Ericsson at 42 percent and Nokia at 32 percent in Europe, Dell’Oro estimated.
Industry analysts say Huawei’s move to consolidate and scrap key public affairs roles could hurt the company in countries where it still has skin in the game: Most importantly, Germany, Italy and Spain. In these large European markets, governments have been slow to impose measures on “high-risk vendors” — and particularly slow and soft in enforcing them.
Europe’s largest operators, like Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone, also have running contracts with Huawei, meaning the Chinese firm is at least still providing maintenance and keeping networks running — and potentially still supporting parts of the 5G rollout.
But in Germany, at least, Olaf Scholz’s new government has taken a more critical stance on Chinese technology. This month, Economy Minister Robert Habeck — who has taken a hawkish approach to China — formally blocked Chinese investors from buying a German chip plant over potential security threats.
Budapest nights
Huawei, of course, hasn’t completely given up on Europe.
Those still giving the company face time in Brussels this summer were presented with a weighty gift bag.
In addition to glossy hardcovers from the company’s PR operation — with titles like “Choose a Smarter Future: A contribution to Europe’s next digital policy” and “Ten Years of Connecting Europe” — the bag contained a memoir by Frédéric Pierucci. A former executive with the French infrastructure manufacturer Alstom, Pierucci was arrested by the FBI on bribery charges in 2013 — just as the American conglomerate General Electric was negotiating to take over Alstom’s nuclear operations.
Titled “The American Trap,” the book argues that its author was a hostage in Washington’s secret economic war on its allies.
“One after the other, some of the world’s largest companies are being actively destabilized to the benefit of the U.S., in acts of economic sabotage that seem to be the beginning of what’s to come…” reads the publisher’s summary.
It’s a narrative with deep appeal inside the company, and one that creates a natural rapport with other governments that see themselves as standing up to liberal superpowers. As Huawei searches for friends on the Continent, Hungary — increasingly in opposition to the rest of the EU on how to engage with China and Russia — remains a vocal ally, and the company is leaning into that relationship.
This year, in September, Huawei’s CEE & Nordic region unit held its annual Innovation Day event in Hungary, home to the company’s largest European logistics center.
On the banks of the Danube, tech entrepreneurs schmoozed in English and Hungarian, with some Chinese and German mixed in, over made-to-order coffee and plentiful canapés at Budapest’s cupola-topped Castle Garden Bazaar.
Inside the conference hall, bilingual hosts teed up mini-documentaries about protecting local salmon breeds in Norway and preventing floods in Hungary. Small business execs highlighted drones that monitor crops in Austria and potential forest fires in Greece, all on Huawei 5G networks.
With simultaneous translation available in Hungarian, Huawei featured research it commissioned from the Economist Intelligence Unit reiterating Europe’s laggard status on 5G use and implementation. It was an implicit reminder that dismantling Huawei’s infrastructure will have real consequences.
But the company also highlighted what it hopes will be a bigger part of its portfolio: products less likely to inspire security concerns, like inverters for solar panels.
Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó said Hungary will stand firm against international pressure | Laszlo Balogh/Getty images
“Huawei is committed to the vision of a green Europe,” said Jeff Wang, the company’s current head of public affairs and comms, in a video address to the Budapest crowd, where he noted the 10 years he spent working on the Continent.
For weeks leading up to the event, Huawei officials were pushing to get Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to speak. While that didn’t pan out, Orbán sent one of his top lieutenants — Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó — to deliver a message.
“We are not going to discriminate [against] any investing company because of their country of origin,” Szijjártó said. Budapest will stand firm against “international pressure” he added, to block “the presence of Huawei here in Hungary.”
Radoslaw Kedzia, Huawei’s vice president for the CEE & Nordic region (and the first non-Chinese to achieve CEO status inside the company, in the Czech Republic in 2015), said there was no political calculation behind the double-down in Hungary.
“Let’s not demonize us, OK? We are like any other company,” Kedzia said.
If a business assessment offers the “prospect of the next 10-20 years of stable operation, then you think it is good to concentrate some of your resources in that particular country,” he added.
Likewise, the European spokesperson insisted, Huawei communicates with every country in the “same way, on the same level.” The company focuses on technology and does “not engage,” he said, in “political games.”
One thing is certain: When it comes to the great European game, Huawei has lost — and sent all its political players home.
Peter O’Brien, Elisa Braun, Stuart Lau and Matt Honeycombe-Foster contributed reporting.
PARIS — France, Germany and Italy announced an agreement Tuesday for a new-generation European space launcher project as part of apparent efforts to better compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and other rocket programs in the U.S. and China.
A statement from the three governments announced an unspecified amount of public funding for the plan, saying it would be based on market prices and economic conditions for each element of the project. The European Space Agency would award contracts to the companies involved.
The next-generation Ariane and Vega launchers will be used to boost Europe’s role in the commercial and government satellite markets, the French Finance Ministry said.
The governments also agreed to support development of European-made mini and micro rocket launch systems.
European government ministers are meeting with ESA in Paris this week. The agency is scheduled to announce its first new team of astronauts in more than a decade on Wednesday, with a focus on more diversity and what are expected to be the first disabled astronauts.
A protester holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini during a demonstration in support of Amini, a young Iranian woman who died after being arrested in Tehran by the Islamic Republic’s morality police, on Istiklal avenue in Istanbul on September 20, 2022.
Ozan Kose | AFP | Getty Images
Iran’s judiciary spokesperson reportedly said Tuesday that 40 foreign nationals have been detained for participating in recent anti-regime protests.
The individuals whose nationalities have not been revealed were arrested in accordance with Iranian laws, Iran’s judiciary spokesman Masoud Setayeshi said in a regular news briefing, state media Mehr News reported.
As Iran enters its ninth week of public unrest following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, the country’s Revolutionary Court has in the past week issued its first slew of death sentences for their roles in one of the largest sustained challenges to Iran’s regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In late September, nine Europeans from France, Sweden, Italy, Germany among other countries were arrested by the Iranian government for their involvement in the protests.
Two weeks ago, Iran’s judiciary announced that 1,024 indictments had been issued in relation to the protests in Tehran alone, according to human rights organization Amnesty International. Out of this number, 21 detainees were charged with security-related offenses punishable by death.
Uprisings against the regime erupted two months ago when 22-year-old Amini, who was arrested by the country’s “morality police” for breaking Iran’s strict rules on wearing the hijab, died while in custody reportedly from suffering multiple blows to the head. Iranian authorities claimed she died of a heart attack, but her family and masses of Iranians accuse the government of a cover-up.
Iran currently holds second place for the highest number of recorded executions, behind China.
At least 378 people have been killed in the nationwide protests, according to Norway-based nongovernmental organization Iran Human Rights.
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The men’s 2022 FIFA World Cup has started, but controversies abound. There are reasons to skip this year’s tournament.
For example, stadiums erected for the occasion in host nation Qatar were built on the backs of workers from Asia and Africa.
The conditions endured by those migrantworkers have stirred controversy – from the intense heat they had to endure while building Qatar’s World Cup infrastructure to how many of them may have died. World Cup organizers vehemently dispute expert estimates that thousands died.
The former Obama administration official Tommy Vietor and the soccer pundit Roger Bennett count the ways this World Cup is problematic in a piece for CNN Opinion. Read their take.
There’s also the issue of LGBTQ rights. FIFA threatened sanctions against the captains of teams who planned to wear armbands to promote inclusion and oppose discrimination, one of a number of last-minute changes the international soccer governing body and Qatar made to the tournament. Homosexuality is against the law in Qatar, although the country’s Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy told CNN the tournament would be inclusive. Read more.
If you’re taking Qatar at their word for inclusivity, imagine having shelled out the coin for game tickets, travel and accommodation for a World Cup in the desert only to learn days before it startedthat stadiums would not sell beer after all. That’s clearly offside.
There’s a new documentary, “FIFA Uncovered” – which doesn’t paint world soccer’s governing body in an altogether flattering light given the organization’s recent history of wrongdoing – streaming just in time for the World Cup. The allegations against FIFA are not new – the US government made them years ago – but they are worth considering again.
Watch closely for signs ofprotest. Iranian players appeared to show solidarity with those protesting against the regimeback home. The players stood silent as the Iranian national anthem played out around the Khalifa International Stadium before kickoff on Monday in their game against England.
With journalists’ access in Qatar limited, someteams maytake up the role of protest against the tournament, such as with Denmark’s jerseys, designed to respect the stadium workers.
Qatar has a close soccer relationship with France, notably investing in the Paris Saint-Germain football club.
French President Emmanuel Macron told journalists during a recent international summit that questions about Qatar should have been raised years ago, during the bid process. He said the event itself provides a path to openness and has worth.
“The vocation of these big events is to allow athletes of all countries, including sometimes of countries at war, to allow sport to exist and sometimes find, through sport, ways of discussing when people no longer manage to talk,” he said.
Qatar’s ambassador to the US, Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani, argues the tournament will help change misconceptions about his country,which he says worked with a United Nations organization to improve working conditions.
“Qatar is not opposed to scrutiny,” he wrote in a CNN Opinion piece responding to the Bennett and Vietor commentary. “In fact we have embraced it – but too often platforms have been used to present one-sided, factually inaccurate arguments that go beyond what some other countries awarded major events have faced, despite each having their own unique set of challenges to overcome.” Read the whole piece.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino also defended the tournament in an hourlong explosive tirade in front of journalists Saturday. He hit back at Western criticisms of human rights issues.
“What we Europeans have been doing for the last 3,000 years, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons,” he said.
Assuming you do watch, here are the informal rules I’ve developed, with help from fellow fans on text chains, for my own enjoyment of the World Cup.
And by the way, these rules often contradict each other, so you have to weigh the importance of one over the other. That’s up to you. Or make up your own rules.
That means root for the US over England when the two countries play in the group stage. Root for conquered Wales over England, even though Wales isn’t exactly a colony and England will be the heavy favorite.
Root for Brazil over Portugal, or Argentina over Spain. There’s something satisfying, at least to this American, about the idea of New World conquering Old World, or an African team defeating France or Belgium.
Asterisks to the colony rule. When I mentioned this rule to one friend, he pointed out the US, while it sprang from former British colonies, has occupied territories in the Atlantic and Pacific, so it’s not always an easy rule to apply.
Another complication to the colony rule is the large number of immigrants on many teams. Much of the French team that won in 2018, for example, was born outside France, and most of the players had some roots in Africa – including the young star Kylian Mbappe. Here’s an interesting report from the Migration Policy Institute about the rise of immigrant players on World Cup teams.
There’s a sliding scale of freedom in the world, according to Freedom House, the independent watchdog that gets funding from the US government.
Qatar, for instance, scores a paltry 25 on Freedom House’s 0-100 scale that combines access to political rights and civil liberties. But it’s not the lowest-scoring country taking part in the World Cup: Saudi Arabia scores a 7 and Iran scores a 14.
Nor is the US, at 83, the freest. Canada gets a 98, and Uruguay and Denmark both get a 97.
Here’s a list of the World Cup countries batched alphabeticallyinto their World Cup group stage assignments, alongside their Freedom House scores.
Brazil (73), Cameroon (15), Serbia (62), Switzerland (96)
Group H:
Ghana (80), South Korea (83), Portugal (95), Uruguay (97)
It’s fun to root for the underdog, and the difference in access to facilities and paychecks varies a lot by country. What a European or North American country can offer its squad is a lot different than what an African or Central American team can offer.
The US gross domestic product amounts to more than $69,000 per capita, according to World Bank data, and Qatar’s oil-rich figure is more than $61,000. Senegal’s per capita GDP, the tournament’s lowest, is less than $1,700. Ecuador, Iran, Tunisia, Ghana and Morocco all have per capita GDPs under $6,000.
Note on combining rules No. 1 and No. 2. Teams that rate relatively high on the freedom score despite relatively low capita GDPs are Ecuador, Ghana and, to a lesser extent on the GDP front, Croatia, a World Cup finalist in 2018.
Thirty-two countries participate in the World Cup.Only eight countries have ever won the World Cup trophy. It’s getting repetitive, and all but one are in the tournament this year.
You can tell by the number of stars players wear on their jerseys. Brazil has won five and Germany has triumphed four times. Italy has also won four but didn’t make the tournament this year. Argentina, France and Uruguay have won two, and Spain and England have each won one.
That still leaves a wide-open field of 25 teams looking for their country’s first World Cup title.
If you do watch, expect exciting upsets, sublime goal-scoring and human drama, all replayed and rehashed with the help of a video assistantreferee, or VAR.
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. This World Cup probably offers the final opportunity to see two masters who have both failed to win the tournament. Now in the extreme twilight of their careers, neither is an odds-on favorite this year to win the trophy for their country (Argentina and Portugal, respectively).
Curses. Every World Cup provides England with yet another, probably doomed, opportunity to excise the curse of failure that has followed it since winning the 1966 tournament. Their agony makes for compelling television.
Brazil can exert its otherworldly dominance upon European teams. Or not, depending on which Brazil shows up. Anything but victory will be a crushing loss for them.
And finally, the United States can come to grips with why it is so mediocre at the international men’s level in a sport so many American children adore and in which its national women’s team has dominated for so long.
It’s recognized as one of the greatest restaurants in the world: Le Bernardin, founded in Paris 50 years ago, and now based in New York City. Chef and co-owner Eric Ripert talks with correspondent Martha Teichner about how running a restaurant with three Michelin stars is an extension of his approach to life: aiming to make a difference.
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LONDON — A man being held at a much-criticized center for migrants in Britain has died after falling sick, bringing renewed criticism to the Conservative government over its treatment of asylum-seekers.
The Home Office said a man who was staying at the Manston migrant center in southeast England died in a hospital on Saturday after “becoming unwell.”
Authorities are trying to contact next of kin of the man, who is believed to have arrived in England in a small boat on Nov. 12.
“We take the safety of those in our care extremely seriously and are profoundly saddened by this event,” the Home Office said. “A post-mortem examination will take place so it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time.”
It said there was “no evidence at this stage to suggest that this tragic death was caused by an infectious disease.”
Cases of diphtheria, scabies and other communicable diseases have been reported at Manston, where people who have arrived by boat across the English Channel are sent for security and identity checks before moving to longer-term accommodation.
A surge in arrivals and a bureaucratic backlog has seen people, including children, languishing for weeks. A facility intended to house at most 1,600 people had more than 4,000 occupants last month, after hundreds were moved there from another site that was firebombed by a far-right attacker. The number has since dropped.
Independent government inspectors who visited the site said they saw families sleeping on floors in prison-like conditions that presented fire and health hazards.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, called for “a thorough and speedy investigation” of the death.
“Every person in Manston must be looked after with the care and attention they need, so when a tragic death likes this takes place it is always a matter of serious concern,” he said.
The U.K. receives fewer asylum-seekers than many European nations, including Germany, France and Italy, but thousands of migrants from around the world travel to northern France each year in hopes of crossing the channel. Some want to reach the U.K. because they have friends or family there, others because they speak English or because it’s perceived to be easy to find work.
In recent years there’s been a sharp increase in the number of people attempting the journey in dinghies and other small craft as authorities have clamped down on other routes such as stowing away on buses or trucks.
More than 40,000 people have arrived in Britain after making the hazardous Channel trip so far this year, up from 28,000 in all of 2021 and 8,500 in 2020.
Dozens have died in the attempt, including 27 people almost exactly a year ago when a packed smuggling boat capsized.
The small-boat crossings are a longstanding source of friction between Britain and France. Last week the British government agreed to pay France 72.2 million euros ($75 million) in 2022-2023 in exchange for France increasing security patrols along the coast by 40%.
In another attempt to deter the crossings, Britain’s government has announced a controversial plan to send people who arrive in small boats on a one-way journey to Rwanda, to break the business model of smuggling gangs. Critics say the plan is immoral and impractical, and it is being challenged in the courts.
India will take over the chair of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) from France, the outgoing Council Chair on November 21, 2022 at a meeting to be hold in Tokyo. The Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, Rajeev Chandrasekhar will represent India at the GPAI meeting.
GPAI is an international initiative to support responsible and human-centric development and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This development comes on the heels of assuming the presidency of G20, a league of world’s largest economies. GPAI is a congregation of 25 member countries, including the US, the UK, EU, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, and Singapore. India joined GPAI in 2020 as a founding member.
As per the information shared by Ministry of Electronics & IT, in the election to the Council Chair, India had received more than a two-third majority of first-preference votes while Canada and the United States of America ranked in the two next best places in the tally – so they were elected to the two additional government seats on the Steering Committee
For the 2022-2023 Steering Committee, the five government seats will therefore be held by Japan (as Lead Council Chair and Co-Chair of the Steering Committee), France (Outgoing Council Chair), India (Incoming Council Chair), Canada and the United States.
Artificial Intelligence has been Catalyzing the Tech Landscape and is expected to add $967 Billion to Indian economy by 2035 and $450–500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025, accounting for 10% of the country’s $5 trillion GDP target, according to the ministry. Artificial Intelligence is a Kinetic enabler for growth of India’s Technology ecosystem & a force multiplier for achieving $1 Trillion Digital Economy goal by 2025.
World Cup 2022 in Qatar: The wait is almost over for the world’s biggest sporting event. Fans eagerly waiting for the FIFA World Cup 2022, which would kick off on November 20 and culminate on December 18, can now count the remaining hours at their fingertips. Qatar is the first country in the Middle East country, and second in Asia, after Japan and South Korea, to host the prestigious sporting event.
Also, for the first time in its 92-year history, the tournament is taking place in November and December rather than in the middle of the year as Qatar is one of the hottest nations in the world.
Qatar: The host
The selection of Qatar as the host country of the 2022 World Cup was done in 2010. As per reports, the country has spent a whopping $300 billion on the tournament’s preparations. It has developed highways, hotels, recreation areas, and six new football stadiums and upgraded two along with training sites at an estimated cost of up to $10 billion to accommodate world-class players. The stadiums where the matches will be played are Al Bayt Stadium, Khalifa International Stadium, Al Thumama Stadium, Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium, Lusail Stadium, Ras Abu Aboud Stadium, Education City Stadium, and Al Janoub Stadium, to hold the tournament. With 80,000 seats, Lusail Iconic Stadium is the largest stadium of the upcoming world cup.
Qatar’s investment has caught everyone’s eye as it is much higher as compared to other hosts. Picture this: Russia spent $11.6 billion spent for the FIFA World Cup in 2018, Brazil invested $15 billion in 2014, South Africa shelled out $3.6 billion in 2010. Before that, Germany spent $4.3 billion in 2006, Japan $7 billion in 2002, France $2.3 billion in 1998, and the US $500 million in 1994.
Besides, the host country was in the middle of many controversies starting from the ban of beer sales inside the stadiums, its strict rules on homosexuality, and lastly, serious abuse and mistreatment of migrant workers who built the tournament’s infrastructure.
Match details
Thirty-two countries will be taking part in football’s biggest event. This tournament will kick start with a Group A match between hosts Qatar and Ecuador on November 20. The opening game will be played at the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor, while the final match takes place on December 18 at the Lusail Stadium in Lusail.
Groups and leagues
The 32 countries have been divided into eight groups with four teams each. There will be group matches, followed by knockout matches, quarterfinals, semifinals and the final to crown the champions on December 18.
The groups are:
GROUP A: Qatar (hosts), Ecuador, Senegal, Netherlands.
GROUP B: England, Iran, United States, Wales.
GROUP C: Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Poland.
GROUP D: France, Australia, Denmark, Tunisia.
GROUP E: Spain, Costa Rica, Germany, Japan.
GROUP F: Belgium, Canada, Morocco, Croatia.
GROUP G: Brazil, Serbia, Switzerland, Cameroon.
GROUP H: Portugal, Ghana, Uruguay, South Korea.
Ticket prices
Pricing on tickets depends on a variety of factors such as who is playing, the stage of the tournament, and more. As per FIFA, nearly three million tickets have been sold across the eight stadiums in Qatar. The tournament is expected to deliver record revenue for the organising body, much more than what it had earned ($5.4 billion) in Russia. The total ticket revenue is estimated to be about $1 billion, as per news reports.
There are 4 categories in the tickets:
Category 1 is the highest-priced ticket and is located in prime areas within the stadium.
Category 2 and Category 3 are tickets that are placed in seating areas within the stadium that offer a less optimal view of the action.
Category 4 is tickets within the stadium that are reserved exclusively for residents of Qatar.
The estimated base ticket prices are as follows:
Match
Cat. 1
Cat. 2
Cat. 3
Cat. 4
Opening Match
$618
$440
$302
$55
Group Matches
$220
$165
$69
$11
Round of 16
$275
$206
$96
$19
Quarterfinals Matches
$426
$288
$206
$82
Semifinals Matches
$956
$659
$357
$137
Third-Place Match
$426
$302
$206
$82
Final Match
$1607
$1003
$604
$206
Tournament format
The tournament will start off with group-stage matches, where only the top two teams from each of the eight groups survive. Following this, 16 group-stage teams will advance to the single-game knockout stages — Round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals, and final — where the winner moves on and the loser goes home.
The knockout matches, if end without any results, will be decided on extra time, penalty kicks, sudden death methods, if necessary, to determine the victor.
When you think of the French Riviera, you might assume that summer is the best time to visit. But Nice has actually been a popular winter travel destination since the 18th century, when aristocrats, largely from England, began spending summers there.
With mild temperatures year-round (a local told me you can eat outside until the end of November, and begin doing so again come February), and far fewer tourists than the hordes that swarm the city in August, Nice is truly at its prime in the cooler months. And you don’t have to take my word for it: Last year, the city earned UNESCO World Heritage recognition as the “winter resort town of the Riviera,” citing Nice’s ideal location between the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea.
But no matter what time of year you choose to visit, you’re sure to be charmed by the city’s architecture, promenades, art, food, and history. Read on for a rundown of what to see, eat, and, of course, what wine to drink while you’re in town.
Leah Romero
Castle Hill
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As stunning as Nice is at ground-level, you haven’t properly seen the city until you’ve seen it from above. The relatively easy and short climb up the steep hill is worth it for the views of Old Town, the Promenade des Anglais, and the powder-blue sea. At the top, you can also explore the ruins of the Castle of Nice, cemeteries, and a spectacular man-made waterfall that doubles as A/C in the summer months (stand close and let the mist cool you down).
Musée Matisse
François Fernandez
Henry Matisse fell in love with Nice in 1917 and relocated to the city, where he would live and produce the majority of his work until his death in 1954. So it is fitting that today Nice is home to one of the largest collections of his work. The Musée Matisse in Nice (say that five times fast) includes 31 paintings, 454 drawings and prints, 38 cut-outs, and 57 sculptures that span the artist’s career, and is largely drawn from his personal stash, brought in directly from his studio. The gorgeous 17th-century villa that houses the museum is a bonus.
Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat
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Leave the city behind for a day trip to Cap Ferrat, a peninsula located about 25 minutes outside of Nice that boasts some of the most stunning beaches in the area. Start your day at the iconic Paloma Beach, which is flanked by villas and home to a lively family-run beach club that’s been around since 1948. From there, you can weave your way along a coastal path until you reach Le Club Dauphin, a swim club and restaurant located at the tip of the peninsula and surrounded by sea views on three sides.
Once you’re lazing by the 1930s-era Olympic-sized salt water swimming pool, where Brigitte Bardot once took swim lessons, you’ll never want to leave. And if so, you can wander up to the Belle Époque-era Grand-Hotel Du Cap-Ferrat, a Four Seasons Hotel, to book a room for the night. Don’t miss the hotel’s spa or the Michelin-starred Le Cap restaurant, which features local ingredients—some from the hotel’s own gardens, 600 wines from France’s best vineyards, and, my personal favorite, the most expansive cheese cart I’ve ever seen. (Fun fact: In season two of Emily in Paris, when Emily heads to “Saint Tropez,” most of the scenes were actually filmed in and around Cap Ferrat; like Elizabeth Taylor and Angelina Jolie before her, Emily stays at the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat.)
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Le Plongeoir
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At the end of the 19th century, a fishing boat was secured to a rock pillar just off the coast of Nice, where guests ate and drank 20 feet above the sea below. The vessel was ultimately damaged and removed, but the restaurant, Le Plongeoir, was reimagined and remains perched at the top of those same rocks today. Start with a delicious “The Signature Diving Board” drink (a nod to the restaurant’s diving boards), which is like an Aperol Spritz but with peach juice (our server told us George Clooney ordered two rounds when he was there recently), and nosh on zucchini flower fritters and seafood.
Les Agitateurs
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Les Agitateurs, located behind the city’s scenic port, is one of Nice’s most recent recipients of a Michelin star, with reviewers remarking on the “painstakingly and skillfully crafted dishes that are rich in texture, flawlessly cooked, and subtly seasoned.” The food is almost too pretty to eat, but chowing down is advised anyway. Diners can choose from preset three- or five-course meals, with wine pairings, of course. If you have trouble snagging a table, you can also visit their grocery store-slash-delicatessen to take some takeaway bites home with you.
Nuances
Sebastien Veraguas Photographe
Eating at Nuances requires you to get deeply in touch with your senses in order to figure out what exactly the deliciousness you’re tasting actually is. That’s because the restaurant serves a set “blind menu” that changes every two weeks, meaning you won’t know what any of the six courses you’re about to be served consist of until you bite down. And even then, you might not be right. After each course, the server asks you to take your best guess at the ingredients. The answers are often surprising, but always delicious.
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LEAH ROMERO
Plage Beau Rivage
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One of the best things about a European beach vacation is the abundance of beaches with top-notch service. Yes, they can be pricey, but the experience is always worth it. Leave the chairs and umbrellas at home and show up just as you are, Plage Beau Rivage will provide the rest. I love the experience of getting to enjoy proper knife-and-fork food on the sand (a real upgrade from the standard beach snacks). Be sure to make a reservation during high season, and if Plage Beau Rivage is full, fear not, the Promenade des Anglais is lined with other options.
Berco
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Located in the heart of Old Town, Berco is a great spot to sip on a glass of red while you rest your feet after a long day of sightseeing. The lively and bright wine cellar also serves tapas with ingredients from small local farms.
La Boulisterie Club
Courtesy
Who doesn’t love a bar with lawn bowling? At La Boulisterie Club, happy hour comes with a side of pétanque (translation: bocce ball). The retro space with vintage décor feels a little bit like you’re hanging in someone’s garage, but a chicgarage because, after all, this is still France.
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Leah Romero
Le Méridien
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Walking into the seaview suite at Le Méridien literally took my breath away. Set on the Promenade des Anglais, at the border of Old Town, the hotel’s location across the street from the beach makes it an ideal vantage point to check out Nice’s sparkling sea from below or above, courtesy of one of the largest hotel balconies possibly ever. Back inside, floor-to-ceiling windows throughout maximize the vistas—even the bathroom had a 180-degree view—and I seriously could not stop staring (or taking pictures) of the waves below. The mid-century modern furnishings—driftwood tables, teak flooring, and wingback chairs—add to the relaxing vibes, and the rooftop pool and restaurant make the hotel worth stopping by, even if you’re not staying the night.
Le Negresco
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Le Negresco is unlike any other hotel. It feels like sleeping in an art museum, minus the stuffiness. And that’s because it’s not just a hotel, but an art hotel, complete with an incredible 6,000 works of art and period furniture pieces throughout. The hallways and rooms are eclectically designed and span eras, with everything from Napoleon to street art. Originally opened in 1914, the pink-domed hotel has hosted Salvador Dalí, Princess Grace of Monaco, the Beatles, Louis Armstrong, and Elton John. And be sure to reserve a table at its Michelin-starred restaurant, Le Chantecler; the space alone is a feast for the eyes, with woodworking that dates back to 175 mixed with modern hot pink and lime green furnishings, and the menu comes courtesy of a female head chef, Virginie Basselot.
Le Windsor Jungle Art Hotel
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This boutique hotel has a lush tropical garden and pool, but what really sets Le Windsor Jungle Art Hotel apart is the artistic spin on its rooms. Guests can choose from three options: artist’s rooms, which modern artists have decorated with original creations straight from their imaginations; fresco rooms, which have a large-scale frescoes painted by local artist Antoine Baudoin to transport guests from Asia to Mexico; finally, there are tribute rooms dedicated to the likes of Coco Chanel and Jean Cocteau. Whichever option you choose, you can rest assured that it will be a winner.
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A nip slip in Nice? No problem. Makeup slippage? A faux pax, for sure. For a look that lasts all day (and night), base your face with this hydrating fan-favorite primer that’s perfect for dry summers and cool winters alike.
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This alcohol-free fragrant toner is not only perfect for dry skin, but the scent will transport you to a rose garden. Apply after cleansing and before serum for maximum effects, or spray midday as a refreshing pick-me-up.
Kayla Webley Adler is the Deputy Editor of ELLE magazine. She edits cover stories, profiles, and narrative features on politics, culture, crime, and social trends. Previously, she worked as the Features Director at Marie Claire magazine and as a Staff Writer at TIME magazine.
Scientists meeting outside of Paris on Friday — who have expanded the world’s measuring unit systems for the first time this century as the global population surges past 8 billion — have the answer.
Rapid scientific advances and vast worldwide data storage on the web, in smartphones and in the cloud mean that the very terms used to measure things in weight and size need extending too. And one British scientist led the push Friday to incorporate bold new, tongue-twisting prefixes on the gigantic and even the minuscule scale.
“Most people are familiar with prefixes like milli- as in milligram. But these are prefixes for the biggest and smallest levels ever measured,” Dr Richard Brown, head of Metrology at the U.K.’s National Physical Laboratory who proposed the four new prefixes, told The Associated Press.
“In the last 30 years, the datasphere has increased exponentially, and data scientists have realized they will no longer have words to describe the levels of storage. These terms are upcoming, the future,” he explained.
There’s the gargantuan “ronna” (that’s 27 zeros after the one) and its big brother the “quetta” – (that’s 30 zeros).
Their ant-sized counterparts are the “ronto” (27 zeros after the decimal point), and the “quecto” (with 30 zeros after the decimal point) — representing the smaller numbers needed for quantum science and particle physics.
Brown presented the new prefixes to officials from 64 nations attending the General Conference on Weights and Measures in Versailles, outside of Paris — who approved them on Friday.
The conference, which takes place every four years in France, is the supreme authority of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. The new terms take effect immediately, marking the first time since 1991 that any new additions have been made.
Brown said the new terms also make it easier to describe things scientists already know about — reeling off a list of the smallest and biggest things discovered by humankind.
Did you know that the mass of an electron is one rontogram? And that a byte of data on a mobile increases the phone’s mass by one quectogram?
Further from home, the planet Jupiter is two just quettagrams in mass. While, incredibly, “the diameter of the entire observable universe is just one ronnameter,” Brown said.
He explained how the new names were not chosen at random: The first letter of the new prefixes had to be one not used in other prefixes and units.
“There were only the letters ‘r’ and ‘q’ that weren’t already taken. Following that, there’s a precedent that they sound similar to Greek letters and that big number prefixes end with an ‘a’ and smaller numbers with an ‘o,’” he added.
“It was high time. (We) need new words as things expand,” Brown said. “In just a few decades, the world has become a very different place.”
BERLIN — With only six weeks to avoid a transatlantic trade showdown over green industries, the Germans are frustrated that Washington isn’t offering a peace deal and are increasingly considering a taboo-breaking response: European subsidies.
Europe’s fears hinge on America’s $369 billion package of subsidies and tax breaks to bolster U.S. green businesses, which comes into force on January 1. The bugbear for the Europeans is that Washington’s scheme will encourage companies to shift investments from Europe and incentivize customers to “Buy American” when it comes to purchasing an electric vehicle — something that infuriates the big EU carmaking nations like France and Germany.
The timing of this protectionist measure could hardly be worse as Germany is in open panic that several of its top companies — partly spurred by energy cost spikes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — are shuttering domestic operations to invest elsewhere. The last thing Berlin needs is even more encouragement for businesses to quit Europe, and the EU wants the U.S. to cut a deal in which its companies can enjoy the American perks.
A truce seems unlikely, however. If this spat now spirals out of control, it will lead to a trade war, something that terrifies the beleaguered Europeans. While the first step would be a largely symbolic protest at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the clash could easily slide precipitously back toward the tit-for-tat tariff battles of the era of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
This means that momentum is growing in Berlin for a radical Plan B. Instead of open tariff war with America, the increasingly discussed option is to rip up the classic free-trade rulebook and to play Washington at its own game by funneling state funds into European industry to rear homegrown green champions in sectors such as solar panels, batteries and hydrogen.
France has long been the leading advocate of strengthening European industry with state largesse but, up until now, the more economically liberal Germans have not wanted to launch a subsidy race against America. The sands are now shifting, however. Senior officials in Berlin say they are increasingly leaning toward the French thinking, should the talks with the U.S. not lead to an unexpected last-minute solution.
Berlin is the 27-nation bloc’s economic powerhouse, so it will be a decisive moment if Berlin ultimately decides to throw its might behind the state-led subsidy approach to an industrial race with the U.S.
Running out of time
The clock is ticking for a truce with Biden that looks increasingly unlikely.
Recent attempts by a special EU-U.S. task force to address EU concerns have met little enthusiasm on the American side to amend the controversial legislation, the European Commission told EU countries this week.
“There are only a few weeks left,” warned Bernd Lange, the chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee, adding that “once the act is implemented, it will be too late for us to achieve any changes.”
Lange said that the failure to reach a deal would likely trigger a WTO lawsuit by the EU against the U.S., and Brussels could also strike back against what it sees as the discriminatory U.S. subsidies by imposing punitive tariffs. Warnings of a trade war are already overshadowing the runup to a high-level EU-U.S. meeting in Washington on December 5.
MEP Bernd Lange Lange said that the failure to reach a deal would likely trigger a WTO lawsuit by the EU against the U.S. | Philippe Buissin/European Union
It’s precisely the kind of spat that the German government wants to avoid, as Chancellor Olaf Scholz hopes to forge unity among like-minded democracies amid Russia’s war and the the increasing challenges posed by China. Earlier this month, Scholz’s government made an overture to Washington by suggesting that a new EU-U.S. trade deal could be negotiated to resolve differences, but that proposal was quickly rejected.
There are sympathizers for the subsidies approach in Brussels, with officials at the EU’s executive saying powerful Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton is a leading proponent. Breton is already advocating for a “European Solidarity Fund” to help “mobilizing the necessary funding” to strengthen European autonomy in key sectors like batteries, semiconductors or hydrogen. Support from Germany could help Breton win the upper hand in internal EU strategy discussions over the more cautious Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis.
Breton will travel to Berlin on November 29 to discuss the consequences of the Inflation Reduction Act as well as industrial policy and energy measures with Scholz’s government.
The German considerations even echo calls from top officials of the Biden administration, including U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, who are urging the EU to not engage in a transatlantic trade dispute and instead roll out their own industrial subsidies; a strategy that Washington also sees as way to reduce dependence on China.
Plan B
Scholz first indicated late last month that the EU might have to respond to the U.S. law with its own tax cuts and state support if the negotiations with Washington fail to reach a solution, lending support to similar plans articulated by French President Emmanuel Macron, who will meet Biden on December 1 in Washington.
Although Scholz does not endorse Macron’s framing of the initiative as a “Buy European Act” (which sounds too protectionist for the Germans), the chancellor agrees that the EU cannot stand by idly if it faces unfair competition or lost investments, people familiar with his thinking said late last month.
Negative economic news, such as carmaker Tesla putting plans for a new battery factory in Germany on hold and instead investing in the U.S., or steelmaker ArcelorMittal partly closing operations in Germany, have increased calls in Berlin to consider more state support to counter a negative trend caused by both the U.S. scheme and high energy prices.
Although the official government line remains that Berlin is still holding out hope for a negotiated solution with Washington, officials in Berlin say that it could be possible to increase incentives for industries to locate the production of green technologies in Europe.
A spokesperson for the German Economy Ministry said that faced with the challenges stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act, “we will have to come up with our own European response that puts our strengths first … The aim is to competitively relocate green value creation in Europe and strengthen our own production capacities.”
The spokesperson warned, however, that both the U.S. and EU “must be careful that there is no subsidy race that prevents the best ideas from prevailing in the market,” and added: “Green technologies in particular thrive best in fair competition; protectionism cripples innovation.”
One important condition that could help Germany and the EU to safeguard said fair competition and to avoid the global free trade system descending into protectionist tendencies would be to ensure that any EU state subsidies remain in line with WTO rules. That means, in contrast to the U.S. law, that those subsidies would not discriminate between local and foreign producers.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz first indicated late last month that the EU might have to respond to the U.S. law with its own tax cuts and state support | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Crucially, support is also coming from German industry.
“In the area of industrial policy and subsidies, we could look at measures that are compatible with WTO rules — as the EU is already doing in the chip sector,” said Volker Treier, the head of foreign trade at the German Chamber of Commerce.
Treier also stressed that “there must be no discrimination” against foreign investors, but added: “This explicitly does not rule out the possibility of settlement bonuses, which in turn should be available to investors from all countries who would be interested in such investment commitments in Europe.”
In Brussels, the Commission’s competition department has also made clear that it’s looking with an open mind at upcoming proposals.
“There are no instruments excluded a priori” when it comes to the EU’s response to the U.S. subsidies, the department’s state aid Deputy Director General Ben Smulders said Thursday.
Barbara Moens, Suzanne Lynch and Pietro Lombardi in Brussels and Laura Kayali and Clea Caulcutt in Paris contributed reporting.
The EU is under immense pressure to cap the price of imported natural gas to contain energy costs — but many of the companies making a fortune selling cheap U.S. gas to the Continent at eye-watering markups are European.
The liquefied natural gas (LNG) loaded on to tankers at U.S. ports costs nearly four times more on the other side of the Atlantic, largely due to the market disruption caused by a near-total loss of Russian deliveries following the invasion of Ukraine.
The European Commission has come under fierce pressure to sketch out a gas price cap plan, but some countries, led by Germany, worry such a measure could prompt shippers to send gas cargoes elsewhere. The Commission is also reluctant, and its proposal issued Tuesday sets such demanding requirements that they weren’t met even during this summer’s price emergency.
But a large part of the trade is in European hands, according to America’s biggest LNG exporter.
“Ninety percent of everything we produce is sold to third parties, and most of our customers are utilities — the Enels, the Endesas, the Naturgys, the Centricas and the Engies of the world,” said Corey Grindal, executive vice president for worldwide trading at Cheniere Energy, rattling off the names of big-name European energy providers.
Cheniere, which this year saw 70 percent of its exported LNG sail to Europe, sells its gas on a fix-priced scheme based on the American benchmark price, dubbed Henry Hub, which is currently at about $6 per million British thermal units.
On average, the price across all Cheniere contracts is 115 percent of Henry Hub plus $3, Grindal said. That works out to about €33 per megawatt-hour. For comparison, the current EU benchmark rate, dubbed TTF, is €119 per MWh.
It’s a big markup for whoever is reselling those LNG cargoes into Europe’s wholesale market, profiting from fears that there may not be enough gas to last the winter.
Despite fears that any EU cap will send gas to higher bidders in Asia and result in bloc-wide shortages, Grindal gave a resounding “no” when asked if a cap would have any impact on how Cheniere does business with European companies.
“Our balance sheet is underpinned by those long-term contracts,” he added.
Translation: If buyers choose to trade their precious cargoes away for higher profits beyond Europe once they receive them, that’s their decision.
Blame game
“The United States is a producer of cheap gas that they are selling us at a high price … I don’t think that’s friendly,” said French President Emmanuel Macron | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
The difference between U.S. and EU gas prices hasn’t gone unnoticed by European politicians — but most of the finger-pointing has been at American producers rather than the resellers closer to home.
“In today’s geopolitical context, among countries that support Ukraine there are two categories being created in the gas market: those who are paying dearly and those who are selling at very high prices,” French President Emmanuel Macron told a group of industrial players last week. “The United States is a producer of cheap gas that they are selling us at a high price … I don’t think that’s friendly.”
Macron’s dig conveniently ignored that the largest European holder of long-term U.S. gas contracts is none other than France’s own TotalEnergies.
At the company’s latest earnings call last month, TotalEnergies CFO Jean-Pierre Sbraire trumpeted the fact that the firm’s access to more than 10 million tons of U.S. LNG annually “is a huge advantage for our traders, who can arbitrage between the U.S. and Europe.”
“And now, given the price of LNG, each cargo represents something like $80 million, even $100 million. So, when we are able reroute or to arbitrage between the different markets, of course, it’s a very efficient way to maximize the value coming from that business,” Sbaire added. “Cash flow generation of this order of magnitude marks the start of a new era for the company.”
Spain’s Naturgy — which has some 5 million tons of U.S. LNG a year from Cheniere under contract — has also earned nearly five times more trading gas so far this year compared with 2021 thanks to “the increased spread between [Henry Hub] and TTF,” it wrote in its half-year report.
Long-term contracts with the U.S. weren’t always so profitable. In fact, from 2016 to at least 2018, buyers were mostly losing money on the fixed deals, leading some to sell them off.
In 2019 Spain’s Iberdrola, for example, pawned off its 20-year Cheniere contract to Asian trader Pavilion Energy, which is now benefiting from selling into a high-priced global market.
In the U.K, Centrica tried — and failed — to sell off its LNG portfolio in 2020 when government-ordered lockdowns drove real-time prices through the floor. That included a 20-year fixed Cheniere contract set to run through 2038.
Now that real-time prices have shot back up, Centrica — part of Shell-owned British Gas — is reaping the rewards and eagerly snapping up more long-term contracts, most recently a 15-year deal with U.S. LNG exporter Delfin beginning in 2026.
“This is a really important profit stream for us,” Centrica CFO Chris O’Shea told investors on a Friday trading update call.
Unlike some producers — for example in the Middle East — which restrict the final destination of the LNG to consumers in Asia and prevent it being sold onward at a higher price, American gas changes ownership the minute it’s loaded onto a ship and comes with no strings attached.
That leaves buyers free to redirect the precious supply wherever it’s most profitable — sometimes at the expense of their downstream clients, if it’s cheaper to break those pre-existing domestic delivery commitments.
“We can only control what we can control,” said Cheniere’s Grindal. “U.S. LNG is destination-free.”
But as far as getting it on the ship at previously agreed prices, “our focus is being that reliable supplier, being committed to the obligations that we’ve made to our customers, and we’re committed to doing everything that we can to help the EU in this situation.”
After Elon Musk bought Twitter — and fired almost anyone whose job it was to deal with regulators — the social networking giant is now facing a flood of legal challenges across the European Union.
The question now is whether the EU’s watchdogs can live up to their ambitions to be the world’s digital policemen.
Ireland’s privacy regulator wants to know whether the company’s data protection standards are good enough. The European Commission doesn’t know who to ask about its upcoming online content rules. The bloc’s cybersecurity agencies raise concerns about an increase in online trolls and potential security risks.
Twitter’s unfolding turmoil is precisely the regulatory challenge that Brussels has said it wants to take on. The 27-country bloc has positioned itself — via a flurry of privacy, content and digital competition rules — as the de facto enforcer for the Western world, expanding its digital rulebook beyond the EU’s borders and urging other countries to follow its lead.
Now, the world’s richest man is putting those enforcement powers to the test.
Europe’s regulators have the largest collective rulebook to throw at companies suspected of potential breaches. But a lack of willingness to act quickly — combined with the internal confusion engulfing Twitter — has so far hamstrung the bloc’s enforcement role when it comes to holding Musk to Europe’s standards, according to eight EU and national government officials, speaking privately to POLITICO.
“This will be a major test for European regulators,” said Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics at George Washington University. She is part of the advisory board of the European Digital Media Observatory, a group helping to shape the EU’s online content rulebook, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).
“If Musk continues to act with intransigence, I think there’s an opportunity for European regulators to move much more quickly than normal,” she added. “These regulators will certainly be motivated to act.”
A representative for Twitter did not return requests for comment.
Regulatory firepower
The bloc certainly has the firepower to bring Twitter to heel.
Under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, companies can be fined up to 4 percent of their annual global revenue for failing to keep people’s personal information safe. The Irish regulator, which has responsibility for enforcing these rules against Twitter because the company’s EU headquarters are in Dublin, has already doled out a €450,000 penalty for the firm’s inability to keep data safe.
As part of the bloc’s upcoming content rules, which will start to be enforced next year, the Commission will have powers to levy separate fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s yearly revenue if it does not take down illegal content. Brussels also has the right to ban a platform from operating in the EU after repeated serious violations.
“In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules,” Thierry Breton, the French commissioner, told Musk — via Twitter | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty images
Thierry Breton, the European internal market commissioner, reminded Musk of Twitter’s obligations under the bloc’s upcoming content rules in a call with the billionaire soon after his acquisition of the social network. Musk pledged to uphold those rules, even as he has pushed back at other content moderation practices that could hamper people’s freedom of expression on the platform.
“In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules,” Breton, the French commissioner, told Musk — via Twitter.
Yet over the last three weeks, European regulators and policymakers have struggled to navigate Twitter’s internal turmoil, according to four EU and national officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The likes of Damien Kieran, Twitter’s chief privacy officer in charge of complying with Europe’s tough data protection standards, and Stephen Turner, the company’s chief lobbyist in Brussels, were among scores of senior officials who left since Musk took over.
Two of the EU officials, speaking about internal discussions on condition of anonymity, told POLITICO that multiple emails to Twitter executives bounced back after those individuals were laid off. One of those policymakers said he had taken to Twitter — scrolling through the scores of posts from the company’s employees announcing their departures — in search of information about who was still working there. A third official said the current confusion could prove problematic when the company had to reveal long-guarded information about the number of its EU users early next year.
Others have been fostering wider connections within the company, just in case. Arcom, France’s online platform regulator, for instance, has built ties with high-level executives outside of France and still had a contact in Dublin at the company to answer its pressing questions.
The policymaking blackholes — fueled by mass layoffs — have been felt beyond the EU.
Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety commissioner who previously ran Twitter’s public policy team in Asia, told POLITICO she had written to the company last week to remind them about its obligations to clamp down on child sexual exploitation on the platform. She had yet to hear back from Musk or other senior officials.
“We did have a meeting on the books with Twitter,” Melanie Dawes, chief executive of Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulator, told POLITICO ahead of her trip to Silicon Valley this week to meet many of the social media companies. “It was canceled.”
What about privacy?
Another open question is how Twitter with comply with Europe’s tough privacy rules.
Although the company’s chief privacy executive had been fired — and rumors swirled Twitter could pull out of Ireland in its cost-saving push — the Irish Data Protection Commission told POLITICO it had yet to open an investigation into the firm.
A spokesman for the agency said Twitter executives had assured Irish regulators on Monday that Renato Monteiro had been appointed as the company’s acting data protection officer — because it’s a legal requirement to have one — and no changes to how Twitter handled data had been made.
A data protection official said it was likely that Musk would move such decision-making powers to his inner circle in the United States | Justin Sullivan/Getty images
A key unanswered question is whether, in the wake of the mass layoffs, Twitter’s operations in Dublin are either shuttered or cut back to an extent that regulatory decisions are made in California and not Ireland.
Such a change would lead the company to fall foul of strict provisions within Europe’s privacy regime that require legal oversight of EU citizens’ data to be made in a firm’s headquarters within the 27-country bloc.
A data protection official, who asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly, said it was likely that Musk would move such decision-making powers to his inner circle in the United States. That potential pullback could allow any European regulator — and not just the Irish agency — to go after Twitter for potential privacy violations under the bloc’s data protection regime, the official added.
This story has been corrected to specify how multiple European privacy regulators may target Twitter for breaching the bloc’s rules if the company pulls out of Ireland.
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Mark Scott, Vincent Manancourt, Laura Kayali, Clothilde Goujard and Louis Westendarp
BALI, Indonesia — Every European leader at this week’s G20 summit in Bali wanted a one-on-one meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Not everyone got one.
The Europeans’ desire to meet Xi was driven by the fact that this week was the first opportunity to meet the Chinese leader at a major diplomatic jamboree since the lockdowns of early 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic started in China and spread to the world.
The Europeans always had to accept that they were going to be fighting for the crumbs in terms of the timetable. U.S. President Joe Biden spent three and a half hours with Xi, while France’s President Emmanuel Macron had to be content with (a still perfectly respectable) 43 minutes.
China conspicuously revived its long-established tactic of courting specific EU countries and their national interests, something it has often used to destabilize Brussels. (When Brussels threatened an all-out trade war in 2013 over China undercutting the EU market in solar panels and telecoms equipment, China expertly shattered EU unity by threatening retaliatory action against French and Spanish wine, playing Paris and Madrid against EU trade officials.)
Once again in Bali, China took the canny nation-to-nation approach, meeting Macron, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and the Netherlands’ Mark Rutte, while avoiding European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel. A meeting with Michel, at least, had been widely expected in diplomatic circles.
China bristles at the EU designation that it is a “systemic rival” to Brussels, and instead decided to leverage its influence with individual European countries.
Take the meeting with Rutte. The Chinese leader’s main interest was that the Netherlands, home to chipmaker ASML, a company that makes key equipment for microchip manufacturing, should not join any EU-U.S. trade coalition seeking to box China out of new technologies.
“It is hoped that the Netherlands would enhance Europe’s commitment to openness and cooperation,” Xi noted in a readout of the Dutch meeting. Translation: Don’t make trade trouble over microchips.
With Sánchez, Xi played up the importance of China as a motor for tourism in Spain, a sector where Madrid is particularly interested in high-rolling visitors from Asia. “The two sides need to make good preparations for the China-Spain Year of Culture and Tourism to build greater popular support for China-Spain friendship,” Xi said.
Similarly, the Xinhua state news agency quoted Macron saying he wanted more cooperation on business, specifically in the aviation and civil nuclear energy sectors. The Chinese account of the Xi-Meloni meeting was that Beijing would import more “high-quality” goods — presumably of the luxury and gourmet variety — and would cooperate in manufacturing, energy and aerospace.
Macron cozies up to Xi
In a sign that Xi’s diplomatic strategy was paying dividends, Macron took a non-confrontational approach to Xi, even massaging the Chinese leader’s ego.
The Chinese embassy to Paris promoted a video by TikTok’s domestic Chinese equivalent Douyin, in which Macron passed his best wishes to China after Xi secured a norm-breaking new mandate. (Xi was appointed for a third term as Communist Party general secretary in a highly choreographed party congress.)
Macron also hailed Xi as a “sincere” figure who should “play the role of a mediator over the next few months” in stopping further Russian aggression against Ukraine — even though Beijing has shown no sign of being a good fit for such a role since the war broke out in February.
Ignoring China’s deadly Himalayan tensions with India, escalating tension with Taiwan or military adventurism in the South China Sea, Macron declared: “China calls for peace … [There is] a deep and I know sincere attachment to … the U.N. charter.”
Macron also told reporters he planned to visit China early next year. That looks like a riposte to the visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who visited China earlier this month. Scholz reportedly rejected Paris’ suggestion for a joint Macron-Scholz visit and decided to go alone with a delegation of big businesses.
“Macron needed this air-time with Xi enormously as he couldn’t be seen to be left out by China when the Americans and the Germans have dominated the headlines,” a Western diplomat said.
While Macron claimed that Xi agreed with him on a “call for respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” China’s own readout made no such mention, saying only: “China stands for a ceasefire, cessation of the conflict and peace talks.”
Brussels boxed out
In stark contrast to the French, Spanish, Dutch and Italian leaders, the Brussels-based EU chiefs didn’t get a look-in.
In a show of Beijing’s continually negative view of the European Union, Xi decided not to go ahead with what POLITICO understood to be a near-certain plan for Michel, the one representing all 27 countries, to meet Xi.
That event, had it been allowed to take place, would have been significant in showcasing the possibility for the bloc’s smaller economies to also make their voice heard, since Xi would otherwise be busy dealing with the bigger players.
Xi’s change of heart over a meeting with Michel came shortly after the EU Council president’s prerecorded speech at a Shanghai trade expo was dropped.According to Reuters, he tried to call out Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in the speech, a message that was deemed too sensitive to Chinese ears.
In a thinly veiled criticism of China’s approach to the new Silk Road, von der Leyen said: “The [West’s] Partnership Global for Infrastructure and Investment is an important geostrategic initiative in era of strategic competition.
“Together with leading democracies we offer values-driven, high-standard, and transparent infrastructure partnerships for low- and middle-income countries,” she said.
Her tone, though, proved to be a minority among European leaders during the G20 engagement with China.
“There’s no common message from the EU on China,” according to another EU diplomat in Bali. “But then there never was one.”
To the relief of European diplomats, at least Xi did not handle their bosses in the same way he treated Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Everything we discuss has been leaked to the paper; that’s not appropriate,” Xi told Trudeau through an interpreter in a clip recorded by Canadian media.
“That’s not … the way the conversation was conducted. If there is sincerity on your part …” Xi said, before Trudeau interrupted him, defending his country’s interest in working “constructively” with Beijing.
Xi took his turn to interrupt. “Let’s create the conditions first,” Xi said.
MUNICH (AP) — The NFL wants to keep its European tour going now that Germany has joined Britain in hosting games.
Spain and France are atop the league’s wish list as it continues to look internationally for revenue growth.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Seattle Seahawks 21-16 on Sunday at Allianz Arena — a first for Germany as part of a four-year deal that the league hopes will extend long-term. London has hosted regular-season games since 2007.
Beyond Germany, which could also get additional games soon, the league’s analysis of fan growth and commercial potential puts Spain and France “very much on our radar,” Brett Gosper, NFL Head of UK and Europe, told The Associated Press in an interview.
“We need to do our homework to make sure that there is the possibility of a place to land any games in those markets, gauge interest of the host stadia, gauge interest of the host city, even the government, as to their enthusiasm to help us bring a game,” Gosper said.
Spain has a slight edge because the Chicago Bears and Miami Dolphins now have “home marketing” rights in the country. The NFL has divvied up international rights to interested teams covering 10 countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Ghana, Mexico and the U.K. No teams have rights in France.
“When you know that there are teams operating in (the international rights program) you want to look at the prospect and the viability of potentially having games in those markets at some point,” Gosper said.
There are five international games this season: three in London, one in Munich, and one in Mexico City on Nov. 21 when the Arizona Cardinals play the San Francisco 49ers.
International expansion was one reason why the NFL added a 17th game to the schedule. The league has committed to playing four international games each season, and teams are required to play a “home” game abroad once every eight seasons.
Outside of that commitment, a team with rights in a country can opt to play home games there, as the Jacksonville Jaguars do in London. The Jags have played nine times in the British capital and currently have a three-year deal to play an annual “home” game at the 90,000-seat Wembley Stadium.
“A team might choose to do that. That’s a real possibility but again not imminent,” Gosper said.
“Certainly, in next six months to 12 months we’ll be really testing the viability of our options from a stadium point of view — not just in Europe but elsewhere — and then at the same time in parallel seeing what the appetite is for clubs to potentially exploit those markets with a game,” he said.
In Spain, Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu Stadium is undergoing major renovations that will include a soccer pitch that retracts to make way for an artificial turf field that can be used for American football with a capacity over 80,000. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which has a long-term deal with the NFL to host London games, has a similar system. Atlético Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano Stadium seats 68,000.
Camp Nou is Europe’s largest soccer stadium with a capacity of 99,000, but Barcelona plans to begin a long-delayed renovation project that will last into 2026. The city’s Montjuic Olympic Stadium seats about 56,000 and was a former home to the Barcelona Dragons of the NFL Europe league.
Gosper said there are “a lot of synergies” with Spain considering the NFL’s large Spanish-speaking fanbase. Nine teams have marketing rights in Mexico.
The Stade de France just north of Paris has a capacity of just over 80,000 for soccer games.
“France is a little bit outside of that and it’s its own market and culture,” Gosper said, “but at the same time it’s an incredibly strong sports media market where returns could be higher and faster than Spain.
“They’re two very healthy media markets, healthy sports markets, some strong indicators from our streaming platform as well as from our consumer sales,” he continued. “When you mine the data a little bit, they certainly are two markets with high potential.”
Elsewhere in Europe, the Nordic markets would be next and “Sweden in particular,” Gosper said. The country’s largest stadium, Friends Arena, tops out at 50,000 fans.
In August 1988, the Bears played the Minnesota Vikings in a preseason game at Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg.
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