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  • Yemen: US and EU ignored our warnings about Houthis to court Iran for nuclear deal

    Yemen: US and EU ignored our warnings about Houthis to court Iran for nuclear deal

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    “We have been saying this a long time,” he said on a visit to Brussels. “I have been here three times before and always we said if we didn’t do this … the Houthis will never stop. The Houthis have an ideology, have a project. Iran has a project in the region and unfortunately, the others do not respond.”

    He expressed frustration that the EU and U.S. spent years pouring their diplomatic energies into wooing Tehran for a nuclear deal, rather than exerting more pressure on the Islamic Republic to stop supporting their Houthi allies, fellow Shi’ite Muslims who were seeking to impose what he labeled a “theocratic, totalitarian” police state.  

    The idea behind the nuclear talks was that Tehran should limit its nuclear ambitions in return for sanctions relief, but an accord proved out of reach.  

    No one paid attention

    Bin Mubarak noted international momentum for action — which has included U.S. and British strikes on Houthi targets — did not finally come about “because of what [the Houthis] did to the Yemenis. They killed thousands of Yemenis. Not because of the atrocities they committed, raping women … jailing women … Just look at what Houthis did. No one is paying attention.”   

    He explained Western diplomacy toward Iran was supposed to have focused on three elements: the nuclear program, Tehran’s support for regional proxies, and its ballistic missile program. The fixation on the first, to the detriment of the other two, means the West is now facing an adversary in Yemen that has been very well armed by Iran, bin Mubarak complained.  

    “[Iran’s] Shahed drones, the first time we started hearing the European Union talking about it, they were being used in Ukraine. But before that, for years, we were saying Iran is supplying Houthis and drones are attacking Yemeni people. No one was believing [it],” he continued, adding that Houthi drone strikes stopped Yemeni oil exports in October 2022.    



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    Christian Oliver

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  • Netanyahu: Don’t accuse me of boosting Hamas with Qatari money

    Netanyahu: Don’t accuse me of boosting Hamas with Qatari money

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    Paul Ronzheimer is the deputy editor-in-chief of BILD and a senior journalist reporting for Axel Springer, the parent company of POLITICO.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vehemently denied accusations he allowed Qatar to fund and strengthen the militant group Hamas in order to divide Palestinians into rival political camps, slamming the claims as “ridiculous.”

    Netanyahu’s opponents in Israel argue his government spent years actively boosting Hamas in Gaza by allowing Qatar to channel hundreds of millions of dollars to the coastal enclave in a risky game of “divide-and-rule,” that was meant to play the Islamist militants from Hamas off against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

    “It’s a big lie that I wanted to build [up] Hamas. Ridiculous,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company. “You don’t go to war three times with Hamas or do major military operations if you want to build up Hamas.”

    Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is a leading example of a politician who takes that version of events with a pinch of salt. “In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas,” he previously told POLITICO. “Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza.”

    Most incriminatingly, Netanyahu himself said in 2019 at a Likud party conference: “Anyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas.”

    Netanyahu on Tuesday, however, dismissed those charges, claiming he only allowed Qatari money to flow into Gaza to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe, not to strengthen the arm of the administration there.

    “We wanted to avoid a civilian humanitarian collapse — disease, rampant hunger and other things that would have created an impossible humanitarian situation,” he said. “That’s why successive Israeli governments allowed this money to go in, not in order to strengthen Hamas. We didn’t want to strengthen Hamas at all. We wanted to weaken it and degrade its capabilities as far as we could.”

    Israel and Hamas are on the fifth day of a fragile truce — which has so far allowed for the release of 69 of the 240 hostages taken by the militant group during its October 7 attack.

    But all eyes are now turned to the “day after” and what the end of the truce will mean for Israel and Gaza.

    Netanyahu said Israel would keep its side of the truce as long as Hamas keeps its, but he noted that Hamas would still have to be destroyed after the cease-fire ends.

    “Make no mistake: we shall continue our military efforts to eradicate Hamas, because Hamas says very clearly that it will repeat the savagery over and over and over,” he said.

    And after Israel has defeated Hamas, he said, the goal will be twofold: to de-militarize and de-radicalize Gaza.

    “Our goal is to make sure that Gaza does not revert to the kind of horrible threat it was to Israel before the war,” Netanyahu said.

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    Paul Ronzheimer and Claudia Chiappa

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  • They’re talking, but a climate divide between Beijing and Washington remains

    They’re talking, but a climate divide between Beijing and Washington remains

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    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

    Last week’s surprise deal between China and the United States may provide a boost to the climate talks in Dubai — but the two powers remain at odds on tough questions such as how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations.

    The world’s top two drivers of climate change are also divided by a thicket of disagreements on trade, security, human rights and economic competition.

    The good news is that Washington and Beijing are talking to each other again and restarting some of their technical cooperation on climate issues, after a yearlong freeze. That may still not be enough to get nearly 200 nations to commit to far greater climate action at the talks that begin Nov. 30.

    The two superpowers’ latest detente creates the right “mood music” for the summit, said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at climate think tank E3G. “But it still is not saying that the world’s two largest economies and two largest emitters are fully committed to the scale and pace of reductions that are needed.”

    The deal, announced after a meeting this month between U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, produced an agreement to commit to a series of actions to limit climate pollution. Those include accelerating the shift to renewable energy and widening the variety of heat-trapping gases they will address in their next round of climate targets.

    U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping endorsed that type of cooperation after a meeting in California on Wednesday, saying they “welcomed” positive discussions on actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during this decade, as well as “common approaches” toward a successful climate summit. Biden said he would work with China to address climate finance in developing countries, a major source of friction for the U.S.

    “Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” said Xi ahead of his bilateral with Biden.

    But the deal leaves some big issues unaddressed, including specific measures for ending their reliance on fossil fuels, the main contributor to global warming. And the two countries are a long way from the days when a surprise U.S.-Chinese agreement to cooperate on climate change had the power to land a landmark global pact.

    That puts the nations in a dramatically different place than in 2014, when Xi and then-President Barack Obama made a historic pledge to jointly cut their planet-warming pollution, paving the way for the landmark Paris Agreement to land in 2015.

    Even a surprise joint deal between the two nations in 2021 failed to ease friction, with China emerging at the last minute to oppose language calling for a phase-out of coal power. The summit ended with a less ambitious “phase-down.”

    A year later, a visit to Taiwan by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi angered Beijing so much that Xi’s government canceled dialogue with the United States on a host of issues, including climate change. China, which claims that Taiwan is part of its territory, alleged that the visit had undermined its sovereignty.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks after receiving the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, Taiwan’s highest civilian honour | Handout/Getty Image

    The two countries’ struggles to find comity have come at the worst possible moment — at a time when rapid action is crucial to preventing climate catastrophe. A growing number of factors has threatened to widen the U.S.-Chinese wedge further, including their competition for supremacy in the market for clean energy.

    Two nations at odds

    While the U.S. has contributed more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than any other nation during the past 150 years, China is now the world’s largest climate polluter — though not on a per capita basis — and it will need to stop building new coal-fired power for the world to stand a chance of limiting rising temperatures.

    The recent agreement hints at that possibility by stating that more renewables would enable reductions in the generation of oil, gas and coal, helping China peak its emissions ahead of its current targets.

    The challenge will be bridging the countries’ diverging approaches to climate issues.

    The Biden administration is urging a rapid end to coal-fired power, which is waning in the U.S., even as it permits more oil drilling and ramps up exports of natural gas — much of it destined for Asia.

    At the same time, it wants the United States to claim a larger role in the clean energy manufacturing industry that China now dominates, and is seeking to loosen China’s stranglehold on supply chains for products such as solar panels, electric cars and the minerals that go into them. It’s also pressuring Beijing to contribute to U.N. climate funds, saying China’s historic status as a developing country no longer shields it from its responsibility to pay.

    China sees the U.S. position as a direct challenge to its economic growth and energy security.

    Beijing wants to protect the use of coal and defend developing countries’ access to fossil fuels. It has also backed emerging economies’ demands that rich countries pay more to help them deploy clean energy and adapt to the effects of a warmer world. China says it already helps developing countries through South-South cooperation and points to a clause in the 2015 Paris Agreement that says developed countries should lead on climate finance.

    Hanging over the talks is also the prospect of a change of administration in the U.S., and continued efforts by Republicans to vilify Beijing and accuse the Biden administration of supporting Chinese companies through its climate policies and investments. And as China’s response to Pelosi’s trip underscored, climate cooperation remains hostage to other tensions in the two countries’ relationship, a dynamic likely to heighten in the coming year as both Taiwan and the U.S. hold presidential elections.

    One challenge is that China doesn’t seem to see much to gain from offering more ambitious climate actions amid worsening relations with other countries, said Kevin Tu, a non-resident fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and an adjunct professor at the School of Environment at Beijing Normal University.

    “In the past several years, China has voluntarily upgraded its climate ambitions a few times amid rising geopolitical tensions,” Tu said, pointing to its 2020 pledge to peak and then zero out its emissions. “So China does not necessarily have very strong incentive to further upgrade its climate ambition.”

    The divide between the two nations has created a dilemma for some small island nations that often walk a fine line between negotiating alongside China at climate talks while pushing for more action to scale back fossil fuels.

    The U.S. and China remain at odds on how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

    “The U.S. is trying to drag everyone to talk about an immediate coal phase-out,” Ralph Regenvanu, climate minister for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, said during a recent call with reporters, calling the effort a “U.S.-versus-China thing.”

    “But we also need to talk about no more oil or gas as well,” he added.

    Operating on its own terms

    The dynamic between China and the U.S. will either drag down or bolster the ambitions of countries updating their national climate pledges, a process that begins at the close of COP28. Nations are already woefully behind cuts needed to hit the goals they laid out in Paris.

    China’s new 10-year targets will be crucial for meeting those marks, given that China accounts for close to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and that it plans to build dozens of coal-fired power plants in the coming years. The U.S., and many other countries, will be looking for greater commitments from China — whether that’s modifying what it means by phasing down coal or setting more stringent targets.

    China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and zero them out before 2060, a decade later than the United States has promised to reach net-zero. Beijing is unlikely to accelerate that timeline, in part because — analysts say — its philosophy is fundamentally different from that of the U.S.: underpromise and overdeliver.

    Even without committing to more action, China’s massive investments in low-carbon energy installations — twice that of the United States — may inadvertently help the country achieve its peaking target early, some analysts say.

    A complicated picture

    If the Trump years drove China further from America, the global pandemic and resulting economic slowdown that started during his final year didn’t bring it closer. And the energy crunch stemming from Russia’s war with Ukraine cemented China’s drive for reliable energy to meet the rising needs of its 1.4 billion people. That created a coal boom.

    Meanwhile, China heavily subsidized the expansion of wind, solar and electric vehicle production. Its clean energy supply chain dominance has lowered the global costs for those technologies but drawn scorn from the U.S. as it tries to rebuild its own domestic manufacturing base.

    China has turned more combative in response. Rather than work with the U.S. to make joint announcements on climate action, Xi has made clear that China’s climate policy won’t be dictated by others. At G20 meetings, China has aligned with Saudi Arabia and Russia in opposing language aimed at phasing out fossil fuels.

    “At the end of the day, it’s harder to make a claim that China needs the U.S. and it’s harder to make the claim that the U.S. can rely on China,” said Cory Combs, a senior analyst at policy consulting firm Trivium China.

    Wealthy countries’ inability to deliver promised climate aid to vulnerable countries hasn’t helped. While China remains among the bloc of developing nations in calling for more action on climate finance, it also points to the investments it’s making in the Global South through its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and bilateral aid. 

    A foreign diplomat who asked for anonymity to speak openly said China has resisted pressure to contribute money to a climate fund that would help developing countries rebuild after climate disasters and would likely push back against a focus on its continued build out of coal-fired power plants.

    US climate envoy John Kerry sits next to China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

    “Anything that would signal that they would need to do more is something that gets blocked,” the person said.

    China did release a plan earlier this month to cut emissions of the potent greenhouse methane, delivering on a promise it had made in a joint declaration with the U.S. at climate talks in 2021. But it has still not signed onto a global methane pledge led by the U.S. and the European Union.

    All that amounts to a complicated picture for the U.S.-Chinese relationship and its broader impact on global climate outcomes.

    “The U.S.-China talks will help stabilize the politics when countries meet in the UAE, but critical issues such as a fossil fuel phase-out still require much [further] political efforts,” said Li Shuo, incoming director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

    “It’s very much about setting a floor,” and the talks in Dubai still need to build out from there, Shuo added.

    He argues in a recent paper that China will subscribe to targets it sees as achievable and will continue to side with developing countries on climate finance. Chinese government officials are cautious about what they’re willing to commit to internationally, which sometimes serves as a disincentive for them to be more ambitious, he said.

    The calculation is likely to be different for Biden’s team, who “want a headline that the world agrees to push China,” said David Waskow, who leads the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative.

    Not impossible

    The power of engagement can’t be completely written off, and in the past it has proven to have a positive effect on the U.S.-China relationship.

    “[Climate] sort of was a positive pillar in the relationship,” said Todd Stern, Obama’s former chief climate negotiator. “And it came to be a thing where when the two sides have come to get together, it was like, ‘What can we get done on climate?’”

    Engagement with China at the state and local level and among academics and research institutes has potential — in large part because it’s less political, said Joanna Lewis, a professor at Georgetown University who closely tracks China’s climate change approach.

    There could also be opportunities to separate climate from broader bilateral tensions.

    “I do feel like there’s that willingness to say, ‘We recognize our roles, we recognize our ability to have that catalytic effect on the international community’s actions,’” said Nate Hultman, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability and a former senior adviser to Kerry. “It doesn’t solve all the world’s issues going into the COP, but it gives a really strong boost to international discussions around what we know we need to do.”

    Sara Schonhardt and Zack Colman reported, and Phelim Kine contributed reporting, from Washington, D.C.

    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM. The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.

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    Sara Schonhardt and Zack Colman

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  • Anti-green backlash hovers over COP climate talks

    Anti-green backlash hovers over COP climate talks

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    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

    LONDON — World leaders will touch down in Dubai next week for a climate change conference they’re billing yet again as the final off-ramp before catastrophe. But war, money squabbles and political headaches back home are already crowding the fate of the planet from the agenda.

    The breakdown of the Earth’s climate has for decades been the most important yet somehow least urgent of global crises, shoved to one side the moment politicians face a seemingly more acute problem. Even in 2023 — almost certainly the most scorching year in recorded history, with temperatures spawning catastrophic floods, wildfires and heat waves across the globe — the climate effort faces a bewildering array of distractions, headwinds and dismal prospects.

    “The plans to achieve net zero are increasingly under attack,” former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, who set her country’s goal of reaching climate neutrality into law, told POLITICO.

    The best outcome for the climate from the 13-day meeting, which is known as COP28 and opens Nov. 30, would be an unambiguous statement from almost 200 countries on how they intend to hasten their plans to cut fossil fuels, alongside new commitments from the richest nations on the planet to assist the poorest.

    But the odds against that happening are rising. Instead, the U.S. and its European allies are still struggling to cement a fragile deal with developing countries about an international climate-aid fund that had been hailed as the historic accomplishment of last year’s summit. Meanwhile, a populist backlash against the costs of green policies has governments across Europe pulling back — a reverse wave that would become an American-led tsunami if Donald Trump recaptures the White House next year.

    And across the developing world, the rise of energy and food prices stoked by the pandemic and the Ukraine war has caused inflation and debt to spiral, heightening the domestic pressure on climate-minded governments to spend their money on their most acute needs first.

    Even U.S. President Joe Biden, whose 2022 climate law kicked off a boom of clean-energy projects in the U.S., has endorsed fossil fuel drilling and pipeline projects under pressure to ease voter unease about rising fuel costs.

    Add to all that the newest Mideast war that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

    On the upside, investment in much of the green economy is also surging. Analysts are cautiously opining that China’s emissions may have begun to decline, several years ahead of Beijing’s schedule. And the Paris-based International Energy Agency projects that global fossil fuel demand could peak this decade, with coal use plummeting and oil and gas plateauing afterward. Spurring these trends is a competition among powers such as China, the United States, India and the European Union to build out and dominate clean-energy industries.

    But the fossil fuel industry is betting against a global shift to green, instead investing its profits from the energy crisis into plans for long-term expansion of its core business.

    The air of gloom among many supporters of global climate action is hard to miss, as is the sense that global warming will not be the sole topic on leaders’ minds when they huddle in back rooms.

    “It’s getting away from us,” Tim Benton, director of the Chatham House environment and society center, said during a markedly downbeat discussion among climate experts at the think tank’s lodgings on St James’ Square in London earlier this month. “Where is the political space to drive the ambition that we need?”

    Fog of war

    The most acute distraction from global climate work is the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The conflagration is among many considerations the White House is weighing in Biden’s likely decision not to attend the summit, one senior administration official told POLITICO this month. Other leaders are also reconsidering their schedules, said one senior government official from a European country, who was granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive diplomacy of the conference.

    The war is also likely to push its way onto the climate summit’s unofficial agenda: Leaders of big Western powers who are attending will spend at least some of their diplomatically precious face-time with Middle East leaders discussing — not climate — but the regional security situation, said two people familiar with the planning for COP28 who could not be named for similar reasons. According to a preliminary list circulated by the United Arab Emirates, Israeli President Isaac Herzog or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will attend the talks.

    A threat even exists that the conference could be canceled or relocated, should a wider regional conflict develop, Benton said. 

    The UAE’s COP28 presidency isn’t talking about that, at least publicly. “We look forward to hosting a safe, inclusive COP beginning at the end of November,” said a spokesperson in an emailed statement. But the strained global relations have already thrown the location of next years’ COP29 talks into doubt because Russia has blocked any EU country from hosting the conference, which is due to be held in eastern or central Europe.

    The upshot is that the bubble of global cooperation that landed the Paris climate agreement in 2015 has burst. “We have a lot of more divisive narratives now,” Laurence Tubiana, the European Climate Foundation CEO who was one of the drafters of the Paris deal, said at the same meeting at Chatham House.

    The Ukraine war and tensions between the U.S. and China in particular have widened the gap between developed and developing countries, Benton told POLITICO in an email. 

    Now, “the Hamas-Israel war potentially creates significant new fault lines between the Arab world and many Western countries that are perceived to be more pro-Israeli,” he said. “The geopolitical tensions arising from the war could create leverage that enables petrostates (many of which are Muslim) to shore up the status quo.”

    Add to that the as yet unknown impact on already high fossil fuel commodity prices, said Kalee Kreider, president of the Ridgely Walsh public affairs consultancy and a former adviser to U.S. Vice President Al Gore. “Volatility doesn’t usually help raise ambition.”

    The Biden administration’s decisions to approve a tranche of new fossil fuel production and export projects will undermine U.S. diplomacy at COP28, said Ed Markey, a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts.

    “You can’t preach temperance from a barstool, and the United States is running a long tab,” he said.

    U.N. climate talks veterans have seen this program before. “No year over the past three decades has been free of political, economic or health challenges,” said former U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa, who now heads the consulting firm onepoint5. “We simply can’t wait for the perfect conditions to address climate change. Time is a luxury we no longer have — if we ever did.”

    The EU backlash

    Before the Mideast’s newest shock to the global energy system, the war in Ukraine exposed Europe’s energy dependence on Russia — and initially galvanized the EU to accelerate efforts to roll out cleaner alternatives.

    But in the past year, persistent inflation has worn away that zeal. Businesses and citizens worry about anything that might add to the financial strain, and this has frayed a consensus on climate change that had held for the past four years among left, center and center right parties across much of the 27-country bloc.

    In recent months, conservative members of the European Parliament have attacked several EU green proposals as excessive, framing themselves as pragmatic environmentalists ahead of Europe-wide elections next year.  Reinvigorated far-right parties across the bloc are also using the green agenda to attack more mainstream parties, a trend that is spooking the center. 

    Germany’s government was almost brought down this year by a law that sought to ban gas boilers — with the Greens-led economy ministry retreating to a compromise. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has joined a growing chorus agitating for a “regulatory pause” on green legislation.

    If Europe’s struggles emerge at COP28, the ripple effect could be global, said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank. 

    The “EU has established itself as the global laboratory for climate neutrality,” he said. “But now it needs to deliver on the experiment, or the world (which is closely watching) will assume this just does not work. And that would be a disaster for all of us.”

    U.K. retreats

    The world is also watching the former EU member that stakes a claim to be the climate leader of the G7: the U.K.

    London has prided itself on its green credentials ever since former Prime Minister May enacted a 2019 law calling for net zero by 2050 — making her the first leader of a major economy to do so.

    According to May’s successor Boris Johnson, net zero was good for the planet, good for voters, good for the economy. But under current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the messaging has transformed. Net zero remains the target — but it comes with a “burden” on working people.

    In a major speech this fall, Sunak rolled back plans to ban new petrol and diesel car sales by 2030, bringing the U.K. into line with the EU’s 2035 date. With half an eye on Germany’s travails, he said millions of households would be exempted from the gas boiler ban expected in 2035.

    In making his arguments for a “pragmatic” approach to net zero, Sunak frequently draws on the talking points of net zero-skeptics. Why should the citizens of the U.K., which within its own borders produces just 1 percent of global emissions, “sacrifice even more than others?” 

    The danger, said one EU climate diplomat — granted anonymity to discuss domestic policy of an allied country — was that other countries around the COP28 negotiating table would hear that kind of rhetoric from a capital that had led the world — and repurpose it to make their own excuses.

    Sunak’s predecessor May sees similar risks.

    “Nearly a third of all global emissions originate from countries with territorial emissions of 1 per cent or less,” May said. “If we all slammed on the brakes, it would make our net zero aspirations impossible to achieve.”

    Trump’s back

    The U.S., the largest producer of industrial carbon pollution in modern history, has been a weathervane on climate depending on who controls its governing branches.

    When Republicans regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022, it created a major drag on Biden’s promise to provide $11.4 billion in annual global climate finance by 2024.

    Securing this money and much more, developing countries say, is vital to any progress on global climate goals at COP28. Last year, on the back of the pandemic and the energy price spike, global debt soared to a record $92 trillion. This cripples developing countries’ ability to build clean energy and defend themselves against — or recover from — hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires.

    Even when the money is there, the politics can be challenging. Multibillion-dollar clean energy partnerships that the G7 has pursued to shift South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and India off coal power are struggling to gain acceptance from the recipients.

    Yet even more dire consequences await if Trump wins back the presidency next year. 

    A Trump victory would put the world’s largest economy a pen stroke away from quitting the Paris Agreement all over again — or, even more drastically, abandoning the entire international regime of climate pacts and summits. The thought is already sending a chill: Negotiations over a fund for poorer countries’ climate losses and damage, which Republicans oppose, include talks on how to make its language “change-of-government-proof” in light of a potential Trump victory, said Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for a bloc of island states.

    More concretely for reining in planet-heating gases, Trump would be in position to approve legislation eliminating all or part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden’s signature climate law included $370 billion in incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles and other carbon-cutting efforts – though the actual spending is likely to soar even higher due to widespread interest in its programs and subsidies – and accounts for a bulk of projected U.S. emissions cuts this decade.

    Trump’s views on this kind of spending are no mystery: His first White House budget director dismissed climate programs as “a waste of your money,” and Trump himself promised last summer to “terminate these Green New Deal atrocities on Day One.”

    House Republicans have attempted to claw back parts of Biden’s climate law several times. That’s merely a political messaging effort for now, thanks to a Democrat-held Senate and a sure veto from Biden, but the prospects flip if the GOP gains full control of Congress and White House.

    Under a plan hatched by Tubiana and backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, countries would in the future log their state and local government climate plans with the U.N., in an attempt to undergird the entire system against a second Republican blitzkrieg.

    The U.S. isn’t the only place where climate action is on the ballot, Benton told the conference at Chatham House on Nov. 1.

    News on Sunday that Argentina had elected as president right-wing populist Javier Milei — a Trump-like libertarian — raised the prospect of a major Latin American economy walking away from the Paris Agreement, either by formally withdrawing or by reneging on its promises.

    Elections are also scheduled in 2024 for the EU, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Russia, and possibly the U.K. 

    “A quarter of the world’s population is facing elections in the next nine months,” he said. “If everyone goes to the right and populism becomes the order of the day … then I won’t hold out high hopes for Paris.”

    Zack Colman reported from Washington, D.C. Suzanne Lynch also contributed reporting from Brussels.

    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM. The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.

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    Karl Mathiesen, Charlie Cooper and Zack Colman

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  • King Charles to attend COP28

    King Charles to attend COP28

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    King Charles III will attend the COP28 climate summit in Dubai next month, Buckingham Palace confirmed.

    The King — a longstanding advocate of bolder action to combat climate change — will deliver the opening address at the World Climate Action Summit, the gathering of global leaders which will open the two-week annual conference.

    It will be the first time he has attended a COP summit as King. Having played a major diplomatic role as Prince of Wales at the U.K.-hosted COP26 in 2021, there was confusion last year as to whether he would attend the COP27 summit in Egypt. Downing Street eventually confirmed that he would not go as it was not the “right occasion.”

    This year, the King will attend “at the invitation” of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and “at the request” of the U.K. government, Buckingham Palace said.

    He will speak at the summit on Friday 1 December and will “take the opportunity to have meetings with regional leaders” ahead of the event, according to a statement from the palace.

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    Charlie Cooper

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  • West urges Israel to show restraint amid escalation fears

    West urges Israel to show restraint amid escalation fears

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    Western governments are urging Israel to show restraint in its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, as fears grow that the conflict could spiral out of control. 

    On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and French President Emmanuel Macron combined their support for Israel’s right to retaliate with a warning: That response must be fair. 

    “Israel has the right to defend itself by eliminating terrorist groups such as Hamas through targeted action, but preserving civilian populations is the duty of democracies,” Macron said on Thursday night. “The only response to terrorism is always a strong and fair one. Strong because fair.”

    On Thursday, for the first time the United States hinted at Israel’s responsibilities. Speaking alongside Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference, Blinken said that while “Israel has the right to defend itself … how Israel does this matters.” 

    In a call with Netanyahu late Thursday evening, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “reiterated that the UK stands side by side with Israel in fighting terror and agreed that Hamas can never again be able to perpetrate atrocities against the Israeli people,” according to a Downing Street readout. But the readout also added: “Noting that Hamas has enmeshed itself in the civilian population in Gaza, the Prime Minister said it was important to take all possible measures to protect ordinary Palestinians and facilitate humanitarian aid.”

    These concerns were privately echoed by other Western officials, who warned that the world is facing a precarious moment. 

    As Israel scales up its powerful counteroffensive in Gaza, the fear in some European governments is that a full-blown regional war could erupt. 

    “Whatever Israel and the Palestinians do now risks contributing to the increasing bipolarization over the conflict,” one French diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly. “One big worry is the risk that the conflict spreads to the region.”

    Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, already called the Hamas attacks and the subsequent kidnapping of civilians “Israel’s 9/11.”

    But the 2001 attacks on the U.S. also led Washington to launch a global “War on Terror,” with American-led military involvement in Afghanistan and, two years later, Iraq, with the loss of many lives. The unified international support the U.S. enjoyed in the days and weeks immediately following 9/11 splintered over President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. 

    “Israel clearly sees this as a casus belli [an act that provokes or justifies war],” one EU official said. “There is a real danger Israel simply uses this for a major ground offensive and wipes out the whole of Gaza.” 

    Shock and fury

    Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis even publicly warned about making the same mistake. 

    “The shock and fury in Israel are reminiscent of the emotions in the US after 9/11,” he said on X. “That provoked a display of American unity and power. It also led to a misconceived and self-destructive war on terror. Israel may be heading down the same dangerous path.” 

    Hamas’ attacks against Israel last weekend, which left more than 1,200 dead, led to an incomparable wave of sympathy and outrage across the West. The Israeli flag was projected across the European Commission’s headquarters and Berlin’s Brandenburger Tor.

    But already, Israel’s retribution against Hamas is being scrutinized. Its counteroffensive has killed more than 1, 500 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and put the coastal strip of land under “complete siege.” 

    The United Nations has already sounded the alarm. Just two days after the attacks, Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply distressed” at Israel’s announcement of a siege on Gaza. He also warned Israel that “military operations must be conducted in strict accordance with international humanitarian law.” This was echoed by the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. 

    NGOs and Western governments now fear a humanitarian crisis, with the Red Cross warning that Gaza hospitals could turn into “morgues” without electricity. 

    So far, Israel seems to be doubling down. 

    On Thursday, Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz said there would be no humanitarian exception until all hostages were freed and that nobody should moralize. 

    Speaking to POLITICO’s transatlantic podcast Power Play, Israel’s ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, said the West must continue to stand with Israel as it fights the “bloodthirsty animals” of Hamas.

    Talking about Israel’s retaliatory measures in the Gaza Strip, Prosor said Israel decided to move “from containment to eradication” of Islamic jihadists. “This is civilization against barbarity. This is good against bad.”

    Haim Regev, the Israeli ambassador to the EU, acknowledged on Tuesday that there were few critical voices so far. “But I feel the more we will go ahead with our response we might see more.”

    Abdalrahim Alfarra, the head of the Palestinian Mission to the EU, told POLITICO on Thursday that a change in atmosphere is already underway. “It’s starting, since [Wednesday] there are several voices in the European Union itself that have started to ask Israel and Netanyahu’s government to at the least open up a passage for food aid to stop the Israeli aggression and war against the Gaza strip,” he said. 

    Gordian knot 

    Just like the U.S. response to 9/11, the escalation of the conflict risks destabilizing the entire region, Western diplomats fear. 

    “This whole conflict is a Gordian knot,” said one EU diplomat, describing the risk of escalation toward other countries in the region. The diplomat said the focus should now be on stabilizing the situation and to getting the parties back to the negotiating table.

    “The Middle East conflict has the danger of escalating and bringing in other Arab countries under the pressure of their public opinion,” former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned, while pointing to the lessons learned from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, during which an Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria attacked Israel.

    Despite the historical peace efforts of the U.S. in the region, Washington is far from a neutral broker, as it has been traditionally a strong supporter of Israel. In previous crises in the region, Washington appeared to give Israel carte blanche in its response, but over time ramped up pressure to compel the Israeli government to agree to a cease fire.

    The EU official cited above doubted whether Washington will follow that playbook this time. “Biden has no more room for maneuvering domestically after the Hamas attacks,” the EU official said. “He has to support Netanyahu all the way.”

    Eddy Wax, Suzanne Lynch, Sarah Wheaton, Elisa Braun, Jacopo Barigazzi and Laura Hülsemann contributed reporting.

    This article has been updated with a readout from U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s call with Benjamin Netanyahu, and to reflect the Palestinian death toll.

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    Barbara Moens, Clea Caulcutt and Nicholas Vinocur

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  • Why dengue in Europe could spell disaster for the rest of the world 

    Why dengue in Europe could spell disaster for the rest of the world 

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    In the early morning of the last day of August, Parisians experienced for the first time a practice normally confined to tropical regions — authorities fumigating the city against the tiger mosquito. The event was a tangible confirmation of what public health stats already showed: Dengue, the deadly mosquito-borne disease, had well and truly arrived in Europe. 

    In 2022, Europe saw more cases of locally acquired dengue than in the whole of the previous decade. The rise marks both a public health threat and a corresponding market opportunity for dengue vaccines and treatments; news that should spur the pharma industry to boost investment into the neglected disease. 

    On the face of it, this shift would appear to benefit not only countries like France but also nations like Bangladesh and the Philippines that have long battled dengue.

    But that assumption could be fatally flawed, experts told POLITICO. 

    People working in the field say the rise of dengue in the West could, in fact, make it harder to get lifesaving drugs to those who need them most, because pharma companies develop tools that are less effective in countries where the dengue burden is the highest or because wealthy nations end up hoarding these medicines and vaccines. 

    “It might look like a good thing — and it is a good thing — that we’re getting more products developed, but does it then create a two-tier system where high-income populations get access to it and then we still have the access gap for low- and middle- income countries?” asked Lindsay Keir, director of the science and policy advisory team at think tank Policy Cures Research.

    Killer invading mosquitoes

    Climate change and migration mean the mosquitoes that transmit dengue, as well as other diseases such as chikungunya and Zika, are setting up shop in Europe. The most recent annual data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control shows that, in 2022, Europe saw 71 cases of locally acquired dengue: 65 in France and six in Spain.

    While dengue usually results in mild or no symptoms, it can also lead to high fever, severe headache and vomiting. Severe dengue can cause bleeding from the gums, abdominal pain and, in some cases, death.

    So far, the mosquito has mostly been confined to Southern Europe but it’s a worry across the Continent. In Belgium, the national public health research institute Sciensano has even launched an app where members of the public can submit photos of any Asian tiger mosquitos they spot.

    The diseases spread by these mosquitoes have traditionally fallen under the umbrella of neglected tropical diseases, a group of infections that affect mainly low-income countries and struggle to attract research and development investment. But this is changing.

    Policy Cures Research, which publishes an annual report on R&D investment into neglected diseases, removed dengue vaccines from their assessment in 2013. Dengue was no longer seen as an area where there was market failure, due to the emergence of a market that the private sector could tap into. 

    The organization is still tracking dengue drugs and biologics and their 2022 analysis showed a 33 percent increase in funding for research into non-vaccine products compared to the previous year, with industry investment reaching a record high of $28 million. 

    Climate change and migration mean the mosquitoes that transmit dengue, as well as other diseases such as chikungunya and Zika, are setting up shop in Europe | Lukas Schulze/Getty Images

    Sibilia Quilici, executive director of the vaccine maker lobby group Vaccines Europe, said the most recent pipeline review of members found that roughly 10 percent were targeting neglected diseases. There is more R&D happening in this area, said Quilici.

    Across the major drugmakers, J&J is working on a dengue antiviral treatment and MSD has a dengue vaccine in their pipeline, while Sanofi has a second yellow fever jab in development. Two dengue vaccines are already approved in the EU — one from Sanofi and another from Takeda. Moderna recently told POLITICO that it is looking closely at a dengue vaccine candidate and it already has a Zika candidate in the works. 

    For the few, not the many

    But just because there might soon be larger markets for Big Pharma doesn’t mean the products will be suitable for the populations that have been waiting years for these tools. 

    Rachael Crockett, senior policy advocacy manager at the non-profit Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), said increased pharma investment in a particular disease won’t necessarily lead to products developed that are globally relevant. “Industry will — and governments are also more likely to — focus on prevention,” she said.

    That means tools such as vaccines will be prioritized; but in countries where dengue is endemic, the rainy season completely overburdens their health systems and what they desperately need are treatments, said Crockett.  

    She also said a massive increase in investment without a structure to ensure access to resulting products means “we have absolutely no guarantee that there isn’t going to be hoarding, [that] there isn’t going to be high prices.” Case in point: The U.S. national stockpile of Ebola vaccines, which exists despite there never having been an Ebola outbreak in the country.

    But just because there might soon be larger markets for Big Pharma doesn’t mean the products will be suitable for the populations that have been waiting years for these tools | Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

    Underlying many of these fears are the mistakes of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw countries with less cash and political heft at the back of the queue when it came to vaccines.

    Lisa Goerlitz, head of German charity Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (DSW)’s Brussels office, warned if drug development picks up because of a growing market in high-income countries, then accessibility, affordability and other criteria that make it suitable for low resource settings might not be prioritized.

    Vaccines Europe’s Quilici sought to allay these concerns, pointing to the pharma industry’s Berlin Declaration, a proposal to reserve an allocation of real-time production of vaccines in a health crisis. Quilici said this was a “really strong commitment …which comes right from the lessons learnt from COVID-19 and which could definitely overcome the challenges we had during the pandemic, if it is taken seriously.”

    CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Lisa Goerlitz.

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    Ashleigh Furlong

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  • Top review says COVID lockdowns and masks worked, period

    Top review says COVID lockdowns and masks worked, period

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    Speedy implementation of a combination of measures such as face masks, lockdowns and international border controls, “unequivocally” reduced COVID-19 infections, a major review has shown.

    The report published Thursday by the Royal Society looked at findings from six evidence reviews that analyzed thousands of studies to assess the effect of masks, social distancing and lockdowns, test trace and isolate systems, border controls, environmental controls and communications. It found evidence that each of these measures — which are called “non-pharmaceutical interventions” — were effective, albeit to varying degrees, when looked at individually. However, the evidence in favor of using these tools was stronger when countries combined several measures.

    The report could have significant implications for decision-making in future outbreaks, with Mark Walport, chair of the report’s expert working group and foreign secretary of the Royal Society, saying that “having protocols in advance is really important.” He said what policymakers should take from the research is “there is evidence that non-pharmaceutical interventions are effective, but … they have to be applied as packages, and they have to be applied as early as possible.”

    The most effective measure, according to the review, was one of the most controversial — restrictions on movement and social interactions through lockdowns, distancing and rules around the size of gatherings. These were repeatedly found to be associated with a “significant reduction” in transmission of the virus, with the more stringent the measure, the greater the effect.

    For masks, 75 studies were assessed, with 63 of these finding positive effects. Unlike the January Cochrane review, which only looked at randomized controlled trials, this review also included observational studies. The Cochrane review was unable to find conclusive evidence that masks helped stop respiratory viruses. 

    Chris Dye, professor of epidemiology at the University of Oxford, who led the review on masks for the Royal Society, said if they had only looked at randomized controlled trials they would have come to the same conclusion as the Cochrane review. But the researchers behind the paper released Thursday chose to analyze a larger body of studies and found strong evidence that masks work. 

    A key finding from the research was these type of measures were most effective when implemented early on. Dye said that while there is a 100-day mission to develop drugs, therapeutics, vaccines and diagnostics for a future pandemic, “it would be marvelous” if there were a 100-day vision for non-pharmaceutical interventions. He said this would mean countries could “put in place the necessary mechanisms for preparedness, which would be to implement [non-pharmaceutical interventions] when some unknown new pathogen comes along.”

    While a future pandemic could be transmitted sexually or gastrointestinally, Salim Abdool Karim, a member of the working group on the report and pro-vice-chancellor for research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the biggest concern was a respiratory virus. “The lessons of SARS-CoV-2 have to feature in our thinking as we prepare for a next pandemic that would be a respiratory virus of which we’ve got no prior exposure and so we don’t have a pre-existing immunity. The lessons of this report are going to feature strongly in anyone’s deliberations,” he said.

    However, responding to the report, Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University cautioned that impact on virus transmission is not the only factor that should be taken into account when deciding to use such measures. “The report does point out explicitly that NPIs can impose a great number of costs and burdens, in terms social and economic impacts, and indeed of increasing ill health … but makes it very explicit that this piece of work isn’t going to consider any of that.” “I think that limits quite severely its effectiveness in helping decisions on what should be done in the next pandemic, whenever it arises.”

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    Ashleigh Furlong

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  • China’s Xi doubles down on hardline Xinjiang policy

    China’s Xi doubles down on hardline Xinjiang policy

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    Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the hardline approach to dealing with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang to continue, despite international criticisms.

    Delivering a major speech on Saturday in Urumqi, the region’s capital city, Xi stressed that “social stability” remained the top priority there, as he highlighted the need for counterterrorism measures and further “Sinocizing” of Islam, the predominant religion for the Uyghurs who make up the majority of the indigenous population in the area.

    China’s Xinjiang policies have come under international scrutiny in recent years, culminating in a U.N. human rights report that found Beijing to have potentially committed crimes against humanity. The U.S., which along with Europe has sanctioned some Xinjiang officials, has labeled the situation a genocide.

    Xi, though, said he “recognizes” the Xinjiang policy in his Saturday speech.

    “[We] have to combine the anti-terrorism and anti-secessionist struggle with the legalized and regularized efforts for stability maintenance,” Xi said during a surprise stopover on his way back from the BRICS summit in South Africa. “The Sinofication of Islam should be deepened in order to effectively handle all sorts of illegal religious activities.”

    China will continue to teach Uyghurs the standard Chinese language, and to reallocate them for work outside the region, Xi said.

    Activists have long said these policies are designed to dilute the ethnic identity, while Beijing says economic development is key to social stability.

    “Xi stressed the need for more positive propaganda to show an open, confident Xinjiang,” according to state media CCTV. “Targeted efforts should be made to rebut any inaccurate and negative press.”

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    Stuart Lau

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  • French rejection of top American economist is a blow to liberal Europe

    French rejection of top American economist is a blow to liberal Europe

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    Lionel Barber is former editor of the Financial Times (2005-20) and Brussels bureau chief (1992-98)

    Nobody does “No” better than the French. Charles De Gaulle said “Non” twice to Britain’s bid to join the European Economic Community; Jacques Chirac said “Non” to the Iraq war; and Emmanuel Macron this week gave a thumbs down to Fiona Scott Morton, the American Yale academic selected for the post of top economist at the EU’s powerful competition directorate in Brussels.

    L’affaire Scott Morton may seem trivial in comparison to the (still unresolved) debate over Britain’s place in Europe or armed conflict in the Middle East, but the French veto of the first foreigner to take up the post says an awful lot about the European Union’s current paranoia about America’s influence and power.

    As Macron has pushed a vision of Europe that stands up to the U.S., resisting pressure to become “America’s followers,” as he put it in April, such thinking has strengthened in Brussels.

    The Scott Morton fiasco brings back memories of a lunch in Brussels exactly 30 years ago when some officials suspected the U.S. was engaged in an Anglo-Saxon plot to sabotage their plans for economic and monetary union. “Remember James Jesus Angleton,” said a stone-faced Belgian bureaucrat, invoking the name of the legendary, obsessive CIA counterintelligence officer at the height of the Cold War.

    Professor Scott Morton was selected as the best candidate in open competition. She enjoyed the backing of Margrethe Vestager, the Danish EU competition commissioner often described as the most powerful antitrust regulator in the world. She also had support from Ursula von der Leyen, German president of the European Commission, whose leadership during the Ukraine war and the COVID pandemic has won widespread praise on both sides of the Atlantic.

    All this counted for naught. Despite her distinguished academic pedigree, Scott Morton, a former Obama administration antitrust official, worked for Apple, Amazon and Microsoft in competition cases in the U.S. The notion her background somehow disqualified her for the job shows George W. Bush was wrong when he complained the French had no word for “entrepreneur.” Today’s problem is that Paris has no understanding of the term “poacher turned gamekeeper.”

    As Carl Bildt, former Swedish prime minister, tweeted: “Regrettable that narrow-minded opposition in some EU countries has led to this. She was reportedly the most competent candidate, and a knowledge of the U.S. and its antitrust policies should certainly not have been a disadvantage.”

    Now, President Macron’s opposition to the appointment has attracted a good deal of support in the Commission, in the European Parliament and among European trade unions. Cristiano Sebastiani, head of Renouveau & Démocratie, a trade union representing EU employees, said senior EU officials should “be invested, believe and contribute towards the European project. The very logic of our statute is that an EU official can never go back to being an ordinary citizen.”

    France’s veto of Professor Scott Morton is de facto a veto of Vestager, who was almost untouchable during her first term as competition commissioner between 2014-19. She won kudos for investigating, fining and bringing lawsuits against major multinationals including Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Qualcomm, and Gazprom. More controversially, at least in Paris and Berlin, she vetoed the planned merger between Alstom and Siemens, two industrial giants intent on creating a European champion.

    Vestager’s second term has been a different story. She has suffered reverses in the courts which overturned punitive fines against Apple and Qualcomm. Then, although she ranks as a vice-president of the Commission, Vestager found herself challenged by a nominal underling in the shape of Thierry Breton, a former top French industrialist put in charge of the EU’s internal market.  

    Both have battled over the policing of the EU’s Digital Markets Act and over policy on artificial intelligence, a proxy fight for influence overall in Brussels.

    Vestager and Breton have battled over the policing of the EU’s Digital Markets Act and over policy on artificial intelligence | Olivier Hoslet/EPA/AFP via Getty Images

    Breton favors the so-called AI Pact, an effort to bring forward parts of the EU’s draft Artificial Intelligence Act. This would ban some AI cases, curb “high-risk” applications, and impose checks on how Google, Microsoft and others develop the emerging technology. 

    By contrast, Vestager favors a voluntary code of conduct focused on generative AI such as ChatGPT. This could be developed at a global level, in partnership with the U.S., rather than waiting for the two years it will take to secure legislative passage of Breton’s AI Pact. 

    So what’s the solution? If Europe is to have any chance of prevailing, so the argument goes, member states must take a far harder-nosed attitude to competition policy. This leads in turn to the creation of national or pan-European champions at the expense of crackdowns on subsidies and other anti-competitive behavior. In short, the very liberal policies designed to protect the single market’s level playing field and embodied by the fighting Viking.

    For those who occasionally wonder how power has shifted inside the EU since Brexit took the U.K. out of the equation, it is proof indeed that “liberal Europe” is on a losing streak.

    Goodbye, Little Britain; hello, little EUrope.

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    Lionel Barber

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  • France arrests nearly 1,000 rioters in fourth night of violence

    France arrests nearly 1,000 rioters in fourth night of violence

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    Nearly 1,000 rioters were arrested last night for taking part in the most violent protests France has experienced in years, according to estimates by Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.

    The killing of a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent by a police officer on Tuesday unleashed violent demonstrations in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where the teen was shot. The violence then spread across the entire country and its main cities.

    The shooting of the teen, identified as Nahel M., reignited long-simmering tensions between the youth of the banlieues – typically disadvantaged and multi-ethnic neighborhoods — and the police, accused of brutality and racial discrimination.

    Nahel’s funeral is scheduled to take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday in Nanterre, with authorities tensing for more demonstrations.

    To address the turmoil, France deployed 45,000 police and gendarmes across all major cities on Friday night, of which 5,000 were tasked with patrolling Paris. Authorities also set curfews around the capital, banned public gatherings in certain municipalities and halted all bus and tram services after 9 p.m.

    Despite the massive security efforts, the unrest doesn’t seem to be calming down, with public buildings, hotels, stores and cars continuing to be targeted and set ablaze. The Interior Ministry said early Saturday that 1,350 vehicles and 234 buildings were torched overnight, plus 2,560 incidents of fire set in public spaces, AFP reported.

    Darmanin said that 200 police officers have been injured since the start of the rioting.

    French President Emmanuel Macron said the killing of the teenager was “inexplicable” and “inexcusable,” although he also promptly blamed social media for spreading violent content and stoking the violence after the tragic event.

    “We’ve seen violent gatherings organized on several [social media platforms] — but also a kind of mimicry of violence,” Macron said on Friday, accusing younger rioters of “living the video games that have intoxicated them.”

    Events including two concerts at the Stade de France on the outskirts of Paris were cancelled. Tour de France organizers said they were ready to adapt to any situation when the race enters the country on Monday after starting in the Spanish city of Bilbao, Reuters reported.

    Religious leaders, including Chems-Eddine Hafiz, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, called for the violence to stop.

    France fears a repeat of the civil unrest in 2005, when three weeks of riots rocked the country after two teenagers of African origins were electrocuted in a power substation while trying to escape the police.

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    Federica Di Sario

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  • Build better ties instead of only asking for microchips, Taiwan tells Europe

    Build better ties instead of only asking for microchips, Taiwan tells Europe

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    Europe cannot ignore Taiwan’s desire for “better relations” if EU countries such as Germany are keen to acquire advanced microchip-making technologies from the island, Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said.

    Speaking to POLITICO and other media on his trip to Europe, Wu questioned the enticements Europe is offering TSMC when asked why the world-leading chipmaking giant based in Taiwan has still not come to a decision to build a new plant in Germany.

    “If Europe has provided very positive incentive, and also speak with the TSMC in a way that will make the TSMC feel comfortable, that their investment in Europe is going to produce very positive results … their investment in Europe is certainly not going to be stopped by the government,” Wu said.

    “Even though we are not selfish in stopping the TSMC, for making investment in other countries, we certainly hope that other countries who want to attract TSMC to make investment can also think about the situation Taiwan is in, or TSMC’s position in Taiwan, and the position Taiwan is seeing in this geo-strategical landscape,” he said.

    In contrast, Wu called Japan and the U.S. — where TSMC plants will be completed next year — a “like-minded partner” and “a very good partner of Taiwan,” respectively.

    “I think this is some philosophical thinking, rather than government policy of putting conditions on TSMC making investment in other [countries],” Wu said. “That philosophical issue is that when a country is in shortage of computer chips, they will ask Taiwan, ‘you should do this, and you should do that’ — but they don’t seem to be thinking about a broader picture of better relations with Taiwan, economic or otherwise.”

    Wu’s comments are a pointed though veiled criticism aimed at Germany.

    At the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2021, then-German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier asked his Taiwanese counterpart, Wang Mei-hua, to intervene regarding TSMC’s reduced supply to the German auto industry, according to a letter reported by Reuters. “I would be pleased if you could take on this matter and underline the importance of additional semiconductor capacities for the German automotive industry to TSMC,” said the letter written by Altmaier, who was a key member of Angela Merkel’s government which put a priority on trade with China.

    Deterring China

    One of Wu’s main missions in Europe — in a trip that took him to Prague, Brussels and Milan — was to shore up diplomatic support for Taiwan among European leaders.

    He welcomed the EU’s repeated calls on Beijing to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. “China might also sense that it might come down with some economic price for their possible aggression against Taiwan, so sanction or other types of economic means against China, and I think the European countries have been discussing about that as well,” he said.

    Even if the EU has taken a more critical view of China as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which began in China, as well as Beijing’s stance on Russia’s war against Ukraine, Taiwan still faces challenges while engaging with Europe.

    On trade, the European Commission has been reluctant to begin negotiations for a bilateral investment agreement (BIA) with Taiwan, apparently out of concern about retaliation from Beijing.

    Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu traveled to Europe to shore up diplomatic support from European leaders | Vladimir Simicek/AFP via Getty Images

    “We are very concerned that the BIA between Taiwan and EU seems to be called as a hostage to the stalling CAI negotiations,” Wu said, referring to the comprehensive agreement on investment between the EU and China. “But if you look at the linkage — close linkage — between Taiwan and the EU, in economic sense, I think EU needs to find an alternative to strengthen the bilateral economic or trade relations, rather than get bogged down by the CAI which is not going anywhere,” he said.

    “We hope we can persuade the EU leadership to think about this in a positive way,” Wu added.

    Due to diplomatic protocol under which all EU member countries recognize the “one China” policy, the Taiwanese officials requested that POLITICO and the other media not disclose the location where the interview was conducted. Nor could Wu say which EU officials he met with, or whether he planned to have meetings at NATO, also based in Brussels. (One of the few EU figures confirming Wu’s presence in Brussels was European Parliament Vice President Nicola Beer, who tweeted about their meeting and called Taiwan a “firm member of the democratic family.”)

    Despite the EU’s lack of public acknowledgment of his visit — as well as the European public’s preference of “staying neutral” in the event of a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan — Wu still has high hopes that the bloc’s attitude would change.

    “I don’t think morally, any sensible country, any sensible leader can stay neutral and say, ‘No, we’re not going to pay any attention to [the] atrocity,'” he said, referring to potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

    “And I think the same can apply to the situation between the U.S. and China. If China initiated any aggression against other countries, in killing innocent people, violating international laws, causing atrocities and destructions, and killing innocent people, and all that, and the United States is trying to help, I don’t think the European countries can say that it’s a matter … between the U.S. and China,” Wu said.

    “When the international community discuss about the major international principles,” he said, “I think it’s going to be very hard for Europe to say that ‘I don’t care’.”

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    Stuart Lau

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  • Defiant Ukraine says dam carnage won’t stop counteroffensive

    Defiant Ukraine says dam carnage won’t stop counteroffensive

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    KYIV — Ukrainian officials insist the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam, which unleashed massive flooding in the Kherson region, won’t stand in the way of Kyiv’s counteroffensive.

    “Ukraine is equipped with all the necessary watercraft and pontoon bridge crossings for crossing water obstacles,” the Strategic Communications Center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (Stratcom) said in a statement on Tuesday. “Ukraine is ready to restore and rebuild the territories liberated from Russian aggression.”

    Western leaders, including NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and EU High Representative Josep Borrell, among others, have blamed Moscow for blowing up the dam, which is located in an area of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces. Kyiv argues that the Kremlin was seeking to flood the areas around it to make them less accessible to Ukrainian tanks and personnel in a counteroffensive.

    Ukraine has been warning that Russia would seek to destroy the dam since last October, when Kyiv launched its surprise counteroffensive and regained swathes of territory from Moscow’s forces.

    Russia, after initially claiming the dam had burst of its own accord on Tuesday, subsequently blamed Ukraine’s forces for bombing it. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed Kyiv had sabotaged the dam, which supplied water to the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, to deprive it of water.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected this argument, saying in a video address to the Bucharest Nine Summit on Tuesday: “Russia has been controlling the dam and the entire Kakhovka HPP for more than a year. It is physically impossible to blow it up somehow from the outside, by shelling. It was mined by the Russian occupiers. And they blew it up.”

    Meanwhile, last week, a Russian government decree suspended requirements to investigate incidents at energy infrastructure in occupied Ukraine.

    On Monday, a day before the dam was blown up, the Kremlin claimed Russia had prevented Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Kyiv dismissed that idea, stating instead that its forces had succeeded in retaking some territory around Bakhmut, the town in Donbas that Russia’s forces claimed to have full control over.

    In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Russia responded with another barrage of airstrikes aimed mostly at Kyiv; Ukraine shot all 35 missiles down.

    Gabriel Gavin contributed reporting.

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    Veronika Melkozerova

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  • Spain’s Socialists have a Sánchez problem

    Spain’s Socialists have a Sánchez problem

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    SEVILLE, Spain — Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez won’t be on the ballot when Spaniards vote in local elections Sunday — but he might as well be.

    Everyone in the country sees this weekend’s municipal votes as a dress rehearsal for the national election, which has to be held by the end of the year.

    That’s bad news for Socialist candidates like Antonio Muñoz, the mayor of Seville who just wants to be reelected on his own merit — but may end up losing his post because Sánchez is so unpopular.

    In an interview with POLITICO, Muñoz complained that the national framing of the election — and the conservative party’s critiques of Sánchez — had undermined the possibility of real debate over how to improve Spain’s fourth-largest city, the capital of the country’s Andalusia region.

    “If you want to just generate noise and have a debate about national politics: run for parliament, not mayor of Seville,” Muñoz said. “Me, I’ve stayed faithful to my slogan in these elections — Seville and only Seville — and I think that’s what voters want to hear about.”

    In any ordinary election season, Muñoz might be right.

    The openly gay, 63-year-old economist is an unusually popular mayor in Seville, a city that once had a reputation for being inward-looking and socially conservative.

    Elected to the city council in 2011, Muñoz has worked to redefine the city’s identity and reinforce the idea that there’s more to it than bullfights, religious processions and flamenco — while being careful not to alienate Seville’s traditionalists.

    As the city council member in charge of the powerful urbanism, tourism and culture portfolios, he bet on a more alternative, vibrant vision of Seville — promoting electronic music and indie film festivals; and lobbying to steal major events like the Goyas, Spain’s version of the Oscars, away from Madrid.

    It was under Muñoz’s watch that Game of Thrones came to town, when the dragon-packed extravaganza used the lush Alcázar palace as a stand-in for the kingdom of Dorne. The producers of Netflix’s The Crown also passed through, using the palatial Alfonso XIII Hotel as a double for Beverly Hills and filming Mohamed Al-Fayed’s Egyptian wedding in Seville’s sumptuous Casa de Pilatos estate.

    At the same time that he’s shown off the city center — famed for its narrow, winding streets, whitewashed homes, interior gardens and Moorish architecture — he’s also promoted newer parts of Seville. These include the high-tech Cartuja Science and Technology Park, where the European Commission recently inaugurated the headquarters of its new European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency.

    He’s also an enthusiastic booster of the eclectic Fibes Conference Center, located in the working-class Sevilla Este district, which this year will host the 2023 Latin Grammys, the first-ever to be held outside the United States.

    “During the next term, we’ll be doing even more to consolidate this city as a Spanish and European reference point for culture, the green economy and the digital transition,” said Muñoz. He became mayor early last year when his predecessor stepped down to run for office at the regional level.

    While crafting a more modern image of Seville, Muñoz has been careful not to neglect the city’s classic cultural scene.

    He may not be a member of any religious brotherhood, but he has no problem joining religious processions during Holy Week. He may not be a bullfighting enthusiast, but he’s happy to socialize with famous toreros. And while he may not have a passion for flamenco, he’s an almost omnipresent force at the city’s annual April Fair, where smartly dressed men spend a week dancing with women in long, ruffled, polka-dot dresses while downing pitchers of rebujito, the signature Andalusian cocktail.

    “You can like those events more, or less … but they’re a part of our history, our way of life,” said Muñoz.

    The skill with which Muñoz has walked the line has played well among sevillanos, especially those who work in the hospitality sector and have been delighted to see the number of tourists in the city boom. Some 6.5 million overnight stays were registered last year.

    “I’ve always been proud of my city, but right now I feel that Seville is at a new level as a destination, as a brand,” said restaurant owner Emilio Gimeno. “I think a lot of that has to do with the mayor because he’s always promoting the city, he never stops.”

    “I like that he’s a normal guy who lives in the city and doesn’t move around in an official vehicle or surrounded by bodyguards,” he added. “If you’re opening up a new bar, he’s the sort of person who will make time in his schedule to show up at the inauguration, the sort that wants things to work out and go well for you.”

    The Sánchez problem

    The trouble for Muñoz is that when Sevillanos head to the polls, they’re be making their choice based not just on his performance — but on the reputation of his party.

    “The polls suggest that three out of four Spaniards intend to base their vote on local matters, but a quarter admit their vote will depend on national issues,” said Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III university. “That’s problematic for some mayors because Sánchez is such a polarizing figure.”

    The local election will take place just months before Sánchez’s fragile left-wing coalition government — the first in Spain’s history — is set to complete its four-year term in December.

    Despite the devastating impact of the COVID crisis and the economic impact of the war in Ukraine, from the outside, Sánchez’s administration appears to have weathered the storm well.

    Spain’s gross domestic product has been growing at a rate above the EU average, and unemployment has dropped to levels not seen since 2008.

    The country’s residents pay some of the lowest power prices in Europe, thanks to the Iberian Exception energy price cap. The European Commission has applauded Spain for efficient handling of its share of the bloc’s pandemic recovery cash.

    And yet, within Spain, perception of the government is negative, and all of the parties in the ruling coalition have suffered a steep drop in the polls. Since May of last year, Sánchez’s Socialists have trailed behind the country’s conservative Popular Party, which is currently 7 percentage points ahead.

    Simón, the political scientist, said that some Spaniards distrust Sánchez for having entered into a coalition government with far-left parties with which he said he’d never govern. Not to mention that, like most political leaders, the prime minister’s prestige took a hit during the pandemic.

    “The government’s policies — the higher minimum wage, the basic income, the country’s role in Europe — are broadly popular,” Simón said. “But at a personal level, he isn’t.”

    Juan Espadas, Muñoz’s predecessor in Seville’s city hall and current leader of the Andalusian Socialists, admitted that the prime minister’s unpopularity had become a factor in the local elections.

    “The right has realized that they can’t challenge him on his politics, so now what they’re trying to do is to discredit him on a personal level,” he said, adding that the Popular Party had focused on casting Sánchez as “an egoist” willing to do anything to hold on to power.

    “Their only goal is to make it so that people won’t go vote because they don’t like the person behind the party,” he said.

    The ghost of ETA

    In addition to invoking the unpopular prime minister, the Spanish conservatives have been reminding voters of the coalition government’s cordial relations with pro-independence parties in the national parliament.

    When the Basque pro-independence party EH Bildu included 44 former members of the terrorist group ETA in its official lists for the local elections earlier this month, the Popular Party seized on the issue and turned it into a major talking point in its campaign in cities across the country.

    Muñoz has worked to redefine Seville’s identity and reinforce the idea that there’s more to it than bullfights, religious processions and flamenco | Cristina Quicler/AFP via Getty Images

    In Seville, José Luis Sanz, the conservative candidate for mayor, rallied supporters by declaring that his neighbors “could not understand how Muñoz’s Socialists have surrendered to the heirs of ETA.”

    Like other Socialist candidates, Muñoz has denounced this line of attack, stressing its irrelevance in a campaign that should be about the threat posed by housing insecurity or extreme heat — not a terrorist group that ceased to exist more than a decade ago.

    “I think what the [Popular Party] is doing is enormously disrespectful toward voters,” he said. “Instead of talking about what’s needed in this city’s poorest neighborhoods, about what we can do to promote culture, about how we should manage tourism, they want to talk about a party that isn’t up for election in Seville.”

    But what politicians want to talk about and what voters are hearing seem to rarely be the same thing.

    In the middle-class Los Remedios district, 83-year-old María Camacho Rojas has followed the campaign and decided she won’t give her vote to the mayoral candidate of a party led by Sánchez, a politician she believes to be “a compulsive liar.”

    “[Sánchez] does deals with ETA, he doesn’t care about Spain, and I — like most Spaniards — am worried about the state in which he’s going to leave our country,” she said.

    She added she’d vote for Muñoz in a heartbeat if he belonged to another party. “I like the mayor, I like how much he does for the city, how much he cares about Seville,” she said. “I’m not going to vote against him but I won’t vote for him: I’ll cast a blank ballot on Sunday.”

    In Seville, the latest polls predict a technical tie, with Muñoz’s Socialists winning 12 or 13 seats in the city council and the Popular Party taking 12. That would leave the two mainstream parties dependent on the support of more extreme elements, the far-right Vox party on one side and array of left-wing groups on the other — with those two ideological blocs also nearly tied.

    Whatever the outcome, the fallout is not likely to remain contained within city limits: Muñoz’s Sánchez problem could easily become Sánchez’s Seville problem.

    Losing the city — the largest municipality controlled by the Socialists — would be a severe blow for the prime minister just months ahead of the national elections.

    “One city won’t decide a general election,” said Simón. “But it can make the outcome easier for some, and all the more difficult for others.”

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    Aitor Hernández-Morales

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  • EU’s Breton says Twitter ‘can’t hide’ after platform ditches disinformation code

    EU’s Breton says Twitter ‘can’t hide’ after platform ditches disinformation code

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    Twitter has abandoned the EU’s code of practice on disinformation, Thierry Breton said late Friday, but Europe’s internal markets commissioner insisted that “obligations remain” for the social networking giant.

    “You can run but you can’t hide,” Breton said in a tweet, after confirming that the platform owned by Elon Musk had left the bloc’s disinformation code, which other major social media platforms have pledged to support.

    “Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation under DSA as of August 25,” Breton said, referring to the Digital Services Act — new social media rules that include fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s annual revenue.

    “Our teams will be ready for enforcement,” the commissioner said.

    The code of practice on disinformation is a voluntary rulebook that includes obligations for platforms to track political advertising, stop the monetization of disinformation, and provide greater access to outsiders. Participation in the code is designed to help offset some of these companies’ obligations within the separate and mandatory DSA.

    Twitter is one of eight social media platforms that fall under the scope of the DSA. The others are Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Snapchat.

    Breton has publicly vowed that he would personally hold Musk to account for complying with the EU’s content rules.

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    Jones Hayden

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  • Blocked! French minister threatens to ban Twitter if it doesn’t follow EU rules

    Blocked! French minister threatens to ban Twitter if it doesn’t follow EU rules

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    France’s Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot waded into a growing tussle between the European Union and Elon Musk’s Twitter on Monday, as he threatened the social media platform’s access to the bloc.

    In comments made on radio network France Info, the minister said that the U.S. company would be banned from the EU if it refused to follow the incoming European Digital Services Act, which goes into effect throughout the EU at the end of August.

    “Disinformation is one of the gravest threats weighing on our democracies,” said Barrot. “Twitter, if it repeatedly doesn’t follow our rules, will be banned from the EU,” the French minister added.

    The remarks mark an escalation of an ongoing fight between European politicians and Twitter, which was bought last year by Elon Musk, the controversial billionaire who also controls Tesla and SpaceX.

    Last week, POLITICO reported that the social media platform was withdrawing from the EU’s voluntary disinformation code of practice.

    The code spells out obligations for large digital platforms on tracking political advertising, clamping down on disinformation, and encouraging wider access and participation to outsiders. Other major social media platforms have pledged to support the rulebook, which is meant to pre-empt some of the measures that will become mandatory under the incoming Digital Services Act. The regulation foresees fines worth up to 6 percent of a company’s annual revenue for rule-breakers.

    Internal Markets Commissioner Thierry Breton tweeted “You can run but you can’t hide” in response to Twitter’s decision to withdraw from the code.

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    Carlo Martuscelli

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  • Biden’s Northern Ireland ultimatum looks doomed to fail

    Biden’s Northern Ireland ultimatum looks doomed to fail

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    LONDON — Joe Biden is not someone known for his subtlety.

    His gaffe-prone nature — which saw him last week confuse the New Zealand rugby team with British forces from the Irish War of Independence — leaves little in the way of nuance.

    But he is also a sentimental man from a long gone era of Washington, who specializes in a type of homespun, aw-shucks affability that would be seen as naff in a younger president.

    His lack of subtlety was on show in Belfast last week as he issued a thinly veiled ultimatum to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — return to Northern Ireland’s power-sharing arrangements or risk losing billions of dollars in U.S. business investment.

    The DUP — a unionist party that does not take kindly to lectures from American presidents — is refusing to sit in Stormont, the Northern Ireland Assembly, due to its anger with the post-Brexit Northern Ireland protocol, which has created trade friction between the region and the rest of the U.K.

    The DUP is also refusing to support the U.K.-EU Windsor Framework, which aims to fix the economic problems created by the protocol, despite hopes it would see the party reconvene the Northern Irish Assembly.

    The president on Wednesday urged Northern Irish leaders to “unleash this incredible economic opportunity, which is just beginning.”

    However, American business groups paint a far more complex and nuanced view of future foreign investment into Northern Ireland than offered up by Biden.

    Biden told a Belfast crowd on Wednesday there were “scores of major American corporations wanting to come here” to invest, but that a suspended Stormont was acting as a block on that activity.

    One U.S. business figure, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Biden’s flighty rhetoric was “exaggerated” and that many businesses would be looking beyond the state of the regional assembly to make their investment decisions.

    The president spoke as if Ulster would be rewarded with floods of American greenbacks if the DUP reverses its intransigence, predicting that Northern Ireland’s gross domestic product (GDP) would soon be triple its 1998 level. Its GDP is currently around double the size of when the Good Friday Agreement was struck in 1998.

    Emanuel Adam, executive director of BritishAmerican Business, said this sounded like a “magic figure” unless Biden “knows something we don’t know about.” 

    DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr. told POLITICO that U.S. politicians for “too long” have “promised some economic El Dorado or bonanza if you only do what we say politically … but that bonanza has never arrived and people are not naive enough here to believe it ever will.”

    “A presidential visit is always welcome, but the glitter on top is not an economic driver,” he said.

    Joe Biden addresses a crowd of thousands on April 14, 2023 in Ballina, Ireland | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

    Facing both ways

    The British government is hoping the Windsor Framework will ease economic tensions in Northern Ireland and create politically stable conditions for inward foreign direct investment.

    The framework removes many checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and has begun to slowly create a more collaborative relationship between London and Brussels on a number of fronts — two elements which have been warmly welcomed across the Atlantic.

    Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said Northern Ireland is in a “special” position of having access to the EU’s single market, to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, and the U.K.’s internal market.

    “That’s like the world’s most exciting economic zone,” Sunak said in February.

    Jake Colvin, head of Washington’s National Foreign Trade Council business group, said U.S. firms wanted to see “confidence that the frictions over the protocol have indeed been resolved.”

    “Businesses will look to mechanisms like the Windsor Framework to provide stability,” he said.

    Marjorie Chorlins, senior vice president for Europe at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the Windsor Framework was “very important” for U.S. businesses and that “certainty about the relationship between the U.K. and the EU is critical.”

    She said a reconvened Stormont would mean more legislative stability on issues like skills and health care, but added that there were a whole range of other broader U.K. wide economic factors that will play a major part in investment decisions.

    This is particularly salient in a week where official figures showed the U.K.’s GDP flatlining and predictions that Britain will be the worst economic performer in the G20 this year.

    “We want to see a return to robust growth and prosperity for the U.K. broadly and are eager to work with government at all levels,” Chorlins said. 

    “Political and economic instability in the U.K. has been a challenge for businesses of all sizes.”

    Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said Northern Ireland is in a “special” position of having access to the EU’s single market | Pool photo by Paul Faith/Getty Images

    Her words underline just how much global reputational damage last year’s carousel of prime ministers caused for the U.K., with Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey recently warning of a “hangover effect” from Liz Truss’ premiership and the broader Westminster psychodrama of 2022.

    America’s Northern Ireland envoy Joe Kennedy, grandson of Robert Kennedy, accompanied the president last week and has been charged with drumming up U.S. corporate interest in Northern Ireland.

    Kennedy said Northern Ireland is already “the No. 1 foreign investment location for proximity and market access.”

    Northern Ireland has been home to £1.5 billion of American investment in the past decade and had the second-most FDI projects per capita out of all U.K. regions in 2021.

    Claire Hanna, Westminster MP for the nationalist SDLP, believes reconvening Stormont would “signal a seriousness that there isn’t going to be anymore mucking around.”

    “It’s also about the signal that the restoration of Stormont sends — that these are the accepted trading arrangements,” she said.

    Hanna says the DUP’s willingness to “demonize the two biggest trading blocs in the world — the U.S. and EU” — was damaging to the country’s future economic prospects.

    ‘The money goes south’

    At a more practical level, Biden’s ultimatum appears to carry zero weight with DUP representatives.

    DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson made it clear last week that he was unmoved by Biden’s economic proclamations and gave no guarantee his party would sit in the regional assembly in the foreseeable future.

    “President Biden is offering the hope of further American investment, which we always welcome,” Donaldson told POLITICO.

    “But fundamental to the success of our economy is our ability to trade within our biggest market, which is of course the United Kingdom.”

    A DUP official said U.S. governments had been promising extra American billions in exchange “for selling out to Sinn Féin and Dublin” since the 1990s and “when America talks about corporate investment, we get the crumbs and that investment really all ends up in the Republic [of Ireland].”

    “President Biden is offering the hope of further American investment, which we always welcome,” Donaldson said | Behal/Irish Government via Getty Images

    “The Americans talk big, but the money goes south,” the DUP official said.

    This underscores the stark reality that challenges Northern Ireland any time it pitches for U.S. investment — the competing proposition offered by its southern neighbor with its internationally low 12.5 percent rate on corporate profits.

    Emanuel Adam with BritishAmerican Business said there was a noticeable feeling in Washington that firms want to do business in Dublin.

    “When [Irish Prime Minister] Leo Varadkar and his team were here recently, I could tell how confident the Irish are these days,” he said. “There are not as many questions for them as there are around the U.K.”

    Biden’s economic ultimatum looks toothless from the DUP’s perspective and its resonance may be as short-lived as his trip to Belfast itself.

    This story has been updated to correct a historical reference.

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    Shawn Pogatchnik

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  • 2023’s most important election: Turkey

    2023’s most important election: Turkey

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    For Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, next month’s election is of massive historical significance.

    It falls 100 years after the foundation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular republic and, if Erdoğan wins, he will be empowered to put even more of his stamp on the trajectory of a geostrategic heavyweight of 85 million people. The fear in the West is that he will see this as his moment to push toward an increasingly religiously conservative model, characterized by regional confrontationalism, with greater political powers centered around himself.

    The election will weigh heavily on security in Europe and the Middle East. Who is elected stands to define: Turkey’s role in the NATO alliance; its relationship with the U.S., the EU and Russia; migration policy; Ankara’s role in the war in Ukraine; and how it handles tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean.

    The May 14 vote is expected to be the most hotly contested race in Erdoğan’s 20-year rule — as the country grapples with years of economic mismanagement and the fallout from a devastating earthquake.

    He will face an opposition aligned behind Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi,” who is promising big changes. Polls suggest Kılıçdaroğlu has eked out a lead, but Erdoğan is a hardened election campaigner, with the full might of the state and its institutions at his back.

    “There will be a change from an authoritarian single-man rule, towards a kind of a teamwork, which is a much more democratic process,” Ünal Çeviköz, chief foreign policy adviser to Kılıçdaroğlu told POLITICO. “Kılıçdaroğlu will be the maestro of that team.”

    Here are the key foreign policy topics in play in the vote:

    EU and Turkish accession talks

    Turkey’s opposition is confident it can unfreeze European Union accession talks — at a standstill since 2018 over the country’s democratic backsliding — by introducing liberalizing reforms in terms of rule of law, media freedoms and depoliticization of the judiciary.

    The opposition camp also promises to implement European Court of Human Rights decisions calling for the release of two of Erdoğan’s best-known jailed opponents: the co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party Selahattin Demirtaş and human rights defender Osman Kavala.

    “This will simply give the message to all our allies, and all the European countries, that Turkey is back on track to democracy,” Çeviköz said.

    Even under a new administration, however, the task of reopening the talks on Turkey’s EU accession is tricky.

    Turkey’s opposition is aligned behind Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi” | Burak Kara/Getty Images

    Anti-Western feeling in Turkey is very strong across the political spectrum, argued Wolfango Piccoli, co-founder of risk analysis company Teneo.

    “Foreign policy will depend on the coherence of the coalition,” he said. “This is a coalition of parties who have nothing in common apart from the desire to get rid of Erdoğan. They’ve got a very different agenda, and this will have an impact in foreign policy.”

    “The relationship is largely comatose, and has been for some time, so, they will keep it on life support,” he said, adding that any new government would have so many internal problems to deal with that its primary focus would be domestic.

    Europe also seems unprepared to handle a new Turkey, with a group of countries — most prominently France and Austria — being particularly opposed to the idea of rekindling ties.

    “They are used to the idea of a non-aligned Turkey, that has departed from EU norms and values and is doing its own course,” said Aslı Aydıntaşbaş a visiting fellow at Brookings. “If the opposition forms a government, it will seek a European identity and we don’t know Europe’s answer to that; whether it could be accession or a new security framework that includes Turkey.”

    “Obviously the erosion of trust has been mutual,” said former Turkish diplomat Sinan Ülgen, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Europe think tank, arguing that despite reticence about Turkish accession, there are other areas where a complementary and mutually beneficiary framework could be built, like the customs union, visa liberalization, cooperation on climate, security and defense, and the migration agreement.

    The opposition will indeed seek to revisit the 2016 agreement with the EU on migration, Çeviköz said.

    “Our migration policy has to be coordinated with the EU,” he said. “Many countries in Europe see Turkey as a kind of a pool, where migrants coming from the east can be contained and this is something that Turkey, of course cannot accept,” he said but added. “This doesn’t mean that Turkey should open its borders and make the migrants flow into Europe. But we need to coordinate and develop a common migration policy.”

    NATO and the US

    After initially imposing a veto, Turkey finally gave the green light to Finland’s NATO membership on March 30.

    But the opposition is also pledging to go further and end the Turkish veto on Sweden, saying that this would be possible by the alliance’s annual gathering on July 11. “If you carry your bilateral problems into a multilateral organization, such as NATO, then you are creating a kind of a polarization with all the other members of NATO with your country,” Çeviköz said.

    A protester pushes a cart with a RRecep Tayyip Erdoğan doll during an anti-NATO and anti-Turkey demonstration in Sweden | Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images

    A reelected Erdoğan could also feel sufficiently empowered to let Sweden in, many insiders argue. NATO allies did, after all, play a significant role in earthquake aid. Turkish presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın says that the door is not closed to Sweden, but insists the onus is on Stockholm to determine how things proceed.

    Turkey’s military relationship with the U.S. soured sharply in 2019 when Ankara purchased the Russian-made S-400 missile system, a move the U.S. said would put NATO aircraft flying over Turkey at risk. In response, the U.S. kicked Ankara out of the F-35 jet fighter program and slapped sanctions on the Turkish defense industry.

    A meeting in late March between Kılıçdaroğlu and the U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Jeff Flake infuriated Erdoğan, who saw it as an intervention in the elections and pledged to “close the door” to the U.S. envoy. “We need to teach the United States a lesson in this elections,” the irate president told voters.

    In its policy platform, the opposition makes a clear reference to its desire to return to the F-35 program.

    Russia and the war in Ukraine

    After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Turkey presented itself as a middleman. It continues to supply weapons — most significantly Bayraktar drones — to Ukraine, while refusing to sanction Russia. It has also brokered a U.N. deal that allows Ukrainian grain exports to pass through the blockaded Black Sea.

    Highlighting his strategic high-wire act on Russia, after green-lighting Finland’s NATO accession and hinting Sweden could also follow, Erdoğan is now suggesting that Turkey could be the first NATO member to host Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    “Maybe there is a possibility” that Putin may travel to Turkey on April 27 for the inauguration of the country’s first nuclear power reactor built by Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom, he said.

    Çeviköz said that under Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership, Turkey would be willing to continue to act as a mediator and extend the grain deal, but would place more stress on Ankara’s status as a NATO member.

    “We will simply emphasize the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO, and in our discussions with Russia, we will certainly look for a relationship among equals, but we will also remind Russia that Turkey is a member of NATO,” he said.

    Turkey’s relationship with Russia has become very much driven by the relationship between Putin and Erdoğan and this needs to change, Ülgen argued.

    Turkey brokered a U.N. deal that allows Ukrainian grain exports to pass through the blockaded Black Sea | Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images

     “No other Turkish leader would have the same type of relationship with Putin, it would be more distant,” he said. “It does not mean that Turkey would align itself with the sanctions; it would not. But nonetheless, the relationship would be more transparent.”

    Syria and migration

    The role of Turkey in Syria is highly dependent on how it can address the issue of Syrians living in Turkey, the opposition says.

    Turkey hosts some 4 million Syrians and many Turks, battling a major cost-of-living crisis, are becoming increasingly hostile. Kılıçdaroğlu has pledged to create opportunities and the conditions for the voluntary return of Syrians.

    “Our approach would be to rehabilitate the Syrian economy and to create the conditions for voluntary returns,” Çeviköz said, adding that this would require an international burden-sharing, but also establishing dialogue with Damascus.

    Erdoğan is also trying to establish a rapprochement with Syria but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says he will only meet the Turkish president when Ankara is ready to completely withdraw its military from northern Syria.

    “A new Turkish government will be more eager to essentially shake hands with Assad,” said Ülgen. “But this will remain a thorny issue because there will be conditions attached on the side of Syria to this normalization.”

    However, Piccoli from Teneo said voluntary returns of Syrians was “wishful thinking.”

    “These are Syrians who have been living in Turkey for more than 10 years, their children have been going to school in Turkey from day one. So, the pledges of sending them back voluntarily, it is very questionable to what extent they can be implemented.”

    Greece and the East Med

    Turkey has stepped up its aggressive rhetoric against Greece in recent months, with the Erdoğan even warning that a missile could strike Athens.

    But the prompt reaction by the Greek government and the Greek community to the recent devastating earthquakes in Turkey and a visit by the Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias created a new backdrop for bilateral relations.

    A Turkish drill ship before it leaves for gas exploration | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images

    Dendias, along with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, announced that Turkey would vote for Greece in its campaign for a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council for 2025-26 and that Greece would support the Turkish candidacy for the General Secretariat of the International Maritime Organization.

    In another sign of a thaw, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi visited Turkey this month, with Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar saying he hoped that the Mediterranean and Aegean would be a “sea of friendship” between the two countries. Akar said he expected a moratorium with Greece in military and airforce exercises in the Aegean Sea between June 15 and September 15.

    “Both countries are going to have elections, and probably they will have the elections on the same day. So, this will open a new horizon in front of both countries,” Çeviköz said.

    “The rapprochement between Turkey and Greece in their bilateral problems [in the Aegean], will facilitate the coordination in addressing the other problems in the eastern Mediterranean, which is a more multilateral format,” he said. Disputes over maritime borders and energy exploration, for example, are common.

    As far as Cyprus is concerned, Çeviköz said that it is important for Athens and Ankara not to intervene into the domestic politics of Cyprus and the “two peoples on the island should be given an opportunity to look at their problems bilaterally.”

    However, analysts argue that Greece, Cyprus and the EastMed are fundamental for Turkey’s foreign policy and not much will change with another government. The difference will be more one of style.

    “The approach to manage those differences will change very much. So, we will not hear aggressive rhetoric like: ‘We will come over one night,’” said Ülgen. “We’ll go back to a more mature, more diplomatic style of managing differences and disputes.”

    “The NATO framework will be important, and the U.S. would have to do more in terms of re-establishing the sense of balance in the Aegean,” said Aydıntaşbaş. But, she argued, “you just cannot normalize your relations with Europe or the U.S., unless you’re willing to take that step with Greece.”

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    Nektaria Stamouli

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  • Europe must resist pressure to become ‘America’s followers,’ says Macron

    Europe must resist pressure to become ‘America’s followers,’ says Macron

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    Cet article est aussi disponible en français.

    ABOARD COTAM UNITÉ (FRANCE’S AIR FORCE ONE) — Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on his plane back from a three-day state visit to China.

    Speaking with POLITICO and two French journalists after spending around six hours with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his trip, Macron emphasized his pet theory of “strategic autonomy” for Europe, presumably led by France, to become a “third superpower.”

    He said “the great risk” Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy,” while flying from Beijing to Guangzhou, in southern China, aboard COTAM Unité, France’s Air Force One.

    Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have enthusiastically endorsed Macron’s concept of strategic autonomy and Chinese officials constantly refer to it in their dealings with European countries. Party leaders and theorists in Beijing are convinced the West is in decline and China is on the ascendant and that weakening the transatlantic relationship will help accelerate this trend.

    “The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron said in the interview. “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” he said.

    Just hours after his flight left Guangzhou headed back to Paris, China launched large military exercises around the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China claims as its territory but the U.S. has promised to arm and defend. 

    Those exercises were a response to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen’s 10-day diplomatic tour of Central American countries that included a meeting with Republican U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy while she transited in California. People familiar with Macron’s thinking said he was happy Beijing had at least waited until he was out of Chinese airspace before launching the simulated “Taiwan encirclement” exercise. 

    Beijing has repeatedly threatened to invade in recent years and has a policy of isolating the democratic island by forcing other countries to recognize it as part of “one China.”

    Taiwan talks

    Macron and Xi discussed Taiwan “intensely,” according to French officials accompanying the president, who appears to have taken a more conciliatory approach than the U.S. or even the European Union.

    “Stability in the Taiwan Strait is of paramount importance,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who accompanied Macron for part of his visit, said she told Xi during their meeting in Beijing last Thursday. “The threat [of] the use of force to change the status quo is unacceptable.”

    Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron in Guangdong on April 7, 2023 | Pool Photo by Jacques Witt / AFP via Getty Images

    Xi responded by saying anyone who thought they could influence Beijing on Taiwan was deluded. 

    Macron appears to agree with that assessment.

    “Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it,” he said. 

    “Europe is more willing to accept a world in which China becomes a regional hegemon,” said Yanmei Xie, a geopolitics analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics. “Some of its leaders even believe such a world order may be more advantageous to Europe.”

    In his trilateral meeting with Macron and von der Leyen last Thursday in Beijing, Xi Jinping went off script on only two topics — Ukraine and Taiwan — according to someone who was present in the room.

    “Xi was visibly annoyed for being held responsible for the Ukraine conflict and he downplayed his recent visit to Moscow,” this person said. “He was clearly enraged by the U.S. and very upset over Taiwan, by the Taiwanese president’s transit through the U.S. and [the fact that] foreign policy issues were being raised by Europeans.”

    In this meeting, Macron and von der Leyen took similar lines on Taiwan, this person said. But Macron subsequently spent more than four hours with the Chinese leader, much of it with only translators present, and his tone was far more conciliatory than von der Leyen’s when speaking with journalists.

    ‘Vassals’ warning

    Macron also argued that Europe had increased its dependency on the U.S. for weapons and energy and must now focus on boosting European defense industries. 

    He also suggested Europe should reduce its dependence on the “extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar,” a key policy objective of both Moscow and Beijing. 

    Macron has long been a proponent of strategic autonomy for Europe | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

    “If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up … we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals,” he said.

    Russia, China, Iran and other countries have been hit by U.S. sanctions in recent years that are based on denying access to the dominant dollar-denominated global financial system. Some in Europe have complained about “weaponization” of the dollar by Washington, which forces European companies to give up business and cut ties with third countries or face crippling secondary sanctions.

    While sitting in the stateroom of his A330 aircraft in a hoodie with the words “French Tech” emblazoned on the chest, Macron claimed to have already “won the ideological battle on strategic autonomy” for Europe.

    He did not address the question of ongoing U.S. security guarantees for the Continent, which relies heavily on American defense assistance amid the first major land war in Europe since World War II.

    As one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and the only nuclear power in the EU, France is in a unique position militarily. However, the country has contributed far less to the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion than many other countries.

    As is common in France and many other European countries, the French President’s office, known as the Elysée Palace, insisted on checking and “proofreading” all the president’s quotes to be published in this article as a condition of granting the interview. This violates POLITICO’s editorial standards and policy, but we agreed to the terms in order to speak directly with the French president. POLITICO insisted that it cannot deceive its readers and would not publish anything the president did not say. The quotes in this article were all actually said by the president, but some parts of the interview in which the president spoke even more frankly about Taiwan and Europe’s strategic autonomy were cut out by the Elysée.

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    Jamil Anderlini and Clea Caulcutt

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  • Why China wants Macron to drive a wedge between Europe and America

    Why China wants Macron to drive a wedge between Europe and America

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    Chinese leader Xi Jinping had one overriding message for his visiting French counterpart Emmanuel Macron this week: Don’t let Europe get sucked into playing America’s game.

    Beijing is eager to avoid the EU falling further under U.S. influence, at a time when the White House is pursuing a more assertive policy to counter China’s geopolitical and military strength.

    Russia’s yearlong war against Ukraine has strengthened the alliance between Europe and the U.S., shaken up global trade, reinvigorated NATO and forced governments to look at what else could suddenly go wrong in world affairs. That’s not welcome in Beijing, which still views Washington as its strategic nemesis.

    This week, China’s counter-offensive stepped up a gear, turning on the charm. Xi welcomed Macron into the grandest of settings at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, along with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. This was in sharp contrast to China’s current efforts to keep senior American officials at arm’s length, especially since U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called off a trip to Beijing during the spy balloon drama earlier this year.

    Both American and Chinese officials know Europe’s policy toward Beijing is far from settled. That’s an opportunity, and a risk for both sides. In recent months, U.S. officials have warned of China’s willingness to send weapons to Russia and talked up the dangers of allowing Chinese tech companies unfettered access to European markets, with some success.

    TikTok, which is ultimately Chinese owned, has been banned from government and administrative phones in a number of locations in Europe, including in the EU institutions in Brussels. American pressure also led the Dutch to put new export controls on sales of advanced semiconductor equipment to China.

    Yet even the hawkish von der Leyen, a former German defense minister, has dismissed the notion of decoupling Europe from China’s economy altogether. From Beijing’s perspective, this is yet another significant difference from the hostile commercial environment being promoted by the U.S.

    Just this week, 36 Chinese and French businesses signed new deals in front of Macron and Xi, in what Chinese state media said was a sign of “the not declining confidence in the Chinese market of European businesses.” While hardly a statement brimming with confidence, it could have been worse.

    For the last couple of years European leaders have grown more skeptical of China’s trajectory, voicing dismay at Beijing’s way of handling the coronavirus pandemic, the treatment of protesters in Hong Kong and Xinjiang’s Uyghur Muslims, as well as China’s sanctions on European politicians and military threats against Taiwan.

    Then, Xi and Vladimir Putin hailed a “no limits” partnership just days before Russia invaded Ukraine. While the West rolled out tough sanctions on Moscow, China became the last major economy still interested in maintaining — and expanding — trade ties with Russia. That shocked many Western officials and provoked a fierce debate in Europe over how to punish Beijing and how far to pull out of Chinese commerce.

    Beijing saw Macron as the natural partner to help avoid a nosedive in EU-China relations, especially since Angela Merkel — its previous favorite — was no longer German chancellor.

    Macron’s willingness to engage with anyone — including his much-criticized contacts with Putin ahead of his war on Ukraine — made him especially appealing as Beijing sought to drive a wedge between European and American strategies on China.

    Xi Jinping sees Macron as the natural to Angela Merkel, his previous partner in the West who helped avoid a nosedive in EU-China relations | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

    Not taking sides

    “I’m very glad we share many identical or similar views on Sino-French, Sino-EU, international and regional issues,” Xi told Macron over tea on Friday, in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, according to Chinese state media Xinhua.

    Strategic autonomy, a French foreign policy focus, is a favorite for China, which sees the notion as proof of Europe’s distance from the U.S. For his part, Macron told Xi a day earlier that France promotes “European strategic autonomy,” doesn’t like “bloc confrontation” and believes in doing its own thing. “France does not pick sides,” he said.

    The French position is challenged by some in Europe who see it as an urgent task to take a tougher approach toward Beijing.

    “Macron could have easily avoided the dismal picture of European and transatlantic disunity,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute. “Nobody forced Macron to show up with a huge business delegation, repeating disproven illusions of reciprocity and deluding himself about working his personal magic on Xi to get the Chinese leader to turn against Putin.”

    Holger Hestermeyer, a professor of EU law at King’s College London, said Beijing will struggle to split the transatlantic alliance.

    “If China wants to succeed with building a new world order, separating the EU from the U.S. — even a little bit — would be a prized goal — and mind you, probably an elusive one,” Hestermeyer said. “Right now the EU is strengthening its defenses specifically because China tried to play divide and conquer with the EU in the past.”

    Xi’s focus on America was unmistakable when he veered into a topic that was a long way from Europe’s top priority, during his three-way meeting with Macron and von der Leyen. A week earlier the Biden administration had held its second Summit for Democracy, in which Russia and China were portrayed as the main threats.

    “Spreading the so-called ‘democracy versus authoritarianism’ [narrative],” Xi told his European guests on Thursday, “would only bring division and confrontation to the world.”

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    Stuart Lau

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