Vladimir Putin said he does not reject the idea of peace talks over Ukraine, but the Russian president added that there could be no cease-fire while Ukrainian forces are “on the offensive.”
Speaking after meeting with African leaders in St. Petersburg, Putin told a press conference that African and Chinese peace initiatives could serve as a basis for ending the war in Ukraine, but are “impossible to implement” at the moment.
“The Ukrainian army is on the offensive, they are attacking, they are implementing a large-scale strategic offensive operation,” Putin said, according to media reports. “We cannot cease fire when we are under attack,” he said.
“We did not reject them,” Putin said, referring to the peace initiatives. “In order for this process to begin, there needs to be agreement on both sides,” the Russian leader said of the possibility of peace talks.
African leaders meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg last week issued a direct appeal for Moscow to end the war in Ukraine, which Russia invaded in February 2022.
“This war must end. And it can only end on the basis of justice and reason,” Moussa Faki Mahamat, foreign minister of Chad and current African Union Commission chairman, told Putin at the Russia-Africa summit.
Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso said an African peace plan “deserves the closest attention.”
“It mustn’t be underestimated,” Nguesso said. “We once again urgently call for the restoration of peace in Europe.”
Senegal’s President Macky Sall also called for “a de-escalation to help create calm,” while South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said he hoped that “constructive engagement and negotiation” could end the conflict.
MADRID — Alberto Núñez Feijóo may not want to admit it but his hope of being Spain’s next prime minister may have to be lowered.
On Monday night, the leader of the center-right Popular Party, which won the most votes in last Sunday’s national election in Spain but fell short of securing a governing majority, was left without options to form a government after two key regional parties rejected his overtures.
To become Spain’s prime minister, a candidate whose party has not secured a governing majority needs to either get the backing of 176 of the total 350 MPs in an initial vote in parliament or wait for a second round of voting to secure a simple majority. MPs can also abstain, which means it can be difficult to determine the exact number of seats needed for a successful bid to form a government.
In a speech after a meeting of the Popular Party’s executive committee, Feijóo reaffirmed his determination to gather the support needed to advance with his candidacy, adding that as the leader of the party that garnered the most votes, it was his “duty.”
But his numbers don’t add up. His Popular Party controls 136 seats in parliament — all of its scenarios for victory require the support of the far-right Vox party’s 33 MPs. But because the combined right-wing forces only account for 169 seats, the conservative leader would also need the support of some regional parties.
While the conservative leader quickly secured the backing of the Navarrese People’s Union — a virtual offshoot of the Popular Party — the rest of his attempts to woo potential allies have gone nowhere, fast.
Vox Secretary-General Ignacio Garriga on Monday stated his party, with whom the Popular Party aspired to form a government,is not interested in supporting a prime minister that is also backed by the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), one of the groups whose votes Feijóo would need to become prime minster.
“You can’t have a patriotic vote alongside that of a separatist party,” said Garriga, referring to the PNV. “It’s impossible.”
Feijóo was similarly rebuffed by the PNV’s Andoni Ortuzar, to whom he sent a chummy text message proposing they sit down to talk.
Ortuzar ignored Feijóo’s message for most of the day and only responded in the evening, when he called Feijóo to tell him his group was not interested in even meeting to discuss the possibility of a Popular Party-led government, the PNV posted on social media.
Meanwhile, Fernando Clavijo, secretary-general of the insular Canarian Coalition, told the Spanish media that his party’s sole MP would not back any government that included Vox.
Feijóo does “not have any possibility to become prime minister,” the group’s outgoing MP, Ana Oramas, said.
A summer of magical thinking
The combined rejections from Vox and the regional groups leave Feijóo without realistic options.
At this point, the only way his bid could succeed is if Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s 122 Socialist MPs agree to not vote against his hypothetical candidacy — a fantasy scenario that has no chance of happening after a campaign in which the Popular Party’s primary message was that it was time to “repeal Sanchismo.”
Pedro Sánchez — officially in caretaker mode since Sunday’s election — is laying low these days | Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP via Getty Images
Feijóo seemed determined to not let reality get in his way on Tuesday, insisting the Socialists needed to deal with him instead of negotiating with the left-wing parties and Basque and Catalan separatists, whose votes could allow Sánchez to remain prime minister.
“Spain holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, we’re negotiating finance rules in Brussels … We need stability, pro-European sentiment and centralism,” he said in Santiago de Compostela.
“It would be a huge mistake for separatists to govern Spain,” he added. “It’s the traditional parties that have won the greatest amount of votes.”
While Popular Party spokesperson Borja Sémper rejected the possibility of a grand coalition with the Socialists, in an interview with Spain’s public radio he floated the idea of a minority government led by Feijóo that could forge some sort of pact with the center left to address some of the nation’s “challenges.”
Deputy Prime Minister María Jesús Montero on Tuesday also rejected any possibility of a deal between the Socialists and the Popular Party, and instead underlined Sánchez’s determination to form a coalition with the left-wing Sumar coalition and secure the support of a hodgepodge of Basque, Catalan and Galician nationalist groups.
The hope is to secure 172 yeas for Sánchez’s candidacy — slightly more than the 170 nays that will come from the right — and convince Catalan separatist group Junts, which has said it will not back the Socialists, to abstain.
“A progressive majority has backed the continuance of the Sánchez government’s progressive policies and rejected the Popular Party and Vox’s Trumpian politics,” Montero told Cadena Ser.
The expat factor
Although Spain’s election was held last Sunday, the definitive results won’t be known until this Saturday, when the votes of Spaniards living abroad are added to the total. Spanish consular offices around the world have registered over 2 million citizens,but the turnout among them is not yet known.
While the foreign vote has never dramatically shifted the outcome of a Spanish election, it can alter the results of one or two seats — and that could make a difference in this particular parliament.
Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University, said that while changes could further complicate Sánchez’s plan to remain prime minister, they would almost certainly not improve Feijóo’s chances of taking power.
The nightmare scenario, of course, would be if enough seats changed hands that the left and right-wing blocs were left controlling the exact same numbers. Simón said that while such a “catastrophic blockage” was highly unlikely, lack of information about participation rates or political leanings of expat voters made it difficult to guess what could happen.
Discretion is everything
Sánchez — officially in caretaker mode since Sunday’s election — is laying low these days. It’s a canny strategy that is focusing the public’s attention on Feijóo’s inability to gather support for his candidacy.
On Tuesday, Sánchez’s spokesperson announced that the traditional summer meeting between the Spanish PM and King Felipe VI in the Marivent Palace in Mallorca had been canceled; the two will meet in Madrid after the holidays. Pundits speculate Sánchez did not want to appear to be getting any special access to the monarch, who will decide who gets to try form Spain’s next government.
Meanwhile, Deputy PM Montero confirmed that behind-the-scenes talks between the Socialists and the groups whose support Sánchez needs were underway. “A successful negotiation depends on discretion,” Montero said.
The left-wing Sumar party, Sánchez’s projected coalition partners, has been entrusted with the delicate task of making contact with the Catalan separatist Junts party, whose abstention in a parliamentary vote on Feijóo’s candidacy will be key to the prime minister’s gamble.
Montero said Sánchez is keen to negotiate with them but no blanket amnesties will be granted — including to its founder Carles Puidgemont, who is sought by Spanish authorities for his role in the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. Likewise, holding an official independence referendum in Catalonia is also off the table.
“The Socialist Party is a constitutionalist party, so everything we do has to be contemplated within the framework of the constitution,” she said.
A row between EU and Latin American countries over how — or even whether — to mention the war in Ukraine risks turning what was meant to be the celebration of a renewed partnership into a diplomatic failure.
The first day of a summit between the EU and the Community of the Latin American & the Caribbean States (CELAC) was all about affirming strengthened intercontinental ties. But the lofty talk quickly fell flat as EU negotiators tried to convince Latin American countries to condemn Russia over its war in Ukraine.
Nicaragua and Cuba vehemently opposed the proposed language on Ukraine, according to three EU officials — with one alleging that these two countries had received calls from Moscow advising them to do so.
The row in Brussels came just as Russia refused Monday to extend a U.N.-brokered deal that had allowed Ukraine to export its grain surplus through the Black Sea. Both were stark reminders of how Russia’s hybrid geopolitics seeks to drive a wedge between the rich, pro-Ukrainian West and the rest of the world.
Despite several rounds of negotiations on a joint declaration which leaders could sign off on, there was still no agreement on Monday evening — with some officials fearing that the two-day summit could fail to produce any joint declaration at all.
“I confirm that we are still discussing the text of the communiqué,” said European Council President Charles Michel on Monday afternoon, in an attempt at damage control. “And it means something. It means that we want on both sides an ambitious text.”
An EU diplomat said at the end of Monday’s meeting that “negotiations will go down to the finishing line.” Haggling over the text “does not put the summit into jeopardy — for now.”
Credibility on the line
Failing to agree a joint declaration would deal a blow to the EU’s credibility at a time when it is seeking to unify voices at the U.N. and beyond in support of Ukraine against a belligerent Russia. Brussels is also trying to become best buddies with Latin America again in the face of an assertive China that is winning market share on the other side of the Atlantic.
“If Russia were to lay down its arms, there would be peace. If Ukraine were to lay down its arms, there would be no more Ukraine,” said Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņs, whose country borders Russia.
“Maybe from a more distant area, it’s not so obvious to understand,” Kariņš added in a clear dig at CELAC countries.
Latest versions of the documents, seen by POLITICO dated July 7 and July 13, showed that the language on Ukraine had been watered down, going from “strongly” condemning Moscow’s “violating” Ukraine’s sovereignty, to just “expressing concern” on the war in Ukraine.
Asked about the holdup, Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Reina said: “I believe that it is part of this process to find, in this dialogue, a way out that respects the visions of both the EU and CELAC and each of its members.”
Ukraine was not the only contentious issue, with the draft communiqué resembling a shopping list, after each capital pushed to mention their national priorities, such as colonial reparations or the Malvinas islands, over which Argentina and the United Kingdom — which is no longer an EU member — fought a short war 40 years ago.
Barbara Moens contributed reporting.
Camille Gijs, Sarah Anne Aarup and Hans von der Burchard
The ghosts of colonial history returned to haunt European and Latin American leaders at their summit in Brussels.
For the guests, four hundred years of European colonial rule, economic exploitation and slavery was front of mind. For the hosts, it was Russia’s war on Ukraine in the here and now.
The divergence in views was so profound that the two sides struggled to align their thinking at their first summit in eight years — especially to find words to condemn Russia’s war of aggression in their closing communiqué.
That made the two-day gathering frustrating for all concerned — but especially for leaders of the EU’s newest member states from Eastern Europe, which have their own bitter memories of Soviet imperial rule and Russian aggression.
“It is actually a war of colonization,” Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš said of the 16-month-old Ukraine conflict.
“There is a former colonizer, Russia, and a former colony, Ukraine. And the former overlord is trying to take back their one-time possession. I think that many countries around the world can relate to that.”
Despite the pre-summit rhetoric highlighting the two continents’ shared values, EU leaders struggled to persuade the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) — which includes traditional allies of Moscow such as Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela — to clearly condemn Russia’s war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — a regular guest in Brussels — wasn’t invited this time. Wrangling over the wording in their joint declaration delayed the end of the meeting by hours as leaders sought to bridge the gaps. In the end, only Nicaragua dissented.
“No one intends to lecture anyone,” said European Council President Charles Michel, seeking to placate his guests. “This is not how it works, we have a lot of respect for those countries, for the traditions, for the culture, and the idea is always to engage in a spirit of mutual respect.”
Four hundred years
Spain, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, has its eyes on Latin America and likes to emphasize the close cultural and linguistic ties between the two.
But those links hark back to Spain — and Europe’s — colonial past. The Spanish kingdom colonized much of Latin America starting in 1493 and, over the next 400 years, acquired vast wealth by exploiting its lands and people. The European slave trade also forcibly transported millions of Africans into slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean.
While European leaders hoped to ease geopolitical tensions, their Latin American counterparts came to the table with a clear message: Defining relations today means addressing and rectifying past injustices — especially as the EU looks once again to the resource-rich region, this time to power its green transition.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves | Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/AFP via Getty Images
The prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — a small island state that heads up the 33-nation group — called for talks on economic reparations for colonization and enslavement.
“Resources from the slave trade and from slavery helped to fuel the industrial revolution that has laid the basis for a lot of the wealth within Western Europe,” Ralph Gonsalves told a small group of reporters on Tuesday.
This was part of his argument for a plan to “to repair the historical legacies of underdevelopment resulting from native genocide and the enslavement of African bodies,” as he said on Monday ahead of the summit.
Trade tensions
Trade talks between the EU and Mercosur — which groups four of Latin America’s big economies — also reflected the broader tensions over what it really means for Europe to start afresh in a relationship of equals.
Beyond a cursory mention of a Mercosur deal in the final statement, talks with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay were kept on the sidelinesdespite previous hopes that the summit could inject new energy into negotiations on wrapping up a trade deal.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen did, however, say after the summit that “our ambition is to … conclude [at] the latest by the end of this year.”
Industry and civil society have fundamentally different interpretations around how much — or how little — the deal would help put the countries on equal footing with their European partners.
For businesses, the deal needs to happen to ensure the region remains on the EU’s political and economic map.
“For us, the [trade] agreements are important. We need stability and don’t want to be at the mercy of political changes,” said Luisa Santos of the industry lobby group BusinessEurope.
But NGOs don’t see it that way. “Any proposal that leaves the region as a mere provider of natural resources for the benefit of the one percent in the region, big corporations and rich countries is business as usual,” said Hernán Saenz from the NGO Oxfam.
Resource craze
Sealing the Mercosur deal has gained importance for the EU, which is banking on the resource-rich region to power the wind turbines and electric vehicles it needs to meet its climate targets.
Brazil is the largest exporter of strategic raw materials to the EU by volume, while the “lithium triangle” spanning Chile, Argentina and Bolivia hosts about half of the world’s lithium reserves. As part of the summit, Brussels and Chile signed a new memorandum of understanding on raw materials.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (left) and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (right) in Brussels | Dati Bendo/EC
But the EU’s new appetite for those metals and minerals evoques those dark memories of Spanish conquistadors who set out to dominate large parts of South America — in the name of god, glory and, not least, gold, fueling an economic boom back home while stripping Latin America of its riches.
While von der Leyen on Monday announced Brussels will pump over €45 billion into the region through its Global Gateway program — for infrastructure projects that, at least in part, will also benefit the EU’s private sector — Europe is coming late to the party in a region where China has already expanded its influence.
And raw materials partnerships today, the region’s countries emphasized, cannot be based on a model where resource-rich countries mine the valuable resources — often under poor environmental and working conditions — only for them to be shipped abroad for processing and manufacturing, making them reliant on imports for finished products.
“This was the first time that we had the opportunity to discuss in such clear terms a mechanism that would take us away from extractivism in Latin America,” Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández said after the summit.
“It took five centuries, but we managed it — I’m saying that half in jest, but we have at last succeeded.”
Camille Gijs and Barbara Moens contributed reporting.
Ben Cohen wasn’t talking about ice cream. He was talking about American militarism.
At 72, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is bald and bespectacled. He looks fit, cherubic even, but when he got going on what it was like to grow up during the Cold War, his tone became less playful and more assertive — almost defiant.
“I had this image of these two countries facing each other, and each one had this huge pile of shiny, state-of-the-art weapons in front of them,” he said, his arms waving above his head. “And behind them are the people in their countries that are suffering from lack of health care, not enough to eat, not enough housing.”
“It’s just crazy,” he added. “Approaching relationships with other countries based on threats of annihilating them, it’s just a pretty stupid way to go.”
It wasn’t a new subject for the famously socially conscious ice cream mogul; Cohen has been leading a crusade against what he sees as Washington’s bellicosity for decades. It’s just that with the war in Ukraine, his position has taken on a new — morally questionable — relevance.
Cohen, who no longer sits on the board of Ben & Jerry’s, isn’t just one of the most successful marketers of the last century. He’s a leading figure in a small but vocal part of the American left that has stood steadfast in opposition to the United States’ involvement in the war in Ukraine.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tanks rolling on Kyiv, Cohen didn’t focus his ire on the Kremlin; a group he funds published a full-page ad in the New York Times blaming the act of aggression on “deliberate provocations” by the U.S. and NATO.
Following months of Russian missile strikes on residential apartment blocks, and after evidence of street executions by Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, he funded a 2022 journalism prize that praised its winner for reporting on “Washington’s true objectives in the Ukraine war, such as urging regime change in Russia.”
In May, Cohen tweeted approvingly of an op-ed by the academic Jeffrey Sachs that argued “the war in Ukraine was provoked” and called for “negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.”
Ben Cohen outside the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington this month, before getting arrested | Win McNamee/Getty Images
I set up a video call with Cohen not because I can’t sympathize with his mistrust of U.S. adventurism, nor because I couldn’t follow the argument that U.S. foreign policy spurred Russia to attack. I called to try to understand how he has maintained his stance even as the Kremlin abducts children, tortures and kills Ukrainians and sends thousands of Russian troops to their deaths in human wave attacks.
It’s one thing to warn of NATO expansion in peacetime, or to call for a negotiated settlement that leaves Ukrainian citizens safe from further aggression. It’s another to ignore one party’s atrocities and agitate for an outcome that would almost certainly leave millions of people at the mercy of a regime that has demonstrated callousness and cruelty.
Given the scale of Russia’s brutality in Ukraine, I wanted to understand: How does one justify focusing one’s energies on stopping the efforts to bring it to a halt?
Masters of war
Cohen’s political awakening took place against the background of the Cold War and the political upheaval caused by Washington’s involvement in Vietnam.
He was 11 during the Cuban missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Part of the reason he enrolled in college was to avoid being drafted and sent to the jungle to fight the Viet Cong.
When I asked how he first became interested in politics, he cited Bob Dylan’s 1963 protest song “Masters of War,” which takes aim at the political leaders and weapons makers who benefit from conflicts and culminates with the singer standing over their graves until he’s sure they’re dead.
“That was kind of a revelation to me,” Cohen said. Behind him, the sun filtered past a cardboard Ben & Jerry’s sign propped against a window. “I hadn’t understood that, you know, there were these masters of war — essentially I guess what we would now call the military-industrial-congressional complex — that profit from war.”
Cohen saw people from his high school get drafted and never come back from a war that “wasn’t justified.” As he graduated in the summer of 1969, around half a million U.S. troops were stationed in ‘Nam. Later that year, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched on Washington, D.C. to demand peace.
It was only much later, while doing “a lot of research” into the “tradeoffs between military spending and spending for human needs,” that Cohen came across a 1953 speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower, which foreshadowed the U.S. president’s 1961 farewell address in which he coined the phrase “military-industrial complex.”
A Republican president who had served as the supreme allied commander in Europe during World War II, Eisenhower warned against tumbling into an arms race. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he said.
“That is a foundational thing for me, very inspiring for me, and captures the essence of what I believe,” Cohen said.
“If we weren’t wasting all of our money on preparing to kill people, we would actually be able to save and help a lot of people,” he added with a chuckle. “That goes for how we approach the world internationally as well,” he added — including the war in Ukraine.
Pierre Ferrari, a former Ben & Jerry’s board member who was with the company from 1997 to 2020, said Cohen’s view of the world was shaped by the events of his youth.
“We were brought up at a time when the military, the government was just completely out of control,” he said. “We’re both children of the sixties, the Vietnam War and the new futility of war and the way war is used by the military-industrial complex and politics,” Ferrari added, pointing to the peace symbol he wore around his neck.
Jeff Furman, who has known Cohen for nearly 50 years and once served as Ben & Jerry’s in-house legal counsel, acknowledged that his generation’s views on Ukraine were informed by America’s misadventures in Vietnam.
“There’s a history of why this war is happening that’s a little bit more complex than who Putin is,” he said. “When you’ve been misled so many times in the past, you have to take this into consideration when you think about it, and really, really try to know what’s happening.”
Ice-cold activism
Politics has been a part of the Ben & Jerry’s brand since Cohen and his partner Jerry Greenfield started selling ice cream out of an abandoned gas station in 1978.
The company’s look and ethos were pure 1960s; they named one of their early flavors, Cherry Garcia, after the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, whose psychedelic riffs formed the soundtrack of the hippy counterculture.
Social justice was one of the duo’s secret ingredients. For the first-year anniversary of the gas station shop’s opening, they gave away free ice cream for a day. On the flyers printed to promote the event was a quote from Cohen: “Business has a responsibility to give back to the community from which it draws its support.”
In 1985, after the company went public, they used some of the shares to endow a foundation working for progressive social change and committed Ben & Jerry’s to spend 7.5 percent of its pretax profits on philanthropy.
In the early years, the company instituted a five-to-one cap on the ratio between the salary of the highest-earning executive and its lowest-paid worker, dropping it only when Cohen was about to step down as CEO in the mid-1990sand they were struggling to find a successor willing to work for what they were offering.
Most companies try to separate politics and business. Cohen and Greenfield cheerfully mixed them up and served them in a tub of creamy deliciousness (the company’s rich, fatty flavors were in part driven by Cohen’s sinus problems, which dulls his taste).
In 1988, Cohen founded 1% for Peace, a nonprofit organization seeking to “redirect one percent of the national defense budget to fund peace-promoting activities and projects.” The project was funded in part through sales of a vanilla and dark-chocolate popsicle they called the Peace Pop.
It was around this time that Cohen opened Ben & Jerry’s in Russia, as “an effort to build a bridge between Communism and capitalism with locally produced Cherry Garcia,” according to a write-up in the New York Times. After years of planning, the outlet opened in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk in 1992. (The company shut the shop down five years later to prioritize growth in the U.S., and also because of the involvement of local mobsters, said Furman, who was involved in the project.)
Cohen, with co-founder Jerry Greenfield, actress Jane Fonda and other climate activists, in front of the Capitol in 2019 | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Even after Ben & Jerry’s was bought by Unilever in 2000, there were few progressive causes the company wasn’t eager to wade into with a campaign or a fancy new flavor.
The ice cream maker has marketed “Rainforest Crunch” in defense of the Amazon forest, sold “Empower Mint” to combat voter suppression, promoted “Pecan Resist” in opposition to then-U.S. President Donald Trump and launched “Change the Whirled” in partnership with Colin Kaepernick, the American football quarterback whose sports career ended after he started taking a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality.
More recently, however, the relationship between Cohen, Greenfield and Unilever has been rockier. In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop doing business in the Palestinian territories. Cohen and Greenfield, who are Jewish, defended the company’s decision in an op-ed in the New York Times.
After the move sparked political backlash, Unilever transferred its license to a local producer, only to be sued by Ben & Jerry’s. In December 2022, Unilever announced in a one-sentence statement that its litigation with its subsidiary “has been resolved.”Ben & Jerry’s ice cream continues to be sold throughout Israel and the West Bank, according to a Unilever spokesperson.
Cohen himself is no stranger to activism: Earlier this month, he was arrested and detained for a few hours for taking part in a sit-in in front of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was protesting the prosecution of the activist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
Unilever declined to comment on Cohen’s views. “Ben Cohen no longer has an operational role in Ben & Jerry’s, and his comments are made in a personal capacity,” a spokesperson said.
Ben & Jerry’s did not respond to a request for comment.
The world according to Ben
For Cohen, the war in Ukraine wasn’t just a tragedy. It was, in a sense, a vindication. In 1998, a group he created called Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities published a full-page ad in the New York Times titled “Hey, let’s scare the Russians.”
The target of the ad was a proposal to expand NATO “toward Russia’s very borders,” with the inclusion of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Doing so, the ad asserted, would provide Russians with “the same feeling of peace and security Americans would have if Russia were in a military alliance with Canada and Mexico, armed to the teeth.”
Cohen is by no means alone in this view of recent history. The American scholar John Mearsheimer, a prominent expert in international relations, has argued that the “trouble over Ukraine” started after the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest when the alliance opened the door to membership for Ukraine and Georgia.
In the U.S., this point has been echoed by progressive outlets and thinkers, such as Jeffrey Sachs, the linguist Noam Chomsky, or most recently by the American philosopher, activist and longest-of-long-shots, third-party presidential candidate Cornel West.
“We told them after they disbanded the Warsaw Pact that we could not expand NATO, not one inch. And we did that, we lied,” said Dennis Fritz, a retired U.S. Air Force official and the head of the Eisenhower Media Network — which describes itself as a group of “National Security Veteran experts, who’ve been there, done that and have an independent, alternative story to tell.”
It was Fritz’s organization that argued in a May 2023 ad in the New York Times that although the “immediate cause” of the “disastrous” war in Ukraine was Russia’s invasion, “the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia’s borders served to provoke Russian fears.”
The ad noted that American foreign policy heavyweights, including Robert Gates and Henry Kissinger, had warned of the dangers of NATO expansion. “Why did the U.S. persist in expanding NATO despite such warnings?” it asked. “Profit from weapons sales was a major factor.”
Cohen andGreenfield announce a new flavor, Justice Remix’d, in 2019 | Win McNamee/Getty Images
When I spoke to Cohen, the group’s primary donor, according to Fritz, he echoed the ad’s key points, saying U.S. arms manufacturers saw NATO’s expansion as a “financial bonanza.”
“In the end, money won,” he said with a resigned tone. “And today, not only are they providing weapons to all the new NATO countries, but they’re providing weapons to Ukraine.”
I told Cohen I could understand his opposition to the war and follow his critique of U.S. foreign policy, but I couldn’t grasp how he could take a position that put him in the same corner as a government that is bombing civilians. He refused to be drawn in.
“I’m not supporting Russia, I’m not supporting Ukraine,” he said. “I’m supporting negotiations to end the war instead of providing more weapons to continue the war.”
The Grayzone
I tried to get a better answer when I spoke to Aaron Maté, the Canadian-born journalist who won the award for “defense reporting and analysis” that Cohen was instrumental in funding.
Named after the late Pierre Sprey, a defense analyst who campaigned against the development of F-35 fighter jets as overly complex and expensive, the award recognized Maté’s “continued work dissecting establishment propaganda on issues such as Russian interference in U.S. politics, or the war in Syria.”
Maté, who was photographed with Cohen’s arm around his shoulders at the awards ceremony in March, writes for the Grayzone, a far-left website that has acquired a reputation for publishing stories backing the narratives of authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia or Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. His reports deny the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria, and he has briefed the U.N. Security Council at Moscow’s invitation.
When I spoke to Maté, he was friendly but guarded. (The Pierre Sprey award noted that “his empiricist reporting give the lie to the charge of ‘disinformation’ routinely leveled by those whose nostrums he challenges.”)
He was happy however to walk me through his claims that, based on statements by U.S. officials since the start of the war, Washington is using Kyiv to wage a “proxy war” against Moscow. Much of his information, he said, came from Western journalism. “I point out examples where, buried at the bottom of articles, sometimes the truth is admitted,” he explained.
He declined to be described as pro-Putin. “That kind of ‘guilt-by-association’ reasoning is not serious thinking,” he said. “It’s not how adults think about things.” When I asked if he believed that Russia had committed war crimes in Ukraine, he answered: “I’m sure they have. I’ve never heard of a war where war crimes are not committed.”
Still, he said, the U.S. was responsible for “prolonging” the war and “sabotaging the diplomacy that could have ended it.”
‘Come to Ukraine’
The best answer I got to my question came not from Cohen or others in his circle but from a fellow traveler who hasn’t chosen to follow critics of NATO on their latest journey.
A self-described “radical anti-imperialist,” Gilbert Achcar is a professor of development studies and international relations at SOAS University of London. He has described the expansion of NATO in the 1990s as a decision that “laid the ground for a new cold war” pitting the West against Russia and China.
But while he sees the war in Ukraine as the latest chapter in this showdown, he has warned against calls for a rush to the negotiating table. Instead, he has advocated for the complete withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine and “the delivery of defensive weapons to the victims of aggression with no strings attached.”
“To give those who are fighting a just war the means to fight against a much more powerful aggressor is an elementary internationalist duty,” he wrote three days after Russia launched its attack on Kyiv, comparing the invasion to the U.S.’s intervention in Vietnam.
Achcar said he understood the conclusions being drawn by people like Cohen about Washington’s interventions in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. But, he said, “it leads a lot of people on the left into … [a] knee-jerk opposition to anything the United States does.”
What they fail to account for, however, is the Ukrainian people.
“In a way, part of the Western left is ethnocentric,” said Achcar, who was born in Senegal and grew up in Lebanon. “They look at the whole world just by their opposition to their own government and therefore forget about other people’s rights.”
Cohen, with late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon in 2011 | Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Ben & Jerry’s
His point was echoed in the last conversation I had when researching this article, with Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and a former economy minister.
“It doesn’t really matter who promised what to whom in the 1990s,” Mylovanov said. “What matters is that there was Mariupol and Bucha, where tens of thousands of people were killed.”
Mylovanov taught economics at the University of Pittsburgh until he returned to Ukraine four days before Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Things like war are difficult to understand unless you experience them,” he said. “This is very easy to get confused when you are sitting, you know, somewhere far from the facts and you have surrounded yourself by an echo chamber of people and sources that you agree with.”
“In that sense,” he added. “I invite these people to come to Ukraine and judge for themselves what the truth is.”
STRASBOURG — Gather round, gather round, it’s the last big match of the season.
This week, just before lawmakers head into the summer recess, the European Parliament will fight it out over nature restoration.
The EU’s proposal to rehabilitate its damaged ecosystems by 2050 has one last chance at survival in Wednesday’s plenary session. The bill, a key pillar of the bloc’s Green Deal, has limped to Strasbourg to face the full Parliament after failing to pass three committee votes.
If the Nature Restoration Law is rejected on Wednesday, “it’s game over,” said Pascal Canfin, a liberal MEP and chair of Parliament’s environment committee. “Nobody will come back with something else before the next election.”
The vote will be tight. And if the text doesn’t pass, it would be the first major Green Deal legislation to fail in Parliament — adding weight to a conservative campaign to pause environmental lawmaking ahead of the 2024 EU election.
For months, supporters and opponents of the law have been exchanging (metaphorical) punches on social media, in committee sessions and press conferences.
Ahead of the vote, POLITICO looks at the main players in the fight to kill — or save — the Nature Restoration Law.
In the blue corner: The bill’s opponents
1 — Manfred Weber
The European People’s Party has spearheaded a tireless effort to kill off the legislation, arguing that it will have detrimental consequences for the bloc’s farmers by allegedly taking land out of production and jeopardizing food security.
Its leader, Manfred Weber, has been among the most vocal opponents of the bill, seizing on the debate as a way to portray his group as defending farmers’ interests in Brussels.
Political rivals have accused him of using underhand tactics to ensure his MEPs voted against the legislation in the agriculture, fisheries and environment committees, including by substituting regular members with others ready to fall in line — allegations Weber denied. The push has also featured an often bizarre social media campaign to highlight the supposed dangers of the bill, culminating in the group claiming it would destroy Santa’s home in northern Finland.
“This is not the right moment to do this piece of legislation,” Manfred Weber said last month | Philippe Buissin/EP
The EPP leader maintains the group is ready to engage on the legislation — if the Commission comes up with a new version. “This is not the right moment to do this piece of legislation,” Weber said last month.
“Give me arguments, give me a better piece of legislation, then my party is ready to give,” Weber added, calling on the Commission to go back to the drawing board and insisting that achieving the EU’s climate and biodiversity goals can’t come at the expense of rural areas.
2 — Right-wing groups — and a handful of liberals
Weber’s conservative group has found allies further to the right — among MEPs belonging to the European Conservatives and Reformists and the far-right Identity and Democracy.
The ECR’s co-chair, Nicola Procaccini, a close ally of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, called the nature proposal “one of the most significant regulation proposals of the entire legislature,” and said he was “quite convinced” the right-wing alliance could defeat it. He added that it shows alliances are shifting in Parliament: “On the Green Geal it is moving more to the right.”
The EPP’s push has also found support among lawmakers in Renew Europe. About a third of the liberal group — mostly Dutch, Nordic and German MEPs — are set to vote against the bill on Wednesday, mostly out of national concerns.
Swedish liberal MEP Emma Wiesner, for example, has argued that the bill will be bad for Swedish farmers and foresters, while stressing that she still supports “an ambitious climate and environmental agenda.”
3 — Industry lobbies
A host of lobby groups have also come out against the legislation, including those representing European fishermen, foresters and farmers.
The powerful agri lobby Copa-Cogeca — which has been accused of representing the interests of large corporate outfits over smaller farms — has pushed the narrative that burdening farmers with new green obligations while they face the impacts of the war in Ukraine and higher energy prices will threaten their livelihoods.
The draft legislation “is poorly constructed, [and] has no coherent, clear or dedicated budget” to help land managers implement it, the lobby said.
Similarly, some business associations, like the Netherlands’ VNO-NCW, have been critical of the proposal, arguing that it will create a “lockdown for new business and the energy transition.”
A host of lobby groups have also come out against the legislation, including those representing European farmers | Jeffrey Groeneweg/AFP via Getty Images
4 — Skeptical EU countries
Several EU countries have waded into the debate, warning that the new measures would be bad for their farming and forestry sectors, as well as for people’s proprietary rights and permitting procedures for renewable energy projects.
The Netherlands has been particularly vocal against the bill, calling for EU countries to be granted more flexibility in how to achieve the regulation’s targets as it could otherwise clash with renewables or housing projects, for example. “We do have concerns about implementation because of our high population density,” said Dutch Environment Minister Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink.
Other skeptical countries include Poland, Italy, Sweden, Finland and Belgium.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo called for hitting “pause” on new nature restoration rules amid a fierce national debate on the legislation.
In the red corner: Its defenders
1 — Frans Timmermans
The EU’s Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans has been on the front lines of the effort to save the nature rules, going toe-to-toe with EPP lawmakers during Parliament committee discussions and calling out misleading statements spread by opponents to the bill.
“Everybody is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts,” he told lawmakers in May, stressing that the reason harvests are failing “is linked to climate change and biodiversity loss.”
He’s repeatedly insisted the legislation is intended to help farmers in the long run, as it aims to improve soil and water quality, as well as build resilience against natural disasters like floods, droughts and wildfires. He’s also been adamant that the Commission won’t submit a new version of the bill, as demanded by the EPP.
“There is no time for that,” he explained.
2 — Left-wing groups in Parliament — and (most of) the liberals
The EU’s Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans has been on the front lines of the effort to save the nature rules | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images
The Parliament’s center-left Socialists & Democrats, the Greens, The Left and part of Renew Europe have been vocal advocates of the Commission’s proposal.
Biodiversity loss and climate change are two sides of the same coin, Mohammed Chahim, vice president of the S&D, told reporters. “Not connecting them is either you being naive, at best, and at worst, you really trying to undermine the Green Deal, and that’s what’s happening.”
The Renew group has been divided on the issue, but a majority backed a compromise deal ahead of Wednesday’s vote to try and convince some EPP lawmakers to switch sides and rally enough support in favor of the legislation.
3 —Teresa Ribera
Spain’s environment minister has come out in favor of the proposal, defending its importance both at home and at the EU level as a means to increase resilience to natural disasters and climate impacts like drought.
“It is very important not only to conserve but also to restore nature … There will be time to improve what we have on the table but for the time being, the best thing we can do is to achieve an agreement,” Ribera said at an informal environment ministers’ meeting Monday.
Alongside Spain, 19 EU countries supported the adoption of a common stance on the text in June.
Ribera also signaled that the file will be among the Spanish presidency of the Council’s priorities if the Parliament adopts a position allowing MEPs to start negotiations with EU countries.
4 — Big business and banks
A number of multinationals — including Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Unilever — have urged MEPs to back the legislation, arguing that restoring nature is good for business.
The new rules, they say, will boost the EU’s food production in the long term as it will help tackle pollinator decline and increase absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere, lessening climate impacts.
Owen Bethell, senior global public affairs manager for environmental impact at Nestlé, stressed that farmers’ concerns need to be addressed and argued they should receive support to adapt to the new rules. “But in the short term, I think it’s important to maintain momentum on this law because it sends the right signal, that change needs to happen,” he said.
Green activists have led a forceful push to convince lawmakers to back the proposal | Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images
The argument that nature is good for business also received backing from Frank Elderson, an executive board member of the European Central Bank, who warned: “Destroy nature and you destroy the economy.”
5 — Scientists and NGOs
More than 6,000 scientists have shown support for the Commission’s nature restoration plan, arguing that healthy ecosystems will store greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to the EU’s objective to become climate neutral by 2050.
“Protecting and restoring nature, and reducing the use of agrochemicals and pollutants, are essential for maintaining long-term production and enhancing food security,” they wrote.
Green activists have also led a forceful push to convince lawmakers to back the proposal, staging protests and making arguments to counter the EPP’s narrative on social media.
“The European Parliament must stay strong against the falsified pushbacks of the conservatives and take firm action to protect citizens from the devastating impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss,” the WWF said in a statement ahead of the vote.
Watching from the sidelines
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a member of the EPP, has stayed conspicuously quiet on the issue, despite mounting calls for her to get involved and help save the bill.
The situation is a Catch-22 for the German official: The nature bill is part of the Green Deal on which she staked her reputation and reelection as Commission president, but speaking in support of it would involve going against her party’s official position.
“I still expect a public reaction from her,” said the S&D’s César Luena, the lead MEP on the file. “Or if it’s not public, then a reaction inside the EPP,” he added, suggesting that her silence could be held against her in a bid for reelection next year if the legislation doesn’t pass this week.
A small group of Western allies are engaged in “advanced” and “frantic, last-minute” negotiations to finalize a security assurance declaration for Ukraine ahead of this week’s NATO summit in Lithuania, according to four officials familiar with the talks.
For weeks, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany have been discussing the issue with Kyiv, and have also reached out to other allies in NATO, the EU and the G7. The idea is to create an “umbrella” for all countries willing to provide Ukraine with ongoing military aid, even if the details vary from country to country.
The effort is part of broader negotiations at NATO and among several groups of nations over how Western allies should display long-term support for Ukraine.
Kyiv wants to join NATO as soon as possible, giving it access to the alliance’s vaunted Article 5 clause — an attack on one is an attack on all. But many allies within the alliance broadly agree Ukraine can only join after the war ends, at the earliest.
So the alliance’s biggest powers have been working to see what stop-gap security commitments they can each give Ukraine in the meantime. That view is not universal, however, with countries along NATO’s eastern flank pushing for Ukraine to get a quicker path to ascension, even as the fighting rages on.
The Western powers’ goal is to unveil their umbrella framework around NATO’s annual summit, according to officials in Berlin, Paris, London and Brussels, all of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the discussions. The two-day event starts Tuesday in Vilnius.
“A discussion is under way; it’s quite advanced, in fact it’s very advanced, and we’re very hopeful that it can be concluded by the end of the summit,” a French official told reporters at a briefing.
A senior NATO diplomat agreed, telling reporters in a separate briefing there are “frantic last-minute negotiations” occurring at the moment “on what this should look like.”
Last-minute details
U.S. President Joe Biden is slated to meet with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday in London, where their two staffs will huddle to try and iron out last-minute details, according to a second NATO diplomat with knowledge of the plans. On the U.S. side, Pentagon policy chief Colin Kahl is tasked with getting the agreement to the finish line.
The initiative may ultimately amount to promises to continue much of the aid allies are already providing: arms, equipment, training, financing and intelligence. But the intent is to offer a more-permanent signal of unity for Ukraine, especially as Kyiv is unlikely to get the firm pledge on NATO membership it wants at this week’s summit.
“It is basically a guarantee towards Ukraine that we will, for a very long time to come, we will equip their armed forces, we will finance them, we will advise them, we will train them in order for them to have a deterrent force against any future aggression,” the senior NATO diplomat said.
Many specifics of this support would be left for later, however. The diplomat said it would be up to each interested country to bilaterally determine with Ukraine “what your commitment will be. And it could be anything, from air defense to tanks to whatever.”
Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz issued an “appeal to all countries that want to support Ukraine,” saying they should “make decisions for themselves that enable them to continue to keep up that support for one, two, three, and, if need be, more years, because we do not know how long the military conflict will last.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz | Pool photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/AFP via Getty Images
Separate from the security assurance declaration that Western powers are finalizing, NATO is also drawing up new ways to aid Ukraine’s military for years to come.
At the summit, NATO will agree on plans to help modernize Ukraine’s defenses, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Friday. The plan, he said, will involve “a multi-year program of assistance to ensure full interoperability between the Ukrainian armed forces and NATO.”
That multi-year effort will also focus on Ukrainian military modernization programs, and like the “umbrella” initiative, will depend on individual countries contributing what they see fit.
NATO aspirations
NATO leaders will also create a new NATO-Ukraine forum, giving the two sides a space to work on “practical joint activities,” Stoltenberg added.
The broader security assurance conversation has inevitably become intertwined with the debate around Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, which will be high on the agenda when leaders gather in Vilnius.
In the formal communiqué that will be issued during the summit, “we will be addressing Ukraine’s membership aspirations and that is something that NATO allies continue to work on,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told reporters on Friday.
Specifically, leaders are aiming to update the alliance’s vague 2008 promise that Ukraine “will become” a NATO member at some point. But they aren’t expected to offer Kyiv the “clear invitation” that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking.
Scholz conceded as much last week.
“Certainly, we will also discuss the question of how to continue to deal with the perspective of the countries that look to NATO and want to join it,” Scholz said. Yet, he added, “it is also clear that no one can become a member of a defense alliance during a war.”
Stoltenberg nonetheless struck an upbeat tone on Friday.
“I’m confident that we’ll have a message which is clear,” he said. “We have to remember that Allies also agree already on a lot of important principles when it comes to Ukraine and membership.”
Jacopo Barigazzi contributed reporting.
Hans von der Burchard, Paul McLeary and Laura Kayali
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’.”
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Monday that the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces could last “weeks, even months.”
“The counteroffensive has started. It’s going to be deployed for several weeks and even months. We are supporting it within the limits that we set ourselves,” Macron said alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Polish President Andrzej Duda at the Elysée Palace.
Ukrainian forces have stepped up operations in the last couple of days and announced on Monday evening that they had liberated several villages in the south and the east of the country.
“We want [the counteroffensive] to be as victorious as possible so that we can then start a period of negotiations in good conditions,” he added.
The French, Polish and German leaders were meeting in Paris to discuss Ukraine’s request for security guarantees and a clear pathway to NATO membership ahead of a summit of the military alliance in July. However, on Monday evening it appeared that the leaders were sending different signals in a press conference that was held ahead of a working dinner in Paris.
While Duda called for Ukraine to be given “a clear signal, a clear perspective” on its future membership of NATO, Scholz was less forthcoming, noting that debates were “intense.”
“We have been discussing security guarantees since the start of the war … We have taken decisions to support Ukraine for as long as needed. This debate is intense between us, between Germany, France, and its U.S. partners,” Scholz said. “We will finalize [our position] when we have the results of our talks. But … it must be very concrete.”
Earlier this month, Macron called for Ukraine to be given “strong and tangible” security guarantees but stopped short of calling for full-fledged NATO membership.
Macron, Scholz and Duda all pledged that their countries would continue supporting Ukraine during the counteroffensive. Scholz told reporters that Germany would support Ukraine for “as long as necessary” and said his country had also set up systems to repair weapons during the current assault.
Macron meanwhile said that France had “intensified deliveries” of weapons, ammunition and armored vehicles.
SINGAPORE — China put European patience to the test on Saturday, with a seasoned Chinese diplomat attributing Russia’s war on Ukraine to a failed security architecture in Europe.
It fell to Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren to challenge that very Chinese interpretation.
“I was actually a little bit surprised to hear it,” Ollongren told POLITICO in an interview moments after she made an impromptu rebuttal of ex-ambassador Cui Tiankai on a panel at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. “It’s very, very false.”
Cui, a former envoy to the U.S. and unofficially an adviser to the Chinese delegation at this top Asian security forum, told the event on Saturday that Europe had showed little success in ensuring the Continent’s security, and suggested that the other nations at the forum should take a lesson from China and Asia instead.
“We used to look to Europe, for their experience in regional integration. But nowadays, maybe people in Europe instead could look to us,” Cui told the gathering. “We don’t impose our ways on you, but maybe you can learn something useful from our experience, from our success,” he said.
“And our region also should learn something very important — from your lack of success. I don’t want to use the word ‘failure,’ [so] a lack of success,” said Cui, who sat next to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov on the panel.
“We will continue with our Asian ways of managing our security situation and managing all the issues,” Cui said. “We don’t need an Asian NATO. We’ll don’t want to see expansion of NATO’s role in our region.”
While the Ukrainian minister steered clear of criticizing Beijing — saying only that Ukraine needed to win the war, not negotiate — Ollongren hit back at Cui’s assertion.
“There was a suggestion by the ambassador that Europe has not succeeded in managing its security very well, because of the war in Ukraine. Of course, I understand there’s a war in Ukraine — but I think it’s not the result of mismanaging our security situation in Europe. It’s the result of not respecting the way we want to manage security in Europe,” the Dutch minister said.
“I think also, there is no lack of respect for China or lack of respect to the culture of China in Europe; we have very high respect for that,” she said.
Ollongren, whose country has taken an increasingly critical stance on China over ties with Russia and tech advancement in military fields, added after the panel that what Cui had presented was a “false perception of the situation.”
“You cannot blame Europe or European countries for Russia’s illegally invading Ukraine,” she said.
Ollongren added that since Cui is no longer an ambassador, she would wait for Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu to spell out the official position in his keynote address on Sunday.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Negotiation is an essential skill for entrepreneurs in creating business relationships that provide value for each party and position you for growth. At its core, negotiating is about reaching terms that create a balance that meets the needs of both parties.
Achieving that balance is a natural struggle as both sides push to secure the best deal. Market and performance data and insight give you the leverage to ensure a fair and favorable outcome.
In this article, we’ll examine why data is the foundation that supports a strong negotiating position, how to employ the data, and how to leverage tech and advisors to collect, analyze and present insights.
Negotiating is a challenging endeavor. It requires a specialized skill set and experience. And in a tough economy where inflation is high, liquidity is low and supply and demand are in flux, it’s more difficult to find terms all parties to a deal (of nearly any type) will accept. You have to work smart to get the terms that will position your business to succeed while satisfying the other party’s expectations.
Some deals fail to produce optimal outcomes when one or both parties don’t have a clear picture of the economic and operating environment. Developing that sight (e.g. situational awareness) by collecting and presenting relevant data boosts each party’s confidence in the terms they can feasibly accept.
Moreover, pursuing a data-backed negotiation strategy ensures you’re making the best decision going into the transaction or agreement and that you know your financial and operational situation — and the criteria for a deal that won’t sink your ship.
What types of data should you collect? Some essential categories include:
Macro, regional and niche market demand and supply indicators.
Personal and organizational financials.
Pro forma financial statements (revenue and expense projections).
Asset, service and corporate performance benchmarks.
For nearly all forms, but most commonly for entrepreneurs in the process of:
Swaying investors and partners — raising capital.
Leasing or buying operating space and equipment.
Selling and securing products or services.
Contracting with suppliers/vendors.
Hiring staff — presenting employment offers.
How can we use this data in negotiations?
Most importantly, leveraging data in the negotiating process helps demonstrate the upside for both parties to the agreement. Even when the agreed terms aren’t ideal or what they were expecting, if they feel the outcome will improve their position and they got the best deal for the circumstances, a contract is more likely.
A crucial role of data in negotiations is supporting bidding and asking value/prices. Market data and performance metrics can demonstrate a sector’s demand and supply factors and relationships. Even if the numbers don’t work in your favor, they ensure all parties are comfortable with the terms. If the price or terms are contentious, comparable analyses based on market pricing and sales data can validate or encourage a reevaluation of pricing.
Objective data provide evidence of feasibility for your proposal and the stated objective. The perceived viability of your venture is fundamental when raising capital and pitching investors. Providing data that supports your market assumptions and projections, including demand fundamentals and market growth, makes your pitch more credible and facilitates investors’ due diligence processes.
Performance metrics pertaining to your assets, products, companies or units highlight your core competencies and illustrate your track record. Important data points include revenue, relative profit among offerings, expense ratios and numerous other KPIs.
Presenting these data points and insights in a polished and upfront manner lets your potential stakeholders know you’re serious, organized and equipped.
Leveraging tech and advisors to source, organize, interpret and report the data
The data and analyses presented are only as credible as the sources, methods, tools and analysts contributing to their aggregation and preparation. Incomplete, inaccurate or irrelevant data will undermine a deal as fast as a sinking foundation.
Therefore, a business or entrepreneur must have the systems, time and expertise to assemble and interpret the data.
To accomplish this, build an integrative strategy comprising data management technology and an internal or external team of analysts and advisors.
Data management and analysis systems, of which there are industry-specific solutions for most sectors, enable entrepreneurs to collect performance and market data continuously and automatically. The results are valid and timely insights available when they’re needed to formulate terms and evaluate counteroffers.
When time is of the essence, the best opportunities go to those who are prepared and ready to act with assurance. If your core competencies( e.g. your strengths or personal value proposition) aren’t in data research and analysis, there’s an opportunity to build an in-house and outside team of experts to bridge the knowledge and experience gap.
Additionally, respected team members enhance your organization’s credibility and capabilities.
Introducing quality data and analyses into negotiations gives credibility to assertions and projections and validates any offers, proposals and ventures.
When offers and counteroffers are supported by objective data that illustrates why the proposed terms are fair and provide the most upside to both parties, reaching an agreement and forming a fruitful business relationship are simpler and more likely.
The U.K conducted its last evacuation flight from Sudan on Saturday, as the U.S. and France also brought groups of foreign nationals out of the conflict-torn African country.
The moves come amid a deteriorating security situation in Sudan, as fighting continues between the Sudanese Armed Forces and its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The British government decided to end evacuation flights “because of a decline in demand by British nationals, and because the situation on ground continues to remain volatile,” the U.K. Foreign Office said in a statement.
“Focus will now turn to providing consular support to British nationals in Port Sudan and in neighboring countries in the region,” it said, noting that more than 1,888 people were evacuated on 21 flights during the operation.
A French plane arrived in Chad on Friday carrying staff from the United Nations and international humanitarian non-profit organizations. France has evacuated over a thousand people from Sudan since the outbreak of hostilities.
The U.S. State Department said on Saturday that a convoy of U.S. citizens, locally-employed staff and citizens of partner countries arrived in Port Sudan and that it is assisting those eligible to travel onward to Saudi Arabia.
“Intensive negotiations by the United States with the support of our regional and international partners enabled the security conditions that have allowed the departure of thousands of foreign and U.S. citizens,” the State Department said.
“We continue,” it added, “to call on the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces to end the fighting that is endangering civilians.”
BELFAST — He fought for peace in Northern Ireland — and now George Mitchell is fighting for his life.
The former U.S. Senate majority leader from Maine, who became a diplomatic superhero in Northern Ireland after leading years of painstaking talks to produce the Good Friday Agreement, may be visiting his adopted homeland for the final time.
He hopes not. But, as Mitchell reflected in an interview with POLITICO, he simply cannot know.
Welcomed by well-wishers young and old this week as he returned to Belfast and to Queen’s University, where he served as chancellor for a decade following his peacemaking triumph in 1998, Mitchell opened a conference marking the accord’s 25th anniversary.
For nearly 45 minutes, Mitchell argued passionately for the power of compromise, his message leavened with well-timed jokes poking fun at the entrenched attitudes — and tough-to-decipher vowels — that tested him in Northern Ireland.
You’d never have known that Mitchell, 89, was making his first public speech in three years — nor that he had only recently ended years of chemotherapy in a battle with leukemia that came close to killing him.
“This is a gift by the grace of God to be able to come back here. I’ve had a rough couple of years,” he said.
“I retired from my law firm at the end of 2019, planning with my wife a life of travel and doing a lot of things that we hadn’t done. Then COVID hit and I was almost immediately diagnosed with acute leukemia. So I’ve been pretty sick. I haven’t been able to do very much.
“Initially I underwent intensive chemotherapy, which was very severe. I didn’t read a newspaper, I didn’t watch a minute of television. I was bedridden and very, very sick for about three months. Then I was on chemo for about two-and-a-half years,” he said. “The doctors said to me: ‘There’s a limit to how much chemotherapy you can take. We have to take you off.’ The disease may return. It may be six months, it may be two years — or who knows.”
‘Nothing in politics is impossible’
Mitchell now describes himself as pain-free and in remission.
He spoke in a Queen’s office overlooking the university’s entrance, where a bronze bust honoring him has just been unveiled by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the former British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. In April 1998, the two premiers joined Mitchell for the intensive final days of the talks in Belfast, while Clinton cajoled Northern Ireland’s polarized politicians by phone from the White House.
Several other figures who helped deliver that breakthrough are no longer alive, including Northern Ireland’s joint Nobel Peace Prize laureates from 1998, John Hume and David Trimble, both of whom have died since the last Good Friday commemorations five years ago.
George Mitchell (C) attends a gala marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement | Pool photo by Charles McQuillan/AFP via Getty Images
In his speech, Mitchell paid equal tribute to Hume, the moderate Irish nationalist leader who opposed Irish Republican Army violence and laid the intellectual architecture for the Good Friday deal; and Trimble, the prickly legal scholar who risked splitting his Ulster Unionist Party by accepting a deal that allowed IRA prisoners to walk free and ex-IRA chiefs to join a new cross-community government without clear-cut guarantees the outlawed group would disarm.
“Without John Hume, there would not have been a peace process. Without David Trimble, there would not have been a peace agreement,” Mitchell said to thunderous applause from the crowd, among them most of today’s crop of British unionist, Irish nationalist and middle-ground leaders.
Left unsaid was that others wanted to see Mitchell himself share that same Nobel prize, given his central role in sustaining hope in the talks after what U.S. President Joe Biden last week described as “700 days of failure.”
Indeed, it has been a common refrain this week among those now seeking to revive Northern Ireland’s shuttered regional government — the centerpiece of a much broader Good Friday package that included police reform, prisoner releases and paramilitary disarmament — that they wish Mitchell was still in the market for one more Belfast mission.
Mitchell offered only raised eyebrows and a wry smile when asked if he’d like to lead one more round of talks at Stormont, the government complex overlooking Belfast.
But he expressed unreserved optimism that the Democratic Unionists — the party that physically tried to block him from taking his chair when the talks began in June 1996, and spent years condemning the peace process as a sellout to IRA terror — will find a way to return to a cross-community government with the Irish republicans of Sinn Féin.
The DUP has refused to revive the coalition government since May 2022 elections, citing its opposition to post-Brexit trade rules that treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the U.K.
Mitchell thinks Northern Ireland’s political fundamentals have evolved since he wrote, in his 1999 book “Making Peace,” that the Good Friday Agreement became possible only because the DUP had abandoned the talks the year before.
“Times and circumstances change,” he said. “Nothing in politics is impossible.
“Political parties change and evolve. Does the Republican Party in the United States today reflect the views of the Republican Party of 20 or even 10 years ago? Does the Democratic Party? The challenge of leadership is to recognize that and to deal with change, all in the broader public interest.”
He also rejected any notion that blame for the current Stormont impasse lies entirely with the DUP. “There isn’t any one villain,” he said. “Everybody’s trying to do what they think is best. The question is: What is best?”
Mitchell stressed that “100 percenters” — people who see “any compromise as weakness” — exist in pretty much every political party on earth, including his own Democrats. And he said no American politician should criticize the depth of political division in Northern Ireland given that, today, the divide in U.S. politics has grown arguably even more noxious.
Former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and George Mitchell shake hands during a photocall at the BBC studios, in Belfast in 2008 | Peter Muhly/AFP via Getty Images
Leaders in any democracy, he said, must be ready to absorb criticism from within their own ranks and keep striving for common ground.
“You can’t let the first ‘no’ be the final answer,” he said. “Or the second ‘no,’ or the seventh ‘no.’ You just have to treat everyone with respect and keep at it.”
A final goodbye
Mitchell came face to face with his own mortality during Monday’s unveiling of his bronze bust, drawing big laughs from the crowd as he observed: “When you’re looking at a statue of yourself, you know the end is near.”
But the reality of living with leukemia, which makes him more vulnerable to infections and other threats, draws his mind back to one of his great regrets from the Stormont talks.
“We were at a critical early moment in the talks in the summer of 1996. I was trying to get them going, to adopt a set of rules. It was very complicated, unnecessarily complicated,” he recalled.
With a vote on the rules due that coming Monday, he received an unexpected phone call from Maine. His brother Robbie, who had been fighting leukemia for five years, was close to death. If Mitchell hopped on to the next flight, he might make it back to his hometown of Waterville by Friday night — but he’d risk having the talks fall at their first hurdle.
Mitchell called his brother’s doctor, oncologist Richard Stone at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, to be told that although Robbie’s health was deteriorating and it was impossible to be certain, he might well survive for several weeks longer. Wanting to get the first step of the peace talks banked before negotiations broke for the summer, Mitchell chose to stay in the U.K. over the weekend.
That Saturday night, another call from Waterville confirmed that his older brother had just died.
“I came back to Belfast on Monday and we got those rules adopted. I made it home in time to speak at Robbie’s funeral. But I didn’t see him before he passed away. That’s one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made,” Mitchell said.
A quarter-century later, the same Dr. Stone is now treating the younger Mitchell brother for the same disease. Mitchell has been told that if the cancer returns, his advanced age means chemotherapy must be kept to a bare minimum.
“Medical science has advanced very rapidly in the curing of leukemia. But as the doctors explained to me, chemotherapy is poison and if you take enough of that, that will kill you,” he said. “The doctor also explained to me that, on the other hand, I might go a few years and die of something else.”
Bill Clinton shakes hands with George Mitchell in the Oval Office at the White House after naming the retiring senator to be a special advisor for economic initiatives in Ireland | Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images
Mitchell estimates he’s already flown back and forth to Belfast at least 100 times since 1995. He and his wife, Heather, have approached this trip as if it could be his last — that this week might represent his final goodbye to a vexatious land he’s come to love.
“I honestly don’t know if this is the last time I’ll ever be in Northern Ireland. But my wife and I accept the possibility that it is,” he said. “I told Heather on the way over, we’ve really got to enjoy this and take in the sights and sounds of this beautiful place and the people. My fervent hope is that I’ll be able to come back again.”
BRUSSELS — Just when you thought Europe’s China policy could not be more disunited, the two most powerful countries of the European Union are now also at odds over whether to revive a moribund investment agreement with the authoritarian superpower.
For France, resuscitating the so-called EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) is “less urgent” and “just not practicable,” according to French President Emmanuel Macron.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is in favor of “reactivating” the agreement, which stalled soon after it was announced in late 2020 after Beijing imposed sanctions on several members of the European Parliament for criticizing human rights violations.
Speaking to POLITICO aboard his presidential plane during a visit to China earlier this month, Macron said he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping discussed the CAI, “but just a little bit.”
“I was very blunt with President Xi, I was very honest, as far as this is a European process — all the institutions need to be involved, and there is no chance to see any progress on this agreement as long as we have members of the European Parliament sanctioned by China,” Macron told POLITICO in English.
Beijing has proved skilled at preventing the EU from developing a unified China policy, using threats ranging from potential bans on French and Spanish wine to warnings that China will buy American Boeing instead of French Airbus planes.
Disagreement over the CAI is only one further example of divergence over China policy in Europe, where Beijing has expertly courted various countries and played them against each other in games of divide-and-rule over the past decade.
Merkel sought to seal the deal and ingratiate herself with Beijing before Washington could apply pressure to block it, causing tension with the incoming administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.
Germany has long been the most vocal cheerleader for the CAI due to its scale of manufacturing investments in China, particularly in the car-making and chemicals sectors.
The CAI would have made it marginally easier for European companies to invest in China and protect their intellectual property there. But critics decried weak worker protections and questioned to what degree it could be enforced.
Xi Jinping during Macron’s visit to Beijing | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Soon after the agreement was announced, Beijing imposed sanctions on several European parliamentarians in retaliation for their criticism of human rights abuses in the restive region of Xinjiang.
The deal, which requires ratification by the European parliament, went into political deep freeze.
Scholz, who at times seems to mimic the more popular Merkel, would like to take CAI “out of the freezer” — but has cautioned that “this must be done with care” to avoid political pitfalls, according to a person he briefed directly but who was not authorized to comment publicly.
“It is surprising Scholz still thinks this is a good idea, despite the vastly changed context from a couple of years ago,” said one senior EU official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss sensitive diplomatic issues.
EU branches split
Not only are EU countries divided on how to approach CAI — there’s also a rift among institutions in Brussels.
With its members sanctioned, the European Parliament is certain to reject any fresh attempt to ratify the CAI.
But like Scholz, European Council President Charles Michel also hopes to resuscitate the deal. He has discussed this with Chinese communist leaders, including during his solo visit to Beijing late last year, according to a senior EU official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, however, has stymied Michel’s attempts to place the agreement back on the agenda in Brussels. Von der Leyen is far more skeptical of engaging with China, citing increasing aggression abroad and repression at home.
Von der Leyen accompanied Macron on part of his China trip earlier this month, but said of her brief meeting with Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials that the topic of CAI “did not come up.” She has publicly argued that the deal needs to be “reassessed” in light of deteriorating relations between Beijing and the West.
Meanwhile, Chinese officials have made overtures to Michel and other sympathetic European leaders, suggesting China could unilaterally lift its sanctions on members of the European Parliament — but only with a “guarantee” the CAI would eventually be ratified.
A spokesperson for Michel said an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers will discuss EU-China relations on May 12. “Following that discussion we will then assess when the topic of China is again put on the table of the European Council,” he said.
During the same interview with POLITICO, Macron caused consternation in Western capitals when he said Europe should not follow America, but instead avoid confronting China over its stated goal of seizing the democratic island of Taiwan by force.
Manfred Weber, head of the center-right European People’s Party, the largest party in the European Parliament, described the French president’s comments as “a disaster.”
In an an interview with Italian media, he said that the remarks had “weakened the EU” and “made clear the great rift within the European Union in defining a common strategic plan against Beijing.”
Oil and gas giant Shell must donate more than $1 billion in unexpected profits from the potential sale of its assets in Russia to help rebuild Ukraine, according to a top Kyiv official.
In a letter to CEO Wael Sawan, dated April 18 and seen by POLITICO, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s economic adviser Oleg Ustenko called on Shell to share with Ukraine any profits from a potential Russian buyout of the British firm’s stake in a Siberian fossil fuel venture.
“If completed, this sale would represent the transfer of more than $1 billion in Russian cash into Shell’s accounts. That would be blood money, pure and simple,” Ustenko wrote.
“We call on Shell to put any Russian sale or dividend proceeds to work for the victims of the war — the same war that those assets have fuelled and funded,” he added.
Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, Shell announced it would exit the Russian market and write off up to $5 billion of assets and investments in the country as a result.
That included a 27.5 percent stake in the Sakhalin-2 project, a major oil field and offshore gas drilling venture in the Russian far east. The company wrote down around $1.6 billion for its stake in the site, and the Kremlin’s move to nationalize the venture in July last year raised concerns the firm would lose its capital.
However, Russian business media reported earlier this week that the government signed off on a trade in which the country’s second-largest gas producer, Novatek, would buy out Shell’s stake for 95 billion rubles — currently worth around $1.16 billion. Shell has previously said it is not involved in any negotiations on the issue.
Shell declined to give a public comment, but pointed out that the company is not actively engaged in any business with ongoing operations inside Russia, is not party to any current negotiations for the sale of a stake in Sakhalin-2 and has no clarity over what would happen to the proceeds from such a sale.
“We appreciate that as of this moment, Shell may not have a choice on whether to accept this offer,” Ustenko conceded in the letter, but maintained there is an “overwhelming” moral case for donating any such profits.
Rebuilding from the rubble
According to NGO Global Witness, the funds would amount to more than a tenth of the total repair bill for attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which a U.N. report last week warned could be as high as $10 billion.
“It would be egregious if Shell kept this money,” said Louis Wilson, who leads Ukraine policy at the NGO. “This is money they’ve told the world they’ve written off as a loss and it’s money that comes straight from the Russian oil and gas sector. Shell has already set a precedent that profits from the war should go to Ukraine.”
In March 2022, the energy firm said it would donate $60 million to humanitarian causes in Ukraine following an outcry over its decision to purchase a cargo of Russian crude to be refined into petroleum products. While the trade did not contravene sanctions at the time, Shell admitted “it was not the right decision” and apologized.
In an interview with POLITICO last month, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko urged major energy companies to donate excess revenues to his country.
“A lot of energy companies get enormous windfall profits due to the war,” he said. “I think it would be fair to share this money with Ukraine. To help us to restore, to rebuild the energy sector.”
That idea is getting some support from EU countries — although the final decision of whether to send cash to Ukraine is up to companies and their shareholders.
Emmanuel Macron is paying a high price for his push on pension reform as a survey on Sunday showed the French president is facing a new low in popularity — as low as during the protests of the so-called Yellow Jackets.
As the French take to the streets to protest against Macron’s pension reform, 70 percent of respondents said they are dissatisfied with the president, according to the Ifop barometer published by Le Journal du Dimanche. Macron’s popularity rating fell by 4 points in one month, it showed.
Since December, Macron has suffered a substantial drop of 8 points, and he now sees only 28 percent satisfied and 70 percent dissatisfied, according to the poll carried out, Le Figaro emphasized, between March 9 and 16.
That is the same period as the negotiations that finally led the Elysée to shun parliament and impose the unpopular pension reforms via a special constitutional power, the so-called Article 49.3, which provides that the government can pass a bill without a vote at the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, after a deliberation at a Cabinet meeting.
The procedure has been used in the past by various governments. But this time it’s prompting a lot of criticism because of the massive public opposition to the proposed reform, which raises the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years. Some media stress that recent opinion polls have shown that a majority of the French are opposed to this type of procedure.
“You have to go back to the end of the Yellow Jackets crisis in early 2019 to find comparable levels of unpopularity,” writes Le Journal du Dimanche commenting the survey. The outlet also stresses that dissatisfaction with Macron crosses all categories, the younger generations as well as the blue- and white-collar workers.
A total of 169 people, including 122 in Paris, were taken in custody for questioning on Saturday evening in France during demonstrations marred by tensions between the police and the protesters, according to French media citing figures communicated on Sunday by the Ministry of the Interior.
The EU has reached a deal to send Ukraine 1 million rounds of ammunition within the next 12 months.
The plan — seen by POLITICO — will see the EU both donate ammunition from its own stockpiles and also jointly purchase new shells for Ukraine. It also leaves open the possibility that the EU could help countries collectively buy missiles for Ukraine. And it sets a goal to “jointly procure” these munitions “in the fastest way possible” before October.
Diplomats and ministers finalized the strategy during meetings in Brussels on Sunday and Monday. EU leaders are expected to give their final blessing at a summit in Brussels later this week.
The deal represents a landmark juncture for the EU, marking the first time the self-described peace project has plotted to jointly buy arms for a country at war. Officials have argued the EU must evolve to meet the extraordinary moment — no less than the fate of democracy on European soil is at stake, they insist.
“A historic decision,” tweeted Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, once the deal was clinched Monday.
The plan has come together rapidly in recent weeks amid fears that Kyiv is running out of shells to hold off Russia’s unyielding assault. Ukrainian officials have said they need at least 1 million 155-millimeter shells to restock and maintain their defenses — a figure that far outstrips Europe’s annual production capacity.
To make up for the shortfall, the EU has drafted a multi-stage blueprint.
First, it will dedicate €1 billion to countries able to either donate ammunition immediately from their own stockpiles or redirect existing orders. Then, it will set aside another €1 billion to jointly buy more ammunition (and possibly missiles) for Ukraine and replace Europe’s donated shells. Finally, it wants to explore ways to boost Europe’s ability to manufacture the arms it needs for years to come.
Borrell in his final remarks speaking to journalists said countries had agreed to the €2 billion total. But diplomats said the legal texts were still being finalized.
Funding for the endeavor is expected to come from the so-called European Peace Facility, formerly an obscure program that has become the EU’s main wartime vehicle to partially reimburse countries for their weapons donations to Ukraine.
Less firm is what the EU plans beyond the €2 billion meant to jointly buy ammunition and cover donations of existing munitions. EU countries did not put forward anything about how to fund the last phase of its plan: growing industrial capacity for years to come. The document circulating Monday merely invited the European Commission to explore the issue and “present concrete proposals.”
“We have an industrial problem,” one seniorofficial conceded late last week, referring to Europe’s struggles to bolster homegrown defense manufacturing.
The €2 billion, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu agreed Monday, is “a clear and solid step further but it won’t be enough.”
Still, the ammunition agreement is a victory for Estonia, which first floated the idea of quickly providing Ukraine with 1 million fresh rounds as part of its push to get EU countries to send more weapons to Kyiv.
It’s also poised to be a boon for France and its many defense firms, as well as numerous defense companies across the EU. France, which has the bloc’s strongest defense sector, has long led the charge to augment European defense spending within EU borders, and the plan approved Monday will essentially do just that, instructing all joint EU contracts to go to EU firms. The only exception is Norway, which is already closely integrated into the EU market.
Several diplomats said French officials were also the ones pushing to include missiles in the scheme, although others chalked it up to Ukraine’s need for the weapons.
Despite the agreement, officials still need to hammer out exactly how the program will operate in practice. Officials have been going back and forth over whether the joint contract negotiations should go through EU agencies, or whether countries should just band together on their own.
EU officials were keen to see the plan identify a role for the European Defense Agency (EDA), the EU body meant to help countries cooperate on national security issues. But some countries have been wary about empowering Brussels to essentially become Europe’s arms negotiator.
The final decision, in classic EU fashion, is an all-of-the-above approach.
Ultimately, only 18 countries signed an agreement to work with the EDA on “the collaborative procurement” of ammunition. On the list are EU heavyweights like Germany, France and the Netherlands (as well as Norway), but not Italy or Spain. The pact envisions two parallel efforts — “a two-year, fast-track procedure for 155mm artillery rounds and a seven-year project to acquire multiple ammunition types.”
But countries will also be able to form groups of three or more to jointly negotiate contracts on their own. Three diplomats said the Netherlands and Denmark, for instance, have expressed interest in joining Germany in its national efforts to procure more ammunition.
Officials acknowledged that considerable work lay ahead.
“Definitely there are many details to be solved,” said Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s defense minister.
Gregorio Sorgi and Nicolas Camut contributed reporting.
BRUSSELS — In a new blueprint for military support to Ukraine, the European Union will propose that €1 billion should be specifically dedicated to ammunition, particularly 155mm artillery shells, according to a document seen by POLITICO.
The EU is helping supply Ukraine with arms through an off-budget, inter-governmental cash pot called the European Peace Facility, which is used to reimburse countries that export arms to Ukraine. So far, the facility has disbursed €3.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine, with member countries deciding last December to increase its funding by €2 billion in 2023.
To date, the spending needs have been loosely defined but the EU is now placing heavy emphasis on artillery ammunition — as Ukrainian forces are locked in attritional howitzer battles with the Russians in the east, around towns such as Bakhmut.
Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell intends to propose an “extraordinary support package” of €1 billion focused on the delivery of ammunition, according to the EU document, drafted by the bloc’s diplomatic service, the European Commission and the European Defence Agency.
The document said the extraordinary €1 billion should be focused on ammunition — “notably 155mm” — as soon as the €2 billion top-up of the European Peace Facility is “operationalised.” This means that half of this year’s top-up should be dedicated to ammunition, mainly shells, according to an EU official.
The EU document also envisages ramping up European industrial production, which is straining to produce ammunition at the rate demanded by the war.
The proposal cites “a favourable reimbursement rate, for instance up to 90% … given the extreme urgency and the depletion of Member States’ stocks.”
Such a high rate could be to reassure member countries that provide major military help. When the reimbursement rate last year dropped below 50 percent, this created problems for some EU nations, in particular Poland, one of the EU’s largest weapons donors to Ukraine.
The funding proposal also provides a possible way out by citing “voluntary financial contributions” for countries not to take part, such as Austria, which is neutral; or that are reluctant to provide weapons, such as Hungary.
It stresses that the specific legal constraints of certain countries “will be taken into consideration,” mentioning also a possibility “to constructively abstain from lethal assistance measures.”
Teaming up
Regarding joint procurement — meaning EU countries teaming up to buy arms — the European Defence Agency, together with member countries, would use a new scheme “encompassing seven categories from small arms calibres up to 155mm.”
This project is to be “launched for a duration of seven years” and so far, 25 EU member states plus Norway have already confirmed their interest in participating, according to the document.
Ukrainian artillery shells Russian troops’ position on the front line near Lysychansk in the Luhansk region on April 12, 2022 | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
In particular, procurement of 155mm ammunition should be accelerated “through a fast-track procedure for direct negotiation” with several providers. This type of ammunition is especially in demand as Ukrainian forces use it in long-range, precise artillery barrages.
Here, time is of the essence: “In view of the urgency, the Project Arrangement needs to be signed no later than March.” And contracts should “be tentatively concluded between end-April and end-May.”
The document also maps out the need for increased support to ramp up manufacturing, as European weapons factories are almost at full capacity and prices are already spiraling.
Concrete measures could include “identifying and helping to remove production bottlenecks in the EU” as well as “facilitating the collaboration of relevant companies in a joint industry effort to ensure availability and supply.”
The document will be discussed by defense ministers at an informal meeting in Stockholm next week and is then expected to be formally agreed by foreign and defense ministers on March 20. Leaders are also expected to give their final blessing at a meeting on March 23 and 24.
More than 100 countries reached agreement on a United Nations treaty to protect the high seas, following marathon talks at U.N. headquarters in New York that ended late Saturday.
The High Seas Treaty will put 30 percent of the planet’s seas into protected areas by 2030, aiming to safeguard marine life.
“This is a massive success for multilateralism. An example of the transformation our world needs and the people we serve demand,” U.N. General Assembly President Csaba Kőrösi tweeted after the U.N. conference president, Rena Lee, announced the agreement.
The negotiations had been held up for years due to disagreements over funding and fishing rights.
“After many years of intense work under EU leadership, countries agree on ambitious actions,” Virginijus Sinkevičius, EU commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, said in a tweet. “This is major for the implementation of the COP15 30 percent ocean protection goal.”
The European Commission said the treaty will protect the oceans, combat environmental degradation, fight climate change and battle biodiversity loss.
“For the first time, the treaty will also require assessing the impact of economic activities on high seas biodiversity,” the Commission said in a statement. “Developing countries will be supported in their participationin and implementation of the new treaty by a strong capacity-building and marine technology transfer component,” it said.
“Countries must formally adopt the treaty and ratify it as quickly as possible to bring it into force, and then deliver the fully protected ocean sanctuaries our planet needs,” said Laura Meller, a Greenpeace oceans campaigner who attended the talks, according to a Reuters report.
The treaty will enter into force once 60 countries have ratified it.
BRUSSELS — The European Parliament’s Socialists are warily eyeing their colleagues and assistants, wondering which putative ally might turn out to be a liar as new details emerge in a growing cash-for-favors scandal.
Long-simmering geographic divisions within the group, Parliament’s second largest, are fueling mistrust and discord. Members are at odds over how forcefully to defend their implicated colleagues. Others are nursing grievances over how the group’s leadership handled months of concerns about their lawmaker, Eva Kaili, who’s now detained pending trial.
Publicly, the group has shown remarkable solidarity during the so-called Qatargate scandal, which involves allegations that foreign countries bribed EU lawmakers. Socialists and Democrats (S&D) chief Iratxe García has mustered a unified response, producing an ambitious ethics reform proposal and launching an internal investigation without drawing an open challenge to her leadership. Yet as the Parliament’s center left ponders how to win back the public’s trust ahead of next year’s EU election, the trust among the members themselves is fraying.
“I feel betrayed by these people that are colleagues of our political group,” said Mohammed Chahim, a Dutch S&D MEP. “As far as I am concerned, we are all political victims, and I hope we can get the truth out in the open.”
S&D MEPs are grappling not only with a sense of personal betrayal but also a fear that the links to corruption could squash otherwise promising electoral prospects.
Social democrats were looking forward to running in 2024 on the bread-and-butter issues at the top of minds around the bloc amid persistent inflation, buoyed by Olaf Scholz’s rise in Germany and the Continent-wide popularity of Finland’s Sanna Marin. Now, the group’s appeal to voters’ pocketbooks could be overshadowed by suitcases filled with cash.
“We were completely unaware of what was going on,” said García, vowing that the group’s internal inquiry will figure out what went wrong. “We have to let the people responsible [for the investigation] work.”
The ‘darkest plenary’
Shock, anger and betrayal reverberated through the 145-strong caucus in early December last year when Belgian police began arresting senior S&D figures, chief among them a former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri and Eva Kaili, a rising star from Greece who had barely completed a year as one of Parliament’s 14 vice presidents.
“The Qatargate revelations came as a terrible shock to S&D staff and MEPs,” an S&D spokesperson said. “Many felt betrayed, their trust abused and broken. Anyone who has ever become a victim of criminals will understand it takes time to heal from such an experience.”
When the S&D gathered for a Parliament session in Strasbourg days after the first arrests, few members took it harder than the group’s president, García, who at one point broke down in tears, according to three people present.
“We are all not just political machines, but also human beings,” said German MEP Gabriele Bischoff, an S&D vice chair in her first term. “To adapt to such a crisis, and to deal with it, it’s not easy.”
“I mean, also, you trusted some of these people,” she said.
An Italian court ruled that the daughter of former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri can be extradited to Belgium | European Union
In Strasbourg the group showed zero appetite to watch the judicial process play out, backing a move to remove Kaili from her vice presidency role. (She has, through a lawyer, consistently maintained her innocence.)
The group’s leadership also pressured MEPs who in any way were connected to the issues or people in the scandal to step back from legislative work, even if they faced no charges.
“It was of course the darkest plenary we’ve had,” said Andreas Schieder, an Austrian S&D MEP who holds a top role on the committee charged with battling foreign interference post Qatargate. “But we took the right decisions quickly.”
The S&D hierarchy swiftly suspended Kaili from the group in December and meted out the same treatment to two other MEPs who would later be drawn into the probe.
But now many S&D MEPs are asking themselves how it was possible that a cluster of people exerted such influence across the Socialist group, how Kaili rose so quickly to the vice presidency and how so much allegedly corrupt behavior went apparently unnoticed for years.
Like family
The deep interpersonal connections between those accused and the rest of the group were part of what made it all so searing for the S&D tribe.
Belgian authorities’ initial sweep nabbed not only Panzeri and Kaili but also Kaili’s partner, a longtime parliamentary assistant named Francesco Giorgi, who had spent years working for Panzeri. Suddenly every former Panzeri assistant still in Parliament was under suspicion. Panzeri later struck a plea deal, offering to dish on whom he claims to have bribed in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Maria Arena, who succeeded Panzeri as head of the Parliament’s human rights panel in 2019, also found herself under heavy scrutiny: Her friendship with her predecessor was so close that she’d been spotted as his plus-one at his assistant’s wedding. Alessandra Moretti, another S&D MEP, has also been linked to the probe, according to legal documents seen by POLITICO.
The appearance of Laura Ballarin, García’s Cabinet chief, raising a glass with Giorgi and vacationing on a Mediterranean sailboat with Kaili, offered a tabloid-friendly illustration of just how enmeshed the accused were with the group’s top brass.
“I was the first one to feel shocked, hurt and deeply betrayed when the news came out,” Ballarin told POLITICO. “Yet, evidently, my personal relations did never interfere with my professional role.”
Making matters worse, some three months later, the scandal has largely remained limited to the S&D. Two more of its members have been swallowed up since the initial round of arrests: Italy’s Andrea Cozzolino and Belgium’s Marc Tarabella — a well-liked figure known for handing out Christmas gifts to Parliament staff as part of a St. Nicholas act. Both were excluded, like Kaili, from the S&D group. They maintain their innocence.
Whiter than white
That’s putting pressure on García, who is seen in Brussels as an extension of the power of her close ally, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is one of S&D chief Iratxe García most important allies | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
However, she has not always been able to leverage that alliance in Brussels. A prime example is the backroom deal the political groups made to appoint the Parliament’s new secretary-general, Alessandro Chiocchetti, who hails from the center-right European People’s Party. García emerged mostly empty-handed from the negotiations, with the EPP maneuvering around her and The Left group securing an entirely new directorate general.
Kaili, from a tiny two-person Greek Socialist delegation, would also have never gotten the nod to become vice president in 2022 without García and the Spanish Socialists’ backing.
Yet when it comes to trying to clean house and reclaim the moral high ground, the Socialist chief has brought people together. “She deserves to be trusted to do this correctly,” said René Repasi, a German S&D lawmaker.
In the new year, the S&D successfully pushed through the affable, progressive Luxembourgish Marc Angel to replace Kaili, fending off efforts by other left-leaning and far-right groups to take one of the S&D’s seats in the Parliament’s rule-making bureau. In another move designed to steady the ship, the Socialists in February drafted Udo Bullmann, an experienced German MEP who previously led the S&D group, as a safe pair of hands to replace Arena on the human rights subcommittee.
And in a bid to go on the offensive, the Socialists published a 15-point ethics plan (one-upping the center-right Parliament president’s secret 14-point plan). It requires all S&D MEPs — and their assistants — to disclose their meetings online and pushes for whistleblower protections in the Parliament. Where legally possible, the group pledges to hold its own members to these standards — for example by banning MEPs from paid-for foreign trips — even if the rest of the body doesn’t go as far.
Those results were hard won, group officials recounted. With members from 26 EU countries, the group had to navigate cultural and geographic divisions on how to handle corruption, exposing north-south fault lines.
“To do an internal inquiry was not supported in the beginning by all, but we debated it,” said Bischoff, describing daily meetings that stretched all the way to Christmas Eve.
The idea of recruiting outside players to conduct an internal investigation was also controversial, she added. Yet in the end, the group announced in mid-January that former MEP Richard Corbett and Silvina Bacigalupo, a law professor and board member of Transparency International Spain, would lead a group-backed inquiry, which has now begun.
The moves appear to have staved off a challenge to García’s leadership, and so far, attacks from the Socialists’ main rival, the EPP, have been limited. But S&D MEPs say there’s still an air of unease, with some concerned the cleanup hasn’t gone deep enough — while others itch to defend the accused.
Some party activists quietly question if the response was too fast and furious.
Arena’s political future is in doubt, for example, even though she’s faced no criminal charges. Following mounting pressure about her ties to Panzeri, culminating with a POLITICO report on her undeclared travel to Qatar, Arena formally resigned from the human rights subcommittee. The group is not defending her, even as some activists mourn the downfall of someone they see as a sincere champion for human rights causes.
Vocal advocacy for Kaili has also fueled controversy: Italian S&D MEPs drew groans from colleagues when they hawked around a letter about the treatment of Kaili and her daughter, which only garnered 10 signatures.
“I do not believe it was necessary,” García said of the letter. “[If] I worry about the situation in jails, it has to be for everyone, not for a specific MEP.”
The letter also did nothing to warm relations between the S&D’s Spanish and Italian delegations, which have been frosty since before the scandal. The S&D spokesperson in a statement rejected the notion that there are tensions along geographical lines: “There’s no divide between North and South, nor East and West, and there’s no tension between the Italian and Spanish delegations.”
In another camp are MEPs who are looking somewhat suspiciously at their colleagues.
Repasi, the German S&D member, said he is weary of “colleagues that are seemingly lying into your face” — a specific reference to Tarabella, who vocally denied wrongdoing for weeks, only to have allegations surface that he took around €140,000 in bribes from Panzeri, the detained ex-lawmaker.
Repasi added: “It makes you more and more wonder if there is anyone else betting on the fact that he or she might not be caught.”
Jakob Hanke Vela, Karl Mathiesen and Aitor Hernández-Morales contributed reporting.
