Russian authorities rejected a price cap on the country’s oil set by Ukraine‘s Western supporters and threatened Saturday to stop supplying the nations that endorsed it.
Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, the United States and the 27-nation European Union agreed Friday to cap what they would pay for Russian oil at $60-per-barrel. The limit is set to take effect Monday, along with an EU embargo on Russian oil shipped by sea.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia needed to analyze the situation before deciding on a specific response but that it would not accept the price ceiling. Russia’s permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, warned that the cap’s European backers would come to rue their decision.
“From this year, Europe will live without Russian oil,” Ulyanov tweeted. “Moscow has already made it clear that it will not supply oil to those countries that support anti-market price caps. Wait, very soon the EU will accuse Russia of using oil as a weapon.”
The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, called Saturday for a lower price cap, saying the one adopted by the EU and the Group of Seven leading economies didn’t go far enough.
“It would be necessary to lower it to $30 in order to destroy the enemy’s economy faster,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, wrote on Telegram, staking out a position also favored by Poland — a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Under Friday’s agreements, insurance companies and other firms needed to ship oil would only be able to deal with Russian crude if the oil is priced at or below the cap. Most insurers are located in the EU and the United Kingdom and could be required to observe the ceiling.
Russia’s crude has already been selling for around $60 a barrel, a deep discount from international benchmark Brent, which closed Friday at $85.42 per barrel.
The Russian Embassy in Washington insisted that Russian oil “will continue to be in demand” and criticized the price limit as “reshaping the basic principles of the functioning of free markets.” A post on the embassy’s Telegram channel predicted the per-barrel cap would lead to “a widespread increase in uncertainty and higher costs for consumers of raw materials.”
“What happens in China will help shape whether the price cap has any teeth,” said Jim Burkhard, an oil markets analyst with IHS Markit. He said dampened demand from China means most Russian crude exports are already selling below $60.
The price cap aims to put an economic squeeze on Russia and further crimp its ability to finance a war that has killed an untold number of civilians and fighters, driven millions of Ukrainians from their homes and weighed on the world economy for more than nine months.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that since Friday Russia’s forces had fired five missiles, carried out 27 airstrikes and launched 44 shelling attacks against Ukraine’s military positions and civilian infrastructure.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president’s office, said the attacks killed one civilian and wounded four others in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. According to the U.K. Defense Ministry, Russian forces “continue to invest a large element of their overall military effort and firepower” around the small Donestsk city of Bakhmut, which they have spent weeks trying to capture.
In southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, whose capital city of the same name was liberated by Ukrainian forces three weeks ago following a Russian retreat, Gov. Yaroslav Yanushkevich said evacuations of civilians stuck in Russian-held territory across the Dnieper River would resume temporarily.
Russian forces pulled back to the river’s eastern bank last month. Yanushkevich said a ban on crossing the waterway would be lifted during daylight hours for three days for Ukrainian citizens who “did not have time to leave the temporarily occupied territory.” His announcement cited a “possible intensification of hostilities in this area.”
Kherson is one of four regions that Putin illegally annexed in September and vowed to defend as Russian territory. From their new positions, Russian troops have regularly shelled Kherson city and nearby infrastructure in recent days, leaving many residents without power. Running water remained unavailable in much of the city.
The other regions annexed in violation of international law are Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukrainian authorities also reported intense fighting in Luhansk and Russian shelling of northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which Russia’s soldiers mostly withdrew from in September.
The mayor of the city of Kharkiv, which remained under Ukrainian control during Russia’s occupation of other parts of the region, said some 500 apartment buildings were damaged beyond repair, and nearly 220 schools and kindergartens were damaged or destroyed. He estimated the cost of the damage at $9 billion.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu met Saturday in Minsk with the president and defense minister of Belarus, which hosts Russian troops and artillery. Belarus has said its own forces are not taking part in the war, but Ukrainian officials have frequently expressed concern that they could be induced to cross the border into northern Ukraine.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said at the meeting that his troops and Russian forces train in coordination. “We ready ourselves as one grouping, one army. Everyone knows it. We were not hiding it,” he was quoted as saying by the news agency Interfax.
President Biden and Prince William met at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston on Friday. But Prince William and his wife Catherine’s U.S. visit has been upstaged by controversies in both the U.S. and the U.K. Michael George has the details.
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Prince William and Kate Middleton arrived in Boston on Wednesday for their first visit to the U.S. in eight years. The royals’ trip is focused on climate change solutions. Michael George has the details.
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Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and her husband Prince Harry faced “disgusting and very real” threats from right-wing extremists, a former counterterrorism police chief has said.
In an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News on Tuesday, Neil Basu said the threats against Meghan were serious and credible enough that authorities had assigned teams to investigate them.
“If you’d seen the stuff that was written, and you were receiving it … you would feel under threat all of the time,” said Basu, who was in charge of royal protection during his time at the Metropolitan Police.
“People have been prosecuted for those threats,” said the former Met assistant commissioner.
Since news of her relationship with Prince Harry broke in 2016, Meghan has been subjected to harsh criticism in the British press. In particular, the UK tabloids have faced allegations that their negative coverage of Meghan fueled racist attacks against her.
The racist bullying on social media became so intense during her first pregnancy that the royal staff was put on high alert, beefing up its own digital presence to filter out hateful comments, including use of the n-word and emojis of guns and knives.
The couple said that the racial abuse Meghan faced was a major factor that drove them to move to the United States and step back as senior members of the royal family.
In the couple’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey last year, Prince Harry said he felt the palace was not doing enough publicly to combat the continued racial abuse in the press.
Harry is currently in a legal dispute with the Home Office regarding the family’s security arrangements when they visit the UK.
The threats against the royal couple came amid a rise in right-wing extremism in Britain, according to Basu.
Basu said in his interview that during his tenure, extreme right-wing terrorism was the fastest-growing threat facing the country, going from 6% of the counterterroism department’s workload in 2015 to more than 20% at the time of his departure more than a year ago.
Basu, who is mixed-race, said he believes the Home Office needs to do more to tackle institutional racism.
“I’ve been the only non-White face as a chief officer for a very long time,” he said. “I don’t think the Home Office cares about this subject at all.”
The Home Office said in a statement to CNN that UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman expects police forces in the country to “take a zero tolerance approach to racism within their workplace.”
“We are actively pushing for a cultural change in the police, including via a targeted review of police dismissals to ensure officers who are not fit to serve can be swiftly removed,” a spokesperson for the Home Office said.
LONDON — Three years after leaving the EU to chart its own course, Britain finds itself caught between two economic behemoths in a brewing transatlantic trade war.
In one corner sits the United States, whose Congress in August passed the Biden administration’s much-vaunted $369 billion program of green subsidies, part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
In the opposing corner is the European Union, which fears Washington’s subsidy splurge will pull investment — particularly in electric vehicles — away from Europe, hitting carmakers hard.
The EU is preparing its own retaliatory package of subsidies; Washington shows little sign of changing course. Fears of a trade war are growing fast.
Now sitting squarely outside the ring, the U.K. can only look on with horror, and quietly ask Washington to soften the blow. But there are few signs the softly-softly approach is bearing fruit. Britain now risks being clobbered by both sides.
“It’s not in the U.K.’s interest for the U.S. and EU to go down this route,” said Sam Lowe, a partner at Flint Global and expert in U.K. and EU trade policy. “Given the U.K.’s current economic position, it can’t really afford to engage in a subsidy war with both.” The British government has just unleashed a round of fiscal belt-tightening after a market rout, following months of political turmoil.
For iconic British motor brands, the row over the Biden administration’s IRA comes with real costs.
The U.S. is the second-largest destination for British-made vehicles after the EU, and the automotive sector is one of Britain’s top goods exporters.
Manufacturers like Jaguar Land Rover have warned publicly about the “very serious challenges” posed by the new U.S. law and its plan for electric vehicle tax credits aimed at boosting American industry.
Kemi on the case
U.K. Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has for months been privately urging top U.S. officials to soften the impact of the electric vehicle subsidies on Britain by carving out exemptions, U.K. officials said.
When Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visited London in early October, Badenoch pushed her to rethink the strategy. The U.K. trade chief brought that same message to Washington in a series of private meetings earlier this month, including at a sit-down with Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo.
Badenoch has “raised this issue on many levels,” an official from the U.K.’s Department for International Trade said, citing conversations with U.S. Ambassador to Britain Jane Hartley, with Secretary Raimondo, “and with members of the Biden administration and senior representatives of both parties.”
The Cabinet minister has also spoken out in public, telling the pro-free market Cato Institute in Washington earlier this month that “the substantial new tax credits for electric cars not only bar vehicles made in the U.K. from the U.S. market, but also affect vehicles made in the U.S. by U.K. manufacturers.”
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Badenoch’s comments echo concerns raised by both British automotive lobby group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), and by Jaguar Land Rover, in comments filed with the U.S. Treasury Department.
The SMMT warned that Biden’s green vehicle package has several “elements of concern that risk creating an uneven competitive environment, with U.K.-based manufacturers and suppliers potentially penalised.” The lobby group is taking aim at the credit scheme’s requirement for green vehicles to be built in North America, with significant subsidies available only if critical minerals are sourced from the U.S. or a U.S. ally.
In response to Washington’s plans, the EU is preparing what could amount to billions in subsidies for its own industries hit by the U.S. law, which also offers tax breaks to boost American green businesses such as solar panel manufacturers. Britain faces being squeezed in both markets, while lacking any say in whatever response Brussels decides.
Protectionism that impacts like-minded allies “isn’t the answer to the geopolitical challenges we face,” the British trade department official warned, adding “there is a serious risk” the law disrupts “vital” global supply chains of batteries and electric vehicles.
The conversations Badenoch had this month in Washington were “reassuring,” the official added. “But it’s for them to address and find solutions.”
‘Ton of work to do’
Yet others believe Badenoch will have a hard time getting her colleagues in the U.S. — now cooling on a much-touted bilateral trade deal — to take action. “The U.S. is minimally focused on how any of their policies are going to impact the U.K.,” admitted a U.S.-based representative of a major business group.
While Britain and the U.S. are “very close allies”, they added, those in Washington “just don’t really view the U.K. as an interesting trade partner and market right now.” The U.S. is more focused, they noted, on pushing back against China, meaning Badenoch has “a ton of work to do” getting the administration to soften the IRA.
Nevertheless the U.S. is still working out how its law will actually be implemented, the business figure said, and is assembling a working group on how the IRA impacts trade allies. This has the potential, they added, to “alleviate a lot of the concerns coming out of the U.K.”
Late Tuesday evening, the SMMT called on the British government to provide greater domestic support for the sector as it prepares to ramp up its own electric vehicle production. The group wants an extension past April on domestic support for firms’ energy costs; a boost to government investment in green energy sources; and a speedier national rollout of charging infrastructure and staff training.
In the meantime, Britain’s options appear limited.
Newly manufactured Land Rover and Range Rover vehicles parked and waiting to be loaded for export | Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
The U.K. “could consider legal action” and haul the U.S. before the World Trade Organization or challenge the EU through provisions in the post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement, said Lowe of consultancy Flint. “But — to be blunt — neither of them care what we have to say.”
Anna Jerzewska, a trade advisor and associate fellow at the UK Trade Policy Observatory, suggested pressing ahead “with your own domestic policy and efforts to support strategic industries is perhaps more important” than complaining about foreign subsidy schemes. But she noted that after a “chaotic” political period, Britain is “likely to take longer to respond to external changes and challenges.”
And in truth, Britain “can’t afford to out-subsidize the U.S. and EU,” said David Henig, a trade expert with the European Centre For International Political Economy think tank.
Outside the EU, Britain could work to rally allies such as Japan and South Korea who are also unhappy with the Biden administration’s protectionist measures, he noted. “But I don’t think we’re in that position,” Henig said, as it would take a concerted diplomatic effort, and the U.K.’s automotive sector would “have to be well positioned” in the first place, not struggling as it is. He predicted London’s lobbying in Washington and Brussels is “not going to get anywhere.”
BERLIN — On a balmy September evening last year, an Azeri man carrying a Russian passport crossed the border from northern Cyprus into southern Cyprus. He traveled light: a pistol, a handful of bullets and a silencer.
It was going to be the perfect hit job.
Then, just as the man was about to step into a rental car and carry out his mission — which prosecutors say was to gun down five Jewish businessmen, including an Israeli billionaire — the police surrounded him.
The failed attack was just one of at least a dozen in Europe in recent years, some successful, others not, that have involved what security officials call “soft” targets, involving murder, abduction, or both. The operations were broadly similar in conception, typically relying on local hired guns. The most significant connection, intelligence officials say, is that the attacks were commissioned by the same contractor: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In Cyprus, authorities believe Iran, which blames Israel for a series of assassinations of nuclear specialists working on the Iranian nuclear program, was trying to signal that it could strike back where Israel least expects it.
“This is a regime that bases its rule on intimidation and violence and espouses violence as a legitimate measure,” David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, said in rare public remarks in September, describing what he said was a recent uptick in violent plots. “It is not spontaneous. It is planned, systematic, state terrorism — strategic terrorism.”
He left out one important detail: It’s working.
That success has come in large part because Europe — the staging ground for most Iranian operations in recent years — has been afraid to make Tehran pay. Since 2015, Iran has carried out about a dozen operations in Europe, killing at least three people and abducting several others, security officials say.
“The Europeans have not just been soft on the Islamic Republic, they’ve been cooperating with them, working with them, legitimizing the killers,” Masih Alinejad, the Iranian-American author and women’s rights activist said, highlighting the continuing willingness of European heads of state to meet with Iran’s leaders.
Alinejad, one of the most outspoken critics of the regime, understands better than most just how far Iran’s leadership is willing to go after narrowly escaping both a kidnapping and assassination attempt.
“If the Islamic Republic doesn’t receive any punishment, is there any reason for them to stop taking hostages or kidnapping or killing?” she said, and then answered: “No.”
Method of first resort
Assassination has been the sharpest instrument in the policy toolbox ever since Brutus and his co-conspirators stabbed Julius Caesar repeatedly. Over the millennia, it’s also proved risky, often triggering disastrous unintended consequences (see the Roman Empire after Caesar’s killing or Europe after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo).
And yet, for both rogue states like Iran, Russia and North Korea, and democracies such as the United States and Israel — the attraction of solving a problem by removing it often proves irresistible.
Even so, there’s a fundamental difference between the two spheres: In the West, assassination remains a last resort (think Osama bin Laden); in authoritarian states, it’s the first (who can forget the 2017 assassination by nerve agent of Kim Jong-nam, the playboy half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, upon his arrival in Kuala Lumpur?). For rogue states, even if the murder plots are thwarted, the regimes still win by instilling fear in their enemies’ hearts and minds.
That helps explain the recent frequency. Over the course of a few months last year, Iran undertook a flurry of attacks from Latin America to Africa. In Colombia, police arrested two men in Bogotá on suspicion they were plotting to assassinate a group of Americans and a former Israeli intelligence officer for $100,000; a similar scene played out in Africa, as authorities in Tanzania, Ghana and Senegal arrested five men on suspicion they were planning attacks on Israeli targets, including tourists on safari; in February of this year, Turkish police disrupted an intricate Iranian plot to kill a 75-year-old Turkish-Israeli who owns a local aerospace company; and in November, authorities in Georgia said they foiled a plan hatched by Iran’s Quds Force to murder a 62-year-old Israeli-Georgian businessman in Tbilisi.
Whether such operations succeed or not, the countries behind them can be sure of one thing: They won’t be made to pay for trying. Over the years, the Russian and Iranian regimes have eliminated countless dissidents, traitors and assorted other enemies (real and perceived) on the streets of Paris, Berlin and even Washington, often in broad daylight. Others have been quietly abducted and sent home, where they faced sham trials and were then hanged for treason.
While there’s no shortage of criticism in the West in the wake of these crimes, there are rarely real consequences. That’s especially true in Europe, where leaders have looked the other way in the face of a variety of abuses in the hopes of reviving a deal to rein in Tehran’s nuclear weapons program and renewing business ties.
Unlike the U.S. and Israel, which have taken a hard line on Iran ever since the mullahs came to power in 1979, Europe has been more open to the regime. Many EU officials make no secret of their ennui with America’s hard-line stance vis-à-vis Iran.
“Iran wants to wipe out Israel, nothing new about that,” the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told POLITICO in 2019 when he was still Spanish foreign minister. “You have to live with it.”
History of assassinations
There’s also nothing new about Iran’s love of assassination.
Indeed, many scholars trace the word “assassin” to Hasan-i Sabbah, a 12th-century Persian missionary who founded the “Order of Assassins,” a brutal force known for quietly eliminating adversaries.
Hasan’s spirit lived on in the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the hardline cleric who led Iran’s Islamic revolution and took power in 1979. One of his first victims as supreme leader was Shahriar Shafiq, a former captain in the Iranian navy and the nephew of the country’s exiled shah. He was shot twice in the head in December 1979 by a masked gunman outside his mother’s home on Rue Pergolèse in Paris’ fashionable 16th arrondissement.
In the years that followed, Iranian death squads took out members and supporters of the shah and other opponents across Europe, from France to Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In most instances, the culprits were never caught. Not that the authorities really needed to look.
In 1989, for example, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, a leader of Iran’s Kurdish minority who supported autonomy for his people, was gunned down along with two associates by Iranian assassins in an apartment in Vienna.
The gunmen took refuge in the Iranian embassy. They were allowed to leave Austria after Iran’s ambassador to Vienna hinted to the government that Austrians in his country might be in danger if the killers were arrested. One of the men alleged to have participated in the Vienna operation would later become one of his country’s most prominent figures: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president from 2005 until 2013.
Not even the bad publicity surrounding that case tempered the regime’s killing spree. In the years that followed, the body count only increased. Some of the murders were intentionally gruesome in order to send a clear message.
Fereydoun Farrokhzad, for example, a dissident Iranian popstar who found exile in Germany, was killed in his home in Bonn in 1992. The killers cut off his genitals, his tongue and beheaded him.
His slaying was just one of dozens in what came to be known as Iran’s “chain murders,” a decade-long killing spree in which the government targeted artists and dissidents at home and abroad. Public outcry over the murder of a trio of prominent writers in 1998, including a husband and wife, forced the regime hard-liners behind the killings to retreat. But only for a time.
Illustration by Joan Wong for POLITICO
Then, as now, the dictatorship’s rationale for such killings has been to protect itself.
“The highest priority of the Iranian regime is internal stability,” a Western intelligence source said. “The regime views its opponents inside and outside Iran as a significant threat to this stability.”
Much of that paranoia is rooted in the Islamic Republic’s own history. Before returning to Iran in 1979, Khomeini spent nearly 15 years in exile, including in Paris, an experience that etched the power of exile into the Islamic Republic’s mythology. In other words, if Khomeini managed to lead a revolution from abroad, the regime’s enemies could too.
Bargaining chips
Given Europe’s proximity to Iran, the presence of many Iranian exiles there and the often-magnanimous view of some EU governments toward Tehran, Europe is a natural staging ground for the Islamic Republic’s terror.
The regime’s intelligence service, known as MOIS, has built operational networks across the Continent trained to abduct and murder through a variety of means, Western intelligence officials say.
As anti-regime protests have erupted in Iran with increasing regularity since 2009, the pace of foreign operations aimed at eliminating those the regime accuses of stoking the unrest has increased.
While several of the smaller-scale assassinations — such as the 2015 hit in the Netherlands on Iranian exile Mohammad-Reza Kolahi — have succeeded, Tehran’s more ambitious operations have gone awry.
The most prominent example involved a 2018 plot to blow up the annual Paris meeting of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an alliance of exile groups seeking to oust the regime. Among those attending the gathering, which attracted tens of thousands, was Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and then-U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyer.
Following a tip from American intelligence, European authorities foiled the plot, arresting six, including a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat who delivered a detonation device and bombmaking equipment to an Iranian couple tasked with carrying out an attack on the rally. Authorities observed the handover at a Pizza Hut in Luxembourg and subsequently arrested the diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, on the German autobahn as he sped back to Vienna, where he enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
Assadi was convicted on terror charges in Belgium last year and sentenced to 20 years is prison. He may not even serve two.
The diplomat’s conviction marked the first time an Iranian operative had been held accountable for his actions by a European court since the Islamic revolution. But Belgium’s courage didn’t last long.
In February, Iran arrested Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele on trumped-up espionage charges and placed him into solitary confinement at the infamous Evin prison in Tehran. Vandecasteele headed the Iran office of the Norwegian Refugee Council, an aid group.
Following reports that Vandecasteele’s health was deteriorating and tearful public pleas from his family, the Belgian government — ignoring warnings from Washington and other governments that it was inviting further kidnappings — relented and laid the groundwork for an exchange to trade Assadi for Vandecasteele. The swap could happen any day.
“Right now, French, Swedish, German, U.K., U.S., Belgian citizens, all innocents, are in Iranian prisons,” said Alinejad, the Iranian women’s rights campaigner.
“They are being used like bargaining chips,” she said. “It works.”
Amateur hour
Even so, the messiness surrounding the Assadi case might explain why most of Iran’s recent operations have been carried out by small-time criminals who usually have no idea who they’re working for. The crew in last year’s Cyprus attack, for example, included several Pakistani delivery boys. While that gives Iran plausible deniability if the perpetrators get caught, it also increases the likelihood that the operations will fail.
“It’s very amateur, but an amateur can be difficult to trace,” one intelligence official said. “They’re also dispensable. They get caught, no one cares.”
Iranian intelligence has had more success in luring dissidents away from Europe to friendly third countries where they are arrested and then sent back to Iran. That’s what happened to Ruhollah Zam, a journalist critical of the regime who had been living in Paris. The circumstances surrounding his abduction remain murky, but what is known is that someone convinced him to travel to Iraq in 2019, where he was arrested and extradited to Iran. He was convicted for agitating against the regime and hanged in December of 2020.
One could be forgiven for thinking that negotiations between Iran and world powers over renewing its dormant nuclear accord (which offered Tehran sanctions relief in return for supervision of its nuclear program) would have tamed its covert killing program. In fact, the opposite occurred.
In July of 2021, U.S. authorities exposed a plot by Iranian operatives to kidnap Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn as part of an elaborate plan that involved taking her by speedboat to a tanker in New York Harbor before spiriting her off to Venezuela, an Iranian ally, and then on to the Islamic Republic.
A year later, police disrupted what the FBI believed was an attempt to assassinate Alinejad, arresting a man with an assault rifle and more than 60 rounds of ammunition who had knocked on her door.
American authorities also say Tehran planned to avenge the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of its feared paramilitary Quds Force who was the target of a U.S. drone strike in 2020, by seeking to kill former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, among other officials.
Through it all, neither the U.S. nor Europe gave up hope for a nuclear deal.
“From the point of view of the Iranians, this is proof that it is possible to separate and maintain a civilized discourse on the nuclear agreement with a deceptive Western appearance, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to plan terrorist acts against senior American officials and citizens,” Barnea, the Mossad chief said. “This artificial separation will continue for as long as the world allows it to.”
Kremlin’s killings
Some hope the growing outrage in Western societies over Iran’s crackdown on peaceful protestors could be the spark that convinces Europe to get tough on Iran. But Europe’s handling of its other favorite rogue actor — Russia — suggests otherwise.
Long before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, much less its all-out war against Ukraine, Moscow, similar to Iran, undertook an aggressive campaign against its enemies abroad and made little effort to hide it.
Russian police investigators stand near the body of killed Russian opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov | Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images
The most prominent victim was Alexander Litvinenko. A former KGB officer like Vladimir Putin, Litvinenko had defected to the U.K., where he joined other exiles opposed to Putin. In 2006, he was poisoned in London by Russian intelligence with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope that investigators concluded was mixed into his tea. The daring operation signaled Moscow’s return to the Soviet-era practice of artful assassination.
Litvinenko died a painful death within weeks, but not before he blamed Putin for killing him, calling the Russian president “barbaric.”
“You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price,” Litvinenko said from his deathbed.
In the end, however, the only one who really paid a price was Litvinenko. Putin continued as before and despite deep tensions in the U.K.’s relationship with Russia over the assassination, it did nothing to halt the transformation of the British capital into what has come to be known as “Londongrad,” a playground and second home for Russia’s Kremlin-backed oligarchs, who critics say use the British financial and legal systems to hide and launder their money.
Litvinenko’s killing was remarkable both for its brutality and audacity. If Putin was willing to take out an enemy on British soil with a radioactive element, what else was he capable of?
It didn’t take long to find out. In the months and years that followed, the bodies started to pile up. Critical journalists, political opponents and irksome oligarchs in the prime of life began dropping like flies.
Europe didn’t blink.
Angela Merkel, then German chancellor, visited Putin in his vacation residence in Sochi just weeks after the murders of Litvinenko and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and said … nothing.
Even after there was no denying Putin’s campaign to eradicate anyone who challenged him, European leaders kept coming in the hope of deepening economic ties.
Neither the assassination of prominent Putin critic Boris Nemtsov just steps away from the Kremlin in 2015, nor the poisoning of a KGB defector and his daughter in the U.K. in 2018 and of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020 with nerve agents disabused European leaders of the notion that Putin was someone they could do business with and, more importantly, control.
‘Anything can happen’
Just how comfortable Russia felt about using Europe as a killing field became clear in the summer of 2019. Around noon on a sunny August day, a Russian assassin approached Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen with Georgian nationality, and shot him twice in the head with a 9mm pistol. The murder took place in a park located just a few hundred meters from Germany’s interior ministry and several witnesses saw the killer flee. He was nabbed within minutes as he was changing his clothes and trying to dispose of his weapon and bike in a nearby canal.
It later emerged that Khangoshvili, a Chechen fighter who had sought asylum in Germany, was on a Russian kill list. Russian authorities considered him a terrorist and accused him of participating in a 2010 attack on the Moscow subway that killed nearly 40 people.
In December of 2019, Putin denied involvement in Khangoshvili’s killing. Sort of. Sitting next to French President Emmanuel Macron, Merkel and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following a round of talks aimed at resolving the conflict in Ukraine, the Russian referred to him as a “very barbaric man with blood on his hands.”
“I don’t know what happened to him,” Putin said. “Those are opaque criminal structures where anything can happen.”
Early on October 19 of last year, Berlin police discovered a dead man on the sidewalk outside the Russian embassy. He was identified as Kirill Zhalo, a junior diplomat at the embassy. He was also the son of General Major Alexey Zhalo, the deputy head of a covert division in Russia’s FSB security service in Moscow that ordered Khangoshvili’s killing. Western intelligence officials believe that Kirill Zhalo, who arrived in Berlin just weeks before the hit on the Chechen, was involved in the operation and was held responsible for its exposure.
The Russian embassy called his death “a tragic accident,” suggesting he had committed suicide by jumping out of a window. Russia refused to allow German authorities to perform an autopsy (such permission is required under diplomatic protocols) and sent his body back to Moscow.
Less than two months later, the Russian hitman who killed Khangoshvili, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Russia recently tried to negotiate his release, floating the possibility of exchanging American basketball player Brittney Griner and another U.S. citizen they have in custody. Washington rejected the idea.
The war in Ukraine offers profound lessons about the inherent risks of coddling dictators.
Though Germany, with its thirst for Russian gas, is often criticized in that regard, it was far from alone in Europe. Europe’s insistence on giving Putin the benefit of the doubt over the years in the face of his crimes convinced him that he would face few consequences in the West for his invasion of Ukraine. That’s turned out to be wrong; but who could blame the Russian leader for thinking it?
Iran presents Europe with an opportunity to learn from that history and confront Tehran before it’s too late. But there are few signs it’s prepared to really get tough. EU officials say they are “considering” following Washington’s lead and designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a vast military organization that also controls much of the Iran’s economy, as a terror organization. Last week, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spearheaded an effort at the United Nations to launch a formal investigation into Iran’s brutal crackdown against the ongoing protests in the country.
Yet even as the regime in Tehran snuffs out enemies and races to fulfil its goal of building both nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach any point on the Continent, some EU leaders appear blind to the wider context as they pursue the elusive renewal of the nuclear accord.
“It is still there,” Borrell said recently of the deal he has taken a leading role in trying to resurrect. “It has nothing to do with other issues, which certainly concern us.”
Forward Marcus Rashford’s second-half double propelled England to a 3-0 win over neighbours Wales, sending them into the World Cup last 16 as Group B winners and ending Welsh hopes of reaching the knockout stage.
The match on Tuesday came to life when Rashford curled home a free kick from the edge of the area in the 50th minute before Phil Foden arrived unmarked at the far post to side foot Harry Kane’s cross into the net a minute later.
Rashford then inflicted a final blow when he cut inside and somehow managed to find the net with a shot that went through the legs of goalkeeper Danny Ward in the 68th minute.
The win moved England to seven points and set up a tie against Senegal in the next round, while Wales finished bottom with one point as their first World Cup in 64 years ended without a victory and only one goal scored in three games.
When: Tuesday, November 29, 10pm local (19:00 GMT)
FIFA rankings: England (5), Wales (19)
If you think the USA vs Iran game will be politically charged, you just wait for this one — which kicks off at the same time as the match between the geopolitical rivals.
The only two non-autonomous countries in this World Cup are neighbours — of the kind where the seat of power of one resides in the other. Since England’s King Edward invaded and colonised Wales in 1282, constructing a “Ring of Iron” of castles to house his occupying army and to project power and control over the Indigenous population, there have been uprisings and rebellions in Wales to wrestle control and return sovereignty to the Welsh.
It is not all ancient history, either. In the 1960s, a valley of Welsh-speaking villages in North Wales was chosen to be flooded, building a reservoir to supply drinking water, not to the people of Wales but to the city of Liverpool.
Musician Dafydd Iwan, one of the founders of Welsh pro-independence party Plaid Cymru, was among dozens of people jailed in the 1970s for Welsh-language activism. Ten years later, he composed Yma o Hyd, a rebel song describing the efforts to destroy Welsh national identity and its language. Its title translates as “We’re still here”, and it now rings out from the terraces when Wales take to the field. The Welsh language was only officially recognised by Westminster’s Parliament in 1993.
This is the first World Cup for which Wales have qualified since 1958. The Welsh football team play with a dragon on their chest. The Welsh rugby team play with the symbol of the prince of Wales on theirs. The title of “prince of Wales”, by the way, is not hereditary, but appointed by the British monarch, ever since Owain Glyndwr, the last Welsh prince of Wales, led a 15-year rebellion against the British monarchy and established an independent parliament for Wales in 1404.
Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles appointed his son William to the role he formerly held. William, Prince of Wales, has announced that, as president of the English Football Association, he will be supporting England at the World Cup. It is no coincidence that the success of the national football team since Euro 2016 — where Wales reached the semi-finals — has coincided with a resurgence in independence sentiment.
But this golden generation, featuring superstar Gareth Bale alongside Joe Allen and Aaron Ramsey, is coming towards the inevitable twilight of their careers. Bale and Ramsey struggle to get game time in the warm climes of Los Angeles and Nice, respectively. Allen is only just back from injury.
Marcus Rashford scored within 49 seconds of coming on as a substitute for England against Iran [Showkat Shafi/Al Jazeera]
The opening draw with the USA, in which Wales were reliant on a Bale penalty, and the loss to Iran, in which a lack of discipline left them exposed defensively, revealed a team scrabbling for composure and cohesion. To qualify now, Wales need to beat England, and hope the USA draw with Iran.
England, meanwhile, are flying high: Euro 2020 finalists, ranked fifth in the world, and considered a serious contender for the title in Qatar. They have practically qualified for the Round of 16 already — only a four-goal margin of defeat at Welsh hands would stop them.
Yet they too have not been as imperious as some had expected. A draw with the USA was not what the tabloids back home were crying out for. But English manager Gareth Southgate — born in Watford, where Welsh manager Robert Page captained the football team in the 1990s — knows that the World Cup is a long tournament and is not won in the group stage.
Headlines howl at the lack of Phil Foden on the pitch, but Southgate knows that he does not need the mercurial Manchester City midfielder to get out of Group B. Foden will make an appearance exactly when England need him.
Harry Kane’s leadership on and off the field is well-known. And he’s not alone. Marcus Rashford, whose campaign for free school meals forced a government U-turn to feed nearly two million children in need, also commands respect. They lead an England attack that includes Jack Grealish, Bukayo Saka and Raheem Sterling — all prodigious talents.
England should win this game; they want that second star on their shirt. For Wales, this World Cup is less about pretensions of grandeur and more about the pride that comes from taking one’s rightful place among a community of nations after so long. And when they come home — whenever that is — the schoolchildren will still be singing Yma o Hyd, “We’re still here”.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said China poses a “systemic” challenge to UK values and interests as his government condemned Beijing after a BBC journalist was beaten while covering Shanghai protests.
In his first major foreign policy speech, Sunak said the so-called “golden era” of UK relations with China was “over, along with the naive idea that trade would automatically lead to social and political reform”.
The United Kingdom would “need to evolve our approach to China” as a result, he said in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, adding that Beijing was “consciously competing for global influence using all the levers of state power”.
“Let’s be clear, the so-called ‘golden era’ is over, along with the naive idea that trade would lead to social and political reform,” Sunak said, a reference to former Finance Minister George Osborne’s description of Sino-British ties in 2015.
His government will prioritise deepening trade and security ties with Indo-Pacific allies, he said, adding that “economics and security are indivisible” in the region.
Some in Sunak’s Conservative Party have been critical of the prime minister, regarding him as less hawkish on China than his predecessor Liz Truss.
While running for the top job against Liz Truss, he promised to get tough on China if he won, calling the Asian superpower the “number one threat” to domestic and global security.
However, a planned meeting between Sunak and China’s President Xi Jinping at this month’s G20 summit in Bali fell through, and last week London banned Chinese-made security cameras from sensitive government buildings.
“We recognise China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that grows more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism,” he said, referring to the BBC statement that one of its journalists had been assaulted by Chinese police.
“Of course, we cannot simply ignore China’s significance in world affairs — to global economic stability or issues like climate change. The US, Canada, Australia, Japan and many others understand this too.”
The speech came as tensions were further strained between the two nations after Ed Lawrence, working in China as an accredited BBC journalist, was arrested at a COVID lockdown demonstration in Shanghai and detained for several hours.
The UK public broadcaster says he was assaulted and kicked by police.
After his release, Lawrence tweeted on Monday to thank his followers, adding he believed “at least one local national was arrested after trying to stop the police from beating me”.
A statement from the BBC on what happened to me in Shanghai last night while doing my job.
I understand at least one local national was arrested after trying to stop the police from beating me.
UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly called the incident “deeply disturbing”.
“Media freedom and freedom to protest must be respected. No country is exempt,” he tweeted.
“Journalists must be able to do their job without intimidation.”
Hundreds of people took to the streets in China’s major cities on Sunday in a rare outpouring of public anger against the state over its dogged commitment to zero COVID.
China’s foreign ministry said on Monday that Lawrence had not identified himself as a journalist.
“Based on what we learned from relevant Shanghai authorities, he did not identify himself as a journalist and didn’t voluntarily present his press credentials,” said Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian.
He told international media to “follow Chinese laws and regulations while in China”.
NATO allies finally agreed earlier this year that China is a “challenge.” What that means is anyone’s guess.
That’s the task now facing officials from NATO’s 30-member sprawl since they settled on the label in June: Turning an endlessly malleable term into an actual plan.
Progress, thus far, has been modest — at best.
At one end, China hawks like the U.S. are trying to converge NATO’s goals with their own desire to constrain Beijing. At the other are China softliners like Hungary who want to engage Beijing. Then there’s a vast and shifting middle: hawks that don’t want to overly antagonize Beijing; softliners that still fret about economic reliance on China.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith insisted the American and NATO strategies can be compatible.
“I see tremendous alignment between the two,” she told POLITICO. But, she acknowledged, translating the alliance’s words into action is “a long and complicated story.”
Indeed, looming over the entire debate is the question of whether China even merits so much attention right now. War is raging in NATO’s backyard. Russia is not giving up its revanchist ambitions.
“NATO was not conceived for operations in the Pacific Ocean — it’s a North Atlantic alliance,” said Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, in a recent interview with POLITICO.
“Certainly one can consider other threats and challenges,” he added. “But [for] the time being, don’t you think that we have enough threats and challenges on the traditional scenario of NATO?”
The issue will be on the table this week in Bucharest, where foreign ministers from across the alliance will sign off on a new report about responding to China. While officials have agreed on several baseline issues, the talks will still offer a preview of the tough debates expected to torment NATO for years, especially given China’s anticipated move to throttle Taiwan — the semi-autonomous island the U.S. has pledged to defend.
“Now,” said one senior European diplomat, “the ‘so what’ is not easy.”
30 allies, 30 opinions
NATO’s “challenge” label for China — which came at an annual summit in Madrid — is a seemingly innocuous word that still represented an unprecedented show of Western unity against Beijing’s rise.
In a key section of the alliance’s new strategic blueprint, leaders wrote that “we will work together responsibly, as Allies, to address the systemic challenges” that China poses to the military alliance.
It was, in many ways, a historic moment, hinting at NATO’s future and reflecting deft coordination among 30 members that have long enjoyed vastly different relationships with Beijing.
The U.S. has driven much of the effort to draw NATO’s attention to China, arguing the alliance must curtail Beijing’s influence, reduce dependencies on the Asian power and invest in its own capabilities. Numerous allies have backed this quest, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Lithuania and the Czech Republic.
China is “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,” the U.S. wrote in its own national security strategy released last month.
NATO is a wide-ranging alliance | Denis Doyle/Getty Images
But NATO is a wide-ranging alliance. Numerous eastern European countries lean toward these hawks but want to keep the alliance squarely focused on the Russian threat. Some are wary of angering China, and the possibility of pushing Beijing further into Moscow’s arms. Meanwhile, a number of western European powers fret over China’s role in sensitive parts of the Western economy but still want to maintain economic links.
Now the work is on to turn these disparate sentiments into something usable.
“There is a risk that we endlessly debate the adjectives that we apply here,” said David Quarrey, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to NATO.
“We are very focused on practical implementation,” he told POLITICO in an interview. “I think that’s where the debate needs to go here — and I think we are making progress with that.”
For Quarrey and Smith, the U.S. ambassador, that means getting NATO to consider several components: building more protections in cyberspace, a domain China is seeking to dominate; preparing to thwart attacks on the infrastructure powering society, a Western vulnerability Russia has exposed; and ensuring key supply chains don’t run through China.
Additionally, Quarrey said, NATO must also deepen “even further” its partnerships with regional allies like Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
While NATO allies can likely broadly agree on goals like boosting cyber defenses, there’s some grumbling about the ramifications of pivoting to Asia.
The U.S. “wants as much China as possible to make NATO relevant to China-minded Washingtonians,” the senior European diplomat said. But, this person added, it is “not clear where NATO really adds value.”
And the U.K., the diplomat argued, is pressing NATO on China because it is “in need of some multilateral framework after Brexit.”
Perhaps most importantly, a turn to China raises existential questions about Europe’s own security. Currently, Europe is heavily reliant on U.S. security guarantees, U.S. troops stationed locally and U.S. arms suppliers.
“An unspoken truth is that to reinforce Taiwan,” the European diplomat said, the U.S. would not be “in a position to reinforce permanently in Europe.”
Europeans, this person said, “have to face the music and do more.”
Compromise central
Smith, the U.S. ambassador, realizes different perspectives on China persist within NATO.
The upcoming report on China therefore hits the safer themes, like defending critical infrastructure. While some diplomats had hoped for a more ambitious report, Smith insisted she was satisfied. The U.S. priority, she said, is to formally get the work started.
“We could argue,” she said, about “the adjectives and the way in which some of those challenges are described. But what was most important for the United States was that we were able to get all of those workstreams in the report.”
But even that is a baby step on the long highway ahead for NATO. Agreeing to descriptions and areas of work is one thing, actually doing that work is another.
“We’re still not doing much,” said a second senior European diplomat. “It’s still a report describing what areas we need to work on — there’s a lot in front of us.”
Among the big questions that remain unanswered: How could China be integrated into NATO’s defense planning? How would NATO backfill the U.S. support that currently goes to Europe if some of it is redirected to Asia? Will European allies offer Taiwan support in a crisis scenario?
Western capitals’ unyielding support for Kyiv — and the complications the war has created — is also being closely watched as countries game plan for a potential military showdown in the Asia-Pacific.
Asked last month whether the alliance would respond to an escalation over Taiwan, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told POLITICO that “the main ambition is, of course, to prevent that from happening,” partly by working more closely with partners in the area.
Smith similarly demurred when asked about the NATO role if a full-fledged confrontation breaks out over Taiwan — a distinct possibility given Beijing’s stated desire to reunify the island with the mainland.
Instead, Smith pointed to how Pacific countries had backed Ukraine half a world away during the current war, saying “European allies have taken note.”
She added: “I think it’s triggered some questions about, should other scenarios unfold in the future, how would those Atlantic and Pacific allies come together again, to defend the core principles of the [United Nations] Charter.”
VERONA, Italy — Early season merrymakers sipping mulled wine and shopping for holiday decorations packed the Verona Christmas market for its inaugural weekend. But beyond the wooden market stalls, the Italian city still has not decked out its granite-clad pedestrian streets with twinkling holiday lights as officials debate how bright to make the season during an energy crisis.
In cities across Europe, officials are wrestling with a choice as energy prices have gone up because of Russia’s war in Ukraine: Dim Christmas lighting to send a message of energy conservation and solidarity with citizens squeezed by higher utility bills and inflation, while protecting public coffers. Or let the lights blaze in a message of defiance after two years of pandemic-suppressed Christmas seasons, illuminating cities with holiday cheer that retailers hope will loosen people’s purse strings.
“If they take away the lights, they might as well turn off Christmas,” said Estrella Puerto, who sells traditional Spanish mantillas, or women’s veils, in a small store in Granada, Spain, and says Christmas decorations draw business.
Fewer lights are sparkling from the centerpiece tree at the famed Strasbourg Christmas market, which attracts 2 million people every year, as the French city seeks to reduce public energy consumption by 10% this year.
From Paris to London, city officials are limiting hours of holiday illumination, and many have switched to more energy-efficient LED lights or renewable energy sources. London’s Oxford Street shopping district hopes to cut energy consumption by two-thirds by limiting the illumination of its lights to 3-11 p.m. and installing LED bulbs.
“Ecologically speaking, it’s the only real solution,’’ said Paris resident Marie Breguet, 26, as she strolled the Champs-Elysees, which is being lit up only until 11:45 p.m., instead of 2 a.m. as in Christmases past. “The war and energy squeeze is a reality. No one will be hurt with a little less of the illuminations this year.”
It’s lights out along Budapest’s Andrassy Avenue, often referred to as Hungary’s Champs-Elysees, which officials decided would not be bathed in more than 2 kilometers (1.5 miles) of white lights as in years past. Lighting also is being cut back on city landmarks, including bridges over the Danube River.
“Saving on decorative lighting is about the fact that we are living in times when we need every drop of energy,’’ said Budapest’s deputy mayor, Ambrus Kiss.
He doesn’t think economizing on lighting will dissuade tourists from coming to the city, which holds two Christmas markets that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
“I think it’s an overblown debate,’’ he said.
Festive lights, composed of LEDs this year, also will be dimmed from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. in the old city center of Brasov in central Romania and switched off elsewhere, officials said.
The crisis, largely spurred by Russia cutting off most natural gas to Europe, is sparking innovation. In the Italian mountain town of Borno, in Lombardy, cyclists will provide power to the town’s Christmas tree by fueling batteries with kinetic energy. Anyone can hop on, and the faster they pedal, the brighter the lights. No holiday lighting will be put up elsewhere in town to raise awareness about energy conservation, officials said.
In Italy, many cities traditionally light Christmas trees in public squares on Dec. 8, the Assumption holiday, still allowing time to come up with plans for festive street displays. Officials in the northern city of Verona are discussing limiting lighting to just a few key shopping streets and using the savings to help needy families.
“In Verona, the atmosphere is there anyway,’’ said Giancarlo Peschiera, whose shop selling fur coats overlooks Verona’s Piazza Bra, where officials on Saturday will light a huge shooting star arching from the Roman-era Arena amphitheater into the square.
The city also will put up a Christmas tree in the main piazza and a holiday cake maker has erected light-festooned trees in three other spots.
“We can do without the lights. There are the Christmas stalls, and shop windows are decked for the holidays,” Peschiera said.
After two Christmases under COVID-19 restrictions, some are calling “bah humbug” on conservation efforts.
“It’s not Christmas all year round,’’ said Parisian Alice Betout, 39. “Why can’t we just enjoy the festive season as normal, and do the (energy) savings the rest of the year?”
The holiday will shine brightly in Germany, where the year-end season is a major boost to retailers and restaurants. Emergency cutbacks announced this fall specifically exempted religious lighting, “in particular Christmas,’’ even as environmental activists called for restraint.
“Many yards look like something out of an American Christmas film,’’ grumbled Environmental Action Germany.
In Spain, the northwestern port city of Vigo is not letting the energy crisis get in the way of its tradition of staging the country’s most extravagant Christmas light display. Ahead of other cities, Vigo switched on the light show Nov. 19 in what has become a significant tourist attraction.
Despite the central government urging cities to reduce illuminations, this year’s installation is made up of 11 million LED lights across more than 400 streets — 30 more than last year and far more than any other Spanish city. In a small contribution to energy savings, they will remain on for one hour less each day.
The lights are Mayor Abel Caballero’s pet project. “If we didn’t celebrate Christmas, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin would win,” he said.
Caballero says the economic return is vital, both for commerce and for businesses in Vigo. Hotels in the city and the surrounding area were completely full for the launch of the lighting and are expected to be close to 100% every week.
Germany’s Christmas markets have crunched numbers that could make any lighting Grinch’s heart grow at least three sizes.
The market exhibitor’s association said a family Christmas market visit consumes less energy than staying home. A family of four spending an hour to cook dinner on an electric stove, streaming a two-hour film, running a video console and lighting the kids’ rooms would use 0.711 kilowatt-hour per person vs. 0.1 to 0.2 kilowatt-hour per person to stroll a Christmas market.
“If people stay at home, they don’t sit in the corner in the dark,’’ said Frank Hakelberg, managing director of the German Showmen’s Association. “The couch potatoes use more energy than when they are out at a Christmas market.”
———
Associated Press reporters Thomas Adamson in Paris; David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany; Ciaran Gilles in Madrid; Justin Spike in Budapest; Giovanna Dell’Orto in Granada, Spain; Courtney Bonnell in London; and Stephen McGrath in Brasov, Romania, contributed.
Hikvision, a leading Chinese surveillance company, has denied suggestions that it poses a threat to Britain’s national security after the UK government banned the use of its camera systems at “sensitive” sites.
The restrictions, announced Thursday, will prevent authorities from installing technology that is produced by companies subject to China’sNational Intelligence Law, which requires Chinese citizens and organizations to cooperate with the country’s intelligence and security services.
In a statement to CNN Business on Friday, Hikvision said it was “categorically false to represent Hikvision as a threat to national security.”
The company said it was hoping to engage with UK officials“urgently” to understand the decision, and had previously spoken with the UK government to clear up what it saw as misunderstandings about its business.
“Hikvision is an equipment manufacturer that has no visibility into end users’ video data,” the Hangzhou-based company said. “Hikvision cannot access end users’ video data and cannot transmit data from end-users to third parties. We do not manage end-user databases, nor do we sell cloud storage in the UK.”
In a statement to the UK parliament on Thursday, Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Dowden said that after a security review, government departments had been instructed to stop deploying equipment produced by companies that are subject to the National Intelligence Law.
Dowden cited “the threat to the UK and the increasing capability and connectivity of these systems,” without specifying further.
Government departments have also been advised toconsider whether to “remove and replace such equipment where it is deployed on sensitive sites rather than awaiting any scheduled upgrades,” he said. The minister added that departments could review whether sites not deemed sensitive should also be taking similar measures.
The move comes months after UK lawmakers called for a ban on technology by Hikvision and Dahua, another Chinese surveillance camera maker, citing allegations that the firms had been involved in enabling human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
The United States in 2019 placed Hikvision and other Chinese companies on a trade blacklist, prohibiting them from importing US technology over similar allegations.
In a statement released in July by Big Brother Watch, a British nonprofit group that investigates the use of surveillance systems, 67 members of the UK parliament said the Chinese companies should be prohibited from selling their products in the country.
Big Brother Watch said at the time that it had “found that the majority of public bodies use CCTV cameras made by Hikvision or Dahua, including 73% of councils across the UK, 57% of secondary schools in England, 6 out of 10 National Health Service Trusts, as well as UK universities and police forces.”
Earlier this year, a UK health minister disclosed that there were 82 Hikvision products in use in his department.
Hikvision, in its statement, said its cameras were compliant with UK laws and “subject to strict security requirements.”
Dahua did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Britain’s cost-of-living crisis is already taking the shine off Black Friday. Now, the annual shopping bonanza faces an additional threat from strikes that could disrupt deliveries, subdue online sales and deliver another blow to the slumping economy.
Some 235,000 workers have gone on strike across the United Kingdom this week, encompassing schools, universities and the postal service. Workers are demanding better pay and working conditions as they struggle with soaring food and energy bills.
Strike action by as many as 115,000 Royal Mail staff on Thursday and Friday threatens to disrupt Black Friday sales and deliveries at a crucial time of the year for retailers.
Small businesses in particular are suffering “enormous damage” as a result of the postal strikes, as they “rely on an efficient mail service for so much of their trade,” according to a statement posted to LinkedIn and signed by Murray Lambell, eBay
(EBAY) UK general manager, Martin McTague, chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, and Michelle Ovens, founder of campaign group Small Business Britain.
Postal workers are planning further strike action for November 30 and December 1, following walkouts in August and September.
“Customers should expect delays to items posted just before, during or just after strike action,” Royal Mail said in a statement.
Strikes have swept the United Kingdom this year, as workers grapple with a worsening cost-of-living crisis and an economy that is sliding into a recession. Wages have stagnated and failed to keep pace with inflation, now at a 41-year high, setting the stage for clashes between employers and employees.
Those clashes have already caused widespread disruption, including to train travel, and are now spreading to even more sectors, such as education and healthcare.
More than 70,000 university workers went on strike over pay, working conditions and pensions on Thursday and Friday at 150 universities across the United Kingdom.
The strike is the biggest in the history of British higher education, affecting over 2.5 million students, according to the University and College Union, which organized the strike. Another strike is planned for November 30.
In Scotland, every school on the mainland was shut Thursday after walkouts by as many as 50,000 teachers in the first day of national strike action over pay in almost 40 years, according to the Educational Institute of Scotland, a trade union.
Meanwhile, the Royal College of Nursing, which has more than 300,000 members, said Friday that nurses would hold a strike on two days in December — the first in the union’s 106-year history — in support of its call for higher pay.Unison, a labor union representing nearly half a million health service workers, will complete its own strike ballot on Friday.
According to the Office for National Statistics, 356,000 days were lost to strike action in August, not far off the previous high recorded in July 2014, when 386,000 days were lost. That number dipped to 205,000 in September.
But the picture could get worse again before it gets better, with disruption stretching beyond Black Friday and well into the holiday season. Strike action will also add to losses facing companies and could prompt further job cuts.
RMT, Britain’s largest transport union, on Tuesday announced four 48-hour strikes in December and January after talks with Network Rail collapsed. Network Rail’s chief negotiator, Tim Shoveller said that striking makes the “precarious financial hole” in which the company finds itself bigger and “the task of finding a resolution ever more difficult.”
Drivers for Best Food Logistics, who deliver fresh food to restaurants including KFC, Burger King and Pizza Hut, have also voted to strike, according to a statement fromtheGMB Union on Thursday. No dates have yet been announced and a company spokesperson told CNN Business it is committed to “reach a way forward.”
The Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents striking postal workers, has announced additional walkouts on December 9, 11, 14, 15, 23 and 24, which could jeopardize Christmas deliveries. Royal Mail says it has not yet been formally notified of these dates.
Relations between the company and the union have deteriorated after they failed to reach an agreement on pay and changes to working terms and conditions during talks lasting seven months.
According to Royal Mail CEO Simon Thompson, the strikes have added £100 million ($121.3 million) to Royal Mail’s losses so far this year and could lead to further job cuts on top of 10,000 already announced.
“The CWU’s planned strike action is holding Christmas to ransom for our customers, businesses and families across the country, and is putting their own members’ jobs at risk,” Thompson said in a statement.
Also on Friday, thousands of Amazon
(AMZN) warehouse workers plan to take part in protests and strikes in around 30 countries, including the United States, Britain, Japan, India, Australia, France, Germany and South Africa, according to UNI Global Union.
This is the third year that the Make Amazon Pay campaign has organized a global day of action on Black Friday. Protests due to take place between shifts at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry, England on Friday evening are not expected to affect Black Friday deliveries.
Two European chip deals have run into trouble over their links with China, a sign of concern spreading in the West over potential Chinese control of critical infrastructure.
Last week, the new owner of Britain’s biggest chipmaker was ordered to unwind its takeover, just days after another chip factory sale was blocked in Germany. Both transactions were hit by national security concerns, and had involved acquisitions by Chinese-owned companies.
In the United Kingdom, Nexperia, a Dutch subsidiary of Shanghai-listed semiconductor maker Wingtech, was told by the government to sell at least 86% of its stake in Newport Wafer Fab, more than a year after taking control of the factory. Staffers have since been protesting the decision, saying it puts nearly 600 jobs at risk.
In Germany, the economic ministry barred Elmos Semiconductor, an automotive chipmaker, from selling its factory in the city of Dortmund to Silex, a Swedish subsidiary of China’s Sai Microelectronics.
Chipmaking was already emerging as a new front in US-China tensions. Now the two troubled deals illustrate how the pressure is also rising in Europe, particularly as Western officials face calls for key sectors to be kept out of Chinese control.
“These decisions mark a shift towards tougher stances regarding Chinese investment in critical industries in Europe,” said Xiaomeng Lu, director of geo‑technology at Eurasia Group.
“US pressure definitely contributed to these decisions. [A] growing sense of technology sovereignty also likely prompted these moves — governments around the world are increasingly [viewing the] semiconductors industry as a strategic resource and seek to protect them from foreign takeovers.”
Legal experts said the two decisions were notable because each deal was initially thought to have been cleared.
The Newport Wafer case is “the first completed acquisition” that needs to be unwound under a UK national security and investment (NSI) act, which took full effect in January, according to Ian Giles, head of antitrust and competition for Europe, the Middle East and Asia for Norton Rose.
Nexperia said last week that it was “shocked” by the decision, and that “the UK government chose not to enter into a meaningful dialogue with Nexperia or even visit the Newport site.”
The company added that it had offered to avoid “activities of potential concern, and to provide the UK government with direct control and participation in the management of Newport,” a 28-acre site in south Wales.
The factory makes silicon wafers, the basis for making computer chips. Many of its products eventually power cars and medical equipment. Nexperia has indicated that workers at the facility now face an uncertain future.
In an open letter to the UK government last Thursday, the Nexperia Newport Staff Association said that it was “in disbelief” that employees’ livelihoods had been “put in jeopardy in the run-up to Christmas.”
“This is clearly a deeply political decision,” the group wrote, rejecting the idea that the deal would undermine British security. “You must see sense and protect our jobs by allowing Nexperia to keep their Newport factory.”
For Elmos, German authorities had initially indicated that they would issue a conditional approval, and even shared a draft approval after an intense review process lasting about 10 months, the company said in a statement following the injunction.
Tim Schaper, head of antitrust and competition for Germany at Norton Rose, said government intervention was also significant given that “Elmos’ technology is said to be quite old, state of the art in the 1990s, and allegedly not of great industrial importance.”
“The transaction became the plaything of a public debate about Chinese investors’ acquiring stakes in key German technologies,” he said.
It’s possible that regulators were concerned about an outflow of technical know how, according to Alexander Rinne, the Munich-based head of international law firm Milbank’s European antitrust practice.
“Elmos is known for making chips for the automotive sector, which is Germany’s core industry and the pride of the country,” he said in an interview.
Elmos and Nexperia both declined interview requests. A Nexperia spokesperson told CNN Business on Tuesday that it was “considering its options regarding the UK government’s decision.”
Chips are a growing source of tension between the United States and China. Washington has declared a shortage of the materials a national security issue, and highlighted the importance of remaining competitive in advanced technology capabilities.
This year, the United States ramped up its own restrictions and pressed allies to enact their own, according to Lu. In August, the US government ordered two top chipmakers, Nvidia
(NVDA) and AMD
(AMD), to halt exports of certain high-performance chips to China.
Two months later, the Biden administration unveiled sweeping export controls that banned Chinese companies from buying advanced chips and chip-making equipment without a license. The rules also restricted the ability of American citizens or US green card holders to provide support for the development or production of chips at certain manufacturing facilities in China.
The pressure is mounting. On Monday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged the West to “be careful not to create new dependencies” on China. Speaking at a NATO parliamentary assembly in Madrid, Stoltenberg said he was seeing “growing Chinese efforts” to control Western critical infrastructure, supply chains, and key industrial sectors.
“We cannot give authoritarian regimes any chance to exploit our vulnerabilities and undermine us,” he said.
China has pushed back on the handling of the two European semiconductor cases.
“We firmly oppose the UK’s move, and call on the UK to respect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and provide a fair, just, and (a) non-discriminatory business environment,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning told a press briefing last Friday when asked about the Newport Wafer order. “The UK has overstretched the concept of national security and abused state power.”
Zhao Lijian, another Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, called on Germany and other countries to “refrain from politicizing normal economic and trade cooperation” at a press conference earlier this month, without addressing Elmos specifically.
Germany has shown greater scrutiny of Chinese buyers this year. Last month, a bid by Chinese state shipping giant Cosco for a stake in a Hamburg port terminal operator sparked similar controversy. Under pressure from some members of the government, the size of the investment was later limited.
Attorneys say if the chipmakers appeal, they could face an uncertain battle that may drag on for years.
In each case, they would need to file a challenge in court within roughly a month of regulators’ decisions, barring exceptional circumstances, according to Norton Rose.
Both Britain and Germany have recently added rules that expand government oversight over such decisions, making outcomes harder to predict. In Germany, a change to foreign direct investment rules in 2020 meant the government can intervene in prospective deals “if there is a ‘probable impairment of public order and security,’” said Schaper.
Previously, by contrast, it could only impose restrictions “if there was an ‘actual, sufficiently serious threat to public order and security,’” he told CNN Business.
In the UK, the ability of the government to retroactively review deals under the NSI Act “was really something that was considered surprising and far-reaching,” said Andrea Hamilton, a London-based partner at Milbank.
“If challenged, as Nexperia apparently intends, it will also become a test case as to [the] extent of the NSI Act’s limits,” she said.
Elsewhere, attention is shifting to the Netherlands. The Dutch government is currently facing pressure from the United States to limit exports to China, particularly from ASML
(ASML), a semiconductor equipment maker that holds a dominant position in the lithography machine market, according to Lu at Eurasia Group.
“It will become the next case study,” she told CNN Business.
The Netherlands has made clear it will form its own position.
Asked about the issue this month, Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade Liesje Schreinemacher said the country would “not copy the US export restrictions for China one-to-one.”
“We make our own assessment,” she said in an interview with Dutch newspaper NRC.
— CNN’s Zahid Mahmood, Rose Roobeek-Coppack and Laura He contributed to this report.
After six years of chaos and recrimination since Britons voted to leave the European Union, there are signs the country is showing an unexpected outbreak of common sense in its approach to the bloc.
In his first weeks in office, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — a Brexiteer himself — has sent clear signals that he wants a more constructive relationship with Brussels and Paris, and to avoid a trade war with Britain’s biggest economic partner.
Gone are the nationalist bombast of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the sheer havoc wrought by his successor Liz Truss crashing the economy in pursuit of a Brexit dividend. Instead, they have both given way to a sudden burst of pragmatism, as Sunak is seeking practical solutions to festering problems.
This change in outlook may be partly due to the realization that Europe needs to stand united in the face of a threat to its common security from Russian President Vladimir Putin — although that hadn’t stopped Johnson from bragging about how leaving the EU had supposedly freed the United Kingdom to be more supportive of Ukraine than France or Germany.
It may also be due to the dire economic straits Britain is in after the collapse of Truss’ short-lived experiment for a deregulated, low-tax Singapore-on-the-Thames. Or, perhaps, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s hard line on any EU deal with the U.K. has had a sobering effect. As may have the shift in British public opinion, which now thinks leaving the bloc was a mistake by a margin of 56 percent to 32 percent.
For whatever reason, it is a welcome start.
In just three weeks, Sunak has signed up to an EU defense initiative to make it easier to move armed forces around the Continent, he’s acted to improve Britain’s relations with Ireland, and he’s created political space for a possible compromise on the vexed issue of trade with Northern Ireland, which has bedeviled relations with Brussels since the U.K.’s exit from the EU.
At their first meeting, Sunak told United States President Joe Biden that he wants to have a negotiated settlement on the Northern Ireland Protocol in place by next April — the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday peace agreement. So, sustained pressure from Washington is starting to pay off as well.
The prime minister has also sought to thaw frosty relations with France, clinching an agreement with Paris to clamp down on migrants crossing the Channel from northern France in small boats. Europe’s only two nuclear powers have now agreed to hold their first bilateral summit since 2018 early next year, focusing on strengthening defense cooperation.
To be fair, after saying “the jury is still out” on whether Macron was a friend or foe of the U.K., Truss had already taken a symbolic first step toward reconciliation by agreeing to attend the first meeting of the European Political Community last month. The geopolitical grouping was dreamed up by Macron to bring the entire European family together — except Russia and Belarus.
What’s more, the torrent of Europe-bashing rhetoric from Conservative ministers has almost dried up — at least for now. Suddenly, making nice with the neighbors is back in fashion, if only to ensure they don’t turn the lights off on the U.K. by cutting energy exports when supplies get tight this winter.
The tone of contrition adopted by Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, once the hardest of Brexit hardliners, was one of the most striking signals of this new humility. “I recognize in my own determination and struggle to get the U.K. out of the European Union that I caused a great deal of inconvenience and pain and difficulty,” he told Ireland’s RTÉ radio recently. “Some of our actions were not very respectful of Ireland’s legitimate interests. And I want to put that right.”
Meanwhile, encouragingly, Sunak is reportedly considering deprioritizing a bill by ousted Brexit ideologue Jacob Rees-Mogg to review, reform or automatically scrap some 2,400 retained EU laws, standards and regulations by the end of 2023 — a massive bureaucratic exercise that has rattled business confidence and angered almost everyone. The prime minister now seems receptive to pleas from business to give the review much more time and avoid a regulatory vacuum.
A bonfire of EU rules would inevitably provoke new trade tensions with Brussels — and at a time when the Office of Budget Responsibility, Britain’s independent fiscal watchdog, has just confirmed the growth-shredding damage inflicted by Brexit.
This isn’t the end of Britain’s traumatic rupture with the bloc. Just how neuralgic the issue remains was highlighted when earlier this week, Sunak had to deny reports that senior government figures were considering a Swiss-style relationship with the EU to ensure frictionless trade. He vowed there would be no alignment with EU rules on his watch.
To paraphrase Churchill, it may not even be the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Puncturing the illusion of a deregulated fiscal paradise fueled by borrowing without new revenue has had a sobering effect on the U.K. — offering Sunak a political window of opportunity to start fixing EU ties. After all, the Conservative Party can’t afford to defenestrate yet another prime minister after Theresa May, Johnson and Truss, can it?
But beyond the conciliatory tone, the real test still lies ahead.
Sunak will have to confront the hard-line Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to push through any compromise with the EU on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
As the province remains part of the EU single market under the withdrawal treaty, any such deal is bound to involve some customs checks in Northern Ireland on goods arriving from Great Britain — even if they are scaled down from the original plan. It’s also bound to involve a role for the Court of Justice of the European Union as the ultimate arbiter of EU law. Both are anathema to the DUP.
But securing such an agreement would at least open the door to a calmer, more cooperative and sustainable relationship between London and Brussels.
Europe, the world’s biggest consumer of chocolate, and West Africa, the leading grower of the cocoa beans used to make it, share a common goal to make the sector sustainable.
But they have opposing views on how to put an end to the social, economic and environmental harms caused by satisfying Europe’s sweet tooth, heralding a showdown over who will bear the costs of complying: Big Chocolate or cocoa farmers.
The EU is finalizing regulations that seek to ensure that chocolate entering the market is free from deforestation and child labor. At the same time, Ghana and Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producers, are demanding higher prices. That’s vital, they say, to make sustainable chocolate a possibility — and not a pipe dream.
The stakes are high: For the EU, cocoa is a test case for how companies and producers react when the bloc tries to impose higher standards. For producers, the push to set up a cartel could drive up prices in the short term — but also risks stimulating oversupply and ultimately causing a price crash that would deepen the poverty already suffered by most cocoa farmers. Chocolate makers, facing rising costs and greater scrutiny, may reroute supply chains to other cocoa-producing countries seen as less risky.
Doing nothing is not an option, said Alex Assanvo, who heads the joint West African initiative to support cocoa prices.
“We are not asking to pay them more, we are asking to pay them a fair price,” Assanvo told POLITICO in an interview. “If we believe that this is going to create oversupply, well then I don’t know, maybe we should stop eating chocolate.”
Bittersweet taste
Chocolate may be sweet but the industry that makes it is not. Most of the beans used to produce the world’s supply are grown by impoverished West African farmers; all too often from trees planted on deforested land and harvested by children. One problem drives the others. Poverty pushes farmers to chop down forests to produce more beans and profits and to put children to work as they cannot afford to pay wages to adult laborers.
To address this, Ghana and Ivory Coast, which produce 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, formed an export cartel in 2019 modeled on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). They introduced a $400 per ton Living Income Differential, which aims to bring the floor price up enough to cover the cost of production.
In public, big chocolate manufacturers and traders, including Barry Callebaut, Cargill, Ferrero, Hersey, Lindt, Mars, Mondelez and Nestlé, welcomed the initiative.
Yet behind the scenes many of the firms — which between them account for about 90 percent of the industry’s $130 billion in annual profits — have done everything possible to avoid paying the premium and to drive prices back down, according to the Ivorian Coffee-Cocoa Council (CCC), the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) and their joint Initiative Cacao Ivory Coast-Ghana (ICCIG).
The companies that responded to requests for comment from POLITICO said that they have paid the Living Income Differential (LID) since its introduction. The Ghanian and Ivorian trade boards and the ICCIG claim, however, that they have negated the LID’s value by forcing down a different premium, the origin differential.
Fed up, these countries boycotted the World Cocoa Foundation Partnership Meeting at the end of October in Brussels. They then gave the companies a deadline: commit to the premiums by November 20 or the countries would ban their buyers from visiting fields to carry out harvest forecasts and suspend their Corporate Social Responsibility programs – which sell well with ethically-minded consumers.
More harm than good?
Another proposed remedy comes from Brussels. Cocoa is one of the products to which the new EU legislation on due diligence — Brussels speak for supply-chain oversight and compliance — would apply.
Under this, large firms operating in the bloc will be forced to evaluate their global supply chains for human rights and environmental abuses, and compensate injured parties. In theory, this should reduce deforestation and child labor and improve the lot of farmers.
Yet, as European ambassadors thrash out the terms — and big players like France push for them to be watered down — concerns are growing that the legislation could turn out at best to be ineffective in practice, and at worst do more harm than good.
Cocoa farmers, and the NGOs that support them, have reason to be skeptical: Back in 2000, a BBC documentary exposed the widespread use of child labor on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast and Ghana. The resulting media pressure led to a proposal for legislation in the United States forcing companies to certify chocolate bars free of child labor.
Companies pushed back hard, Antonie Fountain, managing director of cocoa NGO coalition The Voice Network, told POLITICO. The proposal was dropped and companies committed instead to a voluntary plan to solve child labor, he explained: “And that turned into a two-decade failure of policy.”
The resulting patchwork of pilot projects failed to transform the sector. Despite an initial decline, nearly 20 years after the framework was introduced 790,000 children in Ivory Coast and 770,000 in Ghana are still working in cocoa, with 95 percent of them exposed to the worst forms of child labor, according to a 2020 report.
Deforestation has meanwhile accelerated.
Ivory Coast has lost up to 90 percent of its forest in the last half century. Between 2000 and 2019 alone 2.4 million hectares of forest was cleared for cocoa farms, representing 45 percent of the total deforestation and forest degradation in the country, according to Trase, a data-driven transparency initiative.
The government’s attempts to safeguard what remains are half-hearted and often undermined by corruption: In 2019 a quarter of Ivory Coast’s cocoa production was in protected areas and forest reserves, the Trase study found. This left the EU exposed to 838,000 hectares of deforestation from Ivorian cocoa. Commodity trader Cargill leads the pack, according to Trase, with its 2019 exports exposed to 183,000 hectares of deforestation.
Over the last decade companies have proposed corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives that aim to tackle both ills. For instance, Mondelez, the maker of Cadbury and Toblerone, recently committed $600 million to tackle deforestation and forced labor in cocoa-producing countries, bringing its total funding for environmental and social issues to $1 billion since 2010.
These sums are, however, puny by comparison with the profits earned by those firms, said Fountain. Mondelez returned $2.5 billion to investors in the first half of 2022.
Mondelez is “excited” about its investments, the firm said in a statement. But it is calling for more sector-wide actions and rethinking its incentive model. Cargill did not respond to a request for comment.
Social responsibility
The big numbers that companies cite about their CSR programs’ reach often boil down to one-off training sessions on productivity for farmers, Uwe Gneiting, senior researcher at Oxfam, told POLITICO. This was the case for 98 percent of the 400 farmers interviewed for research recently carried out by Gneiting and others from the charity into the impact of sustainability programs over the last decade in Ghana on farmers’ incomes.
The research finds that CSR initiatives, which companies use to tout their sustainability credentials to European consumers, have not meaningfully increased farmers’ productivity or profits, pointed out Gneiting. In fact, farmers end up shouldering the associated costs, because companies offer the training but do not pay for extra labor or the fertilizer that farmers need to put it into action.
Instead, Ghanian and Ivorian farmers have been hammered by the soaring cost of production and of living over the last three years, finds the new Oxfam research. Fertilizer costs have increased by more than 200 percent, said Gneiting, along with labor and transportation costs. That in turn has contributed to a decline in yields that have also been hurt by climate change, with weather patterns becoming increasingly unpredictable.
All of this has meant incomes have declined close to 20 percent since 2019, said Gneiting, which for farmers already living on the poverty line is “existential.” The decline would have been much worse, he added, if it hadn’t been for the Living Income Differential. Nonetheless, 90 percent of the farmers interviewed say they are worse off than three years ago.
Over the same period, as cocoa prices have fallen, companies have made “windfall gains,” said Isaac Gyamfi, director of Solidaridad West Africa. “The raw material became cheaper for them. But the price of chocolate didn’t change.”
Can Brussels sort it out?
To what extent the new due diligence directive will make a difference depends on the final text that was put to a meeting of EU trade ministers on Friday.
When the European Commission first came up with the draft it was seen as a game changer, but subsequent wrangling over the regulation’s scope has raised doubts. Last week, ambassadors from France, Spain, Italy and some smaller countries voted down the text in the European Council, seeing the value chain and civil liability provisions as too wide and too ambitious.
Two-thirds of Ivorian cocoa is exported to the EU and the U.K. | Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images
A European diplomat told POLITICO that France supported the proposed directive “very strongly,” and its view that it was important to concentrate on the “upstream” part of the supply chain was shared by a majority of EU member countries.
NGOs take the view that, while it’s positive that the EU is proposing broad legislation, there is a risk that it ends up replicating the mistakes that undermined the voluntary initiatives. One of these is the potential limitation of the companies’ due diligence obligations to “established business relations.”
“What you’re going to get is a whole bunch of companies that are going to try to have as few established business relations as possible, which just makes supplying commodities more precarious, rather than less,” said Fountain.
Analysis from Trase finds that 55 percent of Ivorian cocoa, two-thirds of which is exported to the EU and the U.K., comes from untraceable sources. NGOs working on cocoa and on other sectors due to be impacted by the new directive are calling for it to be applied to business relationships based on their risk rather than their duration.
The civil liability mechanism, which should guarantee compensation for people whose rights have been violated, has also come under scrutiny. The latest compromise proposal debated in the Council, seen by POLITICO, reduces the risk of companies getting sued by stipulating that a company can only be held liable if it “intentionally or negligently” failed to comply with a due diligence obligation aimed to protect a “natural or legal person” — not a forest, for instance — and subsequently caused damage to that person’s “legal interest protected under national law.” But, it states, a company cannot be held liable “if the damage was caused only by its business partners in its chain of activities.”
Earlier this year, the EU, Ivory Coast and Ghana and the cocoa sector all committed to a roadmap to make cocoa more sustainable, which, they agreed, includes improving farmers’ incomes. Yet it remains unclear whether this will be mentioned in the final draft of the due diligence directive.
“Sustainability cannot exist without a living income,” said Heidi Hautala, Green MEP and chair of the European Parliament’s Responsible Business Conduct Working Group. Hautala, who is among those pushing for the reference to a living income to be included in the final text, added that responsible purchasing practices are “a prerequisite for respect of human rights, environment and climate.”
Living income “needs to be a part of it because otherwise you’re in trouble,” agreed Fountain.
“If you don’t look at what does a farmer need in order to comply, if you don’t make sure that a farmer actually has the right set of income, then all you’re doing is pushing the responsibility for being sustainable back to the farmer. And this is what we’ve done for the last two decades.”
Wilko Johnson, the guitarist with British blues-rock band Dr. Feelgood who had an unexpected career renaissance after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, has died. He was 75.
A statement posted Wednesday on Johnson’s official social media accounts on behalf of his family said the musician died Monday evening at his home in southeast England.
Born John Wilkinson in 1947, Johnson was raised on Canvey Island, a marshy, industrial oil town in England’s River Thames estuary. He studied Anglo-Saxon literature at Newcastle University and worked as a schoolteacher before forming Dr. Feelgood with other local friends.
In this March 6, 2013, file photo, Wilko Johnson, guitarist and founding member of Dr. Feelgood, performs one of four farewell concerts in the UK, at the Koko club in north London, following his announcement that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the pancreas.
Joel Ryan
At a time of flamboyant glam and indulgent prog rock, they played a then-unfashionable brand of blues and R&B, dressed in cheap suits that made them look, Johnson said later, like “shoddy bank robbers.”
Johnson helped give Dr. Feelgood a dangerous edge with his choppy, relentless guitar style and thousand-yard glare — a look terrifying enough to earn him a role later in life as silent executioner Ser Ilyn Payne on “Game of Thrones.”
The anarchic outfit inspired bands who would soon drive the U.K. punk explosion, and teetered on the edge of global fame, scoring a U.K. No. 1 album, tours of the U.S. and a deal with CBS records. Then in 1977, Johnson walked out amid friction with charismatic lead singer Lee Brilleaux, who died in 1994.
Johnson later said that if the band had been able to follow its managers’ instructions to behave, “I’m pretty sure we’d be multimillionaires. But we didn’t. We were geezers from Canvey Island. We were great friends, and we fell out.”
Johnson went on to perform with Ian Dury’s band, the Blockheads, and spent years playing to a devoted fanbase, largely in the U.K. and Japan.
In 2012, Johnson was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was told it was terminal. The prospect of death unexpectedly revived his creative energies. He declined chemotherapy, decided to go on one last tour, and recorded a “final” album, “Going Back Home,” with Roger Daltrey of The Who.
“I suddenly found myself in a position where nothing matters anymore,” he told the Associated Press in 2013. “I’m a miserable so-and-so normally … I’d be worrying about the taxman or all the things that we worry about that get in the way of the real things. And suddenly it doesn’t matter. All of that doesn’t matter.
“You walk down the street and you feel intensely alive. You’re `Oh, look at that leaf!′ You’re looking around and you think, `I’m alive. Ain’t it amazing?'”
In another twist, a fan who was also a cancer specialist offered to help. After surgery to remove a 3-kilogram (6.6-pound) tumor, Johnson announced in 2014 he was cancer-free. He released another album, “Blow Your Mind,” in 2018, and played gigs with his Wilko Johnson Band until last month.
Johnson is survived by his sons Simon and Matthew and grandson Dylan.
Musician Wilko Johnson poses for a photograph at his home in Westcliff – on- sea, Essex, southern England February 1, 2013.
Britain’s Supreme Court has ruled that Scotland’s government cannot unilaterally hold a second referendum on whether to secede from the United Kingdom, in a blow to independence campaigners that will be welcomed by Westminster’s pro-union establishment.
The court unanimously rejected an attempt by the Scottish National Party (SNP) to force a vote next October, as it did not have the approval of Britain’s parliament.
But the decision is unlikely to stem the heated debate over independence that has loomed over British politics for a decade.
Scotland last held a vote on the issue, with Westminster’s approval, in 2014, when voters rejected the prospect of independence by 55% to 45%.
The pro-independence SNP has nonetheless dominated politics north of the border in the intervening years, at the expense of the traditional, pro-union groups. Successive SNP leaders have pledged to give Scottish voters another chance to vote, particularly since the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016.
The latest push by SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon involved holding an advisory referendum late next year, similar to the 2016 poll that resulted in Brexit. But the country’s top court agreed that even a non-legally binding vote would require oversight from Westminster, given its practical implications.
“A lawfully held referendum would have important political consequences relation to the Union and the United Kingdom Parliament,” Lord Reed said as he read the court’s judgment.
“It would either strengthen or weaken the democratic legitimacy of the Union and of the United Kingdom Parliament’s sovereignty over Scotland, depending on which view prevailed, and would either support or undermine the democratic credentials of the independence movement,” he said.
Sturgeon said she accepted the ruling on Wednesday, but tried to frame the decision as another pillar in the argument for secession. “A law that doesn’t allow Scotland to choose our own future without Westminster consent exposes as myth any notion of the UK as a voluntary partnership & makes (a) case” for independence,” she wrote on Twitter.
She accused the British government of “outright democracy denial” in a speech to reporters later on Wednesday.
Sturgeon said her next step in her effort to achieve a vote will be to brand the next British general election – scheduled for January 2025 at the latest – as a proxy referendum in Scotland on which course to take.
But UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak heralded the court’s “clear and definitive ruling” as an opportunity to move on from the independence debate. “The people of Scotland want us to be working on fixing the major challenges that we collectively face, whether that’s the economy, supporting the NHS or indeed supporting Ukraine,” he said in Parliament.
Opinion polls suggest that Scots remain narrowly divided on whether to break from the UK, and that a clear consensus in either direction has yet to emerge.
England and Scotland have been joined in a political union since 1707, but many Scots have long bristled at what they consider a one-sided relationship dominated by England. Scottish voters have historically rejected the ruling Conservative Party at the ballot box and voted heavily – but in vain – against Brexit, intensifying arguments over the issue in the past decade.
Since 1999, Scotland has had a devolved government, meaning many, but not all, decisions are made at the SNP-led Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh.
A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
CNN
—
The men’s 2022 FIFA World Cup has started, but controversies abound. There are reasons to skip this year’s tournament.
For example, stadiums erected for the occasion in host nation Qatar were built on the backs of workers from Asia and Africa.
The conditions endured by those migrantworkers have stirred controversy – from the intense heat they had to endure while building Qatar’s World Cup infrastructure to how many of them may have died. World Cup organizers vehemently dispute expert estimates that thousands died.
The former Obama administration official Tommy Vietor and the soccer pundit Roger Bennett count the ways this World Cup is problematic in a piece for CNN Opinion. Read their take.
There’s also the issue of LGBTQ rights. FIFA threatened sanctions against the captains of teams who planned to wear armbands to promote inclusion and oppose discrimination, one of a number of last-minute changes the international soccer governing body and Qatar made to the tournament. Homosexuality is against the law in Qatar, although the country’s Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy told CNN the tournament would be inclusive. Read more.
If you’re taking Qatar at their word for inclusivity, imagine having shelled out the coin for game tickets, travel and accommodation for a World Cup in the desert only to learn days before it startedthat stadiums would not sell beer after all. That’s clearly offside.
There’s a new documentary, “FIFA Uncovered” – which doesn’t paint world soccer’s governing body in an altogether flattering light given the organization’s recent history of wrongdoing – streaming just in time for the World Cup. The allegations against FIFA are not new – the US government made them years ago – but they are worth considering again.
Watch closely for signs ofprotest. Iranian players appeared to show solidarity with those protesting against the regimeback home. The players stood silent as the Iranian national anthem played out around the Khalifa International Stadium before kickoff on Monday in their game against England.
With journalists’ access in Qatar limited, someteams maytake up the role of protest against the tournament, such as with Denmark’s jerseys, designed to respect the stadium workers.
Qatar has a close soccer relationship with France, notably investing in the Paris Saint-Germain football club.
French President Emmanuel Macron told journalists during a recent international summit that questions about Qatar should have been raised years ago, during the bid process. He said the event itself provides a path to openness and has worth.
“The vocation of these big events is to allow athletes of all countries, including sometimes of countries at war, to allow sport to exist and sometimes find, through sport, ways of discussing when people no longer manage to talk,” he said.
Qatar’s ambassador to the US, Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani, argues the tournament will help change misconceptions about his country,which he says worked with a United Nations organization to improve working conditions.
“Qatar is not opposed to scrutiny,” he wrote in a CNN Opinion piece responding to the Bennett and Vietor commentary. “In fact we have embraced it – but too often platforms have been used to present one-sided, factually inaccurate arguments that go beyond what some other countries awarded major events have faced, despite each having their own unique set of challenges to overcome.” Read the whole piece.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino also defended the tournament in an hourlong explosive tirade in front of journalists Saturday. He hit back at Western criticisms of human rights issues.
“What we Europeans have been doing for the last 3,000 years, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons,” he said.
Assuming you do watch, here are the informal rules I’ve developed, with help from fellow fans on text chains, for my own enjoyment of the World Cup.
And by the way, these rules often contradict each other, so you have to weigh the importance of one over the other. That’s up to you. Or make up your own rules.
That means root for the US over England when the two countries play in the group stage. Root for conquered Wales over England, even though Wales isn’t exactly a colony and England will be the heavy favorite.
Root for Brazil over Portugal, or Argentina over Spain. There’s something satisfying, at least to this American, about the idea of New World conquering Old World, or an African team defeating France or Belgium.
Asterisks to the colony rule. When I mentioned this rule to one friend, he pointed out the US, while it sprang from former British colonies, has occupied territories in the Atlantic and Pacific, so it’s not always an easy rule to apply.
Another complication to the colony rule is the large number of immigrants on many teams. Much of the French team that won in 2018, for example, was born outside France, and most of the players had some roots in Africa – including the young star Kylian Mbappe. Here’s an interesting report from the Migration Policy Institute about the rise of immigrant players on World Cup teams.
There’s a sliding scale of freedom in the world, according to Freedom House, the independent watchdog that gets funding from the US government.
Qatar, for instance, scores a paltry 25 on Freedom House’s 0-100 scale that combines access to political rights and civil liberties. But it’s not the lowest-scoring country taking part in the World Cup: Saudi Arabia scores a 7 and Iran scores a 14.
Nor is the US, at 83, the freest. Canada gets a 98, and Uruguay and Denmark both get a 97.
Here’s a list of the World Cup countries batched alphabeticallyinto their World Cup group stage assignments, alongside their Freedom House scores.
Brazil (73), Cameroon (15), Serbia (62), Switzerland (96)
Group H:
Ghana (80), South Korea (83), Portugal (95), Uruguay (97)
It’s fun to root for the underdog, and the difference in access to facilities and paychecks varies a lot by country. What a European or North American country can offer its squad is a lot different than what an African or Central American team can offer.
The US gross domestic product amounts to more than $69,000 per capita, according to World Bank data, and Qatar’s oil-rich figure is more than $61,000. Senegal’s per capita GDP, the tournament’s lowest, is less than $1,700. Ecuador, Iran, Tunisia, Ghana and Morocco all have per capita GDPs under $6,000.
Note on combining rules No. 1 and No. 2. Teams that rate relatively high on the freedom score despite relatively low capita GDPs are Ecuador, Ghana and, to a lesser extent on the GDP front, Croatia, a World Cup finalist in 2018.
Thirty-two countries participate in the World Cup.Only eight countries have ever won the World Cup trophy. It’s getting repetitive, and all but one are in the tournament this year.
You can tell by the number of stars players wear on their jerseys. Brazil has won five and Germany has triumphed four times. Italy has also won four but didn’t make the tournament this year. Argentina, France and Uruguay have won two, and Spain and England have each won one.
That still leaves a wide-open field of 25 teams looking for their country’s first World Cup title.
If you do watch, expect exciting upsets, sublime goal-scoring and human drama, all replayed and rehashed with the help of a video assistantreferee, or VAR.
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. This World Cup probably offers the final opportunity to see two masters who have both failed to win the tournament. Now in the extreme twilight of their careers, neither is an odds-on favorite this year to win the trophy for their country (Argentina and Portugal, respectively).
Curses. Every World Cup provides England with yet another, probably doomed, opportunity to excise the curse of failure that has followed it since winning the 1966 tournament. Their agony makes for compelling television.
Brazil can exert its otherworldly dominance upon European teams. Or not, depending on which Brazil shows up. Anything but victory will be a crushing loss for them.
And finally, the United States can come to grips with why it is so mediocre at the international men’s level in a sport so many American children adore and in which its national women’s team has dominated for so long.
LONDON — Seven decades after Britain detonated a nuclear bomb in the Indian Ocean, troops who took part — sometimes unknowingly — in the country’s atomic weapons tests are being recognized with a medal.
The U.K. government’s announcement on Monday of the Nuclear Test Medal is a victory for veterans and their families, who have campaigned for years for recognition. Now, many want recognition of the health problems they believe they suffered as a result of exposure to radiation.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the medal was “an enduring symbol of our country’s gratitude” to the test veterans.
“Their commitment and service has preserved peace for the past 70 years, and it is only right their contribution to our safety, freedom and way of life is appropriately recognized with this honor,” he said.
Sunak attended the first-ever ceremony for the nuclear veterans at the National Memorial Arboretum in central England, marking the 70th anniversary of the U.K.’s first atmospheric atomic test on Oct. 3, 1952. The detonation of a plutonium implosion device aboard a Royal Navy ship in the Montebello Islands off Western Australia, dubbed Operation Hurricane, made Britain the world’s third nuclear-armed nation, after the United States and Russia.
Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said those who took part had made an “invaluable contribution to the safety and security of the U.K.”
The U.K. set off further nuclear explosions in Australia and ocean territories including Christmas Island over the following years. Veterans groups say about 22,000 U.K. military personnel were involved in British and American tests in the 1950s and 60s, many of them conscripts doing postwar national service.
Veterans, scientists and civil servants from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Kiribati who served under British command during the tests between 1952 and 1967 will also be eligible for the U.K. medal.
Many veterans and their families are convinced there is a link between the tests and health problems they have suffered, and are pressing the U.K. to hold a public inquiry into the tests. Some allege they were deliberately exposed to radiation to see how their bodies would react, and claim their medical records were later suppressed.
John Morris, who saw nuclear blasts on Christmas Island as a young conscript in the 1950s, told the BBC earlier this year that “I felt like I had seen the end of the world.”
“I saw right through my hands as the light was so intense,” he said. “It felt like my blood was boiling. The palm trees — which had been 20 miles away — were scorched.”
Numerous studies over the decades have probed allegations of high cancer rates among the test veterans, and of birth defects in their children, but have failed to establish an ironclad connection with the nuclear tests.
Successive British governments have denied troops were exposed to unsafe levels of radiation.
Alan Owen, founder of the Labrats International charity for atomic test survivors, welcomed the government’s recognition, but said “we want more.”
“It’s great the government is starting to recognize the veterans,” said Owen, whose father James was present during nuclear testing on Christmas Island in 1962. James Owen died in 1994, aged 52.
“For me it is going to be an emotional day because I will be representing him and my sister will be there and we will be laying flowers in his memory.”
