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Beyond the rural-urban cliche: the far-right and the EU 'development trap'
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Far-right parties are rising in polls across Europe ahead of this weekend's elections, with both political scientists and politicians scrambling for explanations. Beyond analysis that focuses squarely on economic factors or cultural values, increasing attention has come to the regional inequality to explain support for far-right or anti-system values. Electoral results indicate that anti-system or rightwing populist parties are underpinned by the rural vote, with parties like the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), France’s Rassemblent National (RN) and Portugal’s Chega! [Enough!} predominantly drawing support from the countryside. With progressive voters seemingly concentrated in cities, this had led to an image of an urban-rural divide, pitching aloof progressive urbanites against unsophisticated and angry country bumpkins. Moreover, data suggests that income gaps between rural and urban areas have ballooned in the last decade, driving a so-called recognition gap, with rural residents increasingly reporting a perceived disrespect to their communities, according to analysis by Eurofound . A Greek tragedy However, though a regional perspective is essential, such a straightforward urban-rural dichotomy is too simplistic, argued Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, and co-author of a recent study of regional development and euroscepticism ordered by the commission. “The urban rural component is an important component but there are a lot of other factors that determine the rise of discontent”, he told the EUobserver in an interview, arguing that instead specific regions suffered from a so-called “development trap” - where long-term economic decline and stagnation has sparked voter’s discontent. “Very often this falls in rural areas, but not necessarily,” Rodríguez-Pose said, noting that the problem was widespread, with over 60 million EU citizens living in regions where real-terms GDP has declined since 2000. “It’s not just a question of rich cities versus poor regions,” he added. Moreover, proponents of purely economic explanations of the support for populist parties have often struggled to account for why wealthier regions - like northern Italy - have pivoted to the far-right as well. According to Rodríguez-Pose, it is the trajectory of economic growth that is essential for sparking political disaffection. It’s like a great Greek or Shakespearian tragedy “It’s like a great Greek or Shakespearian tragedy. You cannot take revenge for losing something you never had, the strongest revenge comes from those who had everything and lost it,” he said, pointing towards highly-developed but stagnant regions like Lombardy, or intermediate but declining regions like north-eastern France as prime examples. Other analysts of Europe’s new political cleavages between urban progressives and rural conservatives have put more emphasis on cultural and educational factors. Gender and post-secondary educational qualifications are the basic components that structure the progressive/conservative divide, according to research by political scientists Liesbeth Hooghe and Gary Marks at the European University institute. However, such cultural factors are not necessarily opposed to economic factors, but in fact often aligned with them, argued Rodríguez-Pose. As highly educated women are more likely to leave areas with less growth, he observed that there were “whole Länder [regions] in former East Germany where you have a concentration of on the one hand an ageing population and on the other hand, young uneducated men,” leading to a convergence of cultural conservatism and economic decline. Far-right farmers The far-right itself has seized on the notion of an urban-rural divide as well, as exemplified by RN-leader Marine Le Pen, who tried to cast herself as a spokesperson for the 2019 yellow vests protests in France, which were sparked by outrage in rural areas over a fuel tax hike. More recently, the MCC, a think-tank tied to Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, has tried to link up with radicalised farmers amid controversy over the impact of the green transition on farmer's livelihood. Over the past months, escalating farmers' protest have derailed a number of high-profile pieces of environmental legislation, with the centre-right European People's Party loath to be seen as hostile to farming interests. Rodríguez-Pose suggested that this rising political influence of farmers could be related to regional discontent as well, noting that farmers were very effective at channelling grievances of those feeling left-behind, regardless of whether they actually worked in agriculture. “You have whole slots of rural areas, but not just rural areas, that jump on their bandwagon.” Counteracting the rise of the far-right would therefore require regionally tailored investment under a reinvigorated cohesion policy, argued Rodríguez-Pose, in order to prevent the further deterioration and reverse the decline of struggling regions. “There is a lot of potential, this is not charity but investment,” he said, noting that historically much of Europe’s economic dynamism came from rural areas. Piet Ruig is a Brussels-based journalist who previously worked for the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO.
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Piet Ruig
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The far-right's rise in popularity in Europe has been largely driven by discontent among voters in the countryside. But a straightforward rural-urban political divide might be too simplistic, with experts emphasising cultural factors as well.
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[
"EU Elections"
] |
eu-elections
|
2024-06-03T16:19:40.960Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-elections/ard94b653f
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Stuck in Libya, the Sudanese refugee frightened of both Frontex and coast guard
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In Libya's capital city Tripoli, a 29-year old refugee from Sudan is hoping to get smuggled by boat across the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. "I don't feel safe being anywhere in Libya," he tells EUobserver, in a video conference call on Friday (31 May). "I think of trying [to reach Europe] as soon as possible. It is in my mind now. I can't survive like this forever," he says, via an interpreter. Karim, not his real name, has asked to remain anonymous given security concerns. But EUobsever was able to confirm his identity from an official asylum seeker certificate issued by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) office in Tripoli. It says Karim is from Sudan and that he is an asylum seeker. It also says he should not be returned to Sudan, where his life is threatened. Since Sudan's civil war erupted in April 2023, tens of thousands have been killed and around nine million people displaced. Millions more risk starvation. His brother has been detained by rogue militias in Sudan, where he will be forced to fight on their behalf, says Karim. Karim is afraid he'll meet a similar fate. For the past few months, he has been sleeping rough in a makeshift tent near the UNHCR office in Tripoli. He first arrived in Libya around five years ago in the hopes of eventually making it to Europe. But he stalled out of fears of drowning. Now unable to return to Sudan given the civil war, Karim described his situation and those of others in Libya as hopeless. His health has also taken a turn for the worse given his recent diagnosis with diabetes, he says. Aggressive Libyan militias remain a constant threat. Some arbitrarily detain migrants and force them into slavery in what the UN Human Rights Council has described as possible crimes against humanity. His UNHCR certificate offers no protection. "They don't consider it as documentation," says Karim of the Libyan militias. So he avoids them at all costs. Sometimes he is able to find work at a square nearby. But he mostly relies on charity of local Libyans to eat. Now, he is hoping to gather between €1,000 to €2,000 to pay a smuggler to cross the Mediterranean Sea. "Even though it is very difficult to collect this amount, still the biggest concern is being pulled back, more than collecting the money itself," he says. Frontex and Libyan Coast Guard And he knows Frontex, the EU's border agency based out of Warsaw, is helping the Libyans with the interceptions. The risk Karim will be intercepted is real. Almost 1,000 people were intercepted and returned between 26 May and 1 June alone, according to the International Organization for Migration. Jörgen Hansson from the Swedish Coast Guard told Mission Investigate, a Swedish TV programme for investigative journalism , that the agency informs Libya as soon as a boat embarks. "As soon as we see a refugee boat leaving Libya, for example, we call down here and try to get them to bring them back. And it is quite often that it succeeds," he is quoted as saying. Hansson worked four months last year at a Frontex monitoring centre, he said. The statement suggests the agency is working more closely with the Libyans than previously thought. For his part, Hans Leijtens, the agency's executive director, says they never share any information with the Libyans unless a boat is in immediate danger. He says they make one to two Mayday calls a day and consult their in-house fundamental rights officer, when possible. "I acknowledge that we as Frontex don't want them to end up in Libya," he told MEPs in the civil liberties committee in March. "But if I would be a pilot in a plane and I see a ship in distress and I have to decide 'MayDay call - yes or no?' I think I would do the Mayday call," he said. Leijtens comments follow reports last December that the agency and the Maltese government were also sharing the coordinates of refugee boats with Tareq Bin Zeyad, a Libyan militia. Some of those returned by Tareq Bin Zeyad were tortured in a harbour in Benghazi, including Syrian national Bassel Nahas who managed to escape after paying a ransom. For its part, Frontex says it has no control over who picks up their Mayday calls and can't be held accountable if a militia responds. Such arguments are likely to be given short shrift by critics, including possibly the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Avvenire, an Italian newspaper, has reported that the ICC's chief prosecutor Karim Khan is set to issue multiple arrest warrants late next year over crimes committed against migrants in Libya. Iftach Cohen, a lawyer at front-LEX, a Dutch-based civil society organisation, says the warrant should extend to Frontex's executive's director. Front-LEX last week sent the agency a legal of formal notice to stop helping the Libyans with boat interceptions. And it cited Karim, the 29-year Sudanese refugee stuck in Libya, as a case. Cohen doesn't believe the agency will terminate all communications with Libyan entities as requested. But should the agency not comply, then Cohen says they will go to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. "Because of the DNA of Frontex, and its zero interest in the lives of racialized groups of asylum seekers, I shouldn’t have high hopes that in taking a decision on our invitation to act Frontex will decide to terminate all communications with Libyan entities in accordance with the law," he said. Frontex, for its part, described front-LEX's complaint as a distraction. "I am deeply troubled by the actions of activists who, having failed in a number of cases against Frontex, now risk people’s lives with another frivolous complaint," said Chris Borowski, the agency's spokesperson, in an email. Borowski says Frontex planes are often the first to spot boats in distress in the central Mediterranean. "Our teams alert all rescue coordination centres in the region to initiate rescue operations immediately. This is not just an obligation under international law but a duty we uphold as human beings," he said.
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Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.
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In Libya's capital city Tripoli, a 29-year old refugee from Sudan is hoping to get smuggled by boat across the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe.
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[
"Migration"
] |
migration
|
2024-06-03T14:42:25.637Z
|
https://euobserver.com/migration/ar2e424d7d
|
EU carbon border tax will have 'very small impact' on China, new report finds
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The economic effects of the EU’s new carbon import levy are set to be far smaller than feared by many third countries, according to a report published on Monday (3 June) by Sandbag, a think-tank focused on EU climate policies. But the report also contends that foreign manufacturers can minimise the charges they face under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) by utilising ‘resource shuffling’, by “selectively exporting to Europe the low-emission intensity goods to enjoy lower CBAM charges, while the high-emission goods are kept for other markets.” “Although the EU wishes to avoid such practice, it might not manage to do so under current rules,” the report adds. It adds that if the rules set up for the transitional period remain in force permanently, metal products made from recycled materials, even from steel and aluminium, will be nearly exempt of CBAM. The levy will apply to imports of a group of products including steel, cement, iron and aluminium and was designed to be part of the bloc's push towards net-zero carbon emissions. It was passed into law last year and came into force as a reporting requirement in September 2023. Payments under the scheme will not be enforced until 2026. Although the levy is primarily targeted at China and Russia, the African Climate Foundation has estimated that the levy could result in a four percent drop in Africa's exports to Europe, with South Africa and Mozambique among those likely to be worst affected. 'Resource shuffling' The report states that, in the ‘resource shuffling’ scenario, EU importers of Chinese goods would make a net profit of €32m. It also states that the goods covered by the CBAM regulation represent €13.4bn (2.82 percent) out of €474bn EU imports from China in 2021 values, and CBAM fees would represent 0.12 percent of total imports from China on average. Aside from Russia, no countries would pay more than €1bn in fees in any scenario, the research finds, saying that this would cause “very small impacts on trade partners”. Alternatively, should firms take a “business-as-usual” approach and not revise their trading practices, that would result in a net loss to EU importers of Chinese goods, of €245m per year. However, Sandbag’s research does not look at the costs that could be faced by African states, though it notes that Egypt, Algeria and Morocco account for 14, 12, and 10 percent of the EU’s fertiliser imports, respectively. Although the EU Commission insists that it will not unpick the levy, EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters last week that there was “intensive engagement ongoing with various countries across the globe on preparation for implementation of CBAM”. South Africa’s trade minister Ebrahim Patel, one of CBAM’s most vocal opponents, also told reporters last week that his government was still mulling whether to lodge a formal complaint at the World Trade Organisation against what he described as the ‘protectionist’ levy.
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Benjamin Fox is a seasoned reporter and editor, previously working for fellow Brussels publication Euractiv. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He heads up the AU-EU section at EUobserver, based in Nairobi, Kenya.
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The economic effects of the EU’s new carbon import levy are set to be far smaller than feared by many third countries, according to a report published on Monday by Sandbag, a think-tank focused on EU climate policies.
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[
"EU & the World",
"Green Economy"
] |
eu-and-the-world
|
2024-06-03T13:00:04.949Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ara63f0088
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Normalising the far-right has backfired on migration - next will be climate
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Following the latest coalition agreements between the radical-right and the centre-right in the Netherlands and Croatia, seven EU member states are now governed or supported by the radical right. More could come about, with elections looming in Belgium, Bulgaria and for the European Parliament. The old policy of keeping the radical-right out of power has not succeeded in preventing its rise. Now that some politicians are open to new alliances at the far-right end of the political spectrum, the question is: what is the price of normalizing the radical-right? European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has been trying to divide the radical right by courting some actors, most notably Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni , and isolating others, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. The logic behind the tactic is clear. Dividing the two far-right political groupings in the European Parliament – the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the Identity and Democracy (ID) group is critical to ensure a coherent agenda for the next commission. These parties are already divided on supporting Ukraine and sanctioning Russia, two key priorities for EU diplomats. Similar dividing lines can be found on issues such as Nato and the US, as a recent Carnegie Europe report on Europe’s radical right and foreign policy shows. Secondly, the next commission that von der Leyen wants to lead will also require a plurality of votes beyond the four main parties on the left and right of the political centre. Unable to satisfy everyone, her tactic is to pick those parties that are most likely to align with her priorities. Thirdly, the European People’s Party to which von der Leyen belongs has long been flirting with the radical right, either by embracing some issues on its agenda or by explicitly toying with forming an alliance with some of its members. After all, Orbán’s Fidesz’s party was a member of the EPP until Hungary’s abandonment of liberal democratic principles became a source of tension within the group. There can be points of contact between the family values of Europe’s centre-right and the ultra-conservative values of those further to the right. Finally, working with the radical-right can take some wind out of their wings. The Finnish centre-radical right coalition government is based on a carefully negotiated agreement that aims to prevent discontinuity in Finland’s Europe policies. Italy’s Forza Italia has moved closer to the centre under the leadership of Antonio Tajani . However, whereas populist parties with loose ideologies adapt, the radical-right can fall back on its ideological and electoral core if electorally penalised for cozying up with the centre. Come at a price This normalisation has a price tag. Migration policy provides the best example. In a bid to fend off the rise of the radical-right, the EU has supported migration deals with Turkey in 2016 and, more recently, with Tunisia, Egypt, and others, notwithstanding the human rights conditions in these countries. Von der Leyen has personally supported Italy’s public diplomacy around these agreements, giving credence to Meloni’s argument that, thanks to her interventions, Italy is having a greater say in the direction of Europe. Yet the deals did nothing to prevent the rise of the more extreme right. Rather, it paved the way for an ethically questionable tougher migration policy by tightening border controls, increasing returns of unwanted migrants, and paying third countries to prevent migration flows to Europe, culminating in the Migration Pact that was recently approved It has also seen Meloni, herself, become something of a conduit for the ambitions of the EU’s far-right political grouping. Meloni’s apparent success in getting the attention of the commission has prompted Marine Le Pen, leader of the radical-right National Rally, to distance her party from the Alternative for Germany and seek new alliances. After migration, come climate The normalization pattern is well known, as political scientists such as Cas Mudde and Jan Werner-Muller have long evidenced: the centre-right gets its hands dirty in trying to respond to demands coming from the right, without the ballot box gains. The next policy area that is seeing this pattern unfold is climate policy. The EU’s migration policy has damaged Europe’s standing in the world. Still, policies can potentially be reversed. But if democratic institutions and processes are tampered with, the costs of working with the radical right rises further. The EU has tools to halt attacks on the rule of law in its member states, but it was slow in activating them in the case of Hungary in the 2010s, when Orbán started dismantling the rule of law in pursuit of what he calls ‘ illiberal democracy ’. Arguably, Orbán’s membership of the EPP was one factor that inhibited an early, muscular response to prevent Hungary’s democratic backsliding and the consolidation of a systematic spoiler within the EU. The growing number of governing experiments with radical-right parties could put democratic institutions at risk. Italy’s government has proposed constitutional changes that would strengthen executive powers at the expense of the Parliament. The changes would also weaken the oversight of the President of the Republic, who is the custodian of the Italian Constitution, and, according to legal experts, could limit the electorate’s ability to censure government power. One has to ask whether the EU institutions will be inclined to monitor the standards of European democracy if they depend on the political support of part of the radical-right. Turning a blind eye to the erosion of democratic standards may have short term gains but longer-term costs. Rosa Balfour is director of Carnegie Europe and the co-author of a major new report Charting the Radical Right’s Influence on EU Foreign Policy . Rosa Balfour is director of Carnegie Europe and the co-author of a major new report
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Charting the Radical Right’s Influence on EU Foreign Policy
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Ursula von der Leyen's normalisation pattern is well known — but the centre-right gets its hands dirty in trying to respond to demands coming from the right, without the ballot box gains. The next policy area that is seeing this pattern unfold is climate policy.
|
[
"EU Political",
"EU Elections"
] |
eu-political
|
2024-06-03T10:38:56.272Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-political/ar2397b0fc
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EU farmers shun June 4 anti-Green Deal protest in Brussels
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Europe’s largest farming unions representing millions of agricultural workers have rejected calls to join this week’s protest against EU green reforms, DeSmog can reveal. Smaller groups have also shunned the demo – some wanting to avoid the prospect of violence, others claiming they didn’t know it was happening. Preparations for the 4 June demo have been ramping up ahead of the start of the EU elections next Thursday, with protesters set to gather in Brussels days before European citizens head to the polls. The hardline Dutch group Farmers Defence Force (FDF) has urged farmer “warriors” to attend the demo, with its spokesperson claiming : “we are defending the rights of farmers and the standards of the European Union as it’s supposed to be”. This latest protest, spearheaded by far-right linked farmers’ groups, comes months after a wave of demonstrations swept through Europe. Standing alongside dense tractor blockades, farmers expressed a wide range of concerns from low supermarket prices to the cost of living, fuel taxes, and EU subsidies. Calls by a number of major farming unions and other protesters to reform the EU’s green rules (the ‘Green Deal’) were heeded by Europe’s politicians, leading to a major weakening of the bloc’s climate legislation. In the wake of these concessions, the appetite for anti-EU protests appears to have faltered. DeSmog has spoken to multiple farming unions across the EU, many of which have ruled out attending this week. Most prominent among them is Copa-Cogeca , the EU’s biggest farming union, which is controversial among many EU farmers and has a history of lobbying politicians against green reforms. DeSmog also spoke to smaller farming groups in Italy, Germany, Poland, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, learning a variety of reasons for their absence. Farmers across Europe have traditionally been understood as a unified force, and protests at the start of the year were often presented as a unanimous response to EU climate action. However, many groups have eschewed the upcoming demo, and farmers have voiced growing discontent with some of the forces driving the protest. Many groups acknowledged that the EU had conceded to their demands already, so the urgency to protest had faded. Others sought to draw a line between themselves and the hardline groups leading the charge, while some shared their concerns over the dominance of big unions. With the votes fast approaching, here’s what groups across Europe have planned for 4 June, and how the bloc’s diverse group of farmers have responded. Italy The main farmers’ organisations in Italy – in particular the country’s largest agricultural associations Coldiretti and Confagricoltura – enjoy a close relationship with the government and the national conservative party Brothers of Italy. DeSmog spoke to representatives of these two groups, as well as the smaller farmers’ association CopAgri, and union Cia. These groups, which are all part of Copa-Cogeca, confirmed that they would not be taking part. Despite their links to right-wing politicians, they told DeSmog that they were critical of the new right-wing and far-right linked European farmers’ movements. The groups behind these movements – such as the Dutch Farmers Defence Force, France’s Coordination Rurale, and Spain’s Plataforma 6F – were too closely associated with the far-right, they said. Coldiretti and Confagricoltura said they had instructions from Copa-Cogeca not to participate, while Cia claimed they were not even aware that the protest was taking place. (Copa-Cogeca has not yet responded to DeSmog’s requests for clarification). Some smaller groups have confirmed they will be taking part, such as Movimento Produttori Italiani, which was founded in January this year to counter the demands of Coldiretti. The group, which represents around 500 farmers, is allied with the Farmers Defence Force. Movimento claims that Coldiretti is pursuing the personal interests of its leadership instead of protecting the farming sector. In a statement to DeSmog, Ettore Prandini, president of Coldiretti, rejected the accusations from Movimento. Prandini said they had “repeatedly demonstrated peacefully in Brussels, successfully obtaining significant interventions in favour of the agri-food sector through dialogue and institutional discussion”. Movimento’s leader, Salvatore Fais, said that 3,500 tractors and about 20,000 people from across Europe are expected on 4 June, including around 460 people from Italy. A dozen tractors are expected to arrive in Brussels from Italy, in contrast to the 900 that were brought to the last major demo in February. Coldiretti brought around 3,000 farmers to the demonstration in February, while Italy’s Prime Minister Georgia Meloni gave a speech to Confagricoltura in which she promised to concede to the demands of farmers. The other groups described Movimento as “lone wolves” and “marginal”, but not directly connected with far-right groups. Cia declined to comment on the group’s motivation for pulling out, stating only that its position “aligns with Copa”. A spokesperson for CopAgri told DeSmog: “We understand the reasons behind the protest scheduled for 4 June in Brussels, but as we have made clear from the beginning, as a trade union organisation, we can only favour the path of dialogue and political debate.” The group said it welcomed the April revision of the common agricultural policy (CAP) subsidy, which saw the EU water down environmental demands on farmers. They said that they “will continue this dialogue with the new members of the European Parliament” to make the CAP and other community policies “more efficient and improved”. Germany German participation in the 4 June protest is being co-organised by the farmers’ association Landwirtschaft verbindet Deutschland (LsV Deutschland). The association was borne out of a Facebook group in 2019, when farmers started protesting against stricter environmental and animal welfare regulations introduced by the German government. LsV Deutschland has established a reputation for radical action. Its members have blocked motorways and Aldi supermarket’s central warehouse in Germany. They have also dumped piles of manure on crossroads, and protested in front of media offices, claiming they lack real representation in the media. “We use harsh words and push legal limits, so if that means we’re hardliners, that’s what we are,” Marc Bernhardt, spokesman of a regional LsV group, told German media . LsV Deutschland shared a video promoting the 4 June protest in its Telegram group, calling on its members to head to Brussels. “We go to Brussels because the farmers’ concerns are taken seriously there and laws are changed or withdrawn. That doesn’t happen at all in Germany,” Thomas Antony, the group’s chairman, told DeSmog. However, LsV Deutschland may end up being the only farming group from Germany to join the protest. Even the group Freie Bauern (Free Farmers), which has close links to LsV Deutschland, has no plans to attend. Freie Bauern has limited capacity and is currently focusing on politics at the regional and national level, its spokesperson Reinhard Jung told DeSmog. However, he believes that some of its members will be in Brussels on 4 June due to their overlap with the LsV. Deutscher Bauernverband, a farmers’ union which says it represents 90 percent of the 260,000 farmers in Germany and is a member of Copa-Cogeca, will not participate in the protest. “We don’t know the organisers of the protest, so we can’t recommend our members to join,” said its spokesperson Axel Finkenwirth. Other groups have also ruled out attending. Some said the protesters are too radical. “I was at the farmers’ protests in Brussels in February. I saw the violence and demonstration of power that many farmers were using. How they flattened barricades. That was very frightening,” said Bernd Schmitz, co-managing director of the farmers association Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft, which represents around 2,500 farmers working on sustainable agriculture. His association won’t join the protest but Schmitz will attend as an observer. “We are worried about the direction the protest will take,” he said. “The first call from the LsV was quite fierce. That’s why I want to see what’s happening on the ground, what’s being said, which posters are shown.” The young farmers’ association Bund der Landwirte (BDL), the organic farmers Bund Ökologische Lebensmittelwirtschaft (BÖLW), and the milk farmers’ group BDM will also stay at home. “Our association wants different things than the farmers that will be in Brussels on 4 June,” BDM spokesperson Hans Foldenauer told DeSmog. “We need to move away from intensification and immense competition. And we need to move towards agricultural production that is sustainable and helps us to generate our main income from the sale of agricultural products again.” BDM is not part of Copa-Cogeca and is critical of the union’s policies. “Copa-Cogeca is responsible for the fact that we are in this bad situation and that we have a poor market position,” Foldenauer said. Why does he think Copa-Cogeca might be calling on its members not to join the protest? “They fear that smoke will rise on 4 June and they want to prevent that,” Foldenauer said. Netherlands The hardline Dutch group Farmers Defence Force, which is spearheading the protest, has urged farmers to come together “to defend our way of life, our culture, our businesses, our families”. FDF has also shared a list on social media of far-right politicians who will address crowds, including Polish Member of European Parliament (MEP) Dominik Taczynski, and Dutch independent MEP Rob Roos. The list also mentions the appearance of populist Dutch leader Geert van Wilders, and says that former EU climate chief Frans Timmermans is “pending”. The Dutch farmers association LTO, which has 35,000 members , told DeSmog that it would not be attending the protest. The group said that it preferred to employ different tactics, namely talking and lobbying. The union referred DeSmog to a statement issued in April, in which they wished the protesters “a good day” and applauded the fact that farmers’ groups were taking multiple kinds of action at the same time. “That different organisations take action on different moments contributes to our collective power: together we work hard for a good future for our farmers and horticulturists,” they said. Despite the conciliatory language, there have been rifts between FDF and more traditional farmers’ groups. Speaking from the interior of a tractor, in an address posted on FDF’s YouTube channel, the group’s leader Mark van den Oever has called the actions of LTO “treason” over the Dutch manure crisis , saying that its representatives are the “little slaves” of campaign groups and the ministry of agriculture – rhetoric previously employed by FDF in describing the big farming unions. Alex Datema, the previous chair of the farmers’ collective BoerenNatuur and now director of food and agri at the Rabobank (a major financier of the EU farming sector), has been openly critical of FDF. In a post on social media platform X, they said the group’s arguments had “run out”. Spain Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Agricultores y Ganaderos (COAG), the largest farmers’ organisation in Spain, representing more than 150,000 farmers across the country, has said that its members will not join the protest on 4 June. “We plan our advocacy independently from what other non-recognised platforms are doing. We are recognised by law (as representatives of farmers), and we act accordingly,” said secretary general Miguel Padilla. However, he claimed that, despite some concessions made by the EU and the Spanish government, “there is still a lot to fight for”. In February 2023, a new group called Platform 6F, which is connected to the far-right political party Vox, organised dozens of farmers’ protests in Spain. Other farmers’ unions, including COAG, followed suit and called for action. However, since then, the traditional farmers’ unions and Platform 6F have grown apart. Platform 6F is the only organisation in Spain that has announced that it will join the protest in Brussels. The Small and Young Farmers Association (UPA) also joined the protests in February but will not participate in June. UPA, representing 80,000 farmers, has said that the EU has made satisfactory concessions after the protests earlier this year. “They made decisions to make the CAP more flexible in line with what we were asking for”, UPA spokesperson Diego Juste told DeSmog. When asked about the 4th June protest, he said “We have nothing to do with that”. DeSmog also interviewed a number of individual farmers who said they were not planning to join the protest. Some, such as Javier Díez, a cereal farmer originally from Guadalajara, said that he couldn’t join any protest at the moment because he is “too busy working” on his land. “There is not much being planned. People are really tired now. There were many protests in the past months, and we spent a lot of money on this”, added Santiago, a seller of farming machinery and one of the main organisers of local protests in February. Others, such as Eduardo Vera, a rice farmer from Andalucía, say he would only join protests if they were legal. “In February there were many protests that didn’t have the permits and we didn’t even know who was really organising them,” he said. In Spain, it is mandatory to inform authorities at least 24 hours before a protest. France Coordination Rurale, France’s second largest farmers’ union, is among the groups helping to organise the 4 June protest. Amid a sudden wave of interest in farmers’ protests, the group – established in 1991 – has grown from having a mostly local profile to having a prominent role in national debates. It was at the forefront of the agricultural demonstrations that began in rural France earlier this year. The group is closely affiliated with France’s leading far-right party, the Rassemblement National (National Rally), which is polling to win a third of all the seats being contested in France as part of the EU elections. French President Emmanuel Macron told journalists in March that the union’s local decision makers are “very officially involved with the Rassemblement National”, and French environmental outlet Reporterre has characterised the group as having “values compatible with the extreme right.” Coordination Rurale co-organised a farmers’ protest in Brussels in January alongside the oil-funded think tank MCC Brussels. It also attended an MCC Brussels-hosted planning meeting for the 4 June protest alongside groups such as the Farmers Defence Force. While Coordination Rurale is planning on joining other far-right aligned groups in attendance at the 4 June protest, France’s largest union – the Fédération Nationale des Syndicats d’Exploitants Agricoles (FNSEA) – told DeSmog it is unlikely to attend. A FNSEA representative said that she would be “very surprised” if the group was planning on attending. FNSEA is the largest regional farmers’ group in the EU, and the largest member of Copa-Cogeca , which the spokesperson said would usually coordinate FNSEA’s presence. Poland Polish farming groups seem to be the outliers. NSZZ “Solidarnosc” Rolnikow Individualnych, which has been organising protests against EU green reforms since last year, confirmed it will be attending the 4 June protest in Brussels. Up to 100 members of the group are expected to join, according to leader and farmer Tomasz Obszanski, who refuted allegations that the protest will attract those with links to the far-right. The group’s May 10 protest in the Polish capital Warsaw attracted 30,000 protesters from across the country. “We need to show people who they should vote for,” Obszanski, whose movement is also protesting against Ukrainian food imports, told DeSmog. He was quick to add that farmers are fighting for more than agriculture. He said: “It’s about those values, which are coming back now: God, Honour, Fatherland” – a slogan that’s widely used by Poland’s ultra-conservative groups, and most commonly heard at the country’s Independence Day march. Sławomir Izdebski, the chairman of OPZZ Rolników i Organizacji Rolniczych – one of the country’s largest farmers’ associations – is sending a 50-person delegation to Brussels. The small size of the delegation, Izdebski said, was down to the fact that farmers are “working the field, there’s a drought problem, farmers are a bit under the weather, and a trip to Brussels costs money.” The group is attending the protest in collaboration with the Institute of Agricultural Economy (IGR), which is spearheaded by millionaire and ex-fur producer Szczepan Wójcik. Wójcik, who supports populist Dutch politician Geert Wilders, shared a poster on social media platform X, depicting a man with a high-vis jacket and an EU flag in tatters, accompanied by the call for farmers to #votethemaway. The newly formed Orka movement, which secured a seat at the president’s agricultural counsel this week after a 10 day hunger strike
|
inside the Polish parliament, is also heading to Brussels, confirmed unofficial spokesperson Mariusz Borowiak.
|
Big and small farming groups have decided against attending the demo on the eve of the EU elections.
|
[
"Health & Society",
"EU Elections"
] |
health-and-society
|
2024-06-03T10:10:10.143Z
|
https://euobserver.com/health-and-society/ar2175aec8
|
EU elections: the far-right surge, youth turnout, the 'greenlash' in focus This WEEK
|
This week will revolve around one thing and one thing only: the elections for the European Parliament, taking place across the continent from Thursday to Sunday. After an election campaign marked by farmer’s unrest , concerns over the EU’s economy , and controversy over far-right collaboration , European citizens will cast their votes for the next European Parliament, in what could be one of the biggest political shifts in the parliament’s history. Breaking the centrist coalition With polls indicating sharp gains for the far-right , the vote could result in a rightwing majority, threatening to break apart the traditional centrist ‘pro-European’ coalition consisting of the Christian Democrat European People's Party (EPP), the Socialists & Democrats (S&D) and the liberal Renew Europe, and to a lesser extent the Greens. EPP commission president candidate Ursula von der Leyen's repeated flirtations with the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) has caused progressives particular concern. However, the vote will not directly elect the next commission president despite all rhetoric . Nonetheless, the result could be crucial in determining the fortunes of prospective candidates, including incumbent von der Leyen’s re-election bid, as they face the task of finding a majority in a parliament that is projected to be highly divided. Though most EU countries will head to the polls on Sunday (9 June), in true European fashion there are several exemptions. The Dutch will be first to cast their ballots, with voting booths opening on Thursday, the first exit polls appearing at 9pm. Next up is Ireland on Friday, followed by Latvia, Malta and Slovakia on Saturday. Finally, there are two more outliers, where the vote is spread across two days: Friday and Saturday for Czechia, and Saturday and Sunday for Italy. A European-wide indicative result will be published at 6pm on Sunday. Turnout issues In spite of efforts to cast it as the high mass of European democracy, the European elections have historically been marred by low voter turnout, repeatedly dipping below 50 percent since 1999, a blight on the parliament’s legitimacy. There are strong divergences between member states, with post-2004 members typically at the bottom of the list. Belgium has consistently performed best, as voting is compulsory ánd its national and regional elections normally take place on the same day. The EU will be eager for a repeat of the success of 2019, when a decades-long trend of declining voter participation was reversed, partly driven by a mobilisation of under-25s voting for green parties. EU officials have set their eyes on the same demographic, partly in the hope of stemming the far-right surge, but young people’s progressive credentials have become increasingly subject to doubt. Pollwatch projections Amid signs of a continent-wide ' greenlash' against climate policy , the European Greens are expected to take the biggest hit, losing a whopping 21 of their current 74 seats according to the latest Pollwatch data. Liberal Renew is projected to suffer similar losses, with the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and unaffiliated MEPs rising sharply - the latter mostly driven by far-right Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) suspension from the extreme-right Identity and Democracy (ID). Far-right gains are expected to be especially pronounced in the Netherlands and France, where ID parties poll respectively eight and 30 seats, with the ECR’s gains mainly driven by Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party (FdI). Among the few countries bucking the general rightward trend are Belgium and Sweden, expecting modest increases for parties on the left. French social democrat Raphael Glucksmann’s strong performance in the polls could mark a return to prominence of the French in the centre-left in Europe. Italian and Spanish MEPs will continue to dominate the group, however, with German influence most pronounced in the Greens and centre-right. The polls also indicate a possible slackening of French president Emmanuel Macron’s control over the Renew group, with the Renaissance party dropping from 13 to 8 seats. It is safe to say that the entirety of Brussels will be fixed on the elections and their consequences for the highly-complex game of political musical chairs in divvying up the EU top jobs in the next commission, council and parliament. Well, not entirely: one indomitable group of diplomats will hold out and keep their focus on longer term problems, meeting in Bonn for the annual mid-year UN climate change talks taking place from 3-13 June. Piet Ruig is a Brussels-based journalist who previously worked for the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO.
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Piet Ruig
|
This week, European citizens will head to the polls for the European elections, with votes taking place across the continent from Thursday to Sunday. With the far-right steadily climbing in the polls, the first EU-wide results are expected on Sunday evening in what could be a watershed moment in the parliament's history.
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[
"Agenda"
] |
agenda
|
2024-06-03T05:00:00.000Z
|
https://euobserver.com/agenda/ar943bc539
|
You can now ask AI all about EUobserver's articles
|
Late last year, a Swedish journalist named Lasse Edfast reached out to show his project eu-bots. Back then, it was a bot that would automatically transcribe, translate and summarise debates in the European Parliament. It was a nifty idea. The bot would take statements from MEPs, summarise them and post them under the MEP's name to Telegram, basically creating a chat that gave a good idea of what was discussed in a debate. This idea later evolved into something more ambitious; a bot that was trained on the full corpus of EU documents, which would allow anyone to ask it about any procedure, with the bot giving both an answer and links to relevant documents. "It started last year when I was doing a story about how EU is planning for a large scale house renovation – the ” Renovation Wave ” – and I couldn’t find the information I needed. I got totally lost among all the documents, decisions, firsts readings and revision numbers. The fact that the debates in the parliament isn’t translated got me even more confused, and irritated," Lasse told me. "As I already knew programming and the first open AI models had just been released started to write something to help myself and other journalists reporting on EU. Many dark winter nights later EU-bots.net was published, still with lots of bugs but working for many cases. Now I’m trying to smash those bugs at the same time as I’m integrating more data – like the IPCC reports and EUobserver articles – at the same time as I’m thinking of new functionality. It’s still done during evenings so it’s a slow progress." Nonetheless, its answers could potentially be useful to researchers, journalists and citizens alike who want know something about a specific policy or regulation. Or just how certain things in the EU work. Lasse kept improving the model, and earlier this month we also provided the full archive of EUobserver content to include in the training corpus. This inclusion means that the bot can now also provide journalistic context to queries about EU policy which we covered. The bot returns a short summary and links to EUobserver articles, and I have to say it works quite well. We'll get into how it works a bit further down. I think doing this is important for two reasons: the first is as a public service. I believe our independent (meaning that we're not owned by another entity or rich person) journalism should be used to enrich knowledge about the EU, and accessible to many. Second, tech giants are banking on AI being the new interface for accessing the web. As Google recently announced 'let us do the Googling for you'. This is worrying for a couple of reasons, but mainly because it disincentives people to read information from the source – meaning less revenue for publishers, meaning less money to spend on journalism, resulting in a kind of Ouroboros of journalism. When moving to our new website, we decided to lock it down for scrapers that collect data for training AI models. It's a risky bet, as we would not be included in future Google searches that have done the Googling for you. Potentially many fewer people would thus see our journalism. We're hedging this bet by choosing to work with Lasse and his eu-bots.net . As I'm not an AI expert, I asked Lasse to explain how the model works; how it interprets queries, what sources it returns and how to interpret the results. Here's what he told me in an email: How it works When you ask a question a chain of events happens: 1. Your question gets evaluated to find out what sources of information to use. 2. Relevant documents are fetched from a database. 3. An AI model ( Llama3 8b for now) is using pieces of the fetched documents to answer your question. 4. Another instance of the AI model is asked if the question is answered, and some other checks. 5. The answer is showed to you along with the sources used in the process. This approach, known as an , and comes with pros and cons: Pros + Can understand and ”normal language”, meaning you don’t have to search for specific keywords but can ask a question as you would normally do. + Can be used to get an overview for someone who is not familiar with the topic. + High privacy as everything is done locally so no data leaves the server. + Is getting better and better as the AI models are evolving. Cons - Lack of transparency as it’s difficult to understand how AI is working. - Can only answer questions that there is an answer to in the documents, eg. questions like ”How many time has…” is not answered correctly if there is need for further processing like counting occurrences of something. - Might not give good answers when the question is complex and you need to do multiple steps to reach a conclusion. How can one use the chat You can of course use the chat as a normal chat where you ask a question and get an answer, but also as a summariser of lawmaking procedures and documents. You can of course ask whatever you want in the chat, but the quality of the answer will depend on what and how you ask. In general, EU-bots.net is good answering questions about specific decisions or topics, like ”How is EU regulating train travel?” or ”What is said in the parliament about electric cars?” It’s not good answering questions like ”What is the most common argument for building nuclear power?” (although it will give you some arguments) as there is no mechanism for doing that kind of logic. Also, remember that the search is done mostly in official EU-documents, so try to avoid terms used in media and rather describe what you are looking for. ”What is said about the migration pact” might now result in an answer about the recent migration pact as that is not the official term, but if you instead ask ”How is EU handling migration?” you will get a better answer hopefully covering what you actually wonder. Below each answer you will fin the three links and . The first one will show a summary of the internal process of generating the answer. This is an attempt to make the service more transparent. The link will give you your conversation as a HTML file so you can save it. If you share the conversation that link will be valid for ten days, then the conversation will be deleted (for privacy reasons). The of making new laws for EU is spread over the different institutions, often takes a long time and can be tricky to understand. EU-bots.net is trying to make a timeline of this process, where each step is explained. You recognise a reference number by its form: A year, then a number, and then three letters describing the type of process, eg. . If you see a reference number like this in a document you’re reading, in an agenda or even in a web address: write it in the chat and you will get the timeline for that procedure. Sometimes you will stumble over a document, like proposals from the European Commission, and those often have their own reference number, called a . Those starts with a number, then a year, then a letter indicating the document type, and then a document number, eg. . If you put that number in the chat you will get a summary of the document and the question if you want to know more; if you click ”yes” you’ll get a timeline of the procedure related to that document. What's still to come? One of the most asked for functions is some kind of presentation of voting results, so that has a high priority. I would also like to customise the chat for the user, so that if you’re a journalist from Italy interested in climate you can have more results from Italian parliamentarians and a focus on facts relevant for climate reporting. A more ”clickable” site would also be good, allowing for a more exploring approach where the user can click on sources, persons and keywords. Try it out below or on eu-bots.net : Lasse Edfast produces documentaries for TV and radio, does science reporting for Swedish Radio and coding for all kinds of research. Alejandro Tauber is publisher of EUobserver. Lasse Edfast produces documentaries for TV and radio, does science reporting for Swedish Radio and coding for all kinds of research.
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Alejandro Tauber
|
The developer of EU-docs trained AI bot eu-bots.net has now included EUobserver's articles to the LLM's training data, which already includes EU documents and IPCC reports.
|
[
"Digital",
"Inside EUobserver"
] |
digital
|
2024-05-31T08:35:06.558Z
|
https://euobserver.com/digital/arf8ab9cee
|
Hungry and voiceless: why EU-Africa partnership must rectify this double injustice
|
With the renewal of the EU’s leadership after June's European elections and the upcoming AU-EU summit next year, there is a critical opportunity to scale up action towards fighting hunger. However, as we follow the EU-Africa partnership , transparency is lacking, leaving civil society and communities on the side. Increasingly, the intertwining of economic, political, and diplomatic interests tends to overshadow the core goal of human development, leaving us questioning the true beneficiaries and objectives of this partnership. With nearly 20 percent of the African population facing hunger, and certain countries facing even more alarming levels of under-nutrition and food crisis, progress in food and nutrition security is imperative in this partnership. Recent data indicates that approximately 30 percent of children under five years of age in the continent are stunted, meaning they are too short for their age, which can lead to permanent physical and cognitive harm. Moreover, 5.8 percent of children under five are wasted, meaning they are too thin for their height due to rapid weight loss or inadequate weight gain. These children face weakened immunity, developmental delays, and an increased risk of death . Despite various commitments, progress has stagnated and even regressed in several African subregions . To a much lesser extent, European countries are also affected by hunger and undernutrition: in 2022, two percent of the population in the EU-27 and the United Kingdom was affected by severe food insecurity . However, food insecurity measurement remains an issue across most EU countries due to the lack of systematic, precise, and coherent approaches. In 2022, 95.3 million people in the EU (21.6 percent of the population) were at risk of poverty or social exclusion with a large part of them lacking effective access to sufficient, healthy and sustainable food. This has significant health impacts that are deeply linked to increased inequalities. Fighting hunger is a complex challenge, yet science and experience demonstrate that it is surmountable, especially if actions address its root causes These are widely recognised: the impact of protracted conflicts and the use of hunger as warfare; the rise of socio-economic inequalities and unaddressed gender disparities; the effects of climate and environmental crises; failing food systems, incoherent and unfair European agricultural policies; and the shortcomings of local, national, and international policies. What is crucial is political will. Having worked extensively in both continents alongside communities battling hunger and malnutrition, we urge EU and AU institutions alongside their member states to prioritise the people they serve. A robust political partnership should focus on fundamental social services, access to nutritious and sustainably produced food, peace and protection, over economic gains and political manoeuvring. We must ensure this partnership doesn't contribute to a global race to the bottom, but rather uplifts people and protects the planet. A recent leak on the European Commission’s shift towards prioritising competition and EU-centric interests at the expense of human development, however, goes exactly in this depressing direction – as VOICE and CONCORD rightly pointed out. Instead, our focus should be on long-term outcomes, avoiding failed economic models, self-serving political agreements, misleading media narratives, policy incoherences, and social systems that deepen inequalities. Civil society organisations and communities are essential in driving human development, ensuring that development agendas are rooted in people’s needs. Upholding a principled civic space is thus crucial, particularly in the framework of the EU-Africa partnership where organisations and communities must be recognised as true stakeholders, by valuing their contributions in shaping policies and holding institutions accountable. Civil society is mobilising, presenting united demands and pathways forward . Our leaders need to heed the organised voice of their constituents and steer this partnership toward genuine progress ending hunger and promoting sustainable development. Action Against Hunger , founded in 1979, is an NGO with a mission is to save lives by eliminating hunger through the prevention, detection and treatment of undernutrition, particularly during and after emergencies linked to conflict and natural disasters. Today we operate alongside communities in 55 countries around the world, including in Europe and Africa.
|
Action Against Hunger
|
With the renewal of the EU’s leadership after June's European elections and the upcoming African Union-European Union summit next year, there is a critical opportunity to scale up action towards fighting hunger, with transparent policies and truly civil society involvement, over political and economic interests.
|
[
"EU & the World",
"Africa",
"Health & Society"
] |
eu-and-the-world
|
2024-05-31T08:06:02.009Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ar6e2e2de8
|
Revealed: Far-right links of Polish farmer hunger strikers
|
An obscure far-right linked farmers group has risen to prominence in Poland after it was championed by populist politicians ahead of the EU elections, DeSmog can reveal. Orka, a new farmers’ movement that materialised earlier this month, entered Warsaw’s parliament building on 9 May to protest against EU climate plans and Ukrainian food imports. Protesters suspended a 10-day hunger strike last week after winning the attention of Polish president Andrzej Duda, who invited them to talks, and reportedly offered one member a role on his council for agriculture. The protest group was accompanied by the far-right Confederation Party’s Marta Chech, who is running as a candidate in the 6-9 June EU ballot. The little-known group has been greeted with widespread scepticism in Poland, after it emerged that it is not yet registered as a farming group and few have heard of it. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk has so far refused to meet the protesters, claiming they do not represent real farmers. Orka insists it is apolitical, a group of “common farmers”. However, DeSmog has uncovered a number of far-right links to two of the group’s leading figures. One member, Radoslaw Salata, ran as a candidate for the Confederation Party in 2019. Another, Mariusz Borowiak, has expressed his support for the party on social media and has been photographed with one of its leaders, who has been widely condemned in recent months for anti-semitism. A number of right-wing Polish MPs have also been quick to join the protest. Poland – like much of Europe – has seen widespread farmer demonstrations since late 2023 over green reforms, and a raft of other issues. Further protests are expected before the EU elections, in which about 400 million eligible voters prepare to head to the polls. Orka says it wants to land the Green Deal – the EU’s plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 – “in the trash”. According to EU news website Euractiv, the protesters were last week heard shouting references to an anti-EU conspiracy theory revolving around the false notion that decarbonisation will require high levels of bug consumption, with the phrase: “Let Brussels eat insects. We eat Polish pork chops”. While the EU has already repealed multiple environmental laws in response to the demonstrations, some groups are calling for further concessions. The far-right, which has capitalised on an anti Green Deal narrative, is widely expected to make major gains in the upcoming vote. “It’s very difficult to fight this kind of misinformation,” Krzysztof Cibor, head of campaigns at Greenpeace Poland, told DeSmog. “It’s not fact versus fact, it’s fact versus emotions. The public in Poland wants climate policies to be stronger, but emotions towards the Green Deal aren’t positive now and politicians are using this rhetoric to win votes.” The professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, said the Orka protest was an example of extreme right-wing and populist parties weaponising a popular cause. “They are using these protests to portray themselves as defenders of national interests against EU-imposed regulations,” he said. Political Support The 14 protesters were given access to the parliament building by MPs from Poland’s populist Law and Justice (PiS) party as well as members of the smaller far-right Confederation party. Although PiS lost power in last year’s general election – after eight years of governing – it enjoys almost as much popular support as Civic Coalition, the largest party in the ruling coalition government, two May polls suggest . Deputy agriculture minister Michal Kolodziejczak, who founded the left-wing agrarian party Agrounia, told the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita that he believed the Orka demonstration was “coordinated” by members of the PiS party. “What they [Orka] want, nobody really knows,” he added. Former agricultural minister Robert Telus, who is running in the upcoming EU elections for the Law and Justice party (PiS), spent one night camping out with protesters in the corridor of Poland’s parliament building. Orka’s spokesperson Mariusz Borowiak posted photos on Facebook of Telus and two other MPs, Anna Gembicka and Jarosław Sachajko, who were pictured smiling in sleeping bags. In an interview earlier this year, PiS Telus said the “climate religion” of former EU Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans had led to the demise of farming, and described the EU’s targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as “radical”. The protest attracted wider online support. In a post on social media platform X, the PiS stated that the group was “protesting against a policy that … will simply lead to the collapse of Polish agriculture”, in an apparent reference to the EU’s environmental laws. Such claims have been at the centre of a misleading anti-EU narrative. The Green Deal sets out the EU’s flagship sustainable farming reforms, including its “Farm to Fork strategy,” which aims to mitigate climate change and reverse biodiversity loss. In a comment to DeSmog, Borowiak denied that Orka had been weaponised. He said his association had “used” PiS and Confederation lawmakers to gain access to parliament and air their grievances. “Whatever happens inside the parliament, that’s what politics looks like. Everyone wants to snap a photo, get something out of it,” he said. “These are ordinary guys who work in the field every day, and at the moment we had to fight for our existence in the Sejm [lower house of parliament] and even if we didn’t want to, unfortunately, we have to meet with politicians,” Borowiak said. Rodríguez-Pose of the London School of Economics, who specialises in regional inequality and populism in Europe, told DeSmog that Poland’s political parties could benefit from such protests. “Populist and nationalist political parties, such as Confederation and PiS, stand to gain significantly by capitalising on farmer protests like this hunger strike,” he said, arguing that "they can rally support from communities feeling neglected by the EU’s climate policies, amplify existing discontent, and channel it into political action, undermining their opponents". “Such a strategy will, in all likelihood, weaken the position of pro-Europe parties and boost the visibility and support for populism, leading to a more fragmented European Parliament,” he also said. Far-Right Links Despite Orka’s claims to be apolitical, DeSmog found that two of the group’s leading figures have links to the far-right. In a photo posted on Facebook from Poland’s Independence Day march, Europe’s largest meeting of nationalist groups, in November, Borowiak is seen standing on top of LGBTQI and European Union flags, holding a Polish flag in his hand. The caption reads: “Tighten your fist!!! Don’t tighten your belt!!!” He also praised Grzegorz Braun of the far-right Confederation party after the lawmaker blasted a Jewish menorah with a fire extinguisher in parliament last December – an incident for which Braun was widely condemned . Borowiak posted a photo on Facebook of himself and Braun shaking hands, congratulating the MP for “putting out the fire”. Braun, who is a Confederation candidate in the upcoming elections to the EU parliament, visited Orka farmers while they protested. He livestreamed several of their press conferences on Facebook and in a post on X, urged people to subscribe to the group’s YouTube channel. Another of the group’s unofficial spokespeople, Radoslaw Salata, ran as a candidate for the far-right Confederation Party in 2019, and was until that year a member of the party’s ultra-nationalist faction, National Movement. In 2016, he received an award from the PiS administration for his contribution to farming. Borowiak and Salata both also ran in Poland’s most recent local government elections in April, as part of the same grouping of independent candidates. The group’s slogan “God, Honour, Fatherland” is widely used by Poland’s ultra-conservative groups, and most commonly heard at the country’s Independence Day march. The rally is associated with the Confederation Party and has witnessed xenophobic slogans and outbreaks of violence in recent years. Borowiak said that the “God, Honour, Fatherland” slogan is one farmers identify with too. “I don’t think we should pigeonhole it,” he told DeSmog. Borowiak is a regular commentator on controversial private broadcaster TV Republika, which has over a million subscribers on YouTube. The station regularly platforms climate denial. It is widely considered to be a mouthpiece for PiS, which exerted significant control over Polish state media when it was in government. While small, protests such as Orka’s could “significantly impact” the results of the election, said Rodríguez-Pose. “This stance is attracting voters who feel, with or without reason, neglected or adversely affected by EU policies.” PiS, Confederation party, Robert Telus, Grzegorz Braun and Radoslaw Salata were contacted for comment but had not responded prior to publication. Marta Kasztelan is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker focused on human rights and environmental issues. Clare Carlile is a researcher at Desmog, focusing on the agribusiness sector. Phoebe Cooke is the co-deputy editor of Desmog. Marta Kasztelan is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker focused on human rights and environmental issues. Clare Carlile is a researcher at Desmog, focusing on the agribusiness sector.
|
Phoebe Cooke
|
The nascent Orka movement has won a meeting with Polish president Andrzej Duda – and reportedly a role on his agricultural council.
|
[
"EU Political",
"Health & Society"
] |
eu-political
|
2024-05-30T08:53:18.674Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-political/ar56395776
|
The Hungarian EU presidency and Georgia's election — don't say you weren't warned
|
Georgia's current political crisis was triggered by the Georgian Dream government's repeated attempts to push through its highly-controversial Foreign Agents Law , finally passed on Tuesday (28 May), which jeopardises the country's EU accession path. But it was also catalysed by a rather unexpected external development: the European Union's inability to respond to this challenge with one voice and in a timely manner. The EU's failure to react adequately is both striking and — especially for the pro-EU demonstrators on Georgian streets — deeply disappointing, especially given the overwhelming support of Georgian society for EU accession and the watershed moment for the country. Following the adoption of the law by the Georgian parliament on 14 May, EU member states were simply unable to issue a joint statement and condemn the legislation that put Georgia's EU accession process on a knife's edge. Why? Because the Hungarian government, led by prime minister Viktor Orbán, whose ruling Fidesz party has developed cordial ties with Georgian Dream over the past two years, blocked the EU statement. And according to the treaties, EU decision-making in the field of common foreign and security policy requires unanimity, which gives even a lone-standing member state the right to veto any EU action. After intense negotiations, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell finally issued a statement on behalf of the EU some 24 hours after the events. But the damage cannot be undone. Balázs Orbán, the political director of the Hungarian prime minister’s Office, proudly tweeted that the Hungarian government’s intention is not to veto Georgia’s Law on the Transparency of Foreign Influence — but to encourage the introduction of similar laws across the EU. Georgian Dream, sensing the EU's inability to name-and-shame and exert leverage, may feel emboldened to continue on its authoritarian path. At the same time, Georgian citizens protesting for a European future for their country may feel abandoned. Muzzling electoral watchdogs a prelude to election However, this saga was only a prelude to the next potential clash between the EU and the Georgian Dream government where the stakes will be much higher than this time. On 26 October, Georgia will hold its parliamentary elections, the first time under the new proportional electoral system agreed upon in the 2017 constitutional reform as a compromise between Georgian Dream and opposition parties. Due to the full proportionality, Georgian Dream — even though its electoral victory seems certain — may face increased difficulties in winning a comfortable majority of seats necessary to continue a single-party government. The Foreign Agents Law gives an indication of how the Georgian Dream intends to address this problem. It may not be a coincidence that the main targets of the law are Georgian election integrity watchdogs, like ISFED , that have traditionally borne the brunt of the fight against electoral fraud and interference in Georgia. Electoral integrity — or the lack of it — will be the centrepiece of the October Georgian elections, and it could determine the outcome one way or another. Imagine that in a highly sensitive situation — both Georgian Dream and the opposition declare victory, or opposition parties refuse to recognise the election results due to high level of systemic irregularities in the elections — the EU won’t be able to speak with one voice. Or even worse, a malicious member state holding the rotating EU Council presidency may pretend to speak on behalf of the European Union This is the scenario EU institutions and member states need to be prepared for. The Hungarian government will hold the rotating EU presidency in the second half of 2024, at a critical time for enlargement policy and neighbourhood relations: during parliamentary elections in Georgia and presidential elections in Moldova. Hungary will not only be able — and ready — to block EU statements in case of widespread electoral fraud but might also be ready to formally issue statements on behalf of the presidency. The rotating EU presidency does not represent the EU on the international stage. That is the prerogative of the president of the EU Commission, the high commissioner for foreign relations, and the president of the European Council. But are most Georgian citizens and international media representatives aware of this fine distinction? With a well-timed statement recognising Georgian Dream's electoral victory, despite outstanding and uninvestigated questions of possible electoral fraud, Orbán and the Hungarian presidency could confuse EU and Western reactions and provide significant domestic and international support for the Georgian ruling party at a critical time. What is Orbán’s vested interest in the Georgian Dream that explains the Hungarian government’s recent and possible future interventions? The simple answer is Hungary’s own illiberal agenda and Russia. Over the past decade, Orbán and his Fidesz party have invested significant resources in building strong, strategic party diplomacy ties with illiberal or radical-right parties around the world, often at the expense of official diplomatic relations when these parties are in opposition. The list includes, for example, the Trump/MAGA wing of the US Republicans and Jair Bolsonaro's party in Brazil, the full spectrum of the European radical right, and the Georgian Dream and North Macedonia's VMRO-DPMNE in EU candidate countries. The glue is always the common illiberal agenda. Moreover, as has been demonstrated since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Hungarian government has rarely missed an opportunity to serve Russian strategic interests by delaying or watering down sanctions packages or blocking EU aid to Ukraine. However, this subservience to the Kremlin may not be limited to Ukraine. Georgia Dream is pursuing an illiberal and authoritarian path that is moving Tbilisi further and further away from the EU and closer and closer to Russia's orbit. Keeping the party in power is in the Kremlin's strategic interest. Orbán has two good reasons to troll EU responses to Georgia’s upcoming elections. EU institutions and member states must be prepared for this eventuality. Daniel Hegedüs is a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think tank Daniel Hegedüs is a senior fellow at the
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German Marshall Fund
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The Hungarian government will hold the rotating EU presidency in the second half of 2024, at a critical time for enlargement policy and neighbourhood relations: during parliamentary elections in Georgia and presidential elections in Moldova.
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[
"EU & the World",
"Rule of Law",
"EU Political"
] |
*
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2024-05-29T10:17:59.230Z
|
https://euobserver.com/*/ar627f9fe2
|
The fight for Georgia’s European future
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The celebration of Georgia’s Independence Day in Tbilisi last Sunday was perhaps more symbolic than ever before. On 26 May, thousands of people proceeded from Merab Kostava Street to Vake Park protesting against the so-called “foreign agent law” – the route of the protesters on Sunday repeated that of Georgia’s first Independence Day march on 26 May 1919 — one year after the country declared independence from Russia. The foreign agent law will require Georgian organisations receiving more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as foreign agents. The blueprint for this law comes from Russia – a similar act was passed there in 2012 – hence, the slogan of the Georgian protesters: “Yes to Europe, No to Russian Law”. In Russia, the law was adopted amid the protests against Putin’s decision to return to presidency after four years as prime minister (2008-2012) – the Russian authorities’ crackdown on the protests, which had started in December 2011, marked yet another turn of the authoritarian screw. No surprise that Georgians see the pattern and fear that their country may lose its political freedom again, like it lost its short-lived independence to the annexation to the Soviet Union in 1922. Today’s autocrats, especially those in flawed democracies and hybrid regimes, have several challenges to deal with: political opposition, an impartial justice system, free-and-fair elections, independent media, and a civil society. The latter two often remain the last bulwark of external democratic checks when other checks and balances have already been corroded by autocratic powers. The Russian foreign agent law was so efficient in undermining Russian civil society organisations and free media, which often depended on Western financial support, that foreign agent laws have recently become an indispensable instrument in every autocrat’s toolkit. Viktor Orbán’s Hungary adopted this type of the law in 2017, Milorad Dodik’s Republika Srpska – in 2023, Sadyr Japarov’s Kyrgyzstan – in 2024; and discussions about adoption of similar legislation are underway in Robert Fico’s Slovakia and Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbia . While autocrats often refer to the foreign agent law adopted in the US in 1938 (Foreign Agents Registration Act, FARA) to deflect international criticism of their attacks on democratic culture, FARA predominantly affects lobbying, law and PR firms working for foreign clients, while the primary function of the autocrats’ “foreign agent laws” is to control civil society and suppress dissent and media pluralism. Georgia’s ruling party Georgian Dream (GD) of Georgian-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili first tried to adopt the legislation in 2023, but its attempts were stopped by the mass protests and international criticism. Although the Georgian Dream promised not to revive the draft law after its withdrawal, the party decided to reintroduce it in 2024 The GD’s move runs parallel to the growing anti-Westernism of the Georgian ruling elites disseminating wild conspiracy theories about the West trying to “drag” Georgia into a war with Russia. Speaking to his supporters in April 2024, Ivanishvili produced a myth of the “Global War Party”, an unnamed powerful force “which has a decisive influence on Nato and the European Union and which only sees Georgia and Ukraine as cannon fodder”. International criticism of the GD’s attempts to reintroduce the “foreign agent law” is, according to Ivanishvili, thus driven by the failure of the “Global War Party” “to turn Georgia into a second front despite great efforts, which it could have achieved very easily with the agents’ return to power”. By the “agents of the Global War Party” Ivanishvili apparently meant Georgian pro-Western democratic parties. Antisemitic conspiracy theories In addition to evoking anti-Semitic undertones of the “Global War Party” (a transnational cabal manipulating global events) note that the GD’s MP Mariam Lashkhi even compared the “Global War Party” to the freemasons – the GD’s propagation of this notion signals a geopolitical re-aligning of the Georgian ruling elites. Ivanishvili feels that Russia is winning the war against Ukraine. Since Moscow’s potential victory will necessarily weaken the West and consolidate Russian illiberal influence in Europe, the GD is poised to join Russia’s side – in defiance of the will of Georgian people, who remain overwhelmingly supportive of the Euro-Atlantic integration. What remains there for the GD to do is to break the will and spirit of Georgians. Ahead of the parliamentary elections taking place in October this year, the adoption of the “foreign agent law”, which will subvert the free media and domestic election monitoring groups, is just one stage of a creeping anti-Western counter-revolution that aims to kidnap Georgia from the European family and incorporate it into the Russian sphere of influence. It is existential for European Georgia that the EU does not abandon Georgian people. Financial support for civil society groups must continue, and the EU should take a more assertive stance in defending the interests of Georgian pro-democracy organisations and its own geopolitical interests in the region. Meanwhile, the Georgian ruling elites’ regression on democracy and European values should lead to travel restrictions against those responsible for this backsliding and the repressions of Georgian civil society representatives. Anton Shekhovtsov is director of the Centre for Democratic Integrity in Vienna, visiting professor at the Central European University, and author of three books: New Radical Rightwing Parties in European Democracies (2011), Russia and the Western Far-Right: Tango Noir (2017), and Russian Political Warfare (2023). Anton Shekhovtsov is director of the Centre for Democratic Integrity in Vienna, visiting professor at the Central European University, and author of three books: New Radical Rightwing Parties in European Democracies (2011), Russia and the Western Far-Right: Tango Noir (2017), and
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Russian Political Warfare
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Georgian-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili feels that Russia is winning the war against Ukraine. Since Moscow’s potential victory will necessarily weaken the West and consolidate Russian illiberal influence in Europe, the Georgian Dream party is poised to join Russia’s side – in defiance of the will of Georgian people.
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[
"EU & the World"
] |
eu-and-the-world
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2024-05-28T08:31:39.386Z
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https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ar5684104b
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Forget the TV debates, the 'Spitzenkandidate' process is now a distracting sham
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The last European elections back in 2019 were a pivotal moment in the debate over the so-called 'Spitzenkandidat' process. After a series of wrong political moves and successive negotiation deadlocks, EU leaders, as part of a package agreement for top positions in the European Union's institutions, proposed Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission. She was a political figure unknown to the general public, lacking prime ministerial experience, and her name had never been considered for this position during the election period. Those who closely followed the discussions during that period, still remember the narrow majority in the European Parliament in favour of her candidacy and the strong reactions, mainly from MEPs to the decision of European leaders to bypass the Spitzenkandidat process. According to this process, each political party, from the largest to the smallest, must propose a lead candidate for the presidency of the European Commission . These candidates must be known in advance, defend a manifesto, and participate in the election campaign. In return, the party that secures the most seats in the European Parliament will be "entitled" to choose its lead candidate from the EU leaders, thus dissolving the lack of transparency around backstage agreements based on party preferences, geographical criteria, and other interests. It worked — in 2014 This process was applied almost successfully for the first time with the election of Jean-Claude Juncker in the 2014 European elections, the first electoral process after the Lisbon Treaty came into effect. The European political parties (except for the Eurosceptic European Conservatives & Reformsits, ECR, party) proposed their "top candidates”, who actively participated in the election period and conducted a series of debates on the future of the Union and on specific European policies and issues. For many 2014 was considered as the beginning of an ambitious European democratic reform, giving citizens the opportunity, through their vote, to indirectly provide democratic legitimacy to the political leader of the EU's top executive body. But five years later, the system collapsed emphatically when all the Spitzenkandidaten were rejected by the EU leaders, nullifying the process and undermining the democratic essence of the European Parliament. Was it an illegal move or a violation of any of the provisions of the European Treaties? The truth is that the Lisbon Treaty deliberately chose creative ambiguity in this regard, as it stipulates that the European Council must propose a candidate for the Commission presidency . In simple terms, there is no explicit legal obligation or commitment anywhere that obliges EU leaders to choose a Spitzenkandidat as a candidate And here we are today, with the upcoming European elections promising to give a new chance to the Spitzenkandidat system. The European People's Party (EPP) has already chosen the current president of the Commission as its "top candidate," as have most European parties. Unfortunately, none of the above seems capable of securing the necessary majority in both the European Council and the European Parliament. And maybe it is better to avoid any comparisons between today's candidates with the political figures that ran for the position in 2014. At this point in time, the current president appears to have a slight advantage due to her position and recognition. On the other hand, von der Leyen represents the failure of the 'top candidate' system in 2019 and her tenure has been marred by controversies and criticisms , raising doubts about her suitability for a second term. Moreover, let's not overlook the fact that von der Leyen, during her five-year term and during the election period, never tried to connect with citizens, avoiding public appearances and meetings with the public. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that the day after June’s European elections will come together with a major dilemma for the new composition of the European Parliament and for the 27 heads of state and government of the EU member states: to offer their support to the current president of the Commission for a second term – despite her weaknesses and mainly her very low popularity and acceptance rates among European citizens – or to choose for the second consecutive election to completely ignore the Spitzenkandidat process, selecting a political figure of broad acceptance, recognised value, and prestige. Christos Avdellas is a Greek councillor in Thessaloniki, Greece, and an EU project manager
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Christos Avdellas
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Ursula von der Leyen — a political figure unknown to the general public, lacking prime ministerial experience, and never a Spitzenkandidat for EU president — became EU Commission president in 2019. So what is the point of re-running this sham?
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[
"EU Elections"
] |
*
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2024-05-27T10:30:08.904Z
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https://euobserver.com/*/ar15d1b7ec
|
After Ukraine and Gaza, the forgotten crisis - Syrian refugees
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After 13 years of conflict and crisis, the situation faced by many Syrian refugees remains desperate. There are now more than five million refugees from Syria are registered in the region - with the majority living in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Despite many having been displaced for more than a decade, returning home in safety is simply not an option. Without a political solution in sight, the escalation of hostilities across Syria since October 2023 has caused suffering to a level unseen since 2019. In some areas the threat of arbitrary arrest and detention for those who do return also continues to loom large. Many refugee families that we speak to have had family members returned to Syria only to never hear from them again. Meanwhile, while refugee hosting countries in the region have shown incredible hospitality for over a decade, they are also facing their own compounding crises. In Lebanon, where over 25 percent of the population are Syrian refugees, two in every three people - spanning both refugees and their host community - currently require humanitarian support. Not only do these pressures mean they are less able to support refugees’ complex needs, but they are contributing to increasing negative sentiment towards them. Across the region, the spectre of return to a country that UNHCR continues to deem unsafe is increasingly hanging over many Syrians. Until safe, dignified and truly voluntary returns to Syria become a viable solution, it’s clear that the international community has a vital role to play in protecting and supporting refugees in the region. This week’s Brussels Syria Conference is a chance for the European Union and its member states to make this a reality, and it is vital we see bold commitments for the coming years. There are four key actions needed. Four steps First, funding is key. Despite the clear increase in humanitarian need, funding in response to the Syria crisis has plummeted. In 2023, the humanitarian response was more than 60 percent unfunded and donors have warned of an additional 20-40 percent budget cut in 2024. In recent years, the Brussels Syria Conference has provided an important forum for the EU and broader international community to reinforce their support for the region, and they have consistently stepped up their financial commitments. These pledges have helped to sustain humanitarian efforts. Yet, they remain far short of covering the growing needs of displaced people inside Syria, and those who have sought refuge in neighbouring countries. This year, they have the opportunity to put this right. Rather than divesting from the region, it’s time to look at how we invest and better support Syrian people and the countries hosting the vast majority of its refugees. Second, it’s not just more funding that’s needed but also the right type of funding. There is growing recognition that the bifurcation of humanitarian and development finance is unhelpful in addressing protracted crises such as this one. Instead, the EU needs to respond both to people’s immediate needs, and invest in programmes that build their self-reliance and resilience, so they can thrive in the longer-term without external assistance. One key to making this a reality could be the establishment of a new Resilience Fund - jointly owned by the European Commission’s departments for International Partnerships (INTPA) and Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) - to help meet basic needs and drive resilience of people impacted by fragile and conflict-affected states like Syria, with a view to ensuring people can safely return to their homes. The commission should also ensure that its funding is funnelled directly to locally-led NGOs to ensure it has maximum reach, scale and impact. Third, the international community must stand firm against human rights violations and the persecution of refugees. In some host countries, such as in Lebanon, there are reports of Syrians facing discrimination, including frequent raids, evictions and forced deportations by authorities. While host governments are working to fulfil their obligations towards providing refugees with basic social services, it is important that they also prioritise their safety and protection. The International Rescue Committee's experience shows clearly that when host governments adopt more inclusive policies, it not only benefits refugees but their host communities. In Jordan, for example, the government - with support of the international community - has worked to ensure that Syrian refugees have access to primary and secondary education, resulting in over 135,000 Syrian refugee children being enrolled in public schools across the country. While more work needs to be done to improve the quality of education, this initiative both offers Syrian children a chance of a brighter future, and fosters greater social cohesion and resilience within Jordanian society. Fourth, there is an urgent need for more safe routes out of the region. Trapped in a precarious - and in some cases increasingly hostile - situation in their first countries of asylum, Syrians are left with few safe options. Until voluntary returns become viable, it is essential that wealthier, more stable countries - including those in the EU - urgently expand refugee resettlement, and other safe pathways including work, education and employment visas. This week, the EU, together with the broader international community, must demonstrate that it can lead with humanity, and use its influence to raise the bar for people impacted by one of the world’s most severe and most forgotten crises. This is not only a vital expression of solidarity with Syrian refugees, but with host countries in the EU’s southern neighbourhood who are in urgent need of greater support and responsibility-sharing. Harlem Desir is the senior vice president for Europe of the International Rescue Committee , where Nivedita Monga is the country director for Jordan. Harlem Desir is the senior vice president for Europe of the International Rescue Committee , where
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Nivedita Monga
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On Monday, the EU is hosting the 8th Brussels Conference on “Supporting the future of Syria and the region” - the year’s biggest pledging moment for Syrians impacted by the conflict as it enters its 14th year.
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[
"EU & the World"
] |
eu-and-the-world
|
2024-05-27T05:00:00.000Z
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https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/arb05ca776
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The political 'Eurovision' - Follow the Spitzenkandidat debate live
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The European Union election campaign reaches a peak this week. Following an election debate earlier this week the EU Commission presidential hopefuls will face off in a new televised encounter between the so-called (lead candidates) taking place this afternoon (Thursday 23 May) The debate at the European Parliament is organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) - yes, that EBU - and it will be broadcast in multiple languages on public service media channels and various online platforms across all 27 EU member states. Nicknamed the Eurovision debate, though unlikely to involve any singing, it will feature Ursula von der Leyen for the European People’s Party (EPP), Nicolas Schmit for the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Sandro Gozi for liberal Renew Europe, Terry Reintke for the European Greens and Walter Baien for the Left. Notably, far-right parties will be absent from the debate, despite rising steadily in the polls. Follow our live coverage below: Takeaways (17:22) The live debate has ended, leaving us with some standout moments. Schmit (S&D) took a strong stance against von der Leyen for cosying up with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni Brothers of Italy party in the ECR’. And he also slammed the Tunisia-EU migration deal arguing that von der Leyen sold it as a “fight against smugglers” while it is a “fight against refugees”. Von der Leyen (EPP), for her part, maintained a defensive position, highlighting her accomplishments in safeguarding the rule of law in Poland and Hungary, regulating digital platforms and setting up the Green Deal. But she also used the opportunity to pitch the need to move to “incentives” instead of “conditionality” in farm policy. Meanwhile, Gozi (Renew) proposed an ambitious €100bn investment in European defence, highlighting the need to balance military spending with cultural and educational investments. Urging action, Reintke (Greens) made a plea for citizens to vote in this election to stop the rise of the far right, calling on Renew to quickly decide on the expulsion of the Dutch VVD party, which recently formed a coalition with the far-right in the Netherlands. And Baier (The Left) made a powerful case for social justice, advocating for rent caps and stressing that new fiscal rules jeopardise the green transition. Technological progress comes with risks (16:55) Asked about technology regulation, Schmit emphasised the importance of investment. “It’s not austerity policy that helps us, it’s investment that creates progress,” Schmit says, adding that “we need the right kind of finance” through the Capital Markets Union. Von der Leyen defended the commission's record on regulating technology, highlighting the Digital Service Act, which prompted the withdrawal of TikTok lite amid concerns over its addictive design. Regarding mental health and the safety of minors, Gozi repeated a policy promoted by French president Emmanuel Macron, arguing for an age of maturity of 15 for internet access. On deepfakes, Reintke argued that platforms needed to take responsibility for harmful content. But she ended the debate with an appeal to minorities who feared the future, as a consequence of the far-right surge: “I want to be absolutely clear here: Europe is your home”, she says. Fighting smugglers vs fighting refugees (16:30) Reintke pointed towards the benefits of migration. “We need migration to sustain our hospitals,” she says, though she added that proper management was important, by creating legal pathways and sustainable asylum policies. She emphasised the humanitarian crisis on the EU’s southern border, however. “We need to end the dying in the Mediterranean”, she pleaded, arguing for an EU-wide search and rescue mission. Gozi supported her call. “First of all, let’s be human: when people are dying at sea, you have to save them,” Gozi says, calling back to his experience in government during the refugee crisis in 2015. Baier also emphasised his personal experience with asylum, noting that his family which was murdered in Auschwitz was also refused asylum by European countries. Von der Leyen blamed organised crime and smugglers for the refugee crisis. "We are the ones in Europe who decide who comes to the European Union, and under what circumstances, and not the smugglers and traffickers, this is paramount," says von der Leyen. After being quiet for a while, Schmit suddenly took aim at von der Leyen, slamming the EU-Tunisia deal, though not by attacking her directly. “This is not Europe. These are not European values. Don’t tell us it's about fighting smugglers, it’s about fighting refugees,” Schmit warns. Challenged by Gozi on S&D's position on the migration pact, Schmit expressed his qualified support. “It is not perfect, but it is the beginning of better European solidarity, but we should also always keep an eye on our values,” Schmit says. Von der Leyen, for her part, defended herself saying that it was important to invest in transit countries, suggesting that education investment could help migrants qualify to migrate legally. Schmit calls out von der Leyen for cosying up with Meloni's ECR (16:15) Schmit, for his part, called out von der Leyen for filtring with the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni (ECR). "I think that Europe is built on democracy without democracy there is not a real European Union. And that's why we need clarity on that," he says, explicitly calling on von der Leyen to explain what means pro-European parties. Von der Leyen argues that the true formation of the EU Parliament and its group will become clear only after the elections, but she names three criteria for collaboration. “We need them to be pro-Europe, pro-Ukraine, that is anti-Putin and pro-rule of law,” she says. When asked explicitly about her potential collaboration with Meloni, she says that the ECR group is "clearly pro-European party" and "pro-rule of law if this holds" — while noting that they do not agree on LBTBIQ+ policies. "We have to build a majority in the European Parliament for all the topics to bring Europe forward to have a strong Europe. And as we know the European Parliament is very different from national parliaments," she says. A potential coalition between the EPP and ECR has raised eyebrows, especially considering that one of the largest groups within the ECR is Poland’s Law & Justice (PiS) — a party known for dismantling the rule of law in the country over its past administration. But von der Leyen also defends her record on the protection of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary, pointing to budget freezes in these countries. “We have the means, and these are biting means.” Greens urge citizens not to underestimate the far-right (16:01) Reintke, who is German, refers to Nazi-Germany, saying that back then conservatives and liberals in Germany underestimated the far-right threat in the thirties. “Our task is to make sure that can never happen again.” She also called out liberal Gozi for the newly-formed Dutch rightwing government coalition, which includes the People’s Party of Freedom and Democracy (VVD), a member of Renew and former prime minister Mark Rutte’s party. Renew Europe is expected to vote on 10 June on whether to expel the VVD, but for Reintke that would be too late. "Have an extraordinary group meeting and expel VVD from your group. I know that Renew is committed to the European project, so send a very clear signal now," she told Gozi. Baier also took aim at Gozi for the VVD’s collaboration with the far-right but emphasised the importance of actions. “We must not include the agenda of the far-right,” Baier notes, pointing out how establishment party have taken over their positions of the far-right on migration. “The problem is not migration, it is the far-right.” Is the Green Deal still alive? (15:50) EU Commission president von der Leyen speaks first about climate. The Green Deal, which sets targets for 2030 and 2040, is considered one of her big successes but key proposals have been opposed by her own EPP party in the last months of this legislature. "Now we are in a phase where we have to implement," she says. She also defends her record on the farmer’s dialogue, pitching the need to move to “incentives” instead of “conditionality” in farm policy and more specific reporting measures. Schmit, for his part, says that the right climate policy can enhance the right kind of sustainable growth. But he also points out that this would require “huge investments” to decarbonise Europe's economy and social dialogue to make sure no one is left behind. Meanwhile, the Greens are calling for a green industrial deal for a fundamental reform of the Common Agriculture Policy. “We need sustainability for the climate, but sustainability for farmer’s incomes as well,” Reintke points out. She argues for the importance of speeding up climate policy, saying that acting later will only get more expensive. “I don’t have five, ten years, I need to change policy right now otherwise it will be too late,” Reintke says. And Baier says there cannot be a contradiction between a green economy and an efficient economy. “Social justice is not a nice to have, and that requires money” says Baier, lambasting new EU fiscal rules and arguing that repealing austerity rules is the first step for green policy. On the topic of circular economy, Reintke suggests extending the emissions trading scheme (ETS) - EU carbon market - to resource use as well while Gozi emphasises Renew’s record on circular economy, citing the directive on the right to repair. Liberals say 'no' to whitewashing of ECR (15:45) There's a spotlight on Gozi. He once more calls on von der Leyen to respect the cordon sanitaire. “I don’t understand how the EPP could open the door to the ECR,” Gozi says. “You must fight against the extreme right. And sadly, you have two extreme rights in this parliament: ID and the ECR.” The interviewer presses Gozi on whether the Dutch liberal party VVD will still be welcome in Renew for collaborating with the far-right. “It’s not for me to decide, but I think it’s a mistake,” Gozi said. Concerns about the rise of the far-right and a potential deal between the centre-right EPP and ECR have come up several times during the debate. Defence and security — EU's new priority (15:35) The next topic is defence and security. Seven out of ten EU citizens (71 percent) agree that the EU needs to reinforce its capacity to produce military equipment, according to a new Eurobarometer survey published on Thursday. “We need a real European power,” said liberal leader Gozi. “Either you’re a power, or you’re on the menu in Beijing or Washington,” he also said, calling for an investment of €100bn, financed through common bonds. But he also emphasised the importance of cultural values, apart from the purely martial values. “For every euro that you spend on defence, you need to spend on culture and education”, said Gozi. Echoing similar calls for a real defence fund, Reintke said that she wished defence would not be such a central issue, but that the war in Ukraine has made it central. Pitching defence collaboration as an efficiency measure, she also argued for removing the veto from the council to improve European security. "We haven't chosen the threats coming from Russia. and the fascist regime in Moscow. So, it is absolutely important for our security ... to invest in defence, but that does not mean that we should not invest in our social cohesion," socialist Schmit said. Von der Leyen used the opportunity to reaffirm the EU's support for Ukraine. "Ukraine is fighting for our values and all three nations so we have to support Ukraine in the first place. And of course ramp up our own defense at the same time." Baier, for his part, intervenes forcefully, providing the debate with much-needed interaction: “I’m really amazed that we are talking about peace and security, and no one mentions Gaza. When will the EU put sanctions on Israel to stop the killing in Gaza?” Baier asks von der Leyen. In response, von der Leyen acknowledges that the situation is catastrophic, and emphasises humanitarian aid and work towards a two-state solution. “It is the only light at the end of the tunnel that Gaza has.” Jobs, rents and reforms (15:16) The first topic of this electoral debate is the labour market, one of the most pressing issues for citizens. Outgoing job commissioner Schmit says that the EU has to "mobilise" against poverty adding that "investing in people is key", emphasising the importance of skills. Europe needs to deliver on good social services, Schmit also said, although he is stumbling a bit in his delivery. Reportedly he’s been fighting off a cold today. Asked whether he’s lost touch with the public, Schmit insists that he has responded to the high expectations of citizens. Greens leader Reintke took the opportunity to emphasise the importance of the Green Deal: "We have to break the contradiction between climate and economy", and criticised the return of austerity. "We need to invest in the future". And Baier, the Left candidate, brings some concrete ideas to the debate, calling on the EU to introduce a directive on rent caps, drawing applause from the audience. Asked a question about enlargement, Gozi expressed his support, but argued it was dependent on reform. "It is impossible to enlarge without reform without treaty reform without budget reform, it is clear that we have to rethink and to increase the budget for the Cohesion Policy to increase the budget for the Agricultural policy," liberal Gozi said. It is clear that we have to respond yes to history, but our citizens cannot pay the price." Von der Leyen, for her part, listed the successes of her commission while pointing out that for the competitiveness of the European Union, it was necessary to access better capital and to complete the capital market union. We're off! (15:06) And we're off! Moderators Annelies Beck, from VRT in Belgium, and Martin Řezníček, from Czech TV in Czechia are announcing the candidates. We're starting with a comment on the elephant in the room: the absence of far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). Řezníček explains once more that they have failed to field formal lead candidates, therefore disqualifying themselves from the debate Anders Vistisen was excluded for not being the official candidate for the ID, while the ECR refused to field a candidate, calling the system a sham. The ECR has a point, though. Despite nominally being a debate between candidates for the presidency, incumbent von der Leyen is the only serious contender. And, ultimately, the name of the potential next EU Commission president will be decided by EU leaders behind closed doors — as already happened in 2019, when von der Leyen was selected instead of EPP leading candidate Manfred Weber. Liberals slam von der Leyen for flirting with ECR (13:33) At the doorsteps, Gozi argued that the absence of the far-right ID and ECR was natural. “They don’t want a transnational democracy, they don’t want a stronger Europe,” Gozi said. Asked about liberals collaborating with the far-right, he said: “We say no, no and no to striking alliances with the far-right at the national level” while adding that he could not monitor parliaments in 27 member states. Gozi also warned Von der Leyen against cosying up to ECR leader Giorgia Meloni: “I know all roads lead to Rome, but the road von der Leyen is taking won’t bring her very far,” Gozi said. The Left sees recognition of Palestine as ‘step forward’ Walter Baien, the candidate for the Left, said ahead of the debate that the decision by Ireland, Spain and Norway to recognise Palestine as a state is “a step forward”. “It's good, but it doesn't change the situation on the ground,” he noted. Baien also said he was hoping the debate would focus on real-life issues, such as jobs, affordable housing, the environment and gender equality. “If you want to defend your interest in affordable decent housing in secure jobs, and in a healthy environment, you should vote for the left parties in your respective country,” he said at the doorsteps of the debate. Schmit defends democracy as von der Leyen avoids questions (13:10) While EPP Spitzenkandidat von der Leyen avoids questions at the doorsteps of the debate, the Socialist lead candidate Schmit has slammed any potential coalitions with far-right parties. "We want to build a stronger Europe and they want to dismantle Europe. I do not see how you can go into some kind of coalition with these people," he said ahead of the debate. The Greens accuse liberals and conservatives of killing the Green Deal (13:00) Greens lead candidate Reintke said ahead of the debate that her party will continue to defend climate action and democracy.
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"I think we are at a crucial moment for Europe. The citizens feel this and we need to do everything we can to mobilise people to vote for democratic parties. And of course today I want to convince voters to vote for the Greens," she said before the debate, calling out any coalitions with far-right parties.
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EUobserver takeaways from the final Spitzenkandidat debate before June's European election.
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[
"EU Elections"
] |
eu-elections
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2024-05-23T11:00:53.956Z
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https://euobserver.com/eu-elections/ar747b139b
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The new Dutch coalition faces imminent EU reality check
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Outsiders may already be wondering whether the outcome of the Dutch government's coalition deal of four fractious far-right and centre-right parties constitutes a watershed moment for Dutch EU diplomacy. However, questions should be raised about the expected durability of the Dutch coalition and the feasibility of its plans. The content of the 26-page agreement boldly titled Hope, Guts, and Pride notably reflects the many disagreements within the coalition, which also includes two novel political projects and the traditional centre-right Liberals. Apart from the deal’s shaky financial foundations, the coalition’s EU ambitions are fraught with political risk. In short, concessions are sought from the EU executive to please domestic audiences in the Dutch priority areas of migration, agriculture and environment. The drawback is that the European Commission is not able to deviate from the EU treaties and the rule of law. The incoming clash with the reality of the EU political arena will put the coalition partners in an awkward position. Opposition parties have already slammed the coalition’s EU plans as unworkable. The idea of obtaining a Dutch opt-out from the EU’s migration policy requires EU treaty change and is clearly dead on arrival. Egged on by vocal Dutch agro-industrial interests and the rightwing junior coalition partner Farmer Citizens Movement, the main focus of the Dutch government’s EU diplomacy is likely to turn towards ill-advised attempts to renegotiate its earlier implementation of established EU directives relating to agriculture and environment. Successive Dutch governments have already failed to get EU approval for their uninspired, at times underhanded, implementation in the past 20 years. The 'nitrogen crisis' For example, the 1992 Habitat Directive required member states to designate protected areas in order to protect biodiversity. The actual EU enforcement of Dutch commitments to reduce nitrogen emissions under this directive sparked a ‘nitrogen crisis’, which has impeded the construction of much-needed housing and infrastructure projects. Dutch politicians tend to display the habit of labelling a persistent policy failure of their own making a ‘crisis’. The previous government’s attempt at resolution was to relocate farms – inside or near protected nature reserves – on a voluntary basis, which sparked a major backlash by Dutch agro-industrial interests. A key component of the new coalition, the rightwing populist Farmer Citizens Movement and to a lesser extent the Freedom Party, then rose to prominence on the waves of societal unrest by vowing to take the fight to Brussels, yet again. The stakes are high. The Netherlands is the second largest global exporter of agricultural products and has the highest land prices in the EU. Effective implementation of EU environmental legislation would entail more extensive ways of farming. This would hurt Dutch farmers’ margins raising the prospect of farm closures, a powerful rallying cry for rightwing parties in the last election campaign. Following heavy pressure from agro-industrial lobby groups, farmer-friendly majorities of MPs have already sent various ministers of the previous government to Brussels with unrealistic assignments. Overall, Dutch politicians tend to severely underestimate the complexity of EU decision-making, the sympathy of other EU member states (who have already undertaken painful reforms to curb nitrogen reductions by their farmers or may vie a piece of the Dutch market-share), the political weight of the Netherlands as a member state, and the opportunities for ‘a la carte’ treatment on well-established EU acquis. Confronting the Commission with delusional demands for an EU solution to the ‘nitrogen crisis’ rather than enacting domestic reforms is a clear political choice. Using the EU as a scapegoat risks – and this might be by design – creating multiple feedback loops that fuel popular resentment against ‘Brussels’. It seems to hinge on the general lack of understanding of the EU decision-making process among some of the Dutch agro-industrial stakeholders who belatedly pressure the government for political intervention at EU level at the end of the implementation phase of the EU policy cycle. This stakeholder frustration is then fed back to the electorate. Failed attempts by ministers to renegotiate long-established EU directives could consequently boost popular support for populist coalition parties, while crowding out a viable domestic solution to Dutch agro-environmental issues. The impact the fledgling Dutch government will have on EU decision-making remains to be seen. With the prospect of failed renegotiations on the horizon, risky political manoeuvres around the designation of the next EU Commission president in the coming months and EU budget negotiations can therefore be expected. The question dogging the Dutch coalition will soon be to face a reckoning with the electorate or continue with an ill-advised strategy. Christiaan Boiten is a Brussels-based EU affairs specialist and political economist, focusing on international trade, competitiveness and agri-food issues. He was formerly head of the Brussels office of the Dutch Farmers Association . Christiaan Boiten is a Brussels-based EU affairs specialist and political economist, focusing on international trade, competitiveness and agri-food issues. He was formerly head of the Brussels office of the
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Dutch Farmers Association
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The idea of obtaining a Dutch opt-out from the EU’s migration policy requires EU treaty change and is clearly dead on arrival. Ditto opting-out of the 1992 Habitats Directive.
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[
"EU Political"
] |
eu-political
|
2024-05-23T08:39:16.511Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-political/ar3cf9c12f
|
Right of Reply: the Hungarian government on Russia sanctions and its EU presidency
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Dear Editor, In an all-too-predictable display of prejudice, new criticisms claiming Hungary's EU presidency would pander to Russian or Chinese interests have appeared, attempting to throw unfounded doubt on our upcoming leadership. Let's uncover the motivations behind these claims. First and foremost, the allegations that Hungary is attempting to "defang new Russia sanctions" are simply false and a deliberate attempt to undermine our commitment to EU standards. Hungary's appeal to review particular sanctions against Russia stemmed from real economic concerns, not geopolitical favoritism. Our goal was to address the possible negative effects on European enterprises, a reasonable approach frequently distorted by naysayers. Anonymous diplomats and opposition individuals are also often cited, with speculative statements presented as facts. According to these reports, Hungary intends to postpone the 14th round of sanctions, a claim that lacks any proof. Hungary has a strong track record of defending the EU's common security, which we will preserve throughout our presidency. Critics also attacked prime minister Viktor Orbán's meeting with president Vladimir Putin in China. This was a normal diplomatic exercise, not a sign of shifting allegiance. Hungary is a committed member of Nato and the EU, and will defend its principles and security arrangements. Critics such as Andrew Rettman further misinterpret Hungary's position on sanctions, implying isolation inside the EU. Hungary merely argues for balanced methods that take into account member states' various economic environments. Opposition leaders, including Ágnes Vadai and Márton Gyöngyösi, say Hungary will use the presidency to further illiberal policies. Predicting an "inconclusive and insubstantial" presidency is a preemptive strike designed to undermine our efforts before they begin and serve only to advance such leaders’ personal objectives. Finally, the repeated charges of aiding Russian or Chinese interests are baseless and part of a larger narrative intended to tarnish Hungary. We urge detractors to give Hungary the opportunity to demonstrate its capabilities and commitment, rather than engage in false speculation and divisive language. The EU Council presidency carries significant responsibilities, and Hungary is well aware of the scrutiny it will undergo. We are dedicated to serving as impartial brokers, ensuring that the interests of the whole EU are protected. It's time to move past these baseless accusations and focus on our common goals and obligations. Government commissioner for the 2024 Hungarian EU presidency Zoltán Kovács is government commissioner for the 2024 Hungarian EU presidency.
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Zoltán Kovács
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Influential. Investigative. Independent. EUobserver is a online non-profit news outlet reporting on the European Union.
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[
"EU Political"
] |
eu-political
|
2024-05-21T14:53:53.940Z
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https://euobserver.com/eu-political/ar75a1a5f4
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Who are the Alliance Defending Freedom and why are they lobbying Brussels?
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The European Parliament may be about to change radically after the 9 June elections. Some projections predict a new majority of the right and far right: the conservative European People’s Party group, the ultraconservatives in the European Conservatives & Reformists, and the far-right in the Identity & Democracy Group. And with them come their friends – corporate lobbyists of all kinds, including the chemicals lobby and agribusiness groups hellbent on doing away with climate policies and nature protection. But they also have another well-funded ally behind the scenes. For years rightwing groups in the European Parliament have collaborated with the Alliance Defending Freedom , or ADF International, an ultraconservative US legal advocacy organisation that fights abortion and LGBTQIA+ rights on both sides of the Atlantic. Three reasons There are three main reasons why the ADF’s presence on the Brussels lobbying scene, and its links to the EPP and the ECR, should ring alarm bells. The first is its success at fighting against gender rights, as well as its pursuit of an agenda that led the US civil rights group the Southern Poverty Law Center to call it an anti-LGBTQIA+ hate group. To anyone who cares about rights such as gender equality, access to abortion, same-sex marriage, and a wide range of LGBTQIA+ issues, the presence of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in the corridors of power in the EU institutions should be deeply worrying. Its tactic of using the courts to fight back on these rights is now bearing fruit in the EU too The ADF were instrumental in the overturning of Roe vs Wade and thus the right to abortion in the US; they helped file cases against US states to overturn the 2020 election results; they routinely defend the right to discriminate against the LGBTQIA+ community. And they have brought their game plan to Europe. Via successful legal cases, they have helped roll back abortion rights and support harassment of the LGBTQIA+ community in member states such as Poland, Germany, Ireland, and Finland. The second reason is money. The ADF has increased its European spending by a small fortune in recent years, doubling from $2.6m in 2018 to $5.2m [€2.4m] in its most recent tax filing (mid 2021- mid 2022). Judging by the general upward trend in US conservative foundations' grant-making, more money is on the way. Corporate Europe Observatory combed the tax filings of 80 such foundations; on average, they spent 30 percent more in 2022 than in 2020, with plenty having their eyes on Europe. The third reason for concern is the links to the Trump movement. The ADF supports the infamous Project 2025, a plan for the first 100 days of a new Trump presidency, which involves the deportation of millions of immigrants, sacking thousands of civil servants to replace them with loyalists to Trump, closing down agencies that protect civil rights, locking in corporate tax cuts indefinitely, and more. What they want in Europe The Trump camp’s ambitions for Europe are to unite the conservatives and the far-right; a plethora of recent conferences have aimed to do so, including three in Hungary (Conservative Political Action Conferences), and one in Brussels in April 2024. The ADF was an active participant at the latter event, set up to help “political conservatism” present an “alternative vision for Europe”. This is about promoting archaic, discriminatory, and dangerous policies, a highly regressive and discriminatory political agenda of evangelical Christian nationalism. And they have a kind of foreign policy of an essentially US organisation as a motive for operating in Europe. As one of ADF’s legal counsels in Europe put it, they want influence here, “so that bad European precedents don’t spread further in Europe, then across the sea to America”. That fits all too well with a more general attempt by the Trump movement to strengthen its ability to impact European policies through supporting the unity of the right – from conservatives to far right. The ADF in the corridors It’s very worrying how prolific the ADF is in the European Parliament. Kathleen Van Brempt, a Belgian MEP from the S&D group, is regularly bombarded with emails from the ADF, “especially when one of their strategic files are on the agenda”. And according to the EU’s Transparency Register the ADF’s main partners in the European Parliament are the EPP and the ECR, judging from many conferences they have organised together. While it’s difficult to assess the full impact of these alliances, (for instance the ECR is not currently a centre of power in parliament) that could change rapidly after the June elections. EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has already opened the door to cooperation with the ECR, meaning agreements that can be forged on the right become dominant in EU politics. Call them out We should ask ourselves, and we should ask European rightwing parties: is the tilt to the right that we may see on 9 June a tilt towards Trump-style politics as well? At election debates, they should be asked if they will be working with organisations such as the ADF that fight abortion rights, oppose LGBTQIA+ rights, support deportation of millions of immigrants in the US, and help shape extremely anti-democratic measures should Trump take office again. Kenneth Haar is a researcher with the Brussels-based Corporate Europe Observatory , an NGO monitoring big business lobbying of the EU. Kenneth Haar is a researcher with the Brussels-based
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Corporate Europe Observatory
|
For years rightwing groups in the European Parliament have collaborated with the Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF International, an ultraconservative US legal advocacy organisation that fights abortion and LGBTQIA+ rights on both sides of the Atlantic.
|
[
"EU Political",
"Health & Society"
] |
*
|
2024-05-21T08:38:17.797Z
|
https://euobserver.com/*/ar1ce924df
|
How the EU can help today's new Taiwan president
|
On Monday (20 May), Lai Ching-te, also known as William Lai, who won the presidential election in Taiwan in January , inaugurates his presidency, amid heightened tensions between China’s (officially the People’s Republic of China, PRC) and Taiwan (officially the Republic of China, ROC). Beijing claims that the island is one of its provinces, whereas the current Taiwanese government maintains that it is already an independent country. A conflict over Taiwan – or even a Chinese blockade of the island – would have immediate economic and political implications for Europe. The EU is not a security actor in East Asia – however, it has some formidable – and unique – soft power assets that could be leveraged to promote dialogue and understanding between China and Taiwan. Cross-Strait relations – the relations between the PRC and ROC –are currently at their lowest. Official lines of communication have been interrupted. Travel links between the two countries were frequent before the Covid-19 pandemic era – but no longer. Many Taiwanese are now avoiding the mainland, while for many Chinese citizens it is almost impossible to travel to Taiwan for work, study or even tourism. A wall has been erected between the two sides, and each blames the other for this situation. Beef noodles and bubble tea? President Lai has repeatedly expressed his hope to re-establish communication with Beijing, based on equality and mutual respect. During the electoral campaign, Lai even said he hoped to meet with Xi Jinping over beef noodles and bubble tea. On the other side of the Strait, the PRC’s leadership seems to recognise that it can no longer use economics to bring about unification and that the so-called ‘one country, two systems’ approach, after its failure in Hong Kong and the clear hostility toward it in Taiwan, no longer works. While the possibility of an invasion of the island remains, President Xi Jinping has tasked Wang Huning, a member of the powerful CCP Politburo Standing Committee and China’s most senior official in charge of Taiwan’s policy, to come up with a new framework for unification. As both China and Taiwan seek a thaw in their bilateral relations, it could be a perfect time for the EU to step up its involvement in Cross-Strait affairs to see whether dialogue and understanding can be increased, and tensions defused. The EU is not perceived as a threatening force and its image in East Asia is that of, mainly, a civilian actor that could facilitate dialogue in a way that other major players cannot. European governments continue to abide by the “One China” policy – that is, the acknowledgement of Beijing’s position that there is only one Chinese government. Under this policy, the EU and its member states recognise and have formal ties with the PRC rather than Taiwan. In practice, however, EU institutions and European governments are treating Taiwan as a “de facto” independent state with which they are entitled to entertain economic and political relations. The Europeans tend to avoid being confrontational vis-à-vis Beijing when it comes to Taiwan, contrary to the United States which does not shy away from openly provoking China. The EU has little real leverage on both Beijing and Washington regarding cross-strait relations. While the maintenance of the status-quo is in the long-term interest of the EU, the defence of the island from an attack – or blockade – from the mainland is left to the care of the US and its Asian allies. What the EU can instead do is to leverage its soft power assets in the region. Jean Monnet Centres of Excellence The Jean Monnet Centres of Excellence (also called EU Centres) scattered in many countries, including in China and Taiwan, are an asset that Brussels could use to promote dialogue and understanding between the two sides of the Strait. Managed by the European Commission, but with close links with the EU delegation in the host country, they aim to promote knowledge of the EU, its policies and values, through academic research, partnerships and programmes of public activities. Since last year, due to heightened tensions, Chinese and Taiwanese scholars working at the EU Centres in their respective countries, are unable to meet. It would be in the strategic interest of the EU to step in and facilitate such a meeting among EU experts. And should such meeting be impossible to be held in either China or Taiwan for political reasons, the EU should offer to host it in Singapore, where there is a very active EU Centre. It would not be the first time that the EU Centres would be leveraged by the EU to promote the reasons of dialogue and mutual understanding in the region. For instance, the EU delegation in Seoul has consistently backed the Trilateral Cooperation process, a consultative mechanism which involves China-Japan-South Korea, by supporting, both politically and financially, various workshops and initiatives organised for young students with the aim of promoting mutual understanding and the sense of friendship among future leaders of the three countries. These activities are often supported by – and held at – the Jean Monnet Centres of Excellence located in the three north-east Asian nations. Recent developments inside China and Taiwan should invite the EU to consider doing something similar in the context of cross-strait relations. The EU should start thinking ‘trilateral’: China-EU-Taiwan, finding ways to facilitate dialogue between Chinese and Taiwanese experts of the EU. By keeping it at the level of scholars and by focusing on EU studies (avoiding, at least officially, sensitive issues) it may overcome resistance from various quarters. By doing that, the EU would make strategic use of some of its soft power capabilities. With little investment in terms of time and resources, it may contribute to dialogue and understanding in a region where, should tensions spiral out of control, the result could be very damaging not only for the EU, but for the entire world. Nicola Casarini is associate fellow at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome, and a visiting scholar EU Centre in Taiwan, at the National Taiwan University. Nicola Casarini is associate fellow at the Istituto Affari Internazionali
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(IAI) in Rome, and a visiting scholar
|
The EU is not a security actor in east Asia – however, it has some formidable and unique – soft power assets that could be leveraged to promote dialogue and understanding between China and Taiwan, as Taiwan inaugurates its new president today
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[
"EU & the World"
] |
eu-and-the-world
|
2024-05-20T08:00:00.000Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/arc0a9d307
|
Dutch coalition latest example of EU liberals collaboration with far-right
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Renew Europe leader and French MEP Valérie Hayer denounced the newly-formed Dutch rightwing government coalition on Thursday (16 May) — exposing divisions among Renew, the party group of European liberals. Hayer expressed her “ total disapproval and deep concern ” over the coalition agreement between the People’s Party of Freedom and Democracy (VVD), a member of Renew and former prime minister Mark Rutte’s party; and Geert Wilders' Party of Freedom (PVV), a long-standing member of the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID). The VVD struck the deal shortly after Renew vowed to “never cooperate nor form a coalition with the far-right and radical parties at any level,” in a declaration also signed by the Socialists & Democrats, Greens and the Left — causing commentators to question the value of the pledge. However, the VVD/PVV collaboration is less unprecedented than it might seem, with conservative-leaning liberals across Europe having struck deals with the far-right. The far-right has increasingly frequently found its way to executive power, having assumed office in Italy, Finland, and Austria, and striking coalition or support deals in various other places. Generally, parties affiliated with the Christian democrat centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) tend to be least resistant to the temptation, with Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenković, who signed a coalition agreement with the far-right following elections in April, as the latest example. This was demonstrated once more when during the Maastricht debate EU Commission president and EPP lead candidate Ursula von der Leyen refused to rule out collaborating with the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which includes several ultraconservative and far-right parties. But despite their stated commitment to pro-European values and democracy, some Renew members have found themselves teaming up with the far-right as well. Notably, Rutte himself got his first stint as prime minister with parliamentary support from the PVV in 2010, leading a short-lived minority government with the Christian Democrats. Present examples include the (confusingly-named) Swedish People's Party of Finland, which is currently a junior partner in the Helsinki government, and the Swedish Liberals, who joined a controversial coalition with the far-right Sweden Democrats in 2022. Previously, Renew member Versten in Denmark has made repeated confidence-and-supply deals with the Danish People’s Party since 2001, and in 2019 the Centre Party in Estonia formed a coalition with ultraconservative nationalist EKRE. On the regional level as well, deals have been struck by Dutch and Spanish liberals. The history of far-right collaboration illustrates a continued division within the Renew group. Significantly, liberals collaborating with the far-right tend to come from countries where the liberal vote is split between conservative and progressive parties. Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Estonia all have both a conservative and more progressive member of Renew, in a clear expression of the more general tension. But with National Rally [Rassemblent National] (RN), the French far-right party, surging in European election polls, French liberals in particular have made a concerted push for Renew to cast itself as a pro-European progressive bastion. Still, the VVD coalition talks have demonstrated that not all members are similarly keen to stay on the progressive course. 'Kingmaker' role in grand coalition threatened The rift comes to the fore at a particularly critical moment, with polls indicating that Renew might lose its vaunted kingmaker role in providing the S&D/EPP grand coalition with the votes required for a majority. For their part D66, the Dutch progressive liberals, vehemently criticised the VVD for its coalition deal, with MEP candidate Raquel Garcia Hermida-van der Walle telling the EUobserver that Renew members were “astounded” over the deal. Though talk of revoking membership was premature, “the VVD should consider whether it is still in the right group,” said Garcia Hermida-van der Walle, who is second on the D66 list. But even within the VVD, the coalition deal sowed discord, with MEP Bart Groothuis saying in a debate on Thursday that he would have preferred his colleague Malik Azmani to be leader of Renew over governing with the PVV. Azmani, leader of the VVD delegation in the parliament, was briefly in the running to lead the group. The future of the VVD in Renew will become clearer after the elections, however, with Hayer announcing a meeting on 10 June — the day after the European Parliament elections. Piet Ruig is a Brussels-based journalist who previously worked for the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO.
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Piet Ruig
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The new Dutch government coalition has rattled Renew Europe, the liberal group, which has vowed to exclude the far-right. But conservative liberals have repeatedly cooperated with the far-right, illustrating European liberals' divide.
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[
"EU Political"
] |
eu-political
|
2024-05-17T14:59:25.473Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-political/ar66dc7024
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Slovak politicians focus on hate speech after Fico assassination attempt
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Slovak politicians and media have called for a stop to further escalation of rhetoric and hate speech following the assassination attempt on prime minister Robert Fico. Fico sustained severe injuries in the shooting on Wednesday (15 May) as he approached a public gathering in Handlova, western Slovakia. He underwent a five-hour-long operation and is in a stable but serious condition in Banska Bystrica hospital. “It was a politically-motivated act,” minister of the interior, Matus Sutaj Estok, stated after the Slovak security council and government emergency session on Thursday. "Unfortunately, I cannot yet state that we are winning, or that the prognosis is positive, as the extent of the injuries caused by the four gunshot wounds is so extensive that his body's response will still be very demanding," said vice-premier and defence minister, Robert Kalinak. The 71-year-old alleged gunman, an amateur writer and retired security service employee, was charged with attempted premeditated murder. He could face from 25 years up to a lifetime in prison for attacking a “protected person”, under Slovakia's constitution. “I can confirm that the suspect is not a member of any radicalised political group, neither rightwing nor leftwing,” Estok said, adding that the man was prompted to take action after the presidential elections in April. Estok added that the attacker was deeply engaged in political matters: he disagreed with Fico's stopping of military aid to Ukraine, the closure of the special prosecutor's office, interventions in the RTVS public broadcaster , or the removal of the chairman of the judicial council. The shooting has been generally referred to by Slovak politicians and media as an assault against the democratic establishment. "What happened yesterday was an individual act, but the tense atmosphere of hatred was our collective work," said president Zuzana Caputova at a joint briefing with president-elect Peter Pellegrini. Caputova and Pellegrini warned against a “vicious circle of hatred and mutual accusations” among politicians, media and popular opinion-makers. They announced their plan to invite political leaders to the presidential palace for round table talks to calm the situation. “I call on all political parties to temporarily suspend or at least significantly tone down the campaign in the run-up to the European Parliament election because the campaign brings confrontation,” said Pellegrini. Both coalition and opposition parties welcomed the move and some confirmed they are suspending the campaign or cancelling large public pre-election events. However, Thursday's calls for reconciliation came hot on the heels of an escalation of emotions and critical remarks by politicians in their first reactions to the attack. “It was your job,” parliament vice-chairman Lubos Blaha said, after he interrupted the live parliamentary session and speech of an opposition MP on Wednesday to inform parliament that Fico had been shot, seemingly blaming the opposition. Andrej Danko, the chairman of the junior coalition Slovak National Party, reacted by saying the assault had triggered a “political war,” adding that the ruling coalition would now stop hesitating to “push for changes.” Several other government and ruling coalition members accused the opposition and journalists of spreading hatred against Fico. Minister Kalinak also specifically addressed the media on Thursday and urged for less confrontational political talk shows. “Let's try to embrace the path of tolerance together," he said. For their part, editors-in-chief of the main Slovak media condemned the attack and wished Fico a speedy recovery. However, they urged politicians to stop dividing society. “If hatred is released into the public space, it cannot be controlled and we are all at risk,” they stated in a joint letter. Political analysts, however, pointed out that for several years Fico himself and his Smer-SD party have played an active role in the confrontational rhetoric and attacks against mainstream media. Blaha, the party's number two candidate for the European Parliament, and known for his strong pro-Russia stance and criticism of the EU, had previously been forced to remove social media posts with untrue and offensive claims about president Caputova, following a court verdict. He had also downplayed death threats to a political TV show presenter, and vehemently criticised the public RTVS broadcaster for their news reporting. Lucia Virostkova is a freelance journalist and assistant professor at the department of journalism of Comenius University in Bratislava. She has worked for the public TV and radio and published with several Slovak newspapers.
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Lucia Virostkova
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'What happened yesterday was an individual act, but the tense atmosphere of hatred was our collective work,' said Slovak president Zuzana Caputova. The current and future Slovak presidents have announced a plan to invite political leaders to the presidential palace for round table talks to calm the situation.
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[
"EU Political"
] |
eu-political
|
2024-05-16T14:16:50.030Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-political/ar7656843b
|
How bad is Chinese spying in eastern Europe?
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The recent spike of uncovered espionage activities linked to China across Europe has heightened concerns about Beijing's activities and its impact on European security. In April alone, German authorities made headlines by arresting an aide from the European Parliament on serious espionage charges for allegedly passing sensitive information to Chinese intelligence, and in a separate case, three individuals in Germany were detained for supposedly transferring military technology to China. Adding another layer to these unfolding tensions, Chinese president Xi Jinping's recent trip to Europe , notably his stop in France where he celebrated the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and France, Hungary and Serbia, was overshadowed by significant trade disputes. During his visit, discussions were not just ceremonial but intensely strategic, focusing on trade issues that have become a point of contention between Beijing and Brussels. The European Union, shedding its previous naiveté, has launched anti-dumping investigations targeting Chinese exports like electric cars and solar panels, aiming to protect its market from unfairly subsidised products. These developments occur against a backdrop of growing wariness within central and eastern Europe (CEE) regarding China's intentions. A recent GLOBSEC Trends report highlights a shift in public perception across the region, with an increasing number of people recognizing China as a security threat. Although the perception remains significantly lower compared to concerns about Russia, the deepening alliance between China and Russia, especially post-Ukraine invasion, has heightened the sense of urgency to address these threats. Countries like the Czech Republic and Lithuania have been vocal about their concerns, with a majority now viewing China as a significant security threat. The Czech republic has officially designated China as a security threat alongside Russia in its strategic documents and has established more robust contacts with Taiwan in recent years, leading to China threatening the Czech Senate Speaker. Lithuania has also had firsthand experience with China's economic coercion after enhancing its diplomatic ties with Taiwan. In retaliation, China imposed a de facto trade embargo on Lithuania and disrupted European markets by banning goods containing Lithuanian components. Overall, the perception of China as a security threat across the CEE region remains relatively low at 34 percent, significantly less than the perception of Russia. This discrepancy highlights a potential gap in public awareness and understanding of the complexities of China's foreign policy and espionage activities. As China continues to expand its economic, political, and military influence, its strategies appear focused not only on immediate gains but also on long-term shifts in global alignments. This approach includes influence operations aimed at reshaping political landscapes, leveraging economic dependencies, and fostering strategic dependencies. Yet, there are countries in the region actively seeking deeper economic relationships with China. In Hungary, the government has supported and promoted Chinese investments for years, which is also reflected in 34 percent of respondents in Hungary selecting China as the second most important strategic partner for the country, according to the GLOBSEC report. The newly-elected government in Slovakia has also announced plans to deepen its relationship with China and seek Chinese financing for local public-private partnership (PPP) projects. The CEE, like the rest of Europe, finds itself at a crossroads, needing to balance economic interests with national and regional security. The varied perceptions of China's threat across different member states underscore the need for a more coordinated and comprehensive strategy that addresses both the overt and subtle dimensions of China's influence. CEE countries and international stakeholders need to continue building awareness and adopt common policy measures against Chinese malign influence. While geographical distance might contribute to lower threat perceptions, information sharing about Beijing's activities in the region is crucial. Jana Kazaz is Centre for Democracy and Resilience fellow at the GLOBSEC think-tank in Bratislava, specialising in research on information operations and hybrid threats. Jana Kazaz is Centre for Democracy and Resilience fellow at the
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GLOBSEC
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Central and eastern Europe have an increasing perception of China as a security threat — despite ongoing economic engagements in countries like Hungary.
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[
"EU & the World"
] |
eu-and-the-world
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2024-05-16T11:34:44.728Z
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https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ar5261352f
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The obstacles facing young mothers running to be MEPs
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“Just get on with it” was the advice New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern claims she received from the late Queen Elizabeth II on how to balance the responsibilities of motherhood with leading a nation. Ardern called it “the best advice” she received on the topic, but then went on to resign halfway through her second term due to burnout and persistent misogynistic abuse. With so few young mothers like Ardern in political life, and so many of them sharing similar experiences to Ardern, perhaps it is a good moment to reflect on whether “getting on with it” is the best advice after all. Instead, as two young mothers currently campaigning for the European elections, we argue that it is finally time for our political system to “get on with it” so that women like us can lead, succeed, survive and thrive. The reality is that despite the bouquets and heartfelt cards that were sent this month for Mothering Sunday, mothers remain significantly underrepresented as political leaders. One obvious reason for this is that the media and public perceptions can be harsh towards mothers in political life: How is it possible for a woman to both breastfeed and run the country? Won’t she be too tired to represent the nation internationally? Who is looking after her children while she is in all these meetings? Why should the taxpayer have to pay for their decision to have children while in office? The scrutiny around balancing family and political life, or their choice to have a family while in office is a double standard that male politicians rarely encounter. Whereas for men, having a family can be a political advantage, for women it can seem yet another barrier to achieving their political goals. Is it any surprise so many successful female leaders do not have children or enter politics far later than their male peers? According to a study in the UK during the last decade, 45 percent of female MPs were childless compared to 28 percent of men. Furthermore, the average age of an MP’s eldest child when they first entered parliament was 12 years old for men versus 16 years old for women. These disparities are not just numbers; they reflect the systemic barriers that mothers face in political careers. For example, meetings are rarely scheduled with parents of young children in mind; debates and negotiations can run long into the night and often into the next day. Perhaps this is one reason why committees in the European Parliament are so dominated by men , particularly those dealing with 'money and power' like the foreign affairs, security and defence, tax and budgets committees. Seven out of 24 European Parliament committees are chaired by women; even the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality has a male chair. For MEPs, the absence of any official parental leave or the possibility to vote remotely means they must choose between caring for newborns or carrying out their mandates For MEPs, the absence of any official parental leave or the possibility to vote remotely means they must choose between caring for newborns or carrying out their mandates. The structural hurdles that women encounter, also when it comes to motherhood in politics, are made worse by the rise of far-right and openly misogynistic political parties actively campaigning for women to return to traditional gender roles. Changing these structures can not only benefit young mothers, but lead to better negotiation outcomes and political decision-making overall. The presence of mothers in political roles, with their unique perspective in policymaking, is not just a matter of representation; it’s a catalyst for the sort of compassionate, inclusive and innovative governance democratic societies sorely need. We are not here to essentialise mothers and say as a group they are more likely to support any specific policy. Like all politicians, we have our own set of values, positions and ideas. What is clear is that our lived experiences and understanding of societal needs are, just like those of other underrepresented groups, vital in shaping effective responses to voters’ biggest concerns. More than ever, voters are telling us they want leaders they can trust, who get things done, who listen to them and understand their realities, and who will fight for them and their families. Europeans are no longer as hopeful about the future as they were a decade ago – many are convinced they will not be better off than their parents’ generation. With the cost-of-living crisis disproportionately impacting women , particularly single mothers, we are uniquely placed to champion policies that provide tangible benefits to those struggling with the high costs of childcare, healthcare and education. For example, both our parties support free childcare and have supported the expansion of parental leave rights throughout the EU. Amid growing voter fears for the future, there is an urgency for policies that not only support families financially but also promote work-life balance, enabling parents to thrive both at home and in the workplace. Ensuring more women in all their diversity are elected and represented at every level in politics is the best way to normalise female political leadership, increase the power women have in decision-making and demand the sorts of changes needed to ensure mothers feel valued both outside the family space as well as within. Anna Stürgkh and Raquel García Hermida-van der Walle are both mothers and candidates for the upcoming European elections in Austria and the Netherlands, respectively, for the centrist liberal group ALDE . Anna Stürgkh and Raquel García Hermida-van der Walle are both mothers and candidates for the upcoming European elections in Austria and the Netherlands, respectively, for the centrist liberal group
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ALDE
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Whereas for men, having a family can be a political advantage, for women it can seem yet another barrier to achieving their political goals.
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[
"Health & Society",
"EU Elections"
] |
health-and-society
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2024-05-15T10:36:33.293Z
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https://euobserver.com/health-and-society/area54f4db
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Why did the EU invite a racist to address a conference on racism?
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There are three reasons why the European Commission should not have invited Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz to give a keynote speech at the EU's conference on combating racism, antisemitism and xenophobia on Tuesday (7 May). The first is that he is a racist. The second is that he is an antisemite. The third is that he is a xenophobe, whose rhetoric was cited by judges in The Hague to justify their assessment that Gazans were plausibly threatened by genocide. Specifically, they noted the following tweet by Katz: Perhaps Commission officials wanted to ask Katz how such innovative anti-racist strategies could be applied here? Perhaps they believe that starving a civilian population to death is one tool in the kit for dealing with xenophobes? Or perhaps they just don’t care. Katz gained notoriety in Israel two years ago when he threatened Palestinians with forced expulsion if they flew Palestinian flags at universities. "Remember our independence war and your Nakba, don’t stretch the rope too much," he said . "If you don’t calm down, we’ll teach you a lesson that won’t be forgotten!" These words violate the EU's definition of racism for inciting violence and hatred against a group defined by ethnic or national origin, and for condoning, denying or trivialising war crimes. But that’s not all. As Israel’s intelligence minister, he called for “targeted civil eliminations” – assassinations – of leaders of the non-violent Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He authored a bill to replace Israeli street signs co-written in Arabic and English, with pure “Hebrew names”. He pushed for annexation of West Bank settlements, opposes a “two-state solution” and advocates for housing Palestinians on an artificial island off the Gaza coast. By any European metric, Katz would be considered a rightwing extremist. So why was he invited to lecture the EU on how to combat racism? Presumably because of his record in the fight against antisemitism. Lets look at that. Last month Katz issued a call to diaspora Jews that repeatedly conflated the fight against antisemitism with Israel's bloody rampage through Gaza, He described diaspora Jews as part of the Israeli “nation” and rallied them to join a “global advocacy front” against criticism of the Gaza slaughter and in defence of national causes such as "the eradication of Hamas". He even appropriated a Talmudic saying that “All of Israel are responsible for one another” to try to enlist diaspora support. But under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)'s working definition of antisemitism, which the EU has adopted , his words could reasonably be defined as anti-Semitic because: And Katz asserts that the diaspora and Israelis are "united in our cause," which has so far killed or wounded five percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million population and destroyed 70 percent of its civilian infrastructure . Not to put too fine a point on it, Katz has no right to dump responsibility for Israeli war crimes on Jews like me or anyone in the diaspora. Of course, Zionist antisemites have long been given a free pass. But what message does that send? That antisemitism is fine so long as it is in Israel’s interest? And what message does it send to the Jewish diaspora? That we are not "real" Jews unless we deny our rich culture, history and traditions in favour of a Zionist counter-identity based on ethnic cleansing and murder? Backed by Germany Another speaker at the conference, the EU’s Bavarian antisemitism “czar” Katharina von Schnurbein said in March that accusations of Israeli genocide in Gaza were resonant with “antisemitic prejudice.” She has made similar comments about BDS - and anti-Zionism, which was the majority diaspora sentiment before the Holocaust, and is a fast-growing Jewish trend today. Von Schnurbein’s de facto smearing of Jewish supporters of Palestinian human rights is contemptible. Doubly so, when she fetes racist Israeli politicians who flout the same rules on anti-semitism that she incorporated into EU policy and which were then used to chill the free speech and assembly rights of pro-Palestinian groups. In truth, Katz's invitation only confirms that this Commission never had any real commitment to combating racism or antisemitism. Its primary goals have been to: defend the US foreign policy status quo in the Mideast; protect Zionism as an exculpation of Holocaust guilt, and to maintain trade ties with Israel, even at the cost of defending that state’s "right" to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians with impunity. None of this makes the lives of European Jews safer, or those of Palestinians less expendable. All of it will stoke racism and anti-semitism, not combat it. And it will embolden the Israeli state to believe that it can continue its slaughter in Gaza, while still presenting itself as a victim. Shame on you, Brussels. Arthur Neslen is the author of two critically-acclaimed books about Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian identities: Occupied Minds - A Journey Through The Israeli Psyche and In Your Eyes A Sandstorm - Ways of Being Palestinian . From 2004 to 2009 he was based in Ramallah and Tel Aviv, where he wrote about the Israel-Palestine conflict for the websites of Al Jazeera, the Guardian, the Economist, Haaretz and Jane's Information Group. He is now based in Brussels, writing about the environment for The Guardian and others. Arthur Neslen is the author of two critically-acclaimed books about Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian identities: Occupied Minds - A Journey Through The Israeli Psyche and
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In Your Eyes A Sandstorm - Ways of Being Palestinian
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By any European metric, Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz would be considered a rightwing extremist. So why was he invited to lecture the EU on how to combat racism?
|
[
"EU & the World",
"Health & Society"
] |
eu-and-the-world
|
2024-05-10T11:11:37.542Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ar76727643
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Thirsty Sicily — water scarcity in the Mediterranean basin
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In the council chamber of Aidone, a town in the Sicilian hinterland with just under 5,000 inhabitants, a citizens' committee has gathered to discuss an issue of extreme urgency for their community: water. The citizens of Aidone are concerned, because the new water tariffs for billing from 2024 to 2029 – determined by the Authority for Energy Networks and the Environment – will result in further increases in water bills. The province of Enna, where the municipality of Aidone is located, is one of the poorest provinces in Italy. Yet it pays the highest water rates in Sicily, with an average annual expenditure per household of €766 . The committee convened an assembly to engage citizens in a transparent dialogue about the reasons behind high taxes and to collaboratively explore potential solutions. Armed with informative slides and documents, the committee shed light on the intricacies of taxation, addressing the concerns that prompted citizens to call for the assembly in the first place. Among those present is the mayor of the nearby town of Piazza Armerina, Nino Cammarata, also the director of the local Territorial Water Assembly Enna, which according to the citizens present, is the body responsible for the high taxation that burdens them. During the debate, the theme that emerges most frequently is: water infrastructure is crumbling, and the cost of their maintenance falls mostly on the citizens. Sicily indeed has a decrepit water network. In 2020, Istat found that 52.5 percent of the water volume introduced into Sicilian water networks and used for civil purposes is lost. With severe drought affecting the entire Mediterranean basin, sustainable water management is of paramount importance. However, water interruptions are now daily occurrences. In recent weeks, the region of Sicily has declared a state of crisis by approving a water rationing regime that will affect about one million citizens. For two years water has been cut off in the municipality of Aidone in the evenings during the summer, when water demand is typically higher due to increasingly high temperatures. July 2023 was recorded by the Sicilian meteorological service, Servizio Informativo Agrometeorologico Siciliano (SIAS) as the hottest month in the last 20 years. And for eleven consecutive days, extremely high temperatures, equal to or exceeding 40°C, were recorded in the Sicilian hinterland. About €3.9bn in EU funds The heat and the resulting water demands from civil, agricultural and industrial sectors makes it even more important to improve water management. Purification could be a necessary choice for the near future. But also in the context of water purification, Italy finds itself lagging behind. There are currently four European infringement procedures underway, involving more than 900 clusters. A significant portion of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) is dedicated to improving Italian water infrastructures. The PNRR is Italy’s implementation of Next Generation EU, the European Union’s post-Covid recovery program. Italy stands as the foremost beneficiary of the EU's Next Generation funds, with total projected investments amounting to €222.1bn. The PNRR, which also encompasses the green revolution and ecological transition, allocates a portion of its resources to enhancing water infrastructure, aiming to reduce water loss in drinking water networks by at least 15 percent. A total of €3.9 bn has been invested in the improvement of water infrastructures throughout Italy, with about 60 percent of the funds allocated to the southern regions facing the greatest challenges. About €900m has been specifically earmarked for reducing losses in the water distribution network, with Sicily being the second-largest beneficiary region with around €239.6m. In April 2022, the first temporal window opened for Water Management Authorities to submit funding proposals under the PNRR aimed at reducing losses in water distribution networks. 28 out of 119 requests originate from Southern Italy, amounting to approximately one-third of the total requested contributions. However, in Sicily, a total of eight projects have been rejected within the first timeframe of the funding application. The requests received were much higher than the available resources. Furthermore, several projects were not admitted due to failure to meet scoring limits and lack of admission requirements. This confirms that local authorities have struggled to develop projects in line with the tough requirements of the PNRR. Yet, among the accepted funding for Sicilian water, some controversial projects can be found. In the midst of a territory strewn with golden and dry fields, surrounded by hills and topped by the ruins of a Norman castle, the construction works of the Pietrarossa Dam continue. The Pietrarossa Dam has received a record funding of €82.2 m from the PNRR, a sum that has stirred the anger of local communities and environmental associations. The dam is part of a water system aimed at irrigating the plain of Catania, 43,000 hectares of fertile plain where citrus fruits are cultivated and shipped throughout Europe. Accompanied by volunteers from Siciliantica, an association for the protection of Sicilian cultural heritage, we walk along the fences of the construction site. Forward-thinking Sergio Amata, a retired archaeologist and member of the association, points out the spot where an archaeological find dating back to the Roman era is located: a , a stopping area dating back to the imperial era along the ancient wheat road that connected the cities of Catania and Agrigento. "If the dam ever goes into operation, the site will be buried by water," explains Sergio Amata, but adds with a sardonic smile, "if there will ever be water." In fact, the stream that the dam would block is completely dry. Part of the funding will be allocated to develop a virtual reconstruction of the archaeological site near the dam. Beyond the fence, the construction site guards take photos of us. The first works on the dam began in 1963 and have never been completed (today, it is 95% complete) and have experienced a series of stalls caused by errors in the dam's construction and subsequently by a judicial seizure of the site by the Enna Public Prosecutor's Office, which was investigating abuse, refusal of office acts, as well as defacement of natural and archaeological beauties. Ornella Segnalini, appointed as the extraordinary government commissioner for the completion of the Pietrarossa Dam in Sicily, commented on the project as "a forward-thinking vision that through the Pietrarossa dam would have allowed the irrigation of a huge part of the plain of Catania. A vision of the future that is often lacking today." However, environmental associations are not so optimistic. "Forward-thinking? Today, rivers are being freed," says Giuseppe Maria Amato, regional manager of protected natural areas for Legambiente Sicilia, "in 2022 alone, 425 barriers were demolished. The EU's biodiversity strategy aims to renaturalise at least 25,000km of rivers. The best-performing nation today is Spain, a country suffering from thirst like Sicily. Then we have Sweden and France. Italy is not competing." Intervention calls In Sicily, about 150 years ago, there were about 90 percent more natural wetlands. Reclamation carried out during the fascist regime and water interventions after the First World War shaped and drained these areas for agricultural and civil purposes. "Let's work to recreate them: ponds, marshes, lagoons, river meanders. In these areas, water remains, recharges the aquifers, and allows rivers to expand in case of flooding. In these areas, biodiversity soars, enabling the return of hundreds of species now extinct, restoring balances," comments Giuseppe Maria Amato. Sicilian fields need water, and the persistent drought makes the situation dramatic. In the Enna territory, in the Sicilian inner region, hectares and hectares of wheat fields stretch out. Under the pylons being rebuilt for the highway connecting Enna to the capital Palermo, Silvia Turco, a farmer who produces local and ancient varieties of wheat and legumes, shows us a field of Maiorca, a local variety of wheat widespread since the 1920s in Sicily. She asks us to pay attention to the colour variations in the nearby fields. Yellowish patches alternate with greener patches, demonstrating the plant's water stress. Silvia Turco shows us an ear of wheat: "From this wheat, usually four or five ears sprout from one grain, but here we see only two. This means that this year we will have a loss of at least 50 percent of the product, all due to drought." Her farm relies solely on rainwater, and although local varieties are resistant to Sicily's notoriously arid climates, this extreme drought could jeopardise the entire production system. "October 2023 was marked as the driest since 1921 in Sicily," explains Ramona Magno, head of the Drought Observatory section of the Climate Services at the CNR Biometeorology Institute. "The most important factor of this drought is the scarcity of precipitation in winter periods combined with rising temperatures." Moreover, prolonged higher-than-normal temperatures add to the lack of rain. "This implies greater evaporation and causes soils to dry out faster, as well as draining even the largest reservoirs," explains Ramona Magno. This trend also affects the entire Mediterranean basin, making Sicily a kind of litmus test for the future climate of Mediterranean Europe. As Massimiliano Pasqui, a researcher at the Drought Observatory, explains, the solution to such a widespread problem must be systemic. "There should definitely be interventions on the water network. But it needs to be integrated with new ways of farming and thinking about water use. We should act on the ground because desertification is also due to intensive agriculture that reduces soil fertility with the intensive use of machinery, soil compaction techniques, and soil salinisation," he said. Another summer of record temperatures is looming. And with the lack of water, Sicilian citizens are very concerned. A crisis that today affects the largest island in the Mediterranean but could involve continental regions in the coming years. In the council chamber of Aidone, the debate has ended, with increasingly heated tones from tired and angry citizens. Yet none of them mentioned the ongoing climate crisis; instead, only the increase in bills was mentioned.
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Pierluigi Bizzini
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In the council chamber of Aidone, a town in the Sicilian hinterland with just under 5,000 inhabitants, a citizens' committee has gathered to discuss an issue of extreme urgency for their community: water.
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[
"Green Economy"
] |
green-economy
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2024-05-10T10:17:36.707Z
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https://euobserver.com/green-economy/ar0b16227e
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The slow-mo absorption of Belarus into Russia
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As most of the globe continues to focus on Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war , another development is afoot. The Russian Federation is slowly forcing Belarus into a union state. This was most apparent during the 2020 Belarusian presidential election . In August 2020, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko was challenged by opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya . Desperate to stay in power, Lukashenko falsified the voting , stating he won the election heftily. The Belarusian opposition movement, as well as members within the international community, declared the results a farce. Thousands of Belarusians would also gather to protest the election results, where dozens were wrongfully imprisoned and tortured by the Belarusian government. Threatened by the opposition movement, Lukashenko turned to Russian president Vladimir Putin for assistance. The two counterparts met on several occasions. In an act of desperation, Lukashenko requested that Putin intervene. In response, Russian “ peacekeeping ” forces were sent to Belarus to thwart the opposition protests. In addition, several Belarusian media programmes were replaced by Russian journalists and propagandists. Finally, numerous opposition members were imprisoned, and many more were forced into exile . Since the election, the Belarusian government has continued these political tactics. The Belarusian media sympathised with the Russian state and its media service. Meanwhile, Belarusian news outlets have created disinformation and propaganda campaigns against Western institutions and foreign dignitaries. In other words, Belarus has transformed its political climate to mirror Russia’s. The government has targeted and imprisoned opposition members, it has launched propaganda campaigns against them, and it has strengthened its foothold by banning political parties that oppose the current power structure. This was especially the case during the 2024 parliamentary elections, where “ only candidates loyal to [Lukashenko] were allowed ” to run for political office. Aside from these political developments, Lukashenko’s government has aligned itself with Russia through other means. This is most apparent with the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. De fact province of Russia Over the past two years, Russia has violated Belarus’s sovereignty by stationing troops in the country. This occupying force has transferred weapons and equipment from Russia into Belarus to equip the invading force in Ukraine. The Russians have also fired missiles from Belarusian territory, and they have conducted airstrikes across the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. In other words, due to Belarus’s geographical positioning with Ukraine and the benefits Belarus provided to Russia during the war, Belarus has effectively become a de facto province of the Russian Federation. Most Belarusian citizens oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They do not want Belarusian soldiers to support Russia, and they do not want their country dragged into the war. Despite this stiff opposition, Lukashenko has ignored the statements made by his constituents. Instead, he has succumbed to Putin’s bidding. Beyond these political and defence changes, Belarus has been forced to unify its economy with the Russian Federation. Given international sanctions and other pressures from the international community, Belarus has turned to Russia as an economic lifeline . According to the World Bank, Belarus exports most of its goods to Russia. The Belarusian government has also requested and accepted numerous loans from the Russian Federation, which has allowed the Belarusian economy to stay afloat . Due to this financial assistance, Belarus has become indebted to Russia. What's next? But the economic union has not ended there. According to recent reports, Lukashenka and Putin met to discuss “ macroeconomic, tax, and customs integration programs [for their countries] ” for 2024 to 2026. Under this process, Belarus and Russia would create “conditions for a unified monetary policy.” Should the implementation of this plan be successful, Belarus would lose further aspects of its sovereignty as its economic policy would be directly tied to Russia. Finally, but perhaps most alarming, was a report published by Yahoo News discussing the forced Belarusian integration with Russia. The article sourced a leaked internal strategy document from the Russian government. The document outlined a plan on how the Russian Federation can annex Belarus through political, military, and economic means . By pursuing this strategy, the leaked document stated that Russia should be able to fully establish the Russo-Belarusian union state by 2030. Given the current trajectory of Russo-Belarusian relations, the union state may be inevitable. Since 2020, the Belarusian government has adopted Russian-style politics. The Belarusian government is targeting the political opposition, and it has transformed its media to mirror Russian propaganda. Second, Belarus has effectively become a home for Russia’s military. The Russians have launched attacks on Ukraine from Belarusian territory, and Belarus has become a base of operation for Russia’s armed forces. Finally, the Belarusian economy has become heavily intertwined with the Russian economy. The Russian Federation is dictating monetary policy within Belarus, and the Belarusian state is indebted to Russia. In other words, Russia has slowly established control over Belarus’s political institutions, the military, and the economy. It appears that the union state is all but here. Mark Temnycky is an accredited freelance journalist covering Eurasian affairs and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Mark Temnycky is an accredited freelance journalist covering Eurasian affairs and a
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nonresident fellow
|
As most of the globe continues to focus on Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, another development is afoot. The Russian Federation is slowly forcing Belarus into a union state.
|
[
"EU & the World"
] |
eu-and-the-world
|
2024-05-06T09:48:36.551Z
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https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ar68f1913b
|
To Tik or not to Tok? Europe’s disinformation dilemma
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With the European Parliament elections just weeks away, the fight against online disinformation has risen to the top of EU leaders’ minds. French president Emmanuel Macron called on the EU to create a “digital democratic order” and proposed a minimum age limit of 15 for independent internet usage, during his Europe speech at the Sorbonne last week. For her part, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen hinted at a possible ban on TikTok during the Maastricht debate on Monday (29 April), following the recent US ultimatum to the Chinese-owned platform. EU commissioner Nicolas Schmit, the lead candidate for the Socialists & Democrats, also told reporters that he was “quite American” in his attitude to TikTok, after the debate. The commission has also turned up the heat on social media giants by intensifying its efforts to regulate online disinformation, using the landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into full effect in February. On Tuesday (30 April), the commission opened an investigation into Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, over disinformation by foreign actors amid fears about Russian election interference. Previously, the commission launched a similar probe into X, and blocked TikTok Lite, a reward-to-watch feature, for its addictive design. Still, concerns over online disinformation and manipulation, but also far-right radicalisation have persisted. The proliferation of deepfakes has deepened these fears, after several fake videos with young women with altered faces purporting to be family of RN leader Marine Le Pen went viral in previous weeks. Pursuing the youth vote At the same time, European politicians are flocking to TikTok to woo Europe’s youth, with the European Parliament recently setting up an account. A large number of young Europeans, who increasingly rely on social media as their primary news source, will participate in the EU elections for the first time, especially with 16-year olds newly eligible to vote in Belgium and Germany. Though the youth vote is often assumed to be automatically progressive - commissioner Schinas, for example, called young voters “a wall of democracy” against populism and hate - elections in France, Italy and the Netherlands have shown young people increasingly supporting the far-right. “The youth is not a holistic entity”, Catherine de Vries, professor of political science at Bocconi University, told EUobserver, noting that education and socio-economic circumstances are crucial in determining young people’s political leanings. In fact, if there is something distinctive about Europe’s youth, it would be this polarisation, argued de Vries. “People who grow up in an environment dominated by anti-system politics, are more inclined to vote for anti-establishment parties for the rest of their lives,” de Vries said, noting the gradual normalisation of such parties across Europe. Combined with this tendency towards extremes, young people’s new media habits are a cause of concern, felt de Vries. “Traditional media provide a curated news position,” she pointed out, whereas social media tends to be unstructured, and often features direct messaging from politicians. “Young people are often not trained in contextualising this,” de Vries said, adding that most older people aren’t either. Far-right, far ahead? The far-right seems to have most effectively capitalised on young people’s social media usage, especially on TikTok. With over a million TikTok followers, Jordan Bardella, head of the list for Rassemblement National’s (RN) in the European elections, dwarfs all other MEPs on the platform. In Germany too, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is way ahead of the competition, said Marcus Bösch, a disinformation researcher at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, who also runs the “Understanding TikTok” substack. It’s content. This is their job, they need to maintain engagement. “If you compare follower numbers, at first glance it might not be so dramatic, but the huge problem with AfD’s success is that they have an entire fan army,” Bösch told EUobserver, explaining that both real and fake accounts amplified their message. Though some of these users could be traced back to interference by Russia, the majority of fans are real people trying to spread the AfD’s message, according to Bösch. According to Catalina Goanta, associate professor in law and technology at Utrecht University, the role of such “genuine” users was insufficiently addressed by EU policymakers. “We tend to think of disinformation as foreign adversaries trying to poison the minds of EU citizens with coordinated operations,” Goanta said. However, disinformation is often also simply diffused by content creators for monetisation purposes, she argued. “It’s content. This is their job, they need to maintain engagement.” Moreover, the dynamics of content creation also complicate the difference between political advertising and free speech, according to Goanta. “We’re in an era of authenticity, with creators trying to make contact with followers, telling them: this is my genuine opinion”. Though most social media platforms have policies on political parties buying ads, this kind of “native” advertising is more difficult to regulate, she observed, with Instagram going so far as trying to limit the diffusion of “political” content altogether, though without clarifying what it considers “political”. Targeted solutions Despite the many problems, experts dismissed EU leaders’ muscular talk of banning TikTok or imposing age limits. Ella Jakubowska, head of policy at European Digital Rights, called the proposals “attention-grabbing, but ultimately not very meaningful”, arguing that banning a specific platform would do little to limit online harms and warned that age verification would limit young people’s autonomy and access to information, while also posing privacy risks. Instead, the EU should do more to regulate the “toxic features” of the platforms, Jakubuwska argued, citing hyper-targeted surveillance adverts and manipulative algorithmic content delivery systems as examples. Of course you can argue, TikTok stinks because of the brown shit Such a targeted approach is favoured by Goanta as well, who particularly emphasised the need to improve reporting requirements under the DSA, to help researchers’ and regulators’ understanding of the platform's dynamics. The recent probe into Meta is therefore an important development, as it criticises Facebook's parent company for closing down Crowdtangle, a tool that allowed researchers to monitor election activity on its platforms. But ahead of the European elections, politicians should simply take the fight to TikTok, Bösch argued, praising the European Parliament for joining the platform. “Of course you can argue, TikTok stinks because of the brown shit,” he said. “But it’s a platform used by 21 out of 82 million Germans, you can’t ignore it. You have to be where the people are”. A positive example of such a fight is the #ReclaimTikTok campaign, a countermovement by German climate activists to challenge the AfD’s hold on the platform. “It’s a really nice try, it’s taking protest from the streets to the digital realm,” Bösch said. “They hit 60 million views, that’s very decent!” Piet Ruig is a Brussels-based journalist who previously worked for the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO.
|
Piet Ruig
|
EU leaders have increasingly turned up the heat on social media over disinformation, particularly TikTok. Paradoxically, politicians are flocking to the platform in pursuit of young voters. But bans are not a solution, experts warn.
|
[
"Digital",
"EU Elections"
] |
digital
|
2024-05-04T07:30:00.000Z
|
https://euobserver.com/digital/arf185556e
|
Orbán-backed think-tank courts farmers linked to far-right ahead of elections
|
An oil-funded think tank backed by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is involved in organising widespread farmer protests in the run-up to the EU elections, DeSmog can reveal. Hardline farming groups pledged to "sweep away” EU decision-makers at a “lunch and discussion” event, which was hosted by MCC Brussels on 9 April. The think-tank is an offshoot of Mathias Corvinus Collegium – an educational institution that has received more than $1.3bn [€1.22bn] in Hungarian state funding. It convened a number of far-right linked farming groups from 10 EU countries in the Belgian capital. Speakers at the meeting included the hardline Dutch organisation Farmers’ Defence Force (FDF), which hit out at EU environmental and trade policy. Spokesperson Sieta van Keimpema accused the EU Commission of “deliberately exterminating its own farmers and its own food production”. She told the audience at the “eco-friendly” Thon Hotel EU that their movement would “take a broom and sweep them away from their Brussels homes, sweep them away from the 6th to the 9th [of June]”. The group hopes to rally 100,000 people to attend protests on 4 June, in what it sees as a critical moment to influence voters. The demonstration would be the culmination of a wave of Europe-wide protests by farmers, which have triggered an unprecedented rollback of environmental measures. The protest is backed by organisations from Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Spain, according to FDF’s press release. MCC, which also hosted the controversial “hard-right” NatCon conference in April , has ramped up its hostility to EU-led green farming reforms over the past six months. It is a newcomer to the farming debate, first publicly declaring support for the cause last summer, months before widespread protests that saw tractors block roads in countries across the continent earlier this year. A report from the Financial Times in February suggested that the think tank had organised farmers demonstrations in January, though it did not name the group directly. An event on the MCC Brussels website appears to corroborate this, inviting farmers to attend a protest on January 24 against “the EU’s overzealous green policies” followed by networking drinks. Cas Mudde, a professor specialising in the populist radical right at the University of Georgia, says MCC Brussels’ support of protests fits with the eurosceptic agenda of Orbán, whose political director chairs the think tank’s parent group. “The far-right in general, and Orbán in particular, has a strategic reason for supporting the radical farmers in Brussels,” Mudde told DeSmog. “They create the public image of chaos and dissatisfaction with the EU, which helps their anti-EU message for the European election campaign.” MCC Brussels also did not respond to requests for clarification about the event or offer further comment. ‘Much more radical’ Farmers have clashed with police and lit fires outside EU buildings in Brussels in a spate of demonstrations in the past four months. While farmers have protested against an anticipated surge in bureaucracy from proposed green laws, complaints also focused on low prices at the farm gate and lack of protection against increasingly extreme weather. The protests have led to the weakening of proposed environmental reforms that were aimed at reducing climate impacts from agriculture, which is responsible for 11 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. Led by the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the EU’s largest political grouping, MEPs last week voted to weaken the majority of sustainability requirements for farmers in return for EU CAP subsidies. In some cases, far-right groups have hijacked protests, with authorities in Germany warning that groups there could even be using farmers to trigger an “overthrow” of the government. Far-right parties are expected to make major wins at the upcoming EU ballot, riding on rural discontent. Speakers at the 9 April event included Thomas Fazi, an author and researcher for MCC Brussels who has criticised the “great net zero lie” and spread conspiracy theories about the World Economic Forum attempting to control the food system through environmental laws. In his address, Fazi praised the farmers' protests and warned against the EU’s “decades-long attack on Europe’s small-farming model”, urging farmers to be “much more radical in their analysis and demands”. Fazi did not respond to DeSmog’s requests for comment. Far-right attendance The Brussels discussion was followed by an invitation to a separate meeting held by farmers and a reception in the EU Parliament. Although a full list of attendees was not made public, YouTube video footage and images posted on social media show that a number of key far-right figureheads participated in the MCC event. Alongside Fazi, speakers included Sieta van Keimpema from Farmers’ Defence Force, who ran as a candidate for the Netherlands’ fringe far-right party Belang van Nederland last year. She told the event: “They are killing farmers and food production, slowly but surely, through land grabbing.” In 2019, van Keimpema warned of a “civil war” between farmers and the Dutch government over environmental measures. In a post on X in February, she dismissed climate warnings as “hysterical disaster and fear-mongering”. Farmers Defence Force, which was formed in 2019 to oppose animal rights activists, played a key role in protesting against the country’s plans to buy out cattle farms in order to address the Netherlands’ nitrogen pollution crisis. Its members have been criticised for aggressive tactics such as harassing journalists and intimidating environmental activists. The group described the MCC Brussels gathering as “a hopeful day”. In a press release issued after the meeting, it called on the “warriors” to “defend companies and families against the EU Commission’s demolition policy. Together. On 4 June.” Speaking on behalf of FDF, Van Keimpema told DeSmog that the group was not involved in organising any “media meetings” but had been invited as a speaker to the MCC event."We accepted, just as we accept invitations to speak at government meetings, TV programmes, papers, universities, schools, political and scientific events and in parliaments, from left to right politically,” she said. Van Keimpema added that their quotes had been "taken out of context”. Another attendee, dairy farmer Bart Dickens from the Belgian Farmers Defence Force, told the Brussels meeting that the only way to win the EU's “war on farming” was for farmers across Europe to “fight together”. The group, which was formed in 2023, claims to be independent but previously received funding from its Dutch counterpart. A number of other far-right linked farmers groups were also present at the Brussels meeting. A member of France’s Coordination Rurale, which has strong links to the country’s National Front party, was photographed outside the hotel in the group’s signature yellow beret. Also present were members of Germany’s hardline farming group Land Schafft Verbindung (LSV). At least one LSV member has had past ties to the neo-Nazi group NDP, now called Die Heimat. Spain's Plataforma 6-F, which was set up by a former affiliate of the populist party Vox, are also reported to be taking part in the June 4 protests (although their presence at the MCC event is unknown). European farmers have made their voices heard and rattled, potentially even panicked, the institutions of the European Union,” MCC Brussels said on its webpage for the event. DeSmog identified other far-right politicians in attendance. Front-row seats were held by Patricia Chagnon-Clevers, MEP from France’s National Rally (formerly National Front) party, who posted on X that she was “delighted to participate”, and Hermann Kelly, leader of the Irish Freedom Party, which campaigns for Ireland to leave the EU. The Farmers Defence Force has so far raised over €11,000 of a €50,000 target for the June protests. The group told the news website Euractiv that it hoped the demonstrations would “make people aware of the possibility to vote for a different future” at the EU elections. ‘War on farming’ MCC Brussels is widely understood as part of Orbán’s plan to reshape the politics of the continent. The autocrat Orbán – who is in his fifth term as Hungry’s leader – is a major critic of the European Union, and recently declared plans to “occupy” Brussels and put a far-right stamp on policies around migration, climate and gender. In 2020, the Hungarian government gifted the parent of the think tank, Mathias Corvinus Collegium, 10 percent stakes in the oil and gas giant MOL and in the pharmaceutical firm Gedeon Richter – two of the country’s three most valuable companies. It also provided more than $460m in cash and $9m in property. The Collegium – which models itself as an educational institute – made $65m in dividends from the oil company in 2022. MCC Brussels claims to be a long-term supporter of farmers, who it says have been targeted by “leftwing” green reforms. However, it only began publicly posting about the issue last year. In a report issued in November titled “The Silent War on Farming: How EU policies are destroying our agriculture”, MCC claimed that the EU was “at war with its own farmers” and accused the bloc of “an environmentalist crusade”. On an event page for a farmer demonstration and networking event hosted by MCC Brussels in January, the think tank stated : “The fortunes of farmers across Europe suffer from a common problem: the EU’s overzealous green policies and disinterest in, if not disdain for, farmers and ordinary people living in rural communities.” In the last five years, the EU has attempted to curb the polluting impacts of the agriculture industry, which has contributed to a sharp decline in bird and bee populations across the bloc. The last Commission tabled a package of farming measures including cuts to pesticide use and steps to protect ecosystems on farmland – proposals which more than 6,000 scientists dubbed “cornerstones of food security and human health” in an open letter last year. Orbán has embraced the farmers’ protests. In January 2024, his official X account posted a video of him at the demonstrations, accompanied by the words, “We will stand up for the voice of the people! Even if the bureaucrats in Brussels blackmail us.” The following month, his ruling Fidesz party posted a video on Facebook which also used the farmers’ protests to promote opposition to the EU. “Orbán has carefully crafted his profile as a defender of large-scale agriculture,” Balša Lubarda from DAMAR Research Institute, an expert in the far-right and sustainability, told DeSmog. “The farmers' protests seem to be an easy opportunity for Orbán to entrench his populist position as ‘the defender of the people against the climate elites’, which will most certainly bring votes.” The organisations referenced in the article were approached for comment and had not responded prior to publication. Marta Kasztelan is a freelance journalist, while Clare Carlile and Joey Grostern are both researchers at DeSmog. Marta Kasztelan is a freelance journalist, while Clare Carlile and
|
Joey Grostern
|
An oil-funded think-tank backed by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is involved in organising widespread farmer protests in the run-up to the EU elections, DeSmog can reveal.
|
[
"Green Economy",
"EU Elections"
] |
green-economy
|
2024-05-02T14:09:56.310Z
|
https://euobserver.com/green-economy/ar506ca561
|
The Renaissance Italian villa where the EU archives its history
|
Villa Salviati is a beautiful renaissance residence rising on the green hills above Florence in Italy. From this place powerful aristocratic families have pulled important strings for almost 500 years. “It’s geographical location meets all the requirements regarding the perfect setting of suburban residence,” according to the official brochure about the villa. “Hilly, rich with water, sunny, suitable for agricultural activities, near the city centre and with a panoramic view”. But despite the heavenly surroundings, the owners could not find a private investor when they wanted to sell the estate back in 2000. And so “the Italian state bought Villa Salviati with the view of giving it to the European University Institute as the seat to the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) ," says Dieter Schlenker, holding the keys to Villa Salviati today, as director of the archives. After years of renovation, the archives moved into the premises in 2012. When the EU started in the 1950s, there were no rules about storing documents or giving people access to them. This practice started only in the 1970s after the UK joined and Roy Jenkins became president of the European Commission (1977-81). “The British came with a certain reform spirit. They introduced new administrative processes in the commission, changing slightly the French culture. Creating historical archives was part of the new culture,” says Schlenker. Born in Freiburg, Germany, Schlenker began his own career as an archivist in Italy working for Catholic charity Caritas and the Vatican archives . He also worked at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris. EUobserver asked him why the EU needs historical archives. “Every organisation needs to protect its legal rights. If the original treaties, international agreements, acts, correspondence and decisions are gone, the Union is gone,” he says. Another major reason to archive is knowledge and understanding of history, he continues. Interest in European integration is growing with time. The more time that has passed and the more the European Union project has become a reality, the more people want to look into the history of it. "The European Union is today integral to all the policies shaping the member states. Particularly since the time of Jacques Delors (commission president 1985-95), it is so much integrated with national policies that all the studies, historical studies, in whatever field ... the researchers always need to combine the two. We have on one side studies on European integration itself — but we also have a lot of history written about European policies in connection with national policies, external relations, enlargement and so forth. This is the second reason.” A third reason for running the historical archives is the citizens themselves, Schlenker says. “There is a clear right in the European Union and its member states called the freedom of information, which means that every European citizen has the right to access the decisions of the institutions. This has been a regulation since 2001 , so basically every citizen can go and consult it. It’s a right and in the interest of the citizens.” The EU documents are shipped to Florence, and then made public 30 years after they were produced by the EU institutions. But only 20-30 percent of the total amount of documents make it into the historical archives, according to Schlenker. “The weeding is done within the institutions themselves. It is a tradition in Europe that the owner, the producer of the archives, will be responsible until the material can go public — whether it goes to the national archives, or, in our case, to the EU historical archives. “A lot of documents are [actually] destroyed much earlier. For example, financial papers, such as bills, commitments, procurements and alike that have no historical value. After 10 years, when all the audit controls and checks are through, this is all destroyed. It is a big chunk of documentation". “Personal files stay within the institutions for up to 100 years. Staff matters, they are confidential and have to stay in the institution for the time that the person is employed but then also a long timespan afterwards — for any claims on pension, medical questions, heirs and so forth. They only reach us after 100 years. It won’t happen during my period to see these files”, Schlenker smiles. The sheer volume of papers in Florence demonstrates how EU powers have grown over the years. Some 10km of documents have been shelved in Villa Salviati to date, which is less than, for example, Luxembourg would have in their national archives, according to the EU’s chief archivist. But soon — by the end of the next decade — the European Union’s historical archives will have doubled to more than 20km, he estimates. The commission produces more files than any other EU institution, with more than 100km of documents piling up in a warehouse close to Brussels. Only 5-10 percent of these files will eventually become part of the historic archives in Florence, according to a promotion video from the Commission. Most of the institutions are able to keep their own materials in-house until they decant them to Florence. “The only one that really has a considerable backlog is the Commission due to the sheer quantity of files it produces compared to the small archives unit that deals with the materials”, Schlenker says. “In the case of the commission, it’s usually one or two trucks [coming to Florence] per year with each time around 20-30 pallets, so that’s big – some 300 metres each year. And then another 100 metres from the other institutions, so we get on average 400-500 meters per year”. Not all EU-related documents of historic interest end up in Florence after 30 years, however. “The European People’s Party Group in the European Parliament would have been created in the early 1950s and they would deposit with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung [Institute]. Similar with the Greens. They went to deposit at the German Green Foundation before our archive came into place”, Schlenker explains. Archiving also follows different national traditions. “The British officials often deposit their archives in the university where they have been educated. German politicians sign a deposit agreement with their party foundation. If they later become chancellor or member of the German parliament or member of the European Parliament or the Commission or whatever, their personal archives go systematically to the German foundation”. “The French don’t have a strict system, which is why various French EU officials would deposit their archives in Florence. And the same for the Italians”, Schlenker says, adding: “I obviously regret it, but there is no EU acquis communautaire for archives”. Even with 20km of archives at the end of the 2020s, the EU will still be dwarfed by the Vatican archives’ 85km of shelving. “The Vatican is famous for its registry books. They invented a system of abbreviations, and acronyms, so basically, they shrink the text to something like 10 percent through formulas, which you have to dissolve, otherwise, you can not read it. Like coding. Very fascinating. They basically document all in and out correspondence of the Holy See. It started in the 11th century, then there are gaps here and there, but from the 13th century onwards it is complete until today. This is enormous”, recalls Schlenker, who studied and worked in the archives in his youth. “The Vatican would have dedicated staff that would go into the deposits, while we as researchers would just be delivered. You need to understand the system and the coding and the system they use, which is quite complicated. Still, you can find the information.” With files moving online, there will be less need for trucks in the future to transport documents from Brussels to Florence. But then other problems lurk. “The first challenge will be the transition period because now we have hybrid archives. We are entering times where archives are partly electronic and partly paper. Sometimes it overlaps. Sometimes there are gaps”. “The challenge is to find a new balance between quality and quantity. People write through tweets, through WhatsApp, through letters and emails. This is more tricky. The unstructured documentation makes archiving more difficult in the digital world”, says Schlenker. “When the digital world came … one new concept was that we do not need to do the selection any more. We can just keep it all. But, in fact, nobody can do that, because even with AI and search engines, it is not possible to manage all the information created. Digital long-term storage takes so much energy and space, this is just not manageable,” Schlenker says. All archivists work to preserve their archives and to keep them safe and organise the information so it can be retrieved. In Florence, the EU files are kept underground in fire-protected compacts shelves with only dedicated staff given access, just like in the Vatican. But this is not the only security measure. “All international organisations - including us and obviously the Vatican – have privileges and immunities. We have protection levels beyond the Italian legal framework”, Schlenker explains. “And we keep all the documents on-site. We have our own shelves and our own servers, the archives are not in the cloud". There has been much discussion about EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen's emails. Do you think personally her emails should be stored? EUobserver finally wanted to know. “In principle, email is similar to a letter, and official email should be kept”, Schlenker says, adding: “Archiving rules in organisations should say that whatever official document you create as an officer of our organisation will go into the archives and historically relevant email should be open to the public after 30 years. "Much email is still considered as peripheral to support official documentation — but not as a record per se”.
|
Lisbeth founded EUobserver in 2000 and is responsible to the Board for effective strategic leadership, planning and performance. After graduating from the Danish School of Media and Journalism, she worked as a journalist, analyst, and editor for Danish media.
|
The European Union takes thousands of decisions — and makes mountains of documents. But what happens to these historic files? EUobserver has gone searching in an old renaissance villa in Italy.
|
[
"EU & the World",
"Digital",
"Headline News"
] |
eu-and-the-world
|
2024-05-01T08:30:00.000Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ar33ca72fc
|
Europe faces up to deepening housing crisis
|
The EU is facing an increasingly worrying housing crisis, with average rents rising by almost 23 percent and house prices by almost 48 percent between 2010 and the end of 2023, according to the latest data published by Eurostat. Greece was the only member state to see a fall in rental prices over the period, while others such as Estonia (207 percent), Lithuania (172 percent) and Ireland (102 percent) saw the highest increases. “This is not the phenomenon of one or two cities in Europe or of one or two countries in Europe,” Portuguese MEP Pedro Marques, a deputy with the Socialist & Democrat group, told EUobserver in an interview. “Basically, everywhere where there is a city with some significant concentration of people, the costs have gone up, the prices of the houses were going up, and then suddenly there goes the interest rates, there goes the mortgage payment, and people are suffering a lot,” he added. The most vulnerable and the youngest in Europe are among those most affected by the housing crisis. Europeans now leave their parental home at an average age of 26.4 years, and citizens are increasingly concerned about the difficulties of finding adequate and affordable housing. According to the pre-election Eurobarometer poll which was published last week, a third of European citizens would like to see the fight against poverty and social exclusion emerge as a key issue ahead of the June European elections - and almost a quarter of respondents said that the lack of social housing and homelessness were among their top five concerns at national level, a recent EU survey found. So what's causing the problem, and what and where are the possible solutions? “I think housing policy neglect has been a big part of it since the 90s,” said Sorcha Edwards, general secretary at Housing Europe, representing public, cooperative, and social housing providers. As a result, the housing stock is insufficient to meet citizens' needs, with little variety apart from that provided by the private market. In member states such as the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Spain, for example, the share of social housing accounts for less than two percent of the total housing stock. “[Housing] was seen as a sector that would regulate itself,” she added, stressing that a new paradigm is needed in Europe to give people back the choice of how and where they want to live. Only a few EU countries, including France, Finland and Ireland offer subsidised rent to a considerable share of households. According to figures published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2020, between 17-18 percent of households rent in the subsidised sector in these countries. Meanwhile, the ‘Housing First’ strategy has produced positive results in member states like Finland, and non-profit housing providers in Denmark, which provide a fifth of all homes in the country, and offer special 'youth' housing for those still in education or young people with particular needs. “Why not pick up good ideas and spread those ideas, build capacity to make it happen elsewhere?” Edwards asked. EU housing ministers resumed joint discussions on European challenges in housing policy in 2022 after a decade of stasis. “We don't buy into the idea that the EU cannot do anything (...) It will always be something that will be handled with the regions and the local seats in the cities, but you can do much more from the European level,” argues Marques. The socialist MEP believes that more support could be given to regions and cities through EU funding, as well as further intervention to regulate the private sector or provide a framework for it. Housing should not be a ‘political issue’ Over the past year, countries such as Portugal, Ireland and Italy have seen people take to the streets to protest against high prices, driven by the proliferation of short-term holiday rentals, a shortage of housing and a pressing cost of living crisis, among a range of factors. In Ireland, meanwhile, media reports indicate growing anti-immigrant sentiment fuelled by rising prices and the housing crisis. In the Netherlands, which also has a housing shortage, the issue of affordable housing was one of the key elements in the campaign leading up to last November's elections, won by the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV). "The far right is using this to create a perception among local citizens that prices are going up because of these migrants coming in, which is not the case," Marques warned. Yet the issue is nowhere to be found in the EU's draft strategic agenda for the next five years, which is expected to be adopted at the June European Council. However, European political parties from the left to the right have included housing policy in their manifestos in the run-up to the elections in June, hoping to mobilise more citizens to vote. Housing Europe welcomes the recognition of the problem and the number of proposals to tackle it, even if the interpretation of the causes and the opportunities differ. "We want some alignment of that and we definitely don't want this scapegoating of migration and green policies," Edwards said, noting that housing should not be a political issue.
|
Paula joined EUobserver in January 2023 and left for Euronews in 2024. Previously she worked for the Spanish online newspaper El Confidencial, where she covered mainly economic and financial affairs.
|
The EU is facing an increasingly worrying housing crisis, with average rents rising by almost 23 percent and house prices by almost 48 percent between 2010 and the end of 2023.
|
[
"EU Political",
"Health & Society"
] |
eu-political
|
2024-05-01T07:30:00.000Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-political/ar514aa494
|
Share of Europeans over 85 'will triple' by end of century
|
Europe’s share of people aged 85 years and older will triple by the end of the century, rising from three to nearly 10 percent of the total population, according to a report published by the Bruegel think-tank on Tuesday (30 April). More generally, Europe’s dependency ratio, which measures the number of people over 65 against the working-age population, is set to nearly triple from 36 to 65 percent in the next century, according to the report. But the increase in very old people in particular will put even more pressure on Europe’s care sectors, which are already facing shortages, the report authors say, arguing for more investment in long-term care. The report comes after Europe’s ageing population has been a hot topic for EU policymakers for a while, with leaders increasingly alarmed about the sustainability of the bloc’s pensions, healthcare systems, and public finances, in the face of persistent labour market shortages and rising care needs and shrinking workforce. Examples of recent EU initiatives to combat labour shortages include the European Year of Skills, aimed at “upskilling” the European workforce, and the introduction of an EU talent pool , to attract more legal migration to fill up vacancies. However, with the political climate having turned firmly against migration, it is unlikely that imported labour will solve Europe’s demographic challenges. Moreover, the focus on “upskilling” has been criticised for failing to address the challenging working conditions, especially in the care sector. Gender equality But the increase of the very oldest age bracket desperately requires attention, David Pinkus, co-author of the report, told the EUobserver. “It brings its own set of policy challenges,” Pinkus said, adding that the sustainability of pensions and the supply of long term care were “two sides of the same coin.” With Europe’s working population set to stagnate, due to a combination of lower fertility rates and insufficient migration, the report emphasised the need for more public investment into the sector. Relying on such an important share of informal care puts women at a disadvantage “Increasing the supply of long term care will be crucial, given the demographic trajectory,” Pinkus said, arguing that this was not just a question of fighting labour shortages through “reskilling” the workforce. “The goal must be to make the sector more attractive,” Pinkus noted, acknowledging the tough working conditions in the sector. But increasing the supply of long term care is a gender-equality issue as well, the report argues. According to estimates, up to 80 percent of long term care is informal, which is predominantly done by women. “Relying on such an important share of informal care puts women at a disadvantage,” said Pinkus, pointing at the impact on female participation of the labour force. As childlessness among the elderly increases, and children move further away from their parents, informal care networks are likely to prove insufficient in any case, the report says, recommending that apart from investing in preventative healthcare measures, long term care networks simply need to be prepared to face higher demand. Nonetheless, Pinkus emphasised that in the end, Europe’s demographic change should not be regarded as a bad thing. “This is the result of increased longevity among the elderly. This is fundamentally positive.” Piet Ruig is a Brussels-based journalist who previously worked for the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO.
|
Piet Ruig
|
As childlessness among the elderly increases, and children move further away from their parents, informal care networks are likely to prove insufficient, the report warns.
|
[
"Health & Society"
] |
health-and-society
|
2024-04-30T16:13:30.462Z
|
https://euobserver.com/health-and-society/ar736813f2
|
Farm-to-fork, to protestors with pitchforks: the death of EU’s sustainable food policy
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The European Commission’s Farm-to-Fork Strategy was originally hailed as a highly-ambitious initiative that would transform European agriculture. Four years on, weeks out from the next European Parliament elections, little is left of this ambition, as farmers' protests and industry pressures have forced the commission to drop most of the proposals. Critics and environmentalists have warned that this failure will dupe both nature and farmers, as they caution against agri-industry lobbying and far-right capture of MEPs. The strategy, a major component of the Green Deal, promised to be a transformative push towards a more sustainable food system. Instead of a sectoral focus, the strategy took an unprecedented holistic view of the entire food chain, integrating environmental, agricultural and health policy into an overarching framework, with several directorate-generals working together. Moreover, it was coupled with ambitious and specific targets, like a 50-percent reduction in pesticide use. The holistic approach was crucial for Farm-to-Fork’s ambition, according to experts. “Normally, agricultural policy gets made by special institutions in close collaboration between farming interests and the policymakers, because food is such a sensitive geopolitical and cultural question for countries” said Nathalie Bolduc, senior research fellow at think-tank Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI). “It’s undeniable that political polarisation has made things more difficult" However, with Farm to Fork , the commission put the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE) in the lead, which is further removed from the agricultural sector. “DG AGRI (the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development) was involved, but wasn't holding the pen. That's a key difference, as stakeholders who are close to DG AGRI may have felt that they weren't being heard as much,” Bolduc observed. And agricultural interests have now come back to haunt the strategy. After the war in Ukraine ignited concerns over food security and a general backlash against climate policy has swept Europe, the combined pressure from food industry groups, intensifying farmers’ protests and opposition by centre-right politicians has effectively derailed nearly all of Farm to Fork’s proposals. With fears mounting of far-right parties capitalising on farmers’ discontent during the European elections, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) has been loath to antagonise the agricultural sector, trying to burnish its image as the farmers party by opposing environmental legislation. In response, the commission omitted various flagship proposals from the legislative agenda, like the Framework For Sustainable Food Systems (FSFS), and more stringent animal welfare protection. But the most painful defeat came with the defeat of the centrepiece pesticide reduction regulation (SUR). After being voted down in the European Parliament at the end of 2023, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen moved to scrap the proposal altogether in February 2024, appeasing angry farmers protesting in the streets of Brussels. Not ‘dead’, just ‘depolarising’ While disputing that Farm to Fork was dead, a commission spokesperson acknowledged the challenges faced by the strategy. “It’s undeniable that political polarisation has made things more difficult, so in that respect, we’ve had to slow down and restart a dialogue with all the stakeholders,” the spokesperson told EUobserver. According to a Council diplomat, EU officials have become more realistic about Farm-to-Fork. “There’s an increased awareness of the importance of ambitious regulation, but also that they must be achievable”, the diplomat said, adding that maybe the agricultural sector hadn’t been involved enough. The commission has shifted efforts to a “Strategic Dialogue” on agriculture involving stakeholders from across the food system, to “depolarise” the debate. But the move sparked concern, with major environmental NGOs protesting the return to a ‘narrow focus’ on agricultural policy, as opposed to Farm-to-Fork’s holistic approach. Moreover, critics are contesting the narrative that pits farmers against environmental legislation, blaming lobby groups and the far-right for exploiting farmers’ genuine grievances. Morgan Ody, farmer and general coordinator of the peasant organisation La Via Campesina, insisted that dropping environmental legislation only met the demands of the largest, richest farmers. “For most farmers, the main issue is a fair livelihood”, she said, arguing that the continued protest proved her point. “After the environmental stuff was dropped, Arnaud Rousseau [the head of the Copa-Cogeca agriculture lobby group] told us to go home. Farmers did not go home,” Ody told the EUobserver on the side of a farmers’ protest in Brussels. MEP’s involved with the legislation expressed similar sentiments. Sarah Wiener, Green MEP and rapporteur for the SUR, argued that farmers could have benefited from the pesticide law. “With a little goodwill, farmers could have been motivated and helped to understand that the SUR is necessary and can even support them in their independence,” she said. But resistance was driven by conservative politicians and lobbyists opposing change, according to Wiener: “The pesticide lobby had a business model to lose.” With momentum for climate policy waning and the far-right gaining in the polls, it seems unlikely that Farm-to-Fork’s transformative potential will soon materialise Michal Wiezik, MEP for Renew Europe and member of the environment committee, also felt that resistance against Farm-to-Fork did not originate from most farmers themselves, and lambasted the outsized influence of the large agri-businesses on EU policy-making. “The MEPs in the AGRI committee never dare to do anything that upsets farmer’s lobbies,” Wiezik lamented. 'Overlooked for years' Reports by Corporate Observatory Europe and investigative platform DeSmog have highlighted the ties between the agri-food industry and EU policymakers, documenting the intense efforts of lobby groups like Copa-Cogeca and CorpLife to derail the SUR, and constant meetings between various MEPs on the AGRI committee and industry representatives. Consequently, many farmers end up acting against their own interests, observed Natalia Mamonova, a political sociologist specialising in rural populism. “They demand to be less burdened by environmental regulations, but that results in a further deterioration of the soil of which they will themselves be the major victims.” Being locked into an unsustainable system of competition and intensification, makes farmers susceptible to the far-right, said Mamonova. “They feel they’re a group that has been overlooked for years, in favour of urban elites and transnational corporations, so there’s overlap in the narrative.” In the end, Farm-to-Fork’s flaw might have been that it still wasn’t holistic enough. With many farmers pushed to the brink by shrinking margins, lowering prices, and increased competition compounded by imports from Ukraine, the crisis in agriculture exposed the strategy’s lack of measures for economic support. Though emphasising that environmental protection would benefit farmers in the long run, Wiener acknowledged that Farm-to-Fork was light on economic support. “There were too few proposals to combat price pressure on the market or the supermarkets' monopoly on trade,” she said. Supporters of Farm-to-Fork have now no choice but to put their hopes on the strategic dialogues delivering a breakthrough. But even if the commission manages to get all the different stakeholders on board without watering down all its proposals, implementation will be left to the new commission. With momentum for climate policy waning and the far-right gaining in the polls, it seems unlikely that Farm-to-Fork’s transformative potential will soon materialise.
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Piet Ruig
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The 2019-2024 European Parliament and Commission gave birth to Europe’s Green Deal. Then watched as the key Farm-to-Fork component was watered-down — before going up in smoke in the streets of Brussels.
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[
"Green Economy",
"EU Elections",
"Magazine"
] |
green-economy
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2024-04-29T05:00:00.000Z
|
https://euobserver.com/green-economy/arf1589b03
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Why EUobserver is now asking for your email address
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Some of you regular visitors might have noticed a change since we moved to the new website; to read articles, you must now register with your email address. Some of you might find this annoying. Or inconvenient. Or even an invasion of privacy. I’d like to explain why we made this choice, and why we think it’s necessary. It’s not because we want your data. And it’s not because we’re intent on bombarding you with endless emails to sign up for a paid membership. AI, scrapers, copycats, billionaires I’m writing this post inspired by an article written by my ex-colleagues at VICE’s Motherboard, who last year launched their own worker-owned news publication called 404 Media . Just like us, they had to make the choice to implement either a ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ paywall on their new website – soft meaning it’s possible to read anything with a bit of effort, hard that unless you’re subscribed, you can’t. They opted for the hard one, just like we did. The reason why is simple, but multi-faceted. First, the journalism on their website was being wholesale ripped off and published on some website banking on stolen content to sell ads – often ending up higher in search results than the original work. This has happened to us many times as well. Second, and more nefarious, the reporting they put time, money and effort in was not only stolen and republished, it was being ‘re-written’ by an AI, specifically built to take content published elsewhere, paraphrase it just enough to avoid copyright infringement and publish it. Sometimes even automatically. We have not seen this with our content (yet), but then we have not spent time reporting on the phenomenon like Jason Koebler, editor of 404 Media, did. Building in a ‘hard’ paywall prevents some of this. Third, and connected to the previous point, optimising a website to be found high-up in search results on, for example, Google is a dark art. A dark art often applied by websites that churn out endless amounts of highly search-optimised garbage (often stolen from other websites) to trick people into clicking on it and making money from advertising impressions. It takes a lot of effort – and quite honestly, totally unproductive effort – to optimise a site for search engines, and we would rather spend our hours producing journalism that matters than adding ‘anchor pages’, keywords bound by very specific rules, internal links to other content we’ve published and other wastes of human time only intended for machines that crawl the internet. And finally, it’s to ensure that people who care about the reporting we produce to see the articles we publish, without being dependent on the commercial internet behemoths that control distribution of information for their own profit. We don’t want to be beholden to the latest strategy designed to force makers of online content into some new straightjacket that will make the middle-man more money. I’ve been through that before in other companies I worked for, and it sucks – not only because often the result is that more value is extracted from publishers and transferred to Meta, Google or X. Like when every publisher ‘pivoted to video’, because Facebook preferred video content, and subsequently were fleeced and forced to lay off thousands of journalists. Unfortunately, this is the position publishers have been put in, and even though I really don’t want to be feeding the machine that makes Musk, Pichar, Zuckerberg, Nadella, Bezos or any of the other masters of the internet even richer. We’ve also planned some other ways to personalise the way our members can choose to receive the essential journalism we produce, but those will be unveiled in due course. Just know we’re not planning on sending endless emails with pleas to sign up for a paid membership –those emails are really annoying. We might reach out a few times a year to show some of the results our reporting has achieved, and ask for your support. But I promise we will respect your email as we’d like our own to be. This also means we will never sell or share your email addresses or any other personal information. We’re a small, independent (meaning we’re not owned by another entity), non-profit publisher that primarily relies on our members to pay for salaries, office space and to keep the website up. So if you do happen to value our work, memberships start at €1/month . Or sign up for the free newsletter membership and get access to three articles per month. Perhaps that will convince you, but if not, that’s also fine.
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Alejandro Tauber is Publisher of EUobserver. He is Ecuadorian, German, and American, but lives in Amsterdam. His background is in tech and science reporting, and was previously editor at VICE's Motherboard and publisher of TNW.
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I’d like to explain why we made this choice, and why we think it’s necessary. It’s not because we want your data. And it’s not because we’re intent on bombarding you with endless emails to sign up for a paid membership.
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[
"Inside EUobserver"
] |
inside-euobserver
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2024-04-26T10:37:13.397Z
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https://euobserver.com/inside-euobserver/ar63ed1ff6
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How 'law of unintended consequences' will push up price of a cup of coffee
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Coffee is not just one of Europe’s favourite drinks — the continent is actually the world’s largest coffee market. From bustling Italian espresso bars to leisurely café au laits enjoyed on French sidewalks, to Scandinavia, where the ritual coffee break is reflected by Sweden’s “fika” tradition, while the drink is no less loved in Eastern Europe where Turkish-influenced coffee lends itself to bold and bitter flavours. The EU’s incoming “deforestation-free” regulation , which comes into place in December 2024, is likely to impact supplies to the bloc of the drink’s essential component–coffee beans. The EU’s new rules stipulate that any importers of a broad variety of products–like coffee, cattle, wood, cocoa, soy, palm oil, and rubber–must be able to prove that the products do not originate from recently deforested land, or have contributed to forest degradation. In practice, importers will need to provide geolocation data for the origin of their goods. The rules have been hailed as a meaningful push towards sustainable business practices, cutting carbon emissions and reducing biodiversity loss. However, the West’s imposition of climate-friendly trade rules has been met by opposition in developing countries, where the vast majority of these products are produced. Indonesia’s economic minister has described the deforestation legislation as “ regulatory imperialism ” while India’s commerce minister has criticised the EU’s green rules, saying “ there is clearly bias, discrimination and unfairness .” Part of the criticism stems from the impact that the legislation will have on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, who will find it hard to comply with the new rules. Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, Colombia Coffee beans are mostly produced in Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia and Colombia. Unlike other products on the EU’s list, like cattle, palm oil and soy, which are mostly produced in large-scale farming operations, about three quarters of total coffee bean output is produced by smallholder farmers working on small plots of land–often less than five hectares in size. The European Commission has produced a document detailing the “opportunity” the new regulation offers smallholder farmers who stand to “reap the benefits of these business opportunities.” However, there is evidence to suggest that farmers and exporters of coffee beans will struggle to meet the new regulatory standards. After conducting a week of interviews at plantations in Sabah, a Malaysian state, the New York Times found that not a single smallholder farmer had heard of the incoming legislation. For coffee exporters, the EU will be a less attractive place to sell beans to. They are likely to be more enticed to supply other markets like China or India, where the number of middle class drinkers is rapidly increasing. Current stockpiling by EU exporters before the December 2024 deadline is likely to be a contributing factor for why global coffee prices have so far soared in 2024 (the main reason being extreme droughts in South-East Asia leading to lower harvests). Finicky plant By the laws of supply and demand, a lower supply of coffee beans and a subsequent rise in coffee bean prices should prompt new supplies of the product to spring up elsewhere. However, coffee is a finicky plant. It typically takes four years for a single coffee tree to get a first harvest. Meanwhile in light of more frequent droughts, coffee beans are increasingly prone to unsteady harvests (coffee plants thrive best in well-watered soil). This makes it difficult for farmers to earn a consistent income stream and increases the attractiveness of growing other agricultural goods, like rubber or durian, which are easier to grow in hot weather. Europe should therefore be prepared to reap the likely consequences of tighter supply —namely, higher prices for a daily necessity.
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Frances Li is a Europe analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
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Achtung, espresso lovers! The EU’s incoming “deforestation-free” regulation, which comes into place in December 2024, is likely to impact supplies to the bloc of coffee beans. And Europe is the world's largest market for coffee.
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[
"EU & the World",
"Green Economy",
"Health & Society"
] |
eu-and-the-world
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2024-04-26T08:42:48.936Z
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https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/arbdbe8fdf
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How to talk about Europe without boring the pants off people
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There’s going to be a lot of talk about the EU in the next few months as campaigning gets underway for the European Parliament elections in June and jockeying for the Union’s plum posts intensifies over the summer. But how do we make sure this connects with people, encourages them to vote and sparks a real debate about Europe’s future rather than sending them to sleep? Drawing on my 30 years’ experience reporting on and communicating about the EU, here are my top tips: Make me care “This is a historic day for Europe,” I proudly told my office cleaner on 1 May 2004 as 10 mainly ex-communist countries joined the EU overnight. “It would be a historic day if I didn’t have to wake up at 5am to clean your bloody office,” she replied - proving once again that most people are not as obsessed about the EU as those who are paid to be. Outside the Brussels bubble, only a handful of wonks spend their days reading policy papers and fretting about the process . They have more pressing concerns – like how to pay the gas bill. So instead of assuming that people should be interested in the EU because it’s important, make them interested in the EU by showing its relevance. Beware the curse of knowledge Just because you know a lot about the EU, don’t assume others do. Most people can’t tell the difference between the Council of the EU, the European Council and the Council of Europe. So either don’t use those terms or clearly explain what they mean. One way of doing this is to talk about people not institutions – refer to EU leaders rather than the European Council. When speaking to the wider public, another technique is to ask: ‘would my gran/hairdresser/best mate back home understand what I’m saying?’ If the answer is ‘no’ make it simpler, clearer and shorter. Be concrete A lot of communication about the EU is like snowfall in summer – it melts on impact. The reason why is because it’s stuffed with vague, fluffy language – like ‘towards a values-based research ecosystem’. Instead of talking in generalities, make it specific. This was the European Central Bank’s tactic when launching the euro. Rather than boasting about the benefits of the new currency in lofty macroeconomic terms, it took out ads in the media asking ‘Imagine what you could buy for €10. Three pints of Guinness in a Dublin pub. Two shots of vodka in a Helsinki bar’ etc. Now that’s comms I’ll raise a glass to! Focus on what matters In a 2017 Kantar poll, under 35 percent of the EU public said they had personally benefitted from being a member of the EU – as opposed to over 70 percent of the elites. So rather than rabbiting on about roaming or the new European Bauhaus, zero in on the issues most people care about – better healthcare, security and jobs - preferably with local examples. More importantly, highlight the areas where the EU can actually make a difference, for example fighting air pollution, rather than bringing peace to the Middle East. Be passionate “A credible idea makes people believe. An emotional idea makes people care” wrote Chip and Dan Heath in their storytelling bible ‘ Made to Stick’ . So speak about Europe from the heart, drawing on personal stories that connect with audiences on an emotional level rather than an intellectual one. If you want to learn from the best, watch the speeches of former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, former Green leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit or current EU Commissioner Vera Jourová. Or read some of Donald Tusk’s tweets as European Council president. When he wrote that a "special place in hell" would be reserved for hardline Brexiteers few accused him of being a ‘bloodless bureaucrat’. Easy on the data 94 percent of people don’t remember data. I just made that figure up – which is why you should always be suspicious of statistics. If you are going to use numbers, paint a picture with them. Rather than claim that EU energy saving measures will save €150bn, say it will slice €200 of the annual electricity bill of every European. Axe the jargon Use short, clear, simple words, not long, vague, technocratic ones like synergies, stakeholders and subsidiarity. And axe all EU jargon like comitology, the Copenhagen criteria and . Using these words is the communication equivalent of driving your car into a brick wall. Engage Communicating isn’t the same as broadcasting. And it’s certainly not the same as preaching, proselytising or pouring out propaganda. It’s about listening to your audience, understanding their concerns and occasional admitting you’re wrong – all things EU cheerleaders are not very good at. At the very least, be honest about challenges, like former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans when he said meeting the EU’s climate change goals was “going to be bloody hard to do.” Effects, not process Germany’s first chancellor Otto von Bismarck supposedly said that “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.” Most people really don’t care if it’s an EU directive or regulation or if Belgium of Bulgaria holds the rotating presidency of the Union. What matters are the effects of EU decisions on their daily lives. So instead of talking about the Green Deal or Fit for 55 – which sounds like a gym ad for middle-aged people – talk about how the EU is cutting greenhouse gases, boosting renewables and protecting natural habitats. Keep it short Nobody ever complained about a speech being too short – or an article for that matter. If Abraham Lincoln could deliver the Gettysburg Address in 272 words, you can make a sharp, succinct and sticky speech about Europe without testing people’s patience. The key is not to have a shopping list of main messages – like the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals – but to have a few main points you want to make. Maybe, just maybe, your audience will remember one. Be bold The best communication is bold, not beige. If you don’t believe me, check out this EU video about the European Health Insurance Card featuring a jellyfish and a naked male model on a beach. You may not like it, but at least it grabs your attention – and gets its message across in a provocative, mischievous and humorous way. Don’t be dull In the end, there are no hard communication commandments, except this: Thou shalt not bore people. They have limited time and attention and will zap, swipe or junk you if you are tedious. So grab your reader, viewer or listener from the start and don’t let them go. Gareth Harding is founder and owner of Clear Europe and the director of Missouri School of Journalism's Brussels programme , and an occasional writer and media trainer. Gareth Harding is founder and owner of Clear Europe and the director of
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Missouri School of Journalism's Brussels programme
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Drawing on his 30 years’ experience in the Brussels bubble, a journalism professor's top tips on communicating the EU more clearly, concisely and convincingly.
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[
"EU Political"
] |
eu-political
|
2024-04-25T09:32:05.834Z
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https://euobserver.com/eu-political/arfdf4c3c9
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MEPs celebrate victory as Parliament approves Platform Work Directive
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MEPs finalised a new law on gig economy workers on Wednesday (24 April) as they rushed to conclude dozens of outstanding laws at the European Parliament's final plenary session in Strasbourg before June's European elections. The platform work directive, which aims to increase protection for the millions of European workers in the so-called “gig economy”, like food delivery riders or Uber-drivers, is one of several proposals to clinch last-minute ratification, overcoming numerous setbacks. “It has been a hard battle against the aggressive lobbying of platform giants,” said Italian social democrat Elisabetta Gualmini, who led the parliament's negotiations on the file, but she concluded that in the end, “social Europe won.” Most significantly, the directive introduces a “presumption of employment”, which aims to combat the exploitation of workers with a false self-employment status, by putting the burden of proof with platforms to demonstrate that workers are truly self-employed. The directive was welcomed by French Left MEP Leïla Chaibi, as “a step forward for millions of workers, who will at last have access to labour law, paid vacations, minimum wage and pensions.” The law also includes a prohibition on algorithmic management, and improved data protection for workers. Tortuous negotiations Similar to the supply-chain due diligence law and the forced labour ban , the directive on platform work survived tortuous negotiations, reaching the finish line only just before the end of the legislature. A blocking minority of member states toppled a deal between the council, commission and parliament twice in a row, first during the Spanish presidency in December and again in February under the Belgian presidency. Opposition was led by France, joined by Germany, Estonia and Greece, and primarily focused on the presumption of employment. In a last-ditch effort to save the law, the Belgian presidency further weakened the proposal . Replacing common criteria for false self-employment with a delegated responsibility for such criteria to national authorities, the new compromise moved Greece and Estonia to lend their support. Lobbying reports Negotiations were continually accompanied by reports of intense lobbying on behalf of platform work companies, with a 2022 study by the Observatoire des Multinationales highlighting ties between Uber and France. More recently, Corporate Observatory Europe has obtained emails exposing aggressive efforts by Bolt to influence the Estonian position on the directive, as reported by Euractiv. MEP’s lambasted the member states’ tough resistance. Chaibi cast the directive as a victory after “five years of struggle on the side of workers against lobbyists and Macron.” Similarly, German centre-right MEP Dennis Radtke castigated French and German leadership for “abstaining in the Council until the very end” which raised “questions about Olaf Scholz' and Emmanuel Macron's commitment to the well-being of workers in the gig economy.” Missed opportunity But putting member states in control of the criteria for false employment has met with criticism, including from platform companies themselves. Speaking to EUobserver, Uber reiterated their position that the directive was a “missed opportunity”, and maintained the status quo of member states taking unilateral decisions. Though he was supportive of the law, Ben Wray, analyst for the Gig Economy Project, worried about implementation at the national level as well. “Digital labour platforms will be determined to resist the law if penalties for bogus self-employment are lower than the additional labour costs,” Wary said, pointing to the example of Spain, where a strong national law presuming employment has been ignored by several companies. Effective implementation of the law would require strong labour inspectors, Wary added, who are “willing to pursue criminal as well as civil cases against corporate giants.” Piet Ruig is a Brussels-based journalist who previously worked for the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO.
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Piet Ruig
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Though the law looked dead in the water as late as February, MEP’s overcame tough resistance in the council and aggressive lobbying efforts to pass the law supporting gig economy workers.
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[
"Health & Society"
] |
health-and-society
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2024-04-24T19:59:11.428Z
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https://euobserver.com/health-and-society/ardd959d07
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Europe still has a plastics problem — and it's coming from Texas
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Europe has a plastics problem. Millions of tiny plastic pellets routinely wash up along Europe’s coastline and waterways, becoming long-lasting pollutants. Earlier this year, authorities in northern Spain declared an environmental emergency when millions of these pellets washed up on shore after a huge spill. Plastics pellets are melted down and turned into packaging or bottles, items which also often end up in Europe’s waterways after just a single use, clogging rivers, damaging the environment and endangering marine life. To try and address this problem the EU has recently agreed new rules to cut packaging waste and ban some single-use plastics, whilst additional rules to address plastic pellet pollution loom on the horizon . However, Europe’s plastics problem extends further than the significant problem of plastics pollution. Harms to the environment, climate and human health occur throughout the plastics lifecycle, starting from the extraction of fossil fuels, which are processed into petrochemicals and then plastics pellets. Amnesty International recently published new research showing how some petrochemical products linked to human rights abuses and environmental racism, are being exported into Europe’s plastic supply chain from plants concentrated around the Houston Ship Channel in Texas. The fossil fuel refineries and petrochemical plants along the channel, including many owned by European companies, routinely expose local communities to harmful pollution, causing devastating health harms. LyondellBasell, Shell and ExxonMobil are among the many polluters in the area. These companies produce and send petrochemicals and plastics resins to European destinations, including Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Residents along the channel suffer from a range of illnesses linked to their exposure to toxins, including high cancer rates, asthma, heart disease, infertility, and birth defects. One resident described the reality for fenceline communities such as his: “A lot of people have cancer, breathing difficulties. Maybe it’s just life but you live where you live, it makes you wonder … There’s no way living right next to [industry] is good.” Houston, we have a problem The people most exposed to this harmful pollution are disproportionately low-income and racialised, a form of discrimination that amounts to environmental racism. The industry is rarely held to account by the oil-and-gas friendly state of Texas, which routinely renews operating permits for repeat offenders and rubber stamps extension plans, giving the greenlight to these companies to continue polluting. This has created an industrial corridor so heavily contaminated that Amnesty International has designated the Houston Ship Channel a “ sacrifice zone ”, in which the health and environment of local communities are sacrificed for the benefit of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry. Remarking on the lack of action by the authorities to address this environmental injustice, one resident said: “They don’t care, we’re minorities… That’s why so many lives have been lost over the years.” In 2022, UN member states voted unanimously to recognise that everyone has a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. These same member states will convene in Canada this week to participate in the fourth of five planned rounds of negotiations to develop an ambitious global plastics treaty aimed at curbing pollution. While the intention was to create a legally-binding instrument that addresses the “full life cycle” of plastic , some countries – and fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists – are pushing to limit the scope to plastic waste, ignoring the type of rampant environmental, climate, and human rights harms documented in our report. Virtually all plastics are made from fossil fuels which is why the industry has made increasing plastics production it’s ‘Plan B’ to offset anticipated losses from the energy transition. As a result, plastics production is set to double by 2050 . It is critical that the treaty – expected to be finalised at the end of this year – covers the entire plastics lifecycle to address the adverse impacts of the world’s plastic pollution crisis on human rights, the environmental and climate. Whether proposals to restrict the production of plastics will remain in the treaty text following the latest round of talks is unclear. However, proposals that limit the treaty’s focus to the disposal of plastics will fail to address the root cause of the problem – more plastics production means more plastic waste. They also ignore the significant human rights and environmental harms posed by plastics recycling. At the EU level, new corporate accountability legislation, known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive , is expected to be approved this month. The law will require large businesses based or trading in the EU, to assess and address human rights and environmental risks in their operations and value chains around the world. This will impact EU petrochemical companies operating along the Houston Ship Channel, such as Netherlands-based LyondellBasell, who will be required to assess the impacts of their operations, including their emissions, and provide remedy to those suffering harms. Combined with a tough new UN plastics treaty, the new EU directive could help turn the tide against plastics in Europe – which can’t come soon enough for the continent’s beaches, bottle-blighted rivers, and all those communities suffering at the hands of the plastics and fossil fuel industries. Alysha Khambay is a researcher on business and human rights at Amnesty International and author of a recent report The Cost of Doing Business: The Petrochemical Industry’s Toxic Pollution in the USA Alysha Khambay
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is a researcher on business and human rights at Amnesty International and author of a recent report
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Amnesty International recently published new research showing how some petrochemical products linked to human rights abuses and environmental racism, are being exported into Europe’s plastic supply chain from plants concentrated around the Houston Ship Channel in Texas.
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[
"Green Economy",
"Opinion"
] |
green-economy
|
2024-04-24T09:00:00.000Z
|
https://euobserver.com/green-economy/are38aea8d
|
Pollwatch: Methods and principles
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The following processes were carried out to calibrate the weighted average for Pollwatch, a collaborative project between EUobserver and EM Analytics, in the context of the European elections in June 2024. The data from all the polls published for the last three elections in the member countries were compiled. The deviation in the estimation of each party has been calculated from the vote data of the last projection of each pollster, excluding exit polls. The pollster's deviation in each round is the sum of the absolute values of the vote deviations of the political parties. The average deviation, which results in the pollster ranking (Euro PollCheck), is the average of the deviations of the last three polls per pollster and country. [A link to the table with the Pollster-Country-ranking will be included]. To calculate the turnout data, the electoral census has been used as a starting point, based on the most recent data on the population over 18 years of age available in Eurostat for each country. To estimate the turnout, an average of the turnout in the last three European elections was used for each country, assigning 50 percent weight to the 2019 figure and the remaining 50 percent to the average turnout in 2014 and 2019. [A link to the table with the Census - Participation ratio per country will be included]. The vote estimate is calculated using the weighted average of the latest polls published for the European elections in 2024 by each pollster. Each pollster is assigned a specific weight per country, according to its position in the historical deviation ranking. A minimum of 5/10 is set for those with a deviation greater than two times the average error of pollsters in that country, and a linear ranking between five and 10 for deviations between 2xMAE and 0. Once the percentage of the vote per party has been calculated, the number of voters who would support that political party is estimated (based on the census and the turnout) [census * turnout * percentage]. The estimation of deputies is made according to a proportional distribution using the D'Hondt system, considering the specific minimum thresholds necessary to obtain representation per country. To do this, the estimated vote for each party is divided by correlative numbers and those coefficients equal to or greater than the last coefficient that gives entry to the European Parliament are assigned as MEPs (provided that it is greater than or equal to the entry barrier, otherwise, 0 MPs are assigned). For the vote calculation by political families, the voters of the political parties belonging to each family per country are added up, and their percentage of the total census and estimated turnout is calculated. Similarly, the aggregation of voters by family in the different countries allows us to obtain the overall figure for support by family in the Union as a whole. The MEPs by political families are the result of the sum of the MEPs of the parties that are attached to these families. Have questions? We're all ears! Feel free to reach out and delve deeper into our methods or insights. Send us an email at [email protected]
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or at
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Find out the methodology behind Pollwatch, a collaborative project between EUobserver and EM Analytics, in the context of the European elections in June 2024.
|
[
"EU Elections"
] |
eu-elections
|
2024-04-23T11:00:44.066Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-elections/arab26ec63
|
Is there an alternative to the rise of the far right in the EU?
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Europe has been through a whirlwind of changes in the past five years, from Brexit to Covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These events have reshaped our continent in ways we could never have imagined before. The Europe of 2019 is almost unrecognisable now. We cannot even envisage what it might look like after another five years of constant disruption. But one thing is clear: Europe needs capable leaders now more than ever, and ‘business as usual’ is not the answer anymore. The rise of far-right parties in Europe is a serious concern that threatens the progress we have made in the last decades. It is undeniable that their populist rhetoric is succeeding in gathering support, but their policy proposals -if any- seem to take us back to a time when diversity was seen as a problem and difference as a threat, not a strength. We can't afford to sit back and watch this happen. Is the only answer for Europe just to go backwards, or is there any chance that we can move forward, towards a more democratic future? The upcoming 2024 EU elections will be a crucial moment. They are our chance to put the EU on a different path. One where it will work more effectively, better represent its peoples, and be ready to tackle a changing world without fear. Either we come up with real answers, or we risk our continent falling back into authoritarianism. But there are many democratic questions that are not even being asked by the mainstream parties. There are many voices that are excluded and not heard. Minorities, stateless nations and peoples who are not represented in the mainstream European debate. People like us: like EFA . Incorporating all the voices of peoples from around Europe is key to understanding what we really need to see from the EU in these coming five years. We need a pro-European, pro-democratic majority in the next European Parliament. But a pro-democratic majority also needs to be a diverse one. The big parties have failed to halt the rise of the far-right. They have failed to bring the necessary ambition to imagine a better, more inclusive EU. We need a Europe that is more democratic, more diverse. And we need a Europe that is for all. Not just for the established interests, the states or the majorities. We want to see a serious process of EU reform. The European Parliament needs to have the right to legislative initiative. It is absurd to have a directly elected Parliament that can only approve, reject or protest; it must also be able to propose. And all the European institutions must be much, much more transparent and accountable. Above all, we need a Europe that recognises the democratic right to self-determination. We cannot pretend that the existing state structures are unchangeable, or that they cannot be questioned. The EU in which we live is still too dominated by the member states, with their veto powers and selfish interests. We need to start the conversation for a reformed EU now. The EU itself needs to change to reflect the people it represents. We should get rid of barriers that stop smaller groups from being heard, such as electoral thresholds. Europe is far more than its 27 member states: it is all the diversity within those states. Linguistic, cultural, and historical minorities; stateless nations that have not yet achieved their independence; historical regions with unique identities, and so much more. It is also all the different people who make up our societies. Of all ethnicities, genders, sexualities and social origins. If European politics does not include all these different voices, it is not truly a reflection of the communities in which we live. And just as the EU is so much more than its member states, it is also much more than its official languages. We stand for the right to use many more languages in the European Parliament. Because how can we say European democracy is for the people, if we can’t even use our own language? There are many states in Europe that actively discriminate against their minorities. We believe it is possible for the EU to step in and ensure that European values – which include freedom from discrimination – are properly applied within its borders. That’s why we call on the next European Commission to appoint a Commissioner for Minority Rights. We are here to show that minority rights and self-determination are not a fringe concern for a few small groups in remote places. They are matters of importance. And the Europe that we want to see – the Europe that we have just described – is a symbol of hope for the future. Just as it has been a symbol of hope for so many of us throughout history.
|
Raül Romeva and Maylis Rossberg are the Spitzenkandidaten of the European Free Alliance for the European elections. EFA is the European Political Party that defends democracy and diversity in Europe.
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The rise of far-right parties in Europe is a serious concern that threatens the progress we have made in the last decades. Is the only answer for Europe just to go backwards, or is there any chance that we can move forward, towards a more democratic future?
|
[
"Magazine"
] |
magazine
|
2024-04-23T07:18:11.130Z
|
https://euobserver.com/magazine/ar2329daa3
|
The European far-right: reasons to be pessimistic — and optimistic
|
From June 6 to 9, citizens of the European Union's 27 member states will elect the 720 members of the world's most powerful supranational parliament. Many political analysts anticipate that the recent far-right mobilisation in member states will now more directly influence the European Union's policies and politics Here are five reasons why and how the far-right will shape the next half decade of European integration, and five reasons to remain (cautiously) optimistic. Over the past three decades, 'cultural' issues (often with significant economic implications) have gained prominence across Europe. Among these, immigration and multiculturalism are the most important. Other examples include gender equality and diversity, perceptions of climate change, attitudes towards European integration, and even views on vaccination and Russia. Despite the seemingly disparate nature of these issues, they are connected to underlying values and identities, which are increasingly influential in European societies. The primary beneficiaries of this trend are far-right parties, which try to keep political debates centred on these questions. 'Far-right' serves as a convenient shorthand encompassing three distinct groups of parties, united by nativism — a paranoid form of nationalism rooted in (perceived) ethnicity that views non-native persons and ideas as a threat to the nation. This ideology often merges with a populist worldview, pitting the (ethnically) 'pure people' against allegedly corrupt elites. Extreme-right parties openly reject democracy, while more modern radical-right parties target its liberal and deliberative aspects, such as minority rights, the court system, and the media. The latter approach often yields greater success, inspiring (or infecting) a third group of formerly centre-right parties to adopt radical-right policies and rhetoric. A prominent example is Viktor Orban's Hungarian Fidesz party , which started as a liberal-conservative party in the 1990s. Across 31 European countries surveyed by the PopuList project, (populist) far-right parties have approximately doubled their vote share since the 1990s. Under the principle of degressive proportionality, the four most populous EU member states — Germany , France, Italy, and Spain — collectively hold nearly 45 percent of the seats in the European Parliament. Recent polls indicate the far-right as the leading party in France and Italy (where Georgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia [Brothers of Italy] governs alongside Matteo Salvini's Lega [League]), and securing second place in Germany. Although far-right support in Spain has waned since its peak in 2022, Vox still remains tied for third place in most polls. Additionally, the far-right is making significant strides in states with slightly smaller populations but substantial delegations, ranking second in Poland and Romania, and first in the Netherlands. Many citizens still perceive European Parliament elections as second-order contests with seemingly low stakes, making them vulnerable to disinformation campaigns by far-right parties, affiliated organisations, and their supporters outside the EU. While major players like Google and Meta have stepped up their efforts to combat disinformation, Twitter's new leadership disbanded many moderation teams and reinstated some formerly banned far-right actors. Other platforms like Telegram, a key channel for the far-right, lack effective content moderation. Additionally, the availability of affordable generative AI allows the mass production of propaganda and disinformation on a scale unimaginable just three or four years ago. For decades, the European project has been shaped by an informal coalition of centre-right and centre-left parties. In 2019, this coalition lost its majority in the European Parliament for the first time. However, robust performances by Green and liberal parties, coupled with low party cohesion, maintained support for further integration. In this cycle, however, centre-left, green, and liberal parties are expected to lose seats, resulting in a reduction of the core of MEPs supporting integrationist and progressive legislation. And now for the good news. Models from Europe Elects and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) suggest that the combined seat share of the rightwing European Conservatives & Reformists (ECR) and far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) groups may increase from 18 percent in the current parliament to 24-25 percent in the next. While this would be an impressive feat, it's hardly a far-right takeover of the European Parliament. The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is poised to maintain its status as the largest group, holding around 25 percent of the seats, followed by the centre-left Socialists & Democrats (S&D) group, which is expected to suffer some moderate losses. Collectively, the centre-left, centre-right, and liberal parties are projected to still hold more than 50 percent of the seats in the parliament. Despite anticipated losses, the Greens are likely to retain most of their seats, too, ensuring the continuation of a broad pro-European majority. However, legislative behaviour in the European Parliaemnt is characterised by fluidity, and less cohesion, than in many national parliaments, with coalitions forming on a per-issue basis. As the left-of-centre camp shrinks, the EPP and the liberals may align more frequently with the rightwing and far-right, bringing about a marked rightward shift in certain policy fields (e.g. environment). Due to their inherent xenophobia, collaboration among far-right parties in the European Parliament is often fractious. Currently, some far-right MEPs are unaffiliated, while eight far-right parties form the (nationalist and eurosceptic) Identity and Democracy (ID) group, and 20 ideologically more-diverse parties sit as the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) . Orban's Fidesz is considering joining either group, but potential disagreements over Orban's stance towards Russia may lead some current ECR members to leave in that scenario. And there is even speculation that the (mainstream right) European People's Party (EPP) could offer membership in the club to Meloni's Brothers of Italy. For four decades, spanning from the early 1950s to the early 1990s, "Europe" operated as an elite project with minimal public involvement. Paradoxically, the increasing levels of far-right mobilisation against and within the EU can be viewed as evidence that European integration has become so politicised that it can no longer proceed by stealth. In any case, it forces the pro-European parties to take a stand and effectively campaign for their vision of Europe. Three decades of research indicate that the gradual decline of the centre-left and centre-right, coupled with the ascent of the far-right, is structurally rooted in the transformation of European societies and economies. Nevertheless, this research also underscores that the voter potential of the far-right is not limitless, and that mainstream parties retain substantial agency to influence the political process to their advantage. Kai Arzheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Mainz, specialising in the extreme and radical right vote in Europe.
|
Kai Arzheimer
|
Here are five reasons why and how the far-right will shape the next half decade of European integration, and five reasons to remain (cautiously) optimistic.
|
[
"EU Political",
"EU Elections"
] |
eu-political
|
2024-04-22T07:30:00.000Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-political/ar3cdfa533
|
Welcome to the new EUobserver
|
Hello there. If you’re reading this, we’ve successfully managed to transfer over to our new home. I’ll tell you, it was not easy. EUobserver has be en around since the year 2000, publishing over 70,000 articles since its inception as one of the first EU-focused news publishers on earth – and certainly online. Over the decades (yes, decades) our humble site has carved out a unique niche in the Brussels media landscape, not only operating as a non-profit, but also with a particular view on the EU. A view that emphasises the human and humane angle of EU policy, the stories less-covered, and takes the voices of civil society seriously. In fact, we believe our role is to be a kind of two-way informational bridge between civil society – representing groups of people with common interests – and policy-makers. EUobserver has also uncovered countless stories through dedicated investigative work by our highly-experienced journalists. Our pan-European reporting has been used as a basis of stories published by some of the most influential news publications in the world. We also co-publish investigative reporting from some of the most influential and thorough partners, like Investigate Europe , Lighthouse Reports , DeSmog and many others. Independence We’ve always strived to be fiercely independent, not only of outside influence from advertisers, industries and politics, but also financially – first of all, by creating one of the first membership programmes in EU media, but also by consciously not taking core funding from EU institutions. The new website is the next step in this evolution. And also it looks pretty good, if I may say so. At the moment, we rely on foundations, advertising and memberships for our income. The goal of the new website is to become self-sustaining through primarily memberships, both from individuals and from institutions. As other great publications have shown, it’s possible to provide enough value to readers that they’re willing to pay for being a part of it. Look at Correctiv in Germany, Mediapart in France, Tortoise Media in the UK and Follow the Money in the Netherlands (but now also in Brussels). Today, we’re introducing a few new membership tiers – at a lower price. The goal is to use the new membership income to invest into more journalism on more topics, which will then provide even more value for our readers. We’re also adding a new membership tier for people under 25 for just €1 per month, because we believe it’s important for young people to stay informed on the EU, affordably. Especially with the European Parliament elections less than two months away. You are not a news consumer At EUobserver we’ve always tried to value your time by being as concise as possible in our reporting and our newsletter. The new website is also a reflection of this (and a dream come true for me as a publisher). If you’d be so inclined, you could navigate everything on the website just using the filters in the Latest News section on the website. For example, if you’re only interested in Investigations that have to do with Ukraine, you can select these filters in the drop-down menus to only see the articles fitting this interest. The reason behind this is that most news sites have become way too cluttered in a quest for trying to highlight every ‘important’ story in every single category – thereby making choices for readers on what they should think is important. We believe in our readers’ ability to discern what’s important for them. So we’re giving you the choice of what you see. It’s an experiment in shifting away from the idea of readers as news ‘consumers’ to the idea of readers as news *generators*, an idea recently put forward by journalist Ezra Klein. Not that we ask you to write the news (although with our new comment feature you can share your thoughts and tips as a supporting member), but that your choices matter. If you choose to spend time on our website, you’re also choosing to not spend that time on a social media giant. You’re sending a signal to society that you value quality journalism above something else. And that’s important. Your choices matter. They matter for our continued existence and growth, but also for the support that allows for the production of valuable journalism. Features galore The website will support this idea with a few more experimental features that will allow more flexibility for members to choose how you receive articles: i.e. if you only want to get updates about Rule of Law, via Whatsapp, at the end of the day. This option is still in the works, but should be coming pretty soon. Supporting members also will have the possibility to share gift articles with friends (through the little gift icon on article pages). And finally we’ve also re-introduced the Ticker on the homepage, which is where we share links to stories and news from across the web that we (and hopefully you) think are interesting – even if they’re published by ‘competitors’. Speaking of competitors, I’m proud to say that in a ranking of the most influential publications in the EU, EUobserver is the only independent publisher left – and moving up the ladder. We’re not owned by another corporation or private equity firm, we can’t make a profit, which means that all our income flows into journalism, and we can’t be bought or sold, even if we wanted to. The new website is an investment in EUobserver’s future, one I’m both proud and scared to be responsible for. Proud because I believe in our mission and that our coverage matters. Scared because founder Lisbeth Kirk trusted me with the role of publisher, and I do not want to let her legacy down – I have tremendous respect for the publication she’s built and maintained over almost 25 years. Then again, we have the best possible people to do this. Our editorial department is staffed exclusively by incredibly knowledgeable, devoted and kind individuals. Our sales department understands perfectly from whom we do and don’t want to take money. Together with you, our readers, we have the chance to build something special. The new website was partially made possible by generous support from our core funders; Adessium Foundation , Schöpflin Stiftung and Isocrates Foundation . We worked together with the developers who built the Eurovision voting infrastructure – it’s slightly overpowered for our humble needs, but it also means the website is extremely fast and built towards the future. Expect a lot of new stuff from us in the future. We’ll be releasing a very intricate and hopefully accurate Poll of Polls for the upcoming EU elections soon. We’ll keep publishing high quality investigations and reporting, both by ourselves and a group of dedicated freelance journalists across Europe and the globe. And we have a couple of exciting new sections in the works, which we’ll all unveil in due time. For anyone who has been used to reading us over the years, first of all thank you, and second, the new website will require some adjustments – but I’m sure you’ll adapt quite easily. And feel free to get in touch with me if you have any comments, requests or improvements you’d like to share. And to all of you still to read our website and get to know us, thank you for being here. Thank you for spending time with us, thank you for supporting us and thank you for caring about the journalism we produce. With the upcoming elections in the US, UK and EU, turmoil in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, economic uncertainty and a necessary green transition, there has never been a more important time to read and support quality journalism.
|
Alejandro Tauber is Publisher of EUobserver. He is Ecuadorian, German, and American, but lives in Amsterdam. His background is in tech and science reporting, and was previously editor at VICE's Motherboard and publisher of TNW.
|
New website, same EUobserver. Come explore its updated look, features and possibilities for the future with us.
|
[
"Inside EUobserver"
] |
inside-euobserver
|
2024-04-17T05:10:26.286Z
|
https://euobserver.com/inside-euobserver/ar77652c78
|
Don't kill cohesion policy
|
Many think of Frankfurt as the financial centre of the EU and, therefore, as its economic beating heart. One can also say the same about our national capitals and two or three of the largest cities in every member state. Indeed, most Spanish wealth is concentrated in Madrid and Barcelona. But does the future of the EU depend solely on them? We, the Socialists & Democrats , are convinced that this is not — and cannot be — the case. In fact, Spain will be a successful society when we unlock the entire potential of our nation — from Madrid to the outermost regions like the Canary Islands and the rural areas of Murcia. The same most certainly applies to the EU, from Frankfurt to the northernmost regions of Finland and the areas hit by the climate emergency we live in, in particular the villages and small towns suffering from devastating fires and floods in Poland, Croatia and Greece. The EU was born as a project with a social heart. Thus, it was able to convince its citizens that it was not something abstract, but on the contrary; something of great benefit to each one of them personally. First from the ruins of the Second World War and once again after the end of the Cold War. One of the best incarnations of all of this was and remains the cohesion policy. Millions of Europeans found jobs in SMEs supported by cohesion funds, children have been able to stay in schools, lives were saved in hospitals built with money from cohesion policies and people used EU infrastructure improved with these means to go to these schools and hospitals. The European Commission has recently published its 9th report on economic, social and territorial cohesion , giving us an opportunity to take stock and summarise the key factors with regards to this great European policy. First of all, we have to say it aloud: don't kill cohesion policy. Some groups on the right of the EU political spectrum are openly putting into question the need for this major investment instrument. Worse — on top of this — comes the worrying trend of taking money for other legitimate and pressing needs which our Union faces. It is true that the economic recovery from the pandemic, the energy crisis and all other consequences from the Russian invasion in Ukraine undoubtedly require the use of EU money. However, for the S&D Group this cannot — as a rule — be done at the cost of depleting cohesion funds aimed at investment for the future. As a matter of fact, this is the first place the policymakers from the right think about when it comes to finding money to tackle every major crisis we face. This is partially due to the mistaken traditional belief that cohesion policy is a saving policy for some member states and an expenditure policy for the rest. A 'win-win' An example of a win-win situation for Polish workers and Bulgarian citizens: it is true the new trams in Sofia have been funded from the European Regional Development Fund. But it is also true that these trams have been manufactured and delivered to Sofia by a Polish company in the city of Bydgoszcz. Second, should we continue with GDP as the sole indicator as to whether a region needs EU money for its development? This is a question we have to discuss for the future of cohesion policy. On top of GDP, should we also define a set of indicators taking into account socio-economic aspects like unemployment rate, education level and access to healthcare? And what about adding climate and environmental aspects such as how much a region is exposed to the effects of climate change and what are its adaptation needs to this change? Our regions differ greatly and so do their needs; leaving it all based exclusively on GDP might not be the best solution in the future. Third, it is often the case that the metropolitan areas of major European capitals are surrounded by vulnerable areas with weak socio-economic indicators. These are what we call intra-regional disparities. This issue must be addressed by the future cohesion policy through the mobilisation of economic potential everywhere and the creation of quality jobs. Fourth, what about greater involvement of local and regional governments in deciding, implementing and monitoring the use of the funds? This would be a better way to invest smarter, increase the absorption of EU funds and bring the result closer to the real problems of citizens. Fifth, the pressing issue of depopulation. Cohesion policy must invest in human capital; ensuring people's right to stay in their regions, thus balancing growth among EU regions. Providing connectivity such as high-speed internet connections, including in mountainous and rural areas, is of key importance. After years focusing our efforts in urban areas, it is now time to widen the focus and give the Territorial Agenda 2030
|
for the EU a relevant role, as demanded recently by the European Parliament.
|
Some groups on the right of the EU political spectrum are openly questioning the need for this major investment instrument, risking depleting cohesion funds aimed at investment for the future, writes Marcos Ros Sempere of the Socialists & Democrats.
|
[
"Health & Society"
] |
health-and-society
|
2024-04-11T09:57:47.000Z
|
https://euobserver.com/health-and-society/arfd6800ce
|
How NOT to write an op-ed
|
As comment editor, I receive around 10-15 unsolicited op-ed submissions every 24 hours. That includes weekends. At peak periods, it can be 20 in one day. Even at slow times, e.g. Christmas or mid-August, it is never fewer than five. At 800 words each, that is 10,000 to 15,000 words of cold-calling text daily to read and evaluate — about an Iliad's worth of text every week. And this is not including ones I proactively commission from academics, think tanks, NGOs, journalists, experts, even — god forbid — politicians themselves. And all of this for one, at most two, slots a day. While we're grateful for the submissions — especially the good ones — I reckon we can all save ourselves time by having a clear guide on how to not write one of those many, many, many pieces that end up on the chopping block. Here is how NOT to get published. Don't neglect your homework. Have a good read of EUobserver first (if you don't already — and if you don't already, why are you pitching to us?). Have we already covered the topic you are writing about? Do we never ever, in fact, cover the topic you are writing about? If you don't know or know and don't care, you can be pretty sure your op-ed on Nancy Pelosi's role as Democratic Speaker is not going to end up on EUobserver. Don't send me a mini-essay as an email, please. Make it short (two or three paragraphs), saying who you are, why you're a qualified expert on the topic, and what the piece says. Include the piece. That's enough. If you send it to anyone else than ME, chances are I will never see it. We have an About Us page — why spend several hours/days writing the piece, then not bother looking up the correct person to send it to, dooming it to the 'not-for-me, too-busy-to-read' unread emails list? Too much deviation from 800 words is dooming your effort. 800 words is the industry standard. I'll take 700 and I'll take 900, but over or under that, it's either too short or too long, and I won't read it. Don't plead with me about how it's "it's too important to condense to 800 words". Everything is. It's your job to make it short, snappy and concise. Essays of more than 1,000 words are for think tank journals, academia and general wonkery. We are journalists, serving everyday readers. You just read about the amount of email I have to go through, so I plead you DO NOT email on every subsequent day to "reach out to check if you got my email?" Instead, add a final line saying "please let me know if you are interested, or not, so I can pitch it elsewhere". "Rough drafts" are no-nos. Send your absolute final and best attempt at saying what you have to say. If it's good enough, I can polish it up. If it isn't, I don't have time to teach the world how to write a piece about which you are supposed to know more than I do. How to not get a NO Follow one golden rule: Is this NEW, and is it INTERESTING? If it's both, you're probably going to get a yes. If it's well-written as well, that's the Holy Trinity, and a bonus, but I can patch it up, so long as it is clear and intelligible. However, one word of warning: do not pitch to me because the 'peg' is that it will be that some random Tuesday is "International Day of X". Clean water, adult literacy, female genital mutilation — these are all worthy topics in themselves, but no one cares that some PR department pronounced it their day. If it's NEW and INTERESTING, that's enough. "Put 'the intro' ... in the INTRO." A maxim of the late, great, Eugene Duffy, my first ever Fleet Street editor, but basically it means: start with your most arresting and interesting fact or opinion. Do not start with six boring paragraphs of scene-setting, history and context. And I beg you, don't start your Ukraine War op-ed with a variation of "Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022...." etc. We all know that — what's the NEW, INTERESTING thing you've got to say? Like every publication, WE WRITE THE HEADLINE. However trivial it might seem, it's a dark art that's only truly mastered by few. Suggest your best one, but then leave it to the editor. Photos? Nice if you have some, but not essential. ACRONYMS — avoid like Covid, but where necessary, always spell them out first, or even add an apologetic 'known as/so-called 'x'. You might live and work in the Brussels Bubble, and know perfectly well what CSDDD stands for — real people have no idea what you're talking about. FACTS/FIGURES/QUOTES — good to include new/fresh figures and sexy quotes, but get them right. Check them, and double-check them. You're supposed to be the expert on this. An almost guaranteed way to never get published a second time is if we have to publish a correction on simple factual errors you've made. If the mistake is at our end, in the editing process, then the blame is on us for getting it wrong or not double-checking. LIBEL/ACCUSATIONS. Sourcing is the big difference between professional journalists and civilians. If president X or prime minister Y has been convicted of corruption, or is under investigation for it, you can say that (but only, precisely, that). Non-factual accusations will get us sued for libel. Here are a couple of good examples from op-eds from this year, to give you the idea. Take this prosaic, everyday example. Nothing could be more niche, complex and dull than EU chemicals directives, right? Wrong. Immodestly, the other one is by me . Rare that I write anything these days, but having actually attended and covered the 2008 Nato summit in Bucharest, where Ukraine was offered the (long-term) assurance of Nato membership, thus tossing a match for the current conflagration, I thought it was about time someone set the record straight, whilst offering up some of the flavour and colour of that slightly weird summit 14 years ago. The observant among you will have noticed by now I've broken one of my own golden rules. This piece is now 1,106 words long. Which is too long for an op-ed — but proves that rules are there for breaking, and the writing's good enough, it can sustain any length. Not saying this is the case here, but I'm the editor, so hey.
|
Matthew is EUobserver's Opinion Editor. He joined EUobserver in June 2018. Previously he worked as a reporter for The Guardian in London, and as editor for AFP in Paris and DPA in Berlin.
|
EUobserver receives tens of thousands of words of unsolicited opinion pieces every day — for one daily slot. So, how do you differentiate your piece from the crowd of others, and actually get published?
|
[
"EU Political",
"Opinion"
] |
eu-political
|
2023-01-02T06:25:02.000Z
|
https://euobserver.com/eu-political/ar8c10ab92
|
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