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Across Britain, a slow-burning problem has ignited into a supply chain crisis in recent weeks as restaurants, supermarkets and food manufacturers warned customers that some popular products may be temporarily unavailable because of a shortage of truck drivers.

McDonalds milkshakes, Nandos chicken, Haribo sweets and supermarket milk are among the items that have become scarce in Britain over the summer. But it goes far beyond food: Nearly every industry is complaining about delivery problems. And already organizations are warning that logistics issues could upend the arrival of Christmas toys and the trimmings crucial to family holiday meals.

A long-running shortage of truck drivers has been exacerbated by a post-Brexit exodus of European Union workers. Adding to the problem are disruptions to training for new drivers because of the pandemic. And for years, the trucking industry has struggled to attract new workers to a job that has traditionally been low paid and required long, grueling hours.

Ninety-five percent of everything we get in Britain comes on the back of a truck, said Rod McKenzie, the director of policy at Road Haulage Association, which represents the British road transport industry, and estimates that there is a shortfall of 100,000 drivers. So if there are not enough trucks to go around and weve got reports of big companies with a hundred trucks parked up at any one time there simply is less stuff being delivered.

Earlier in the summer, the German candy company Haribo said it was struggling to get its sweets into British shops. Arla, a large dairy producer, said it was having to skip up to a quarter of its deliveries. Last week, Nandos, the popular restaurant chain, had to close about 50 of its restaurants because of a shortage of its famed peri-peri chicken. This week, Greggs, a grab-and-go coffee and lunch cafe, and Costa, a coffee chain, were the latest to suffer product shortages because of supply chain disruptions.

The delivery problems are forcing other companies to triage what they sell. McDonalds took milkshakes and bottled drinks off the menu this week, allowing it to focus on serving burgers and fries.

British shoppers should expect to see even more companies reduce their product options and prioritize their best-selling items, Mr. McKenzie said.

In some cases, the disruption has been worsened by staff shortages. A major British poultry producer, 2 Sisters Food Group, said Brexit had contributed to a 15 percent reduction in its work force this year. The British Meat Processors Association recently warned that companies were six weeks behind their Christmas production schedules, almost guaranteeing shortages of popular items over the holidays.

The group also said its problems had been made more severe by retailers poaching their truck drivers with pay bonuses.

Iceland, a large supermarket chain, is raising the alarm about Christmas. It said retailers should be building up their inventory beginning in September, but instead, shelves are now emptying out. Richard Walker, the managing director, said the company was missing 100 full-time drivers.

That is impacting the food supply chain on a daily basis, Mr. Walker told the BBC. Weve had deliveries canceled for the first time since the pandemic began about 30 to 40 deliveries a day.

The United States also faces a shortage of truck drivers; the crisis is similar in that its been years in the making, as trucking companies have failed to attract younger workers. In Britain, the average age of a truck driver is nearly 50. Six years ago, the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport said that just 2 percent of drivers were under the age of 25 and that by 2022, the industry would need 1.2 million more workers.

Daily Business Briefing

Aug. 27, 2021, 8:54 p.m. ET

Then, after the 2016 Brexit referendum, the value of the British pound plummeted, making it less lucrative for continental Europeans truck drivers included to work in Britain, prompting some to return to their home countries. That trend was exacerbated by the pandemic, when many wanted to be closer to their families.

When Britain took the final step of leaving the European Union at the end of last year, it meant drivers from continental Europe could no longer be employed at short notice and with ease in Britain.

Until December, there was never going to be a labor shortage because, as soon as there was a sign of one, a company could talk to their agency in Poland or elsewhere and get them to send some people over, said David Henig, a trade expert at the European Center for International Political Economy, a research institute.

Similarly, Brexit has complicated the job for British drivers who make international journeys because of the new paperwork needed to take loads to countries including France, the Netherlands and Ireland.

And more roadblocks are coming when Britain phases in the introduction of checks on foods and other goods coming into the country from continental Europe later in the year (so far, these checks have been performed only on items exported to the European Union).

The haulage and logistics industries in Britain have pleaded with the government to ease restrictions on visas for E.U. drivers. Logistics U.K., a trade group, is asking the government to create 10,000 seasonal visas (similar to a program for farm workers) for drivers.

To ease the shortage, the government has increased the number of hours drivers can work each day, and it has proposed initiatives to recruit new drivers, but it has resisted pressure to ease visa rules for European truck drivers.

I dont think the government wants to go there: if they give concessions on lorry drivers, there are other requests that will follow, Mr. Henig said. Nor is there significant political pressure to concede because the opposition Labour Party, which is trying to woo back pro-Brexit voters, is cautious of criticizing Britains withdrawal from the European Union.

Efforts to fill those jobs with new British drivers have been stymied because over much of the last year, pandemic lockdowns prevented driving exams from taking place. The Road Haulage Association estimates that as many as 40,000 tests were not conducted. Training a new driver takes up to six months.

Employers have responded by raising pay and offering signing bonuses. Tesco, Britains largest supermarket chain, is offering 1,000 bonuses to drivers who join before the end of September and further pay increases for six more months.

Its definitely an undervalued profession, said Alex Veitch, the general manager of public policy at Logistics U.K., in both pay and the appreciation for its crucial role in supplying necessities and the pressure of performing the job safely. Thats bound to change.

Working conditions, too, have been the focus of complaints among drivers. The job involves long, sometimes lonely hours, andsafe parking spaces and rest stops for truckers can be hard to find. The challenges of truckers was stark last year when thousands of drivers in southern England spent Christmas camping in the front of their trucks after the French government closed the border in a vain attempt to stop the further spread of the coronavirus. It then took days to clear the backlog.

Mr. McKenzie at the Road Haulage Association joined others in predicting the problems would still disrupting deliveries come Christmas. The problem isnt showing signs of abating.

Its getting worse, Mr. McKenzie said. No doubt, no question. Its getting worse week on week.

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Chicken, Milkshakes, Candy: Scarce in Britains Truck Driver Shortage - The New York Times

Islamabad: After maintaining an indefinite ban on Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is entering as a member of European Union states, the EU has asked the national flag carrier for assistance in evacuating its personnel staff from Afghanistan.

The European Union officials have requested evacuation support from Pakistani authorities as the window for airlifting is narrowing down. The majority of the diplomatic corps and local employees have been evacuated from Kabul by the member states thus far.

After the Taliban takeover and deteriorating security situation, the majority of EU workers have already evacuated from the country, particularly after suicide bombings near Kabul airport.

Because of safety concerns, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) suspended PIAs third country operator authorization to fly flights in EU member states for six months.

The EASA, on the other hand, in April prolonged travel restrictions indefinitely and ordered the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) to have its safety audit done by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

See the original post here:
The European Union has requested PIA to evict its staff from Afghanistan - BOL News

The following report was delivered at the Socialist Equality Party (US) 2021 summer school, held August 1 through August 6, by Johannes Stern, the deputy editor of the German-language edition of the World Socialist Web Site and a leading member of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) in Germany.

Over the last year, the initial propaganda of the European governments that they had responded more responsibly to the pandemic than the US governmentfirst under Trump and now under Bidenhas been exposed as a murderous fraud. As in the US, the European population faces a ruling class that puts profits before lives and effectively pursues a policy of social murder.

There are officially over 1.1 million dead on the continent. This includes more than 150,000 in Britain, more than 160,000 in Russia, about 130,000 in Italy, 110,000 in France, 92,000 in Germany, 82,000 in Spain, 75,000 in Poland and 53,000 in Ukraine. Such numbers are unprecedented outside times of war. And as in the US and India, the real numbers are certainly much higher. And they continue to rise.

As we hold this school, a deadly fourth wave of the pandemic is developing, exacerbated by the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. In the UK, Spain and France, 20,000 to 30,000 new infections are reported every day. In Germany, the numbers are rising rapidly and, as a result of the governments reckless reopening policy, it is only a matter of a few weeks before daily infection figures reach new records.

Earlier this week, Chancellery chief Helge Braun of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) even warned of 100,000 new daily infections in Germany in September. Incidence rates of over 800 infected with COVID-19 per 100,000 inhabitants are unfortunately not unrealistic, she said.

What such an incidence rate means is clear: the complete overload of the health system and a renewed wave of mass death. A recent study published by the RKI calculated that intensive care capacities would be overwhelmed at an incidence rate of 400. Already in the second and third waves of the pandemic, the health care system was at its limit, and tens of thousands of people succumbed to the virus in Germany alone.

As in the first waves of the pandemic, the mass suffering is a direct result of the aggressive opening policies pursued by the European ruling class. Governments of all stripes are pursuing a deliberate policy of herd immunity, putting profits before lives.

In order not to jeopardize the orgy of enrichment on the stock exchanges, governments across Europe insist that there must be no more lockdowns and that one must live with the virusor, rather, die with the virus. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson summed up the ruling classs policy in his infamous statement, No more f***ing lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands!

With this the governing parties in Europewhether conservative, social democratic or pseudo-leftare in essence implementing the program of the extreme right, which has long called for an end to all pandemic containment measures. In Germany, just a few weeks ago, the CDU leader and likely next chancellor, Armin Laschet, openly declared his solidarity with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a diatribe against new lockdown measures.

The WSWS has described the pandemic as a trigger event that enormously accelerates the already advanced economic, social and political crisis of the capitalist world system. This is especially visible in Europe. The ruling class has used the pandemic to further advance its policies of social austerity and rearmament, which it had already steadily intensified after the 2008-09 financial crisis.

As in the US, trillions were handed over to banks and large corporations last March. As a result, the fortunes of the super-rich have continued to explode in the year of the pandemic. According to this years Forbes list, Europes billionaires have grown richer by a total of $1 trillion over the past year. These 628 people now have a total wealth of over three trillion dollars, an increase of around 50 percent in just one year.

These gigantic sums are now to be squeezed out of the working class again. Hence the aggressive back to work and back to school policies supported by all capitalist parties and organized in close cooperation with the trade unions.

The herd immunity policy and social attacks go hand in hand with calls for a more aggressive imperialist policy. Like the US government, the European powers are taking advantage of the crisis to intensify their rearmament policy. All the central European powers have massively increased their defence budgets in the year of the pandemic. Germany is leading the way. Next year, for example, the defence budget is set to rise by another five percent, to well over 50 billion.

We have written about the aggressive NATO manoeuvres in the Black Sea, which heighten the danger of a direct military confrontation with the nuclear power Russia. And the European powers are also becoming increasingly aggressive toward China, despite close economic ties.

In a fit of megalomania, Berlin sent a frigate towards the Indo-Pacificon the pretext of securing freedom of navigation there. Aggressive anti-Chinese comments in the press bring back dark memories of Kaiser Wilhelms infamous Hun speech almost 121 years ago to the day.

We have discussed in detail the January 6 coup and the danger of fascism in the US in this school. In Europe, too, the turn of the ruling class toward dictatorship and fascism is well advanced and has been further exacerbated by the pandemic.

I have already mentioned that fact the ruling class in Germany is adopting the program of the far-right AfD. In France and Spain, there are far advanced coup plots in the army. The Macron government in France and the PSOE-Podemos government in Spain are downplaying the danger and are themselves responding to the far-right threat with a sharp shift to the right.

Their stance expresses the same class interests that we have analysed with respect to the Democrats in the United States. The nominally democratic parties in Europe reject any serious struggle against the far-right danger because they defend the interests of finance capital and, above all, fear the growing militancy and resistance of the working class. To suppress the class struggle, they themselves increasingly adopt the program of the extreme right.

At the same time, the pandemic has aggravated the deep crisis of the European Union and the tensions between the imperialist powers on the continent.

While the European powers in general agree on issues of social cuts, militarism, and war, they have been utterly unable to organize a common approach to contain the pandemic. When the virus spread dramatically last spring, for example, the German and French governments imposed export bans on medical protective equipment. Since then, tensions have continued to grow, especially between France and Germany. In mid-July, French neo-fascist and possible next president Marine Le Pen threatened to break the alliance with Germany and develop a close military cooperation with Britain and the United States.

The spectre of catastrophe returns. Germany and France have fought three bloody wars against each other in the last 150 years. Now the escalating economic, social and political crisis is reviving all the unresolved problems of European capitalism in the 20th century.

The entire history and development of the European Union confirms the Marxist analysis summarized by Leon Trotsky in 1917: A halfway complete and consistent economic union of Europe coming from the top by means of an agreement of the capitalist governments is sheer utopia.

And further: The economic union of Europe, which offers colossal advantages to producer and consumer alike, and in general to the whole cultural development, becomes the revolutionary task of the European proletariat in its fight against imperialist protectionism and its instrumentmilitarism.

This is the perspective that the Trotskyist movement has defended against Social Democracy and Stalinism, and which now takes on immediate significance. Among workers and youth, resistance is developing across Europe.

First, there was a wave of spontaneous strikes in key auto, manufacturing and food factories in Italy and across Europe that forced European governments to implement the initial lockdowns last spring. Then in the fall of 2020, there were renewed strikes and protests against the opening policy, including school strikes in Greece, France and Germany.

Now strikes and protests are developing across the continent against attacks on workers jobs and wages. As in the US, corporations, with the help of the unions, are using the COVID-19 pandemic to push through historic attacks on wages and working conditions.

These are only some examples we have been covering extensively on the WSWS: the struggle of the Banbury300 at JDE in Britain, the strikes and protests of the Gorillas delivery workers in Berlin, the struggle of the WISAG airport workers in Frankfurt and the spontaneous strikes of electricity workers in Turkey.

In all these struggles, we have not only commented on events, but intervened as active participants in the class struggle. We fought to organize workers independently of the unions and clarified central questions of political orientation and perspective. On this basis, we have been able to set up rank-and-file committees among teachers and students and make similar developments in other workplaces and industries.

We are in a situation where our partys intervention is becoming the most decisive factor in determining how political developments play out.

The example of our intervention among Volvo workers in the Belgian city of Ghent is worth considering again. Our intervention there and the support we won for the strike of the Volvo workers in Dublin, Virginia directly strengthened the struggle of the rank-and-file there. At the same time, the strike in Dublin, which we told Volvo workers in Ghent about, spurred their fight against the 40-hour week. Just one day after our first intervention, there was a spontaneous walkout at Volvo Cars in Ghent.

We cannot underestimate the influence we have. Similar to the response of the WSWS to the 1619 Project, we have understood that the rewriting of history in Germanythe trivialization of Nazi crimes by far-right professors such as Jorg Baberowskihas far-reaching consequences. We have not only noted this, but we have mobilized a powerful intellectual and political offensive against it, which has found such a great response because it articulates the enormous opposition among workers and youth to fascism and war.

There is one other more recent experience that I want to share with you. We are currently in the midst of a federal election campaign. We decided to intervene strongly after the recent flood disaster, in which more than 200 people died because they were not warned and no safety measures were organized. Like the pandemic, this disaster is again exposing the criminality of the ruling class and the bankruptcy of capitalism. Our latest video report, with interviews of those affected, was viewed over 200,000 times within only five days. This underscores the impact we have when we respond aggressively to political events.

In his report to the summer school two years ago, Comrade North explained, The attack on our German section by the Verfassungsschutz is a clear political statement that the ruling elite recognizes that the program and ideas of our movement have the potential to gain a mass following in the working class.

He added: This acknowledgment of the political stature of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei is, in one sense, a compliment. But it is also a threat, and it must be taken seriously... To meet the demands of this global development of the class struggle it is necessary for the cadre of the International Committee to draw upon the entire theoretical and political capital of our world party.

This is the orientation of this school and the basis on which we must now continue to develop the work of the SEP and the entire International Committee of the Fourth International.

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The pandemic exposes the bankruptcy of European capitalism - WSWS

The Coronavirus situation in the European Union and Schengen Area countries may not be as bad as it was last winter. However, travelling to a large share of these countries remains risky, and only travel to five EU countries is considered safe.

Updating the maps published in support of the Council Recommendation on a coordinated approach to the restriction of free movement within the block amid COVID-19, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has revealed that the only countries that remain green in the maps are Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania (except for Bucharest).

Countries coloured green in the maps are those which have less than 50 cases detected and a test positivity rate under four per cent during the previous 14 days, or a notification rate less than 74 and less than one per cent test positivity rate within the same period.

Travel to these countries is safe, and travellers reaching other EU countries from these five should not be subject to any entry restrictions upon arrival.

Countries in the orange category, on the other side, are those in which the 14-day notification rate is under 50, and the test positivity rate is four per cent or more, as well as countries in which the two weeks notification rate is 50 or above, or it is less than 75 when test positivity rate is one per cent or more.

According to the updated maps of August 26, the following countries and territories are coloured in orange:

Countries in red, on the other hand, are those which have a case notification rate that ranges between 75 to 200 when the test positivity rate of four per cent or more, as well as those with a case notification rate over 200 but less than 500. Those over 500 are categorized as dark red.

>> EU Health Agency Says Its Less Safe to Travel to Germany & Sweden Now

The Member States are advised to impose travel restrictions as pre-departure tests and quarantine requirements for persons travelling from areas in red and, in particular, the dark red category.

This should also apply to essential travellers provided that this does not have a disproportionate impact on the exercise of their function or need. Transport workers, however, should in principle be exempted from testing and quarantine/self-isolation requirements, the EU Commission advises.

Currently, according to ECDC, it is risky to travel to the following countries, which are coloured completely in red: Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Lichtenstein and Bulgaria.

Whereas the following are coloured as partly red: France, Italy, Greece, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands. Countries with only one red region are Norway and Finland.

The riskiest regions for travellers are currently those coloured in dark red, which are as follows:

Read the rest here:
End of Summer 2021: Which EU Countries Are Safe & Which Are Very Risky to Travel to According to ECDC - SchengenVisaInfo.com -...

EU institutions and bodies in brief

In the EU's unique institutional set-up:

The European Council sets the EU's overall political direction but has no powers to pass laws. Led by its President - currently Charles Michel - and comprising national heads of state or government and the President of the Commission, it meets for a few days at a time at least twice every 6 months.

There are 3 main institutions involved in EU legislation:

Together, these three institutions produce through the "Ordinary Legislative Procedure" (ex "co-decision") the policies and laws that apply throughout the EU. In principle, the Commission proposes new laws, and the Parliament and Council adopt them. The Commission and the member countries then implement them, and the Commission ensures that the laws are properly applied and implemented.

Decision-making in the EU - more on EU law-making procedures

List of presidencies of the Council of the EU

Two other institutions play vital roles:

The powers and responsibilities of all of these institutions are laid down in the Treaties, which are the foundation of everything the EU does. They also lay down the rules and procedures that the EU institutions must follow. The Treaties are agreed by the presidents and/or prime ministers of all the EU countries, and ratified by their parliaments.

The EU has a number of other institutions and interinstitutional bodies that play specialised roles:

Originally posted here:
Institutions and bodies | European Union