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Britain wants to see progress soon in talks with the European Union on solving the post-Brexit Northern Irish border riddle, with its minister in charge of ties with the bloc urging member states to meet their obligations.

After the United Kingdom left the European Union's orbit at the end of last year, checks were introduced on some goods moving from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland, which has a land border with EU member Ireland.

The checks triggered anger and a perception among pro-British unionists in Northern Ireland that the Brexit deal divides them from the rest of the United Kingdom, a shift they say could sink the 1998 peace deal that brought an end to three decades of violence there.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had promised there would be unfettered trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, unilaterally extended a grace period on certain checks to minimise supply disruption, a move Brussels said breached the Brexit divorce deal.

David Frost, the minister in charge of ties with the EU, said he wanted the bloc to meet its obligations under the Brexit deal to try to minimise barriers in trade between Britain and the province, but had yet to have the conversation. read more

He also said there should be progress before July 12, when Northern Irish loyalists gather to mark the 1690 victory at the Battle of the Boyne by Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James of England and Scotland.

"I would like to feel that we will be making progress with the EU in good time before that date," he told a parliamentary committee.

Earlier, the BBC said Britain was asking the EU to introduce checks slowly. From October, checks on fresh meat products could begin, extending to dairy products, plants and wine from the end of Jan. 2022, the BBC reported.

Irish Prime Minister Michel Martin said separately he wanted the deal to work, adding he did not get an immediate sense from his meeting with Johnson that London wanted to rewrite the trading arrangements, as reported this week in the Irish media. read more

"We were very clear and are very clear that this is an international agreement, commitments have been made and it needs to be worked, and the processes that are in it need to be worked also," Martin told an online event when asked about the Irish national broadcaster RTE report.

Preserving the delicate peace without allowing the United Kingdom a back door into the EU's single market via the Irish border was one of the most difficult issues of nearly four years of tortuous talks on the terms of Britain's exit from the bloc.

Some fear the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol, designed to prevent a "hard" border, could spill over into violent protest in the province in the coming months.

Britain's retail industry lobby group on Monday called for urgent talks between the major supermarket groups it represents and European Union and British officials to discuss proposed new post-Brexit Irish Sea border checks for food products.

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Britain calls for progress with EU on post-Brexit Northern Irish trade - Reuters UK

May 15th 2021

AMERICANS CAN always be counted on to do the right thing, Winston Churchill is supposed to have quipped, after they have exhausted all other possibilities. There are two problems with the quotation. First, there is no evidence Churchill ever said it. Second, today the phrase applies better to Europes leadership than to their friends across the Atlantic.

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Take the European Unions recovery from the pandemic. For the first time since last spring, economic optimism is in the air. Across Europe, vaccines are going into arms, summer holidays are being booked and bars are opening up. The European Commission has just jacked up its growth forecasts for 2021 and 2022, citing the blocs 750bn ($910bn) recovery fund as one of the reasons why. This cash should start appearing in European treasuries later this year. As a whole, the EUs GDP will be back at its pre-pandemic level by the end of 2021. This is slightly faster than expected and is due to happen only a few months behind America, which has had the benefit of Donald Trump and Joe Bidens blockbuster stimulus packages. In the ten-year gap between their initially bungling response to the euro-zone crisis and the pandemic, European leaders seem to have learned some lessons, even if they still have not learned them thoroughly enough.

Where the European Central Bank was actively making things worse a decade ago, it is now helping governments out of their hole. In the spring of 2011 the bank was raising rates and worrying about a brief flurry of inflation, rather than stagnant growth. It was not treated as a lender of last resort until a year later, when Mario Draghi finally pledged to do whatever it takes to save the euro. Then began Mr Draghis long, slow crusade to make the ECB adopt unorthodox measures, such as quantitative easing. As a result the bank is able today to print money, (largely) ignore inflation hawks and keep interest rates at historic lows. Its official mandate of price stability has been replaced by an unofficial creed of supporting economic growth, reducing unemployment and doing whatever it takes.

If the technocrats have changed their tune, so, to some extent, have the politicians. Long-held political certainties have been revisited. During the previous crisis common debt was suggested as a necessary step to guarantee the future of the euro, only to be dismissed by the likes of Angela Merkel, Germanys chancellor. Mrs Merkel reversed course last May. After a year of haggling, the commission will begin to issue up to 750bn of the stuff, which will be dished out to countries in the form of cheap loans and grants. True, on a continental level, the scheme is tiny. But for some of the individual countries most in need of the cash it is significant. In Germany, it is a piddling 1% of its GDP. For Italy, though, the figure is about 11% of GDP. Greece, meanwhile, is due 32bn of loans and grantsa useful sum for an economy of roughly 170bn.

For rich countries, EU funds are a fiscal aperitif. It is up to national governments to pump up their economies in the post-crisis era. Here, again, attitudes have changed, though not yet enough. In contrast to a decade ago, spending is now more likely to be seen as a solution than a sin. Countries such as Greece endured economic vivisection, forced to slash spending rather than stimulate their economies. This approach failed either to reduce Greek debt or to produce faster growth. These days, advocates of a return to austerity are thinner on the ground.

With luck, political circumstance could embed this new attitude permanently in the EUs own rules on government spending. Although temporarily suspended during the pandemic, EU countries are obliged to keep deficits below 3% and national debt below 60% of GDP. In an age when the national debt of Italy, the third-largest EU economy, stands at about 160% of GDP, these rules can seem quaint. Europes struggling southern economies have called for an overhaul ever since the previous crisis. Now they may get their wish. Frances president, Emmanuel Macron, has long advocated more forgiving fiscal rules. So has Mr Draghi, now the prime minister of Italy. Meanwhile the rise of the Green Party means that the next German government will probably be the most profligate in a generation. It is a rare alignment which could, just possibly, lead to a more permanent shift.

Boom-mongers have not yet routed the doom-mongers. There is plenty of opportunity to muck things up. Inflation still haunts European politics. While the noises coming from the ECB suggest that a modest rise in inflation this year will be brushed off, this claim will only be properly tested when German politicians start screaming. (The upcoming election will give plenty of excuses for such hysterics.) An improved economic outlook may lessen the pressure on countries to overhaul the EUs spending rules. Rather than turning the recovery fund into a permanent scheme, ready to issue more debt if needed, some governments will try to keep it a temporary one, setting up a needless drama about rebuilding it in the next crisis. The tyranny of low expectations hangs over the EU. In the previous crisis, mere survival was enough, never mind prosperity. Now waddling only slightly behind Americas economynever mind Chinasis being held up as an achievement. For a bloc with designs on being a superpower, that is not enough.

Yet the EU is stronger than its critics allow. It can correct its errors, albeit slowly. It took a decade to unpick the mistakes of the previous crisis. So long as the EU is not a state, it will not have the speed, power or flexibility of one. Across the Atlantic Mr Biden can launch a plan to spend trillions, knowing he has the power to do so. By contrast, EU politics is kaleidoscopic. Consensus must be cooked up among a rotating cast of ministers and amid ever-changing alliances. Reluctant countries have to be slowly cajoled. A stronger, more coherent EU is coming, but not for a while. It could still take a lot longer to exhaust the other options.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "Whatever it took?"

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Can the European Union learn from its fiscal mistakes? - The Economist

Today, the European Union, in partnership with the Somaliland Ministry of Employment, Social Affairs and Family, launched two new projects to combat Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV) and all forms of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Somaliland.

Today, the European Union, in partnership with the Somaliland Ministry of Employment, Social Affairs and Family, launched two new projects to combat Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV) and all forms of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Somaliland, which will be implemented by Candlelight and Health Poverty Action. The projects were selected as part of the EUs support to civil society and human rights.

Violence against women and girls remains one of the most serious threats to their health and safety in the world. The situation is critical in Somaliland, where women and girls are at higher risk of rape, early and forced marriage, and FGM. Despite being internationally recognized as a human rights violation, it is estimated that almost 99% of girls and women aged 15 to 49 in Somaliland have been subjected to the harmful practice, which is the highest percentage in the world. Today, there is an alarming trend of medicalization of FGM, where the procedure is carried out by medical personnel.

The Government of Somaliland is committed to zero tolerance for all forms of Female Genital Mutilation. We have established an inter-Ministerial taskforce to finalize the long standing anti FGM policy, we already started to engage with civil society organizations and government line ministries to support the approval of the zero tolerance anti FGM policy, H.E Mustafe Mohamoud Ali, Minister, Ministry of Employment, Social Affairs and Family stated.

We take note of the governments commitment to end all forms of FGM in Somaliland, European Union Ambassador Nicols Berlanga replied. This gives us great encouragement to support the government and civil society actors to make this commitment a reality.

Hundreds of young innocent girls are subjected to cutting everyday while there are much more girls at risk. The way to tackle this practice is to have a law banning all forms of FGM. We need to speed up our efforts; there is no better time to have the law than now, stated Nafis Network Programme Manager Hibo Mohamoud.

At the national level, the projects are aligned with the priorities of the Somaliland National Development Plan, and will build on communities increased awareness of the need to end sexual and gender-based violence, and adopting a zero tolerance approach to female genital mutilation.

The project implemented by Candlelight, Accelerating Change to Abandon SGBV and FGM, aims at opening the civic and democratic space and promoting the rights of women and girls by adopting a rights-based, community-led approach to reducing sexual and gender-based violence, including all forms female genital mutilation.

The project implemented by HPA, Somaliland Termination Oppression of women and girls Programme II (STOP II) works to reduce the prevalence of SGBV and FGM through both a top-down and bottom-up approach, influencing communities and stakeholders at all levels to ensure that changes to social norms are structural and sustainable, while supporting legislations to abandon all forms of FGM and lobbying to pass the Sexual Offenses Bill.

For more information contact:

Candlelight: abdirizaqlibah@candlelightsom.org (link sends e-mail)

Health Poverty Action m.dahir@healthpovertyaction.or.ke (link sends e-mail)

European Union: delegation-somalia@eeas.europa.eu

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The European Union launches two projects combatting Sexual and Gender Based Violence and Female Genital Mutilation in Somaliland - Somalia - ReliefWeb

There has been substantial political debate over the last decade about the role of experts in policymaking. But how are these trends likely to develop in future? Drawing on a new edited volume, Vigjilenca Abazi, Johan Adriaensen and Thomas Christiansen set out four distinct scenarios concerning the future role of expertise in policymaking within the EU.

The Covid-19 pandemic has once more brought the role of experts in policymaking to the centre of attention. Instead of a general consensus on the importance of science-based decisions during a pandemic, we have witnessed persistent challenges to scientific knowledge, including by top elected officials. In this era of disruptive politics and global transformation, understanding the role of expertise and its future constitutes a key challenge for scholars and practitioners alike.

In a new edited volume, we have brought together contributions that take a closer look at why and how expertise is contested in EU policymaking and in global issues of international trade and climate change. In doing so, we have explored four distinct scenarios concerning the future role of expertise in policymaking.

Temporary shifts

The first scenario is that recent developments and current problems can be considered as something of a temporary phenomenon that can be expected to correct itself. In this view, the role of expertise in policymaking, and its current contestation, is subject to a pendulum-like motion, most of the time overshooting an ideal steady state, and rarely being in balance.

Even if expertise may have become highly contested in the 2010s, decision-makers and the public, once confronted with the consequences of their disregard for expertise and scientific facts, will re-embrace their earlier reliance on expertise. According to this logic, as the implications of decisions such as Brexit or the effects of the climate crisis become more apparent, the merit of experts and their value to the policy process will be vindicated.

However, this self-correcting scenario hinges on an arguably nave assumption that those who have been contesting expertise will acquiesce and acknowledge their error in judgement. Instead, past experience suggests it is more likely they will double down, deflect or change the discussion, rather than go gently into the night.

Incremental reform

A second scenario is one of (incremental) reform. Such reforms have been proposed and implemented in the scientific, administrative, and political community. In the scientific community, debates are taking place over the importance of science communication, the use of meta-studies, and efforts to make data and research more transparent. In the political and administrative community there have been reforms to ensure expert groups are more balanced, procedures to procure expertise are made more transparent, and the design of public consultations seek to avoid bias.

Institutional reforms must be followed with more drastic revisions to the role of (social) media in the spreading of fake news and the need for greater regulation in this regard. Such reforms can range from practices of fact-checking to the need for proper science reporting, but also the possibilities for introducing tighter regulations on the combatting of misinformation, foreign interference and hate speech on social media.

A radical approach

A third scenario pleads for a more radical conceptualisation of expertise in policymaking. The starting point of these claims is the strong relationship between expertise and power. Contestation of expertise is therefore viewed as a part of the political struggle for power and is an integral part of a functioning democracy. The debate on the contestation of expertise cannot be studied independently from the political power structures from which it stems and which it seeks to (re-)create.

According to this line of reasoning, the suggestions put forward in the second scenario are too superficial and destined to fail as they do not engage with the wider structural problem. Restoring the authority of expertise cannot be attained without a matching political evolution that would help to democratise the creation of scientific expertise.

In this vision, experts should be part of the public arena and argue their case, rather than become the only politically acceptable view. The inclusion of wider society in processes of knowledge creation and dissemination should be part of the academic profession, rather than creating boundaries in access and production of knowledge. In line with this third approach, what is needed is not a fine-tuning of research practices but a fundamental change in order to ensure that the classroom becomes a place of redistribution of the epistemic wealth.

The pessimistic scenario

Each of these scenarios assumes that there are avenues to reverse the recent contestation of expertise. There is, however, a different, more pessimistic scenario in which these trends continue, and even accelerate, in the future. Experiences with debates about the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic have already illustrated this possibility.

As the past has demonstrated, human history, and indeed European politics, does not follow a particular script towards progress and reason. Developments in the late 2010s created echoes of what had been observed in the 1920s: the rise of populism, the increasing polarisation of politics, the shrinking of the political centre, and the marginalisation of science and expertise in public policymaking. Subsequent developments were horrific: the rise of fascism, global war and the Holocaust.

A broader historical reference might be to the enlightenment the era which established scientific method, technical expertise and political reason in the mainstream of European public life. Through its embrace of science in the advancement of public goods, the Renaissance brought an end to the Middle Ages during which the scientific achievements of the ancient world had fallen into disregard.

It may be an extreme analogy, but perhaps a sustained and further accelerating contestation of expertise, and the rise of a post-factual world in which this trend is embedded, constitutes not only a threat to liberal democracy but might even herald the end of the enlightenment? After all, the immediate reaction of former European Council President Donald Tusk to the British vote in favour of Brexit was to see this as the beginning of the end of Western civilisation.

Conclusion

All of these scenarios, utopian or dystopian as they may be, are long-term visions and thus go beyond the horizon of current developments. For now, decisionmakers, scientists and citizens in the European Union will have to adapt to the reality of a system in which scientific expertise remains both essential and contested in its contribution to public policymaking.

The resultant increase in transparency and accountability required from executives, judges and scientists may help to democratise policymaking in the process. However, such a normative gain comes at a price: the tension between institutional reliance on evidence-based policymaking and populist denial of scientific expertise is bound to create uncertainties, delays, policy-reversals and generally more sub-optimal conditions for policymaking.

For more information, see the authors accompanying edited volume, The Contestation of Expertise in the European Union (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)

Note: This article gives the views of theauthors, not the position of EUROPP European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: European Council

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Are experts back in fashion? Four scenarios concerning the contestation of expertise in the European Union - EUROPP - European Politics and Policy

EFE / EPA / PHILIPP GUELLAND / Archive

The European Union (EU) GDP contracted by 0.4% and the employment rate decreased by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year compared to the previous quarter.According to data released this Tuesday by the Bureau of Community Statistics, Eurostat.

While you are in the Eurozone, The GDP fell 0.6% and employment 0.3% between January and March.

Compared to the first quarter of 2020, GDP contracted by approximately 1.8% In the single currency area and 1.7% In the community club, while employment a 2.1% and 1.8%, Straight.

Eurostat on Tuesday released its first estimate of European employment development and revised GDP data, which confirm this The European economy has returned to recession Between January and March this year, after the accumulation of two quarters of fall.

distance Record collapse due to the coronavirus pandemic in the second quarter of 2020, 11.6% in the euro area and 11.2% in the European Union, The economy regained the ground it lost in the third quarter (+ 12.5% and + 11.7% respectively), however New waves of COVID-19 and the consequent decline in activity caused GDP to drop again in the last three months of the year. (-0.7% in the Eurozone and -0.5% in the European Union).

The decline continued between January and March 2021, the quarter in which restrictions have been largely maintained against the pandemic, with It is located in all major European economies except for FranceThat grew 0.4% quarterly.

In Germany GDP decreased 1.7%; In Spain and the Netherlands 0.5% and in Italy 0.4%, although the main declines were recorded in the European Union as a whole in Portugal (-3.3%), Latvia (-2.6%) and Slovakia (-1.8%))..

On the contrary, major increases in GDP are observed in Romania (2.8%), Bulgaria (2.5%) and Cyprus (2%).

On an annual basis, the main decline in GDP was recorded in Portugal (-5.4%), Spain (-4.3%) and Germany (-3%), while the only increases were in France (1.5%), Lithuania (1%) and Slovakia (0, 5%).

Overall, the year-on-year decline was more moderate in the first quarter of 2021 than it was in the last quarter of 2020, when GDP fell by a factor of 4,9% In the euro area and 4,6% At twenty-seven.

In terms of employment, the quarterly decline between January and March represents a change of direction, as it closed the fourth quarter of 2020 0.4% increase In the number of people employed both in the single currency area and in the European Union, and in the third quarter a 1% and 0.9% improvement, Straight.

In year-on-year comparison, the decline has decreased in 2,1% In the euro area and 1.8% In the European Union, in both cases it was one-tenth higher than that recorded in the fourth quarter of 2020 according to Eurostat, which does not give employment figures by country.

(With information from EFE)

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The European Union has entered a recession: GDP and employment fell again in the first quarter of 2021 - Amico Hoops