Archive for the ‘European Union’ Category

Incredible link between UK’s Brexit saga and Greenland’s withdrawal from bloc exposed – Express

The Conservative Party secured an incredible victory in Thursdays general election, capturing 364 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. It was one of the biggest shifts in British political allegiances for decades and it marked a personal triumph for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is now the most successful Tory leader since Margaret Thatcher. The win means Britain will almost certainly leave the EU in January 2020 as, just like the Prime Minister said, "no one can now refute" his "stonking mandate" to deliver Brexit.

The era of uncertainty has therefore ended as the general election result broke the Brexit deadlock created by Theresa Mays disastrous 2017 campaign.

As MPs prepare to vote on the withdrawal agreement on Friday, unearthed reports reveal how remarkably similar Greenland's exit from the EEC the precursor to the EU is to the UKs Brexit saga.

Greenland became the first and only country to leave the bloc after a referendum was held in 1982.

As part of the Danish Kingdom, Greenland joined the bloc in 1973 but, not long after its entry, the country started fighting for independence.

Soon after the 2016 Brexit referendum, former Greenland Prime Minister Lars-Emil Johansen, recalled that quitting the forerunner to today's EU in 1985 had provoked a political storm in his country and that the process took three lengthy years.

However, the storm was soon followed by economic growth once Greenland was free of Brussels.

Mr Johansen said: It was a huge deal for domestic politics in Greenland.

The doomsday prophets said that Greenland could never get an exit deal that would be as beneficial as the conditions under EEC membership.

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"We had to do a lot of waiting."

The politician added that a massive political row erupted after two years of exit negotiations, as his government's deal came under attack "by a broad part of the population who thought we sold ourselves too cheaply on our fishing rights.

As a result, Greenland's government was toppled as a no-confidence vote triggered an election in 1984.

However, similarly to Mr Johnson's triumph, Mr Johansens Siumut party was re-elected with a big majority and the island successfully left the EU in 1985.

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Mr Johansen noted that it was only after Greenland had left the bloc that the economy expanded and opponents were proved wrong.

Since then, Greenland's leaders have consistently said that they are satisfied with the decision to leave.

In a 2013 interview with the BBC, former Prime Minister of Greenland Kuupik Kleist said life outside the EU was good and that, after a successful negotiation with the bloc, the country was left significantly better off.

He claimed Greenland had free access to the European markets for his exports but, when asked about other exported goods, he answered with a laugh.

He said: "We don't export anything else but the fish.

"We have regular meetings with the [European] Parliament, and the European Union is one of our international partners an important partner, and important for trade.

"But at the moment, there's no serious consideration for rejoining the European Union."

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Incredible link between UK's Brexit saga and Greenland's withdrawal from bloc exposed - Express

Explained: Why EU Green Deal matters – The Indian Express

Written by Amitabh Sinha | Pune | Updated: December 21, 2019 8:04:10 am European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at a session to present the Green Deal plan, in European Parliament in Brussels last week. Reuters

The annual climate talks ended in Madrid last week with a disappointing outcome. The talks were unable to define the rules of a new carbon market to be set up under the Paris Agreement, the only major agenda before it. Nor were they able to persuade countries to commit to increase the scale of climate actions by next year, a demand being made again and again in view of scientific assessments that show that current efforts to tackle climate change were not enough.

While the meeting was still on, the European Union, whose 28 member countries are together the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world after China and the United States, came up with an announcement on additional measures it would on climate change. Called the European Green Deal, the EU announcement was hailed as a major step forward, even though it needs complementary efforts from other countries to make a significant impact.

Two major decisions are at the heart of the European Green Deal. One is about achieving climate neutrality. The EU has promised to bring a law, binding on all member countries, to ensure it becomes climate neutral by 2050. Climate neutrality, sometimes also expressed as a state of net-zero emissions, is achieved when a countrys emissions are balanced by absorptions and removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Absorption can be increased by creating more carbon sinks like forests, while removal involves technologies like carbon capture and storage.

Over the last few months, there had been a growing demand for countries to commit to net-zero emissions by 2050. The UN Secretary-General had convened a special meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly session in September to persuade countries to commit to this target. Over 60 countries had agreed to scale up their climate actions, or to the 2050 target, but these were all relatively small emitters. The EU is now the first major emitter to agree to the 2050 climate neutrality target. It has said it would bring a proposal by March next year on a European law to enshrine this target.

The second decision pertains to an increase in its 2030 emission reduction target. In its climate action plan declared under the Paris Agreement, the EU was committed to making a 40 per cent reduction in its emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. It is now promising to increase this reduction to at least 50 per cent and work towards 55 per cent.

Even at 40 per cent, the European Union had the most ambitious emission reduction targets among the developed countries. The US, for example, had agreed to cut emissions by 26-28 per cent by 2030 from 2005 levels, but having withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, it is under no obligation to fulfill even that target.

The EU also happens to be only one among major emitters to retain the 1990 baseline for emission cuts, originally mandated under the Kyoto Protocol for all developed countries. Most other countries have shifted their baselines to 2005 or even later under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The Green Deal includes sectoral plans to achieve these two overall targets, and proposals for the policy changes that would be required. For example, it has proposals for making the steel industry carbon-free by 2030, new strategies for transport and energy sectors, a revision of managements of railway and shipping to make them more efficient, and more stringent air pollution emission standards for vehicles.

The European Union, as a whole, has been doing better than other developed countries on reducing emissions. In 2010, the EU had pledged to reduce its emissions by at least 25 per cent by 2020 from 1990 levels. By 2018, it claimed to have achieved 23 per cent reduction in emissions. In terms of emission reductions, it probably is on track to meet the 2020 target, unlike any developed country outside the EU.

Canada, which walked out of the Kyoto Protocol, reported last year that its emissions were down 4 per cent from 2005 levels, but compared to 1990, this was an addition of about 16 per cent. Japan, another country to have abandoned the Kyoto Protocol, said its emissions for the year ending March 31, 2018 had come to about 8 per cent below the 2013 baseline it has chosen for itself. But this is a miniscule decrease compared to 1990 levels.

Even the EU, however, has not been fulfilling all its climate obligations. The Kyoto Protocol required the rich and developed countries to provide finance and technology to the developing countries to help them fight climate change. In those respects, there has been little climate money flowing out of the EU, especially for adaptation needs of developing countries, and transfer of new climate-friendly technologies has been mired in patent and ownership complications.

This is the reason why developing countries, like India and China, have been repeatedly raising the issue of unfulfilled obligations of developed countries in the pre-2020 period, that is covered by the Kyoto Protocol.

The Green Deal is important but inadequate in itself to achieve the emission reductions that scientific assessments say would be required to save the world from catastrophic and irreversible impacts of climate change. There has been no signal from other big emitters, including large developing countries like China and India, that they were considering immediate scaling up of their climate actions.

While announcing the deal, the EU urged other countries to raise the ambition of their actions as well. As long as many international partners do not share the same ambition as the EU, there is a risk of carbon leakage, either because production is transferred from the EU to other countries with lower ambition for emission reduction, or because EU products are replaced by more carbon-intensive imports. If this risk materializes, there will be no reduction in global emissions, and this will frustrate the efforts of EU and its industries to meet the global climate objectives of the Paris Agreement.

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Explained: Why EU Green Deal matters - The Indian Express

Parliament backs Brexit deal in decisive step toward leaving the E.U. on Jan. 31 – NBCNews.com

LONDON British lawmakers on Friday finally voted to back a plan to withdraw from the European Union.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's bill, backed by a huge parliamentary majority, will take the country out of the 28-member bloc on Jan. 31, and lays the groundwork for sweeping foreign and trade policy shifts.

The 358-234 vote marks a significant breakthrough for Johnson, who stormed to electoral victory last week on a pledge to get Brexit done. The former mayor of London won the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher in 1987, confirming his position as prime minister after he took over from Theresa May in July.

Johnson's majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons meant he was able to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill legislation that will implement the divorce deal hammered out with the European Union (EU).

The announcement of the result was met with cheers, as well as some jeers, in the packed chamber where many lawmakers were forced to stand due to limited space.

Britain joined the European Economic Community, a precursor to the European Union, in 1973. After the U.K. voted to leave the bloc in June 2016, May failed on three occasions to win support for a deal she had agreed to with the EU, leading her to step down in June.

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In October, Johnson was forced to break his own "do-or-die" deadline to lead Britain out of the EU after lawmakers rejected his proposed timetable to get the Withdrawal Agreement Bill through parliament, meaning he had to request a Brexit extension from European leaders.

The bill dubbed WAB by Brexit-watchers commits Britain to leave the EU on Jan. 31 and to conclude trade talks with the bloc by the end of 2020. The final stages of ratification will take place after Christmas.

Ahead of the vote, Johnson told Members of Parliament that his bill "ensures Brexit will be done" and "it will be over."

He added that passing it would end the acrimony and anguish that has consumed the country since it voted to leave and struggled to negotiate terms of its departure.

The sorry story of the last 3 1/2 years will be at an end and we will be able to move forward together, he said.

Now is the time to act together as one reinvigorated nation," Johnson added.

After winning the vote he tweeted: "We are one step closer to getting Brexit done."

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn told Parliament that his Labour Party still believed Johnson's Brexit deal was "terrible."

"There is a better and fairer way for this country to leave the EU," he said.

However, this should not be confused with the end of Brexit as the U.K. is only nearing the end of stage one.

Much of the angst over Brexit since Britain voted to leave has centered on the divorce itself. With that endorsed by Parliament on Friday, the U.K. must now pivot to negotiating what Brexit will actually look like for citizens and businesses alike.

Britain will first enter a transition period that lasts until December 2020 in which it will continue to act like a member of the European Union. In the meantime, top of the agenda is defining the nature of Britains future relationship with the European Union post-divorce.

By most accounts, 11 months to strike a trade deal is ambitious but Johnson has insisted that he wont agree to any more delays. The pledge has set off alarm bells among businesses, who fear Britain could crash out of the European Union with no future trade arrangement in place at the beginning of 2021.

A no deal Brexit is widely considered a nightmare scenario raising the possibility of shortages of food and medicine, civil unrest, and conflict in Northern Ireland.

Saphora Smith is a London-based reporter for NBC News Digital.

Associated Press contributed.

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Parliament backs Brexit deal in decisive step toward leaving the E.U. on Jan. 31 - NBCNews.com

EU headquarters built by undocumented migrants, workers claim – The Guardian

The EU is facing embarrassment over claims that its new Europa headquarters, also known as the Space Egg building, was built with the help of undocumented migrant workers who at times went without pay.

The European council building in Brussels, which contains an ovoid glass structure, was opened in 2016 at a cost of 300m.

At its unveiling it was said to symbolise all that is best about the union. But EU officials are now facing claims from the Belgian newspaper De Standaard about the business practice of subcontractors who worked on the project.

One subcontractor, known as Group Diamond Services, which was subsequently declared bankrupt in 2015, was investigated by prosecutors after claims by Bulgarian workers, the paper reports. The men claimed to have gone without pay.

The investigation was closed in October because of insufficient evidence, but De Standaard found that in reality the file had been lost by prosecutors at some point in the four years since the inquiry started.

The paper carries interviews with some of the workers, including Beyhan Dzhelilov, 43, who was the head of a team of eight iron casters on the Europa building project.

He told the paper: Several team members did not have Belgian residence papers. None of us got a contract, we were not insured.

The main companies, Interbuild and Jan De Nul, who won the tender for construction of the Europa building, told De Standaard they were unaware of any exploitation of workers by subcontractors.

A spokesman for Jan De Nul told the paper that GDS was taken off the project early as the company did not comply with contractual planning and technically did not perform the work correctly.

The spokesman added: Every employee from all subcontractors was checked for possession of the necessary documents. This also applied to the employees of subcontractors who acted on behalf of a subcontractor or a sub-subcontractor.

Only after this preliminary inspection did the approved employees of subcontractors gain access to the site. For that they received a personal badge with passport photo. The yard was completely closed off from the area and only had two access gates with a badge system. Unauthorised persons could not enter the yard.

The Council of the European Union has been contacted for comment.

An EU official working at the council said the Belgian state was the prime contractor for the Europa building.

He added: The Council itself has not been informed by the Rgie des btiments [the building regulations office] of any issues related to the working conditions of their contractors or sub-contractors

All building and maintenance contracts undertaken directly by the Council are in line with the Belgian labor legislation.

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EU headquarters built by undocumented migrants, workers claim - The Guardian

Where theres hatred of the European Union, theres hatred of the Jews – Haaretz

I renewed my British passport this week. As I ripped open the yellow envelope holding the new and old passports, I had a very brief moment of warm nostalgia. Id been expecting to receive the new, non-European, dark blue, old-style British passport, that Brexiteers seem so fond of. Instead, rejoice! My new travel document was exactly the same shape and color of my old burgundy one.

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But looking more closely, it wasn't an exact copy at all. A closer examination revealed that the words European Union, which had once been embossed above United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, have now been removed.

I was surprised how much those two missing words saddened me.

Im Jewish and British, Israeli and European, and Ive never felt any part of my identity needs clash with another. These are my roots, my family, my history, and now the hidden hand of a government has tried to erase a section of my identity.

The fear among British Jews that a government would be elected, lead by a politician whose party once the political home for many of them had, under his leadership, transformed into an institutionally anti-Semitic environment, has overshadowed what is now Britains imminent departure from the European Union.

But the relief at Jeremy Corbyns downfall last week in the General Election, with the Labour partys worst result since 1935, and the vindication of those who warned that a man who had throughout his career had rubbed shoulders with terrorists, blood libelers and Holocaust deniers should never be allowed close to the levers of power, has quickly been replaced with the dreary certainty that the reelected Conservative government is indeed going to get Brexit done, by the end of next month.

There are many ways to view the advantages and drawbacks of belonging to the EU, and the British Isles uneasy relationship with the adjacent continent goes back millennia. Brexit will not change that. But since we hear a lot of bad things about the EU, especially in Israel, some of them even justified, its important to remind ourselves that the EU has achieved something that Jewish communities, above all, have dreamt of for so many centuries. In the continent which saw more persecution and bloodshed of Jews, including the industrial genocide of our grandparents within living memory, the EU has achieved an unparalleled period of peace and prosperity.

No matter how much many of us may resent the intrusiveness and self-importance of the grandiose Eurocrats, the founders of the EU (backed by the military alliance of NATO) ushered in the most peaceful seven decades in Europes history and that meant also an end to the persecution and murder of Jews. It meant also a supranational commitment to upholding the fight against anti-Semitism, not just of the physical and violent kind, but also in any rhetorical or legal form.

A Europe in which no country discriminates against Jews, how unthinkable that would have been only 75 years ago, and in Communist Eastern Europe, only thirty years ago. And yet today it is a basic requirement of any nation wishing to belong to the EU.

Formal discrimination against Jews by government in todays Europe is unthinkable.

No, of course I dont think that the rolling back of Europes borders from Britain means that Jews will be discriminated there. Britain, after all, was the one European country where Jews were free and equal citizens throughout the entire 20th century, but it is an ominous development for Jews nonetheless.

While many British voters chose to leave Europe from perfectly understandable, if misjudged, reasons of repatriating control of internal affairs from Brussels, it is impossible to overlook that there was a distinctly xenophobic tone to the reasoning behind Brexit. At the moment this may not directly impact on Jews, but any turn toward nativism and hostility toward immigrants will ultimately also result in an increase in attacks on Jews. Whether or not this is comparable in the long-run to a government led by Corbynists, who have normalized anti-Semitism in entire sections of the British public, is impossible to say, and theoretical anyway. But it is a reason for concern.

But beyond Britain, Jews have an obligation of solidarity elsewhere, and weakening the EU, which is what Brexit is doing, will also weaken the protection of Jewish communities in other countries.

Just look at who is in favor of Brexit. Its main non-British cheerleaders are Donald Trump, a man who cant address a Jewish audience without resorting to crude anti-Semitic stereotypes, and Vladimir Putin, whose Kremlin bankrolls propaganda channels where various conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers are regular guests - and even hosts. And within Britain itself, Brexits supporters are not just on the right. Notorious left-wing Jew-baiter George Galloway (another host on the Kremlins Russia Today) hates the EU, and was a loud backer of Brexit.

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And then of course Corbyn himself, before becoming Labour leader, was an outspoken opponent of the EU as well. During the 2016 referendum, it was his unwillingness to campaign for remain that greatly contributed to the narrow win for leave. Its a wonderful irony that as leader, he was forced to support a second referendum in this election, greatly contributing to Labours defeat.

In the referendum, Jews instinctively understood where their interests lay; about two-thirds voted to remain, a much higher proportion than the national vote of 48 percent, and a fact that gives the lie to the claim that British Jews are overwhelmingly right-wing.

Maybe it shouldnt matter as much anymore. After all, the past 130 years have seen the European Jewish communities go from being nearly 90 percent of the entire global Jewish population to barely ten percent today, perhaps less. Diminished first by mass emigration to American and then decimated by the Holocaust.

But even in their shrunken size today, there are still proud Jewish communities across Europe and those of us who live elsewhere are still connected to the continent by centuries of glorious Jewish tradition and heritage. We mustnt ignore the fact that the enemies of the EU, on the far-right and far-left, see Jews as their enemies as well. Whatever it says on our passports, we cant escape our European roots.

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Where theres hatred of the European Union, theres hatred of the Jews - Haaretz