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Author: Kai Schulze, Free University of Berlin

The recently launched EUJapan Partnership on Sustainable Connectivity and Quality Infrastructure (EUJapan Connectivity Partnership) signals a new stage for EUJapan infrastructure cooperation. This agreement follows on the heels of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) that took effect on 1 February 2019. But this new initiative will go beyond the bilateral EUJapan focus of the EPA and SPA agreements. It ambitiously aims to connect the two poles at either ends of Eurasia, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emphasised in his speech at the EUAsia Connectivity Forum.

The strategic calculations of Japan and the EU and their motivation to start this connectivity partnership become apparent when looking at the geographical focus of the EUJapan Connectivity Partnership. One of the main drivers appears to be in reaction to China and its own ambitious connectivity-focussed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

At the official announcement of the EUJapan Connectivity Partnership, Prime Minister Abe and the then president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker emphasised the Western Balkans, the Indo-Pacific and Africa as the geographical spaces of special concern for the new partnership. The agreement itself also mentions Eastern Europe and Central Asia. These are almost exactly the same geographical regions that Chinas BRI focuses on.

Despite the fact that China is and remains an important economic partner for Japan and the European Union, both have noticed that China is steadily increasing its political and economic influence in these regions. Consequently, the EUs perception of China has dramatically changed from China as a promising future market to officially labelling China a strategic rival in March 2019.

For the European Union specifically, Chinas growing influence in Central and Eastern Europe has obviously become an urgent issue. In recent years, China has successfully enhanced cooperation with countries in the vicinity of the European Union and increasingly also within its membership. An example of the latter is the creation of the Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (ChinaCEEC) initiative and deeper cooperation with individual EU member states such as Italy and Greece.

Yet, benign neglect has characterised European and Japanese connectivity cooperation up until now, giving China considerable advantage in fostering connectivity between Europe, East Asia and the regions in between. Both the European Union and Japan hope the new initiative will change this.

The European Union hopes to claim a position where it can proactively shape the way Europe connects with Asia instead of only reacting to Chinas initiatives. With Japan as a partner, the European Union can show that everyone in Europe could benefit from increasing EuropeanAsia connectivity between both regions without being solely dependent on China.

The agreement with the European Union also offers many opportunities for Japan to not only shape Chinas growing global influence, but also to further promote its own ambitious geopolitical alternative to the BRI, Japans Free and Open Indo-Pacific initiative (FOIP). Unlike China, Japan has so far missed the chance to become an active part of the increasing connectivity between East Asia on the one end and Europe on the other.

But with its economic power, Japan is still able to offer an alternative to China on the East Asian end, while Europe serves as the partner on the other end of the connectivity project. Cooperation with the European Union might allow Japan to enhance the somewhat nebulous FOIP initiative with concrete partnerships, cooperation and agreements not only in Europe, but also in regions such as Africa.

The new partnership agreement appears to be a mutually beneficial response of the European Union and Japan to Chinas increasing influence in Asia, Europe and Africa from which all sides might benefit. To really reach this goal, the still rather vague agreement needs to be filled with concrete projects and clear strategies and goals. More financial resources also need to be forthcoming. Hard work remains to be done if this new EUJapan Connectivity Partnership is to become more than the mere statement of aspirations that currently populate the connectivity infrastructure policy space.

Kai Schulze is a postdoctoral researcher at the Free University of Berlin.

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EUJapan connectivity aspirations - East Asia Forum

PRISTINA, Kosovo The European Union is investing more than $89 million to improve the air quality in Kosovo, whose capital of Pristina is choking from pollution by coal-based power plants, coal and wood heating in homes and old vehicles on the roads.

Luigi Brusa of the European Union office in Kosovo on Friday said during the last few days the air in Pristina was like that of Beijing, considered one of the most polluted cities in the world.

The U.S. Embassy's air quality monitor has shown PM2.5 pollution levels higher than 50, considered the maximum level accepted, rising up to 213 on Sunday.

School children on Friday wore masks when walking to schools in the foggy capital.

To highlight the problems, air masks were also put on statutes of Mother Teresa and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Nysrete Doda, a Pristina resident walking her child to school, said even the air in her home was bad because she had forgotten to close a window overnight.

"It is better that children and old people do not go out of home, but they (children) have to," she complained.

Smoke from the Kosova B power plant in Obiliq, 6 miles from Pristina create a regular cloud over the capital.

Brussels has signed a contract with Kosovo authorities to invest $83 million to refurbish the plant, starting in May next year, to reduce the dust it produces, according to Brusa.

The EU is also investing $7.6 million to increase the capacity of the central Termokos heating system for 2,000 more households, or about 10,000 residents, including schools and kindergartens.

Outgoing Environment Minister Fatmir Matoshi says public institutions do not use coal for heating anymore and giving coal sacks to power corporation employees as a reward has stopped.

"We ask people for help because every citizen, especially in Pristina, should avoid using cars and heating with coal (now), so that we have better air," he said.

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EU funds help Kosovo fight unhealthy air pollution - Stars and Stripes

Amsterdam-headquartered full-service law firm Stibbe has hired Sophie Van Besien as a partner in its Brus...

Amsterdam-headquartered full-service law firm Stibbe has hired Sophie Van Besien as a partner in its Brussels office, strengthening its Benelux service offering in European Union law, competition law and regulated markets.

From career inception in 2007, Van Besien was hired by Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in Brussels where she was retained for a decade and seconded to Washington, DC, and London.

She then became the regulatory and competition director of Belgian state-owned company Bypost, in 2016.

Having advised public and private clients before national competition authorities and regulators, national courts, the European Commission and the Luxembourg European Courts, Van Besien brings a breadth of experience in Brussels to Stibbe.

Her practice has a particular focus on intricate merger filings, cartel infringements, damage claims and abuse of dominance cases, with capabilities in the management of state aid claims and issues faced by clients in highly regulated sectors, such as financial services, e-commerce and postal.

Stibbes managing partner in Brussels, Wouter Ghijsels, said in a statement that Besiens experience spending a large portion of her career practising in foreign jurisdictions makes her a valuable addition to the team.

Also in Belgium, Pharumlegal appointed ex-PwC counsel and antitrust expert Marc Picat to its EU law and international commercial department as a partner, in December.

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Stibbe adds partner to EU and competition practice in Brussels - ICLG.com

Europe ended the year better than it started

IT WAS A year of fragmentation and fightback, of progress and decline, of fear and resolution. Europe, in short had a mixed 2019. But it ended the year, on the whole, in a better state than it started it; and most Europeans should allow themselves a little quiet satisfaction as they reflect not just on the past 12 months, but also on the past 30 years since that dramatic day, in November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and the great task of rebuilding a divided continent began.

First, some of the setbacks. 2019 was a year in which too much of the European Union slid back into near-stagnation, with growth flat or negative in some of its largest economies, especially Germany and Italy. The slowing of the German motor has set off an acrimonious debate within Germanys ruling grand coalition, an uneasy alliance between the Christian Democrats, who want to stick to their traditional fiscal orthodoxy (encapsulated in the black zero policy of no deficits), and the Social Democrats, who are now pushing for more spending under their more left-wing, newly elected leaders. If this row cannot be solved, the coalition could even collapse early next year. Germanys new economic weakness also poses a threat to the countries of central Europe, especially Poland and the Czech Republic, whose long boom has been intimately linked to supplying the behemoth.

Politically, too, it was a year of difficult fragmentation for some of the EUs biggest and most powerful players. Britain spent the whole year still wracked by the problems of engineering its exit from the EU, and the election with a solid majority for Boris Johnson has done nothing to solve that underlying problem. France spent much of the year casting about for ways to counter the threat of violent protest by the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets), and ended the year with a huge wave of strikes against President Emmanuel Macrons limited yet still deeply unpopular pension reforms. In Spain, political deadlock, over economic policy and how to manage the separatists of Catalonia, resulted in not one but two elections, yet neither managed to produce a viable government. In Italy, the strange alliance between the hard-right Northern League and the maverick Five Star Alliance also collapsed, and the new coalition that replaced it seems destined to fall apart in the fairly near future. Matteo Salvinis League would then be poised to win absolute power, and renew his assault on the euro.

Beyond the EU, the economic and political situation is hardly sunny. The two mighty autocracies on the EU's flanks, Russia and Turkey, have both been hammered by economic weakness and the growing unpopularity of their leaders, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Neither of the two men need face the voters in the near future, and popular uprising is doomed to failure. But both of them have increased the level of repression they employ to protect themselves.

Still, there are reasons to be cheerful as well. Perhaps the biggest came at the hands of voters in the European Parliament elections in May. Many had feared the rise of Europes populists; Italys Mr Salvini had tried, after all, to construct a pan-European alliance of nationalists, bringing in the likes of Hungarys Viktor Orban, Marine Le Pens National Rally in France and the Alternative for Germany. Voters took a good look, and rejected that plan. Although the political centre is now more fragmented than it was before, with the creation of a big new liberal block as well as the traditional centre-right and centre-left, the populists made no significant gains at all.

The news on Europe and NATO is also mildly encouraging. Europeans are gradually coming to accept that they need to shoulder more of the burden of their own defence, stung of course by the threats of Donald Trump, but also by the hard words of Mr Macron, who in an interview with The Economist described the alliance as experiencing brain-death.

And the EU also ended the year well with a bold plan to combat climate change; having met its 2020 target for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases a couple of years ahead of schedule, and being (more or less) on track to meet its 2030 goal as well, it is proposing that the whole 27-member club achieve zero net emissions by 2050. Leaders gave the plan their initial thumbs up at their December summit (though coal-rich Poland is resisting). Europes example may yet shame others into action.

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2019 in review: Europes fragmentation and fightback - The Economist

MINSK, 20 December (BelTA) Belarus is ready to sign the visa facilitation and readmission agreements with the European Union and would like to do it as soon as possible, Anatoly Glaz, Head of the Information and Digital Diplomacy Office, Press Secretary of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told BelTA.

On 19 December 2019, the EU Council approved the agreement on readmission with Belarus. The European Union officially suggested signing the visa facilitation and readmission agreements with Belarus in January 2020.

Anatoly Glaz stressed: "We have been fully ready to sign these agreements since 18 September 2019 when the appropriate decrees of the Belarusian president were issued. We stand ready so sign them by the end of this year, today, tomorrow or any other day, including weekends and holidays. We would like to do it as quickly as possible. If we are talking about January, then we can do it starting 3 January, either in Minsk or in Brussels. The result is important, not the technical side.

Our European partners failed to complete the necessary procedures within three months and suggested doing it in January 2020. It would be more reasonable to ask them what took them so long, the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Consultations with the European colleagues on the date and format of the signing procedure are already underway. The European Union asked for another three weeks to verify the text. For some reason the European structures find it difficult to speed up even this process despite the declared intention to facilitate the freedom of movement for our citizens.

Once the agreements are signed, they will need to be ratified by the National Assembly of Belarus and the European Parliament. They will come into force on the first day of the second month after the exchange of the notifications on the parties' compliance with the procedures, Anatoly Glaz said. He stressed that it is already clear that with the terms proposed by the EU, the agreement will not come into force before the new EU Visa Code comes into operation. The new rules provide for an increase in the cost of Schengen visas up to 80 (on 2 February 2020). This means that Belarusian citizens will have to pay 80 for a Schengen visa for at least several months.

We do not live on the Moon. We receive salaries in Belarusian rubles. We understand full well that this is big money for citizens of our country that ranks first in the world in terms of the number of issued Schengen visas. In this regard, during the events in Brussels, we called on the European partners to find a possibility and make a political or legal decision not to raise or freeze' Schengen visa fees for Belarusian citizens after the launch of the new EU Visa Code until the Belarus-EU agreement on visa facilitation comes into force. We have not received any substantive reaction yet, but we would like to hope that the issue is being considered.

In the interests of tourism development, economic and investment cooperation, the Belarusian president has taken serious decisions in recent years to relax the rules of entry for nationals of a number of countries, including EU member states, Anatoly Glaz said. The matter is about the short-term visa-free entry through Minsk National Airport and to the tourist zones of Brest Oblast and Grodno Oblast and for international sports and cultural events, including the 2th European Games.

We believe that the increase in the number of tourists entering Belarus is the best assessment of the effectiveness of such unilateral steps, that indicate the openness of our country. More than half a million of foreign nationals have taken the advantage of such visa-free entry since the program was launched, the vast majority of them being EU citizens, Anatoly Glaz summed up.

The Schengen visa fee will increase to 80 starting from 2 February 2020. However, after the visa facilitation agreement comes into force, the visa fee for Belarusian nationals will drop to 35. The visa rules will be relaxed in a number of other ways, too.

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MFA: Belarus ready to sign package of agreements with EU any day - Belarus News (BelTA)