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LONDON Hoping to replace that two-year-old smartphone in a few months? The European Union wants you to think twice about doing that.

The bloc announced an ambitious plan on Wednesday that would require manufacturers of electronic products, from smartphones to tumble driers, to offer more repairs, upgrades and ways to reuse existing goods, instead of encouraging consumers to buy new ones.

The right to repair, part of a wide-ranging policy package known as the Green Deal that was introduced this month, is the latest example of the European Unions ambitions to promote more sustainable economic growth and to prevent waste. It extends standards brought in last year that put right to repair obligations on the manufacturers of some large appliances.

The linear growth model of take-make-use-discard has reached its limits, Virginijus Sinkevicius, the unions environment commissioner, told reporters in Brussels as he presented the Circular Economy Action Plan, which includes the right to repair initiative.

We want to make sure that products placed on E.U. market are designed to last longer, to be easier to repair and upgrade, easier to recycle and easier to reuse, he added.

The plans are being put forward by the blocs executive arm, the European Commission. To become law, they would need to win the approval of the European Unions Parliament and the governments of its 27 member states, a process experts say would take at least four years.

But Mr. Sinckevicius said the proposal reflected a growing demand from consumers. According to the commissioner, surveys have found that two-thirds of European citizens want their electronic devices to serve them longer. They have also indicated support for clearer indications on a products life span, easier repairs or more readily available replacement parts.

Manufacturers like Apple take old iPhones back when consumers buy a new one, but the E.U. plan wants them to go one step further: If implemented, it would encourage consumers to buy less and to keep a product in use as long as possible, and encourage industries to consider recycling only when a device is no longer usable.

Environmental groups said the plan represented a shift from the European Unions current policy, which is mostly based on recycling. A law passed in 2012 required countries to collect 65 tons of electronic waste for every 100 tons of goods put on sale by 2019, but members have not met such targets. Less than 40 percent of European electronic waste is recycled, according to E.U. estimates.

With the right to repair, upgrading a phones software, replacing the battery of a tablet, or buying a new display for a laptop instead of changing the whole device would become easier, said Jean-Pierre Schweitzer, from the European Environmental Bureau, a network of environmental citizens groups.

We know people are ready for it, said Mr. Schweitzer, who focuses on circular economy and product policy at the network. The measures that the commission wants to take on products and repair are very, very good.

The plan also includes measures to introduce a common charger for smartphones an effort that the European Union has long tried to implement, with little success targets to reduce packaging, and a new framework to recycle batteries and textiles, among other measures.

Mr. Sinkevicius, the European commissioner, said the measures were essential if Europe was to meet its aim under the Green Deal: becoming a net zero emitter of greenhouse gases by 2050. What we are trying to reach is a little bit different perception of the economic model, he said this week.

But just as climate activists criticized the Green Deal as too vague, and for not setting a 2030 target, advocates like Mr. Schweitzer also faulted the European Commission for not setting broader, compulsory targets to reduce resource consumption.

Its not all negative, Mr. Schweitzer said. But where do we want the economy to be in the next couple of years? How much do we want to reduce our material or water footprint? Were missing the big picture.

Continued here:
Europe Wants a Right to Repair Smartphones and Gadgets - The New York Times

So populists will respond first with a denial of facts and responsibility, of how bad the situation is, Mr. Mounk said. Then theyre likely to admit its bad but pretend its all the fault of everyone else and that they have been fighting a valiant struggle against the virus all along.

Mr. Trumps decision to try to isolate the United States is not by itself irrational as an effort to slow the pace of the disease, said Franois Heisbourg, a French analyst, noting that Israel had taken even tougher action without criticism.

The problem is the way that Mr. Trump had aimed the ban at the European Union, which he has already labeled an economic foe, Mr. Heisbourg said, while allowing flights to continue from countries like Turkey.

That underlines the sense in the Europe Union that it is being opposed by three predators Russia, China and the United States, which all seek to destroy it, he said.

For Europe this is a very big moment, which requires faster action by states to lock down people, because the longer the delay, the worse the consequences, Mr. Heisbourg said. A pandemic carries the same logic as a war, and in war, its the results that count. The state is at the center, and its not a situation where the normal pace of democratic debate can handle the crisis.

Rates of infection are following the Italian pattern, and if Brussels and states do not respond more forcefully and faster with strong executive action, Mr. Heisbourg said, they are inviting larger trouble.

Then you leave the field to the populists and youre dead, because here the populists are right, he said. Even democracies behave more like authoritarians in a war.

See the article here:
Coronavirus Tests Europes Cohesion, Alliances and Even Democracy - The New York Times

FILE PHOTO: A screen shows the logos and trading information for defense contractor Raytheon Co, and United Technologies Corp. on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., June 17, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has cleared United Technologies Corporations (UTC) (UTX.N) planned acquisition of Raytheon (RTN.N), subject to conditions, the European Commission said on Friday.

UTC agreed in June to combine its aerospace business with U.S. contractor Raytheon Co and create a new company worth about $121 billion, in what would be the sectors biggest ever merger.

The Commission said it had had concerns that the transaction would have reduced competition in the markets for military GPS receivers and airborne radios.

To address these concerns, UTC and Raytheon offered to divest UTCs entire military GPS receiver and anti-jamming business located in Iowa and Raytheons entire military airborne radios business, based in Indiana

The Commission said that the remedies removed the entire horizontal overlap and the proposed transaction, as modified by the commitments, would no longer raise competition concerns.

Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop

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EU clears UTC purchase of Raytheon, subject to conditions - Reuters

While listening to President Trump announce the European travel ban in his Oval Office address, my mind wandered back in time to the early G20 meetings of finance ministers and heads of government in 2009 when the United States and its European partners worked together to head off a global financial meltdown.

I then traveled back a little further in time to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a day on which I found myself traveling on the Eurostar between London and Brussels, my two homes at the time. For the first time in NATO's history, our European and Canadian allies triggered the alliance's Article 5 commitment to common defense.

Going back to read the language of this provision, written in 1949 to deter Soviet aggression, it struck me that Trump could have produced a far more presidential moment this week if he had done what the Europeans did for the United States back then. He should offer the transatlantic community an Article 5 declaration of war against this deadly pathogen.

If NATO could bend Article 5 to combat a non-state terrorist actor striking the United States, why not also to combat the Chinese-originated COVID-19, which by Friday had infected more than 28,000 individuals and killed more than 1,200 among NATO allies. Given current transatlantic divisions, there is far greater need now than after 9/11 for a symbolic gesture of unity.

President Trump could have confounded his critics, calmed markets and perhaps even outlined common cause efforts including travel limitations that he and his administration had agreed to during consultations with our NATO partners and the European Union. "Article 5 provides that an attack on one of us is an attack on all," he could have said, Three Muskateer-like. "It's all for one, and one for all!"

There's also a strong America First reason why President Trump should have leaned more in that direction. He's going to need Europe, just as the United States did in 2009, as this health crisis is quickly becoming a markets and financial crisis that could be addressed far more effectively through coordinated public health and fiscal stimulus measures.

Though no one wishes the world a financial crisis of the 2008 and 2009 dimensions, it would be irresponsible not to begin talks among the world's major economies and democracies about what strains they see in the system and what contingency planning they should be undertaking should the coronavirus economic slowdown continue. Compared to 2009, the world's record debt levels and its low to negative interest rates provide far less capability and then demand even more common cause.

Instead, what unfolded on 3/11/2020 in Europe and the United States were events that further underscored how divided the United States and its European partners are when they should be most united. Without consulting our allies at all, he implemented the ban which took effect at midnight Friday in an Oval Office address on all American television networks that left his own national security team scratching their heads, correcting mistakes (cargo wouldn't be banned, as the President initially said), and filling in critical omissions (Americans could still travel home from Europe).

The result was one of the harshest responses ever recorded from EU leaders to an American President. A joint statement by President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and President of the European Council, Charles Michel, read: "The Coronavirus is a global crisis, not limited to any continent and it requires cooperation rather than unilateral action. The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation. The European Union is taking strong action to limit the spread of the virus."

"When it comes to solidarity and unity, the United States is failing the coronavirus test," Benjamin Haddad, the director of the Atlantic Council's Future Europe Initiative, wrote in the Washington Post. "President Trump's speech Wednesday on the response to COVID-19 marked one of the most consequential foreign policy turning points of his presidency. This moment represents the lowest point in transatlantic relations in recent memory."

Sadly, the recent days have also shown how divided Europeans are among themselves, with Italians that there call for help has brought insufficient assistance to the country so far hardest hit in Europe by the virus. At previous such times of European uncertainty, the United States could provide necessary glue to keep everyone together.

".it's time now for the EU to go beyond engagement and consultations," Maurizio Massari, the Italian permanent representative to the European Union, wrote in Politico, "with emergency actions that are quick, concrete and effective."

He complained that "not a single EU country" had responded to Italy's call to active the European Union Mechanism of Civil Protection for the supply of medical equipment for individual protection. "Only China responded bilaterally. Certainly, this is not a good sign of European solidarity."

Unimaginably, Italian newspapers were full of Beijing's outreach to help on the very same day that President Trump declared his European travel ban.

A plane carrying a team of specialist doctors with battleground experience fighting the virus left China on Wednesday for Italy, the European epicenter of the pandemic, with urgently needed medical equipment. That includes 2 million facemasks, 20,0000 protective suits and 10,000 ventilators.

The gesture was widely publicized in China and Italy. A report in China Daily said that thanks to donations from people living in the East China Zhejian province, some 4,556 boxes of disaster-relief materials were on their way to Italy. More than 300,000 people from the province live and work in Italy.

Crises either make institutions and relationships stronger or weaker, but they don't leave them unchanged. A pandemic's political danger is that countries just like some individuals feel that it's everyone for themselves.

Yet after an unforgivable initial delay, Europeans are beginning to show more solidarity among themselves. EU leaders have committed 25 billion euros to respond to the economic fallout, of which $7.5 billion euros should be available quickly to provide emergency necessities.

Now it's the United States' turn to mend the message of this week. As fanciful as this idea might sound, it's time to invoke NATO's Article 5 to tackle the virus. It may take that dramatic of a symbolic action to repair the transatlantic damage that has been done.

Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, prize-winning journalist and president & CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of the United States' most influential think tanks on global affairs. He worked at The Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant managing editor and as the longest-serving editor of the paper's European edition. His latest book "Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth" was a New York Times best-seller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter@FredKempeand subscribe hereto Inflection Points, his look each Saturday at the past week's top stories and trends.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.

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Op-Ed: The US should call NATO to action and defend Europe against coronavirus - CNBC

BRIXHAM, England In the pitch black of early morning, huge waves hurled the 30-ton vessel from side to side, drenching crewmen who struggled to keep their footing as they cast the trawlers nets into the swirling seas.

But, once back on the bridge, the skipper, Dave Driver was oblivious to the stomach-churning motion of the boat, and dismissive of the perils of his work even as he recalled once falling overboard and, on another occasion, rescuing two fishermen from drowning.

Im my own boss, I do what I want, I think its the best job in the world, said Mr. Driver, who left school at age 15, but now owns the 1.2 million pound trawler Girl Debra, named after his wife.

He has only one major gripe in life: the French.

Mr. Driver thinks French boats are allowed to take too many fish too close to the British coast touching on a deeply emotional issue on both sides of the channel that could dash hopes of a post-Brexit trade deal between Britain and the European Union.

Without the obligations of membership in the bloc, Britain wants to curb the number of continental trawlers in its waters. It is even scaling up its naval protection fleet in preparation for possible confrontations on the high seas.

Yet its fishermen rely on European markets where new trade barriers look certain. And if talks collapse many fear that Frances famously truculent fishermen could blockade ports to stop movements of British fish.

That matters in places like Brixham, in the southwest of England, because the British export most of the fish they catch and import the majority of what they eat.

About one third of the catch landed in Britains ports is mackerel, a species few Britons will touch. Overall, around four-fifths of the fish caught by British vessels goes abroad, mainly to other European countries.

Most of it is mackerel, herring and shellfish that fetch better prices abroad.

For decades this has been managed through a combination of free trade within the European Union and carefully drawn fishing rights based on historic fishing patterns. French and Dutch fishermen say they are hardly interlopers in Britains waters, as their ancestors worked there for centuries.

But Brexit has blown that system apart, and long-held resentments are coming to the surface.

The looming clash is in many ways extraordinary, considering how minute the fishing industry is in the greater scheme of things.

There are just 12,000 British fishermen operating 6,000 vessels and contributing less than one half of one percent of gross domestic product less, according to one analysis, than Harrods, the upscale London department store.

I can see a ridiculous amount of political emotion being spent on something that is not economically that important, said Chris Davies, a former chairman of the European Parliaments Fisheries Committee.

Yet a sense of injustice has festered for years in British coastal communities, many of which have little else going for them apart from fish.

The British governments once seemed happy enough to trade fishing for other concessions, downsizing the national fleet, said Mr. Davies, who added that many British fishermen sold their boats and fishing rights to continental competitors.

There is a huge myth that some have created that they were robbed and its just not true, Mr. Davies added, noting that much British fish is extracted by wealthy corporations rather than independent fishermen like Mr. Driver. Just 13 companies hold 60 percent of British fishing rights.

But gazing back at the English coastline from a few miles out at sea, things look different. If Mr. Driver had his way, foreign vessels would be barred from the first 12 miles of British waters, while British quotas would be expanded.

The French have the majority of the fish, we just havent got enough quota, said Mr. Driver, reading from a sheet of paper with his monthly cod entitlement.

Thirty kilos that isnt even a box thats all Im allowed, the French they fill up and, with all due respect, asked Mr. Driver, pointing to the ocean, his voice rising a little, whats this piece of water called between England and France? Its called the English Channel, not the French Channel.

Around Britains coast, about 60 percent of the fish are caught by foreign boats, and one former British minister, Michael Forsyth, recently compared the situation to the British demanding two-thirds of Frances grape harvest.

In the English Channel zone where Mr. Driver goes to sea 84 percent of the cod is allocated to France and just 9 percent to the British, according to Barrie Deas, chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermens Organizations.

Yet, livelihoods are at stake on the other side of the Channel, too. Standing on the bridge of the Prins Bernhard, preparing to leave the Dutch port of Scheveningen on a 15-day voyage to Irelands west coast, Christophe Pauliac described being a captain not as a job, but a passion.

Mr. Pauliacs father, grandfather and uncle were fishermen, and he is in charge of 30 French crew members on this floating fish factory, a large and sophisticated trawler that nets, then pumps up tons of mackerel and herring from the sea.

The fish are sorted and stored in a giant freezer that can accommodate more than 65,000 blocks of fish, each weighing more than 20 kilos, or about 45 pounds.

Excluding the Prins Bernhard from British waters particularly those off the Scottish coast would be a catastrophe, said Mr. Pauliac, who added that he competes not with smaller trawlers but with Scotlands fleet of big, efficient, vessels. His boat spends perhaps 70 percent of its time in British territorial waters.

There is room for everyone, said Mr. Pauliac calm, polite and mild-mannered adding that he hopes for an agreement.

Without a deal, there could be bankruptcies in France. Even crews that spend just 30 percent of their time in British waters would struggle, said Antoine Dhellemmes, director general of France Pelagique, the company that operates the Prins Bernhard.

The European Union wants to base new fishing quotas around Britain on existing ones, and make them of long duration, rather than haggling annually as the European Union does with Norway over fishing rights.

The British want the opposite. But one question is whether the British fishing industry will get the better deal it demands or whether history will repeat itself with London trading fish for finance or another sector in a broader trade deal.

There is danger for Britains fishing industry if the European Union imposes tariffs on imports. Even without such restrictions, British fish will need new food safety certification before export, and time-consuming checks are likely at continental ports.

Extra costs and delays could drive some merchants, processors and fishermen out of business.

Perhaps the best hope that a deal can be struck is the fact that British fishermen seem to be demanding less than some expected.

In the Cornish port of Newlyn, Andrew Pascoe, talking on the quay side next to his vessel, the Ajax, called for only modest increases in fish quotas and the exclusion of foreign vessels from a zone 12 miles off the British coast. In many areas there is now a six-mile limit for French boats.

Some fishermen would say ban all foreign trawlers but we couldnt claim everything back and catch all that fish, said Mr. Pascoe, who is also chairman of the National Federation of Fishermens Organizations.

A truck from Portugal routinely meets one of Mr. Pascoes boats so that its haul of shellfish can be driven straight to the continent, illustrating the importance of European markets to him. His Portuguese customer has promised to keep the arrangement after Brexit, whatever the extra costs, he said.

But many are unsure that things will go so smoothly.

We hold the access card and the Europeans hold the market card, said Sam Lambourn, as he tinkered with the Lyonesse, a catamaran used for sardine fishing in the same port.

The markets are interrelated and nobody is isolated, he said, and anyone who thinks they are not going to be affected is in for a surprise.

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Fishing Presents a Vexing Snag in Brexit Talks - The New York Times