Mediaboss Marketing

Romanias close ties with Moldova are a strategic asset in the new European security environment.

Charles Michel, the European Council President, traveled to Bucharest in March for his first official meeting in three and a half years with the President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis. The Romanian head of state took the opportunity to call on the European Union (EU) to adopt a new sanctions regime against pro-Russian entities and individuals seeking to derail Moldovas path toward EU accession.

In a press conference following the talks, Iohannis stated that Russian aggression is not limited to the war in Ukraine but extends to hybrid activities designed to block Moldovas path to membership and European integration. While Moldovas government seeks a Euroatlanticist future, Russia says that its future course must be Eurasian.

Russia has used Moldova as a punchbag for years, and still illegally occupies a swath of its territory. But in recent months, the Kremlin has stepped up its campaign. It has withheld gas supplies, mobilized political proxies to stage anti-government protests, and exploited Moldovas deeply entrenched ideological and ethnic differences with sophisticated disinformation and propaganda. It has also been accused of seeking to engineer a coup and of nurturing covert pro-Russian networks among opposition parties.

This is troubling for Romania, which has intimate ties to Moldova, not least through its language which is spoken by about three-quarters of Moldovans. About 10% of Moldovans live in Romania, and a third have a passport.

Its not therefore an issue that Romanias leaders could ignore, even if they wanted to. Romania has been making a conscious effort to ensure that Moldovas EU aspirations are at the forefront of the EU foreign policy agenda alongside the war in Ukraine. The focus of the European Council summit was rightly on providing Ukraine with 1m rounds of artillery ammunition. But it was at Romanias initiative that the 27 EU member states asked the European Commission to produce a support package for Moldova ahead of the next meeting in June. Details of the package have not yet been released.

The framework currently used for EU engagement with Moldova is of limited use to confront Russias threat. The EU-Moldova Association Agreement, signed in 2014, establishes foundations for stronger political association and economic integration. However, the scope for political and security cooperation is narrow.

Russias all-out invasion of Ukraine, on Moldovas eastern border, has prompted the EU to reassess its approach to ensure the stabilization and security of its eastern neighborhood. Last summer, the European Council decided to grant Moldova EU candidate status together with Ukraine. Germanys Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, expressed his support for the defense and security of Moldovas sovereignty and territorial integrity in a trilateral meeting in Bucharest in April 2022 with the leaders of Romania and Moldova.

But the overall response has been far from adequate. The EU is failing to meet the moment. While Moldova says it is penetrated by FSB agents and held to ransom by Russian gas suppliers, the bloc is focusing, very literally, on technicalities.

The point was rammed home in a none-too-subtle manner by the Austrian Foreign Minister, Karoline Edtstadler, who said during a recent visit to Moldova with seven of her European counterparts that there can be no shortcuts.

Get the Latest

Get regular emails and stay informed about our work

The rules are rules argument might be fine at another time. But it hardly takes a master strategist to understand that with Russian cruise missiles taking shortcuts over Moldovan territory, the situation is more urgent.

NATO seems to have grasped this. Even before Russia sent its tanks across the border in 2022, the alliance chose Romania, its reliable and strategically-important regional partner, as the home to a new battlegroup under NATOs Enhanced Forward Presence. Allied aircraft use Romanian bases to patrol and reconnoiter the Black Sea region. The decision had to be made quickly and it was.

From Moldovas perspective, the Russian hybrid threat means that there can be no alternative but to pursue EU accession, and swiftly. Moldovas President Maia Sandu has described EU membership as the only way to ensure her countrys survival as a free and prosperous state.

Romania shares this perspective. The Romanian Prime Minister, Nicolae Ciuc, stated that his country would continue to be an active promoter of Moldovas accession to the EU in an official meeting with his Swedish counterpart, Ulf Kristersson, in Stockholm on April 3. Romanias outlook now needs to be heard with more respect than previously. As an EU member state with an intimate understanding of Moldova and the challenges it faces on its European path, Romania is central to how the EU navigates the new security situation in its eastern neighborhood.

It is of course important to maintain respect for the meritocratic procedure of the EU enlargement process, but sometimes events intervene. The security situation now calls for pragmatism and flexibility on the part of the EU to provide Moldova with certainty over its future place in Europe. Moldovas pro-European choice both within its current government and its population as a whole is by no means a foregone conclusion. Pro-Russian forces may very well return to power.

Romanias nuanced understanding of Russias security threat in the region could allow it to act as a mentor to Moldova, continuing to work closely with EU officials to aid its government, channel aid, ensure its delivery, and secure the administration against the Kremlins hybrid threats like the weaponization of corruption.

Most of all, the EU should understand and act as a matter of urgency on the critical issue there is competition for Moldovas future against a nasty, militaristic power with utter indifference for Moldovas 2.5 million people. That point would best be made by a significant gesture from Brussels. Quite what form that should take is a matter for discussion. The EU might start by asking for Romanias advice.

Hugo Blewett-Mundy is a Central and Eastern Europe commentator and consultant.

Europes Edgeis CEPAs online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or viewsof the institutions they representor the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Read More From Europe's Edge

CEPA's online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.

View post:
Romania Gets Moldova (and the EU Doesn't) - Center for European Policy Analysis

PARIS, April 11 (Reuters) - French officials were in damage control mode on Tuesday as they tried to contain anger, division and confusion sparked by President Emmanuel Macron's comments on Europe's dependence on the United States and its relations with China and Taiwan.

Macron's comments came in an interview on a trip to China that was meant to showcase European unity on China policy, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also taking part, but highlighted differences within the European Union.

In the interview with French daily Les Echos and news portal Politico published on Sunday, Macron called for the EU to reduce its dependence on the U.S. and to become a "third pole" in world affairs alongside Washington and Beijing.

As European politicians and diplomats returned to work after the long Easter holiday weekend, they were still struggling to digest Macron's comments, in which he also cautioned against being drawn into a crisis over Taiwan driven by an "American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction".

While many of the remarks were not new, the timing of their publication - at the end of a high-profile trip to China, as Beijing carried out military exercises near Taiwan - and their bluntness annoyed countries in eastern Europe.

Many governments in that region see ties with the United States as sacrosanct, particularly given Washington's key role in helping Ukraine defend against Russia's invasion.

"The return of geopolitics means that we have to see more clearly who is our ally and who is not. Strong transatlantic relations between Europe and the U.S. are the foundation of our security," Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky told Reuters.

"Europe must invest more in its own security, but I do not see that as an obstacle or a limit for cooperation with the USA," he said via a spokesman.

A senior diplomat from Central and Eastern Europe, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "President Macron is not speaking for Europe or the European Union. He is unwittingly helping Beijing to dismantle transatlantic unity at the time of war in Europe, when it is most needed."

Marcin Przydacz, a foreign policy adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, made clear Warsaw was not in favour of any shift away from Washington.

"We believe that more America is needed in Europe," he told Polish broadcaster Radio Zet. He added pointedly: "Today the United States is more of a guarantee of safety in Europe than France."

Such criticism prompted French officials and diplomats to stress that Macron did not suggest Europe should be equidistant geopolitically from Washington and Beijing, simply that Europe's interests will sometimes differ from those of the United States.

The French foreign ministry cancelled a planned debrief on the trip for foreign diplomats in Paris on Tuesday as officials scrambled to make sure they had a consistent message and to limit any fallout with Washington.

The initial response from Washington was measured. Without directly addressing Macron's comments, the U.S. State Department spokesperson and the White House lauded the bilateral relationship with Paris and its role in the Indo-Pacific region and Ukraine. But there was broader unease.

If Europe doesn't "pick sides between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, then maybe we shouldn't be picking sides either [on Ukraine]," U.S. Republican Senator Marco Rubio said in a video drawing parallels with the conflict in Ukraine.

Even some of the president's closest allies in France recognised Macron had misspoke. "There's a problem with the president's communication. It's a disaster," one Macron ally said on condition of anonymity, saying the timing and location of what he said, although right on substance, were problematic.

"The idea now is to reassure the Americans and tell them there is nothing new and that on Taiwan we have the same position as before," said a senior French diplomat.

"The difficulty I think will ultimately not be with the Americans. I think it will be more complicated with the Europeans, notably the Baltics, Nordics, Eastern Europeans."

Other governments in Europe, however, are at least more sympathetic to Macron's push for "strategic autonomy" - making Europe less dependent on others when it comes to defence, technology and supplies of critical raw materials.

Countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain have also backed strong EU engagement with China, even as Washington takes a harder line with what it sees as an increasingly belligerent Beijing.

"I think we cannot just turn our back to China and try to ignore it. It is a key trading partner, a very large player," Spanish Economy Minister Nadia Calvino said in discussion hosted by the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

"We have a shared interest, I think, in ensuring that they engage constructively to put an end to the war in Ukraine as soon as possible and to avoid global market fragmentation, which is going to be lose-lose for everyone."

But even some of those broadly supportive of Macron's agenda lamented the handling of the China trip, in which von der Leyen received a much more muted welcome than the French president.

Nils Schmid, a foreign policy expert and member of parliament for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats, said both Scholz and Macron had long favoured the idea of "European sovereignty".

But, he added: "The problematic thing about Macron's visit is that he deliberately pulled out the European card and took ... von der Leyen with him. But then he allowed her to be put in the second row. This has destroyed the hoped-for impetus for a common European policy on China."

He added: "China is playing the card of dividing Europe. We must prevent that."

Reporting by Michel Rose, John Irish, Andreas Rinke, Belen Carreno, Alan Charlish, Jan Lopatka and Michel Rose; Writing by Andrew Gray; Editing by Sandra Maler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

See original here:
Analysis: Macron's aim of EU unity on China undone by trip fallout - Reuters

Credit: Adriy Onufriyenko/Getty

Hydrogen has been billed as a green fuel for the future because its carbon-free at the point of use. Theres no shortage of ways to produce it, but these techniques have a crucial flaw: they all produce carbon, too.

The pursuit of a more sustainable, cost-efficient way to generate hydrogen was chosen in 2021 to be one of the first focuses of the European Unions European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder Challenge. This is a new funding mechanism that supports a portfolio of research projects, led by scientists and engineers from various disciplines, to tackle the same fundamental problems. Launched that year, the programme encourages a holistic approach to EU-directed challenges, with a view to ferrying the best innovations to market. The programme has given grants of up to 4 million (US$4.4 million), with no expectations about the number of partners in a consortium or the duration of projects. So far, the challenge counts 86 projects in its portfolio, totalling a commitment of 312 million.

In 2021, the EIC funded other portfolio themes, including emerging cell and gene-therapy technologies; engineered living materials; tools to measure and stimulate brain tissue activity; and awareness and consciousness in artificial intelligence.

The story of hydrogen will be a success only if its a story about innovation, says Jos Miguel Bermdez Menndez, an energy technology analyst for hydrogen and alternative fuels at the Paris-based International Energy Agency. To get to net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, a target that the European Commission committed to as a party to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, hydrogen technology needs to be feasible for widespread use in shipping and aviation, he says.

The Pathfinder Challenge aims to do more than just hand out grants. Each project has an innovation manager tasked with investigating how to commercialize intellectual property resulting from the research.

The EIC identifies where research innovation should go on the basis of specific evidence of what is missing in Europe, and so it is a completely different approach, says Antonio Pantaleo, an energy systems and green technology programme manager at the EIC, who oversees the hydrogen-challenge portfolio. Programme managers such as Pantaleo have the authority to terminate or refocus projects funded by the challenge. They are appointed to develop a vision for the technologies that the European Council wants to bring to market.

ANEMEL, an initiative that aims to transform dirty water into clean hydrogen using a technique called anion exchange membrane electrolysis, is one of ten projects included in the hydrogen portfolio. Led by Pau Farrs, an inorganic chemist at the University of Galway in Ireland, ANEMEL is searching for a greener way to split water into hydrogen and oxygen by using catalysts that are more abundant and sustainable.

Projects such as ANEMEL must interact and exchange knowledge with eight other projects in the same portfolio a precondition that the European Commission hopes will create a synergizing effect. The EIC were very much interested in having this almost-open collaboration, says Farrs. Research teams across all projects meet at least once a year, with most collaboration coming through bilateral exchanges on projects that have clear overlap.

Not everyone is happy with the Pathfinder Challenge scheme, however, says Pantaleo. We give specific intellectual property rights to the inventors, rather than to the university where the research is produced. This, he says, has ruffled some feathers at research institutes across Europe, which have experience in helping researchers to develop intellectual properties.

There is the risk that this focus on the invention and not on the role of the inventors institution could make these funding mechanisms less attractive for some universities that are very, very strong and very good in developing spin-off start-ups, says Pantaleo. But he adds that the Pathfinder Challenge represents a new culture and a new way to support research and innovation.

Whether this new culture succeeds in commercializing research to alleviate some of the worlds most pressing problems is something that funders in Brussels will be keen to assess in the coming years. For now, Farrs says, the biggest challenge for the scheme is finding a common footing on which the projects can collaborate. We are all still learning how to have a proper communication between the different projects in the portfolio, he says. This is still a work in progress. I think that well need to see how this evolves.

Read the original post:
European Union appeals for interdisciplinary collaboration in new ... - Nature.com

By Emily Wigens, ONE EU Director & Valentina Barbagallo, Global Citizen EU & Climate Lead

Much has been said and written about the converging crises of COVID-19, conflict, and climate change. Less has been said, however, about the credibility crisis that is hurtling towards Brussels and the European Union.

The past two years have underscored that, in a global crisis, EU Member States increasingly turn to the EU. Unfortunately the Member States have not set the institutions up for success. Despite a strong political commitment to lead internationally, the EUs budget for external action is unable to meet the scale of the challenges facing the world today.

The EU urgently needs new resources capable of meeting the moment.

Securing these from Member States is going to be difficult with the cost of living crisis biting across the continent although Member States must step up, too. There are, however, other proposals that, if adopted, could bring about a stepchange in ambition and progress.

Later this year the European Commission will publish a proposal for a new set of own resources options for raising revenues that would go directly into the EU budget, rather than national purses. It is through this process that the EU can take concrete steps to avoid a credibility crisis.

An international tax on financial transactions has been long debated, but never yet agreed, at EU level.

The proposal is both simple and attractive: given the scale of transactions in financial markets, all that is needed is to apply a tax at an extremely low rate to raise significant tax revenues, without affecting the functioning of the markets.

In 2013, the European Commission estimated that a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) implemented by just 11 Member States participating in an Enhanced Cooperation Procedure could generate between 30-35 billion annually.

With this idea once again gaining international traction as a means to rebalance the harmful effects of globalization, the EU should play a leading role in delivering such a game-changing agreement, and an ambitious proposal must therefore be central in a new basket of own-resources.

This is just one example. The EU must agree a broad package of new revenues, ensuring that there are sufficient funds in the EU budget to meet the challenges ahead.

During exceptional times we need exceptional measures. Everyone must pay their share from industry (through windfall taxes on excessive profits), to investors (through an excise duty on share buy-backs), and the wealthiest in society. Anything less will be sure to undershoot in terms of the scale of ambition needed to address todays global challenges.

Furthermore, the package should also introduce a new principle: that once Next Generation EU debt has been paid down, a large portion of new revenues should be allocated to the fight for climate justice and development.

This would ensure sufficient EU financing for the fight against extreme poverty and climate change and to support low-income countries in the face of the disruptions for which wealthy economies are mainly responsible.

In June, an international summit in Paris will attempt to catalyze the first steps towards a new global financing pact.

This is a prime opportunity for the EU to protect its credibility by setting out plans to ensure its deeds match its words by supporting the adoption of new internationally coordinated levies, including an FTT, to raise at least $50 billion a year for development, climate, and biodiversity protection. In order to respond adequately to the urgent situation, these proposals must be operational by 2025.

The devastating war in Ukraine and the onslaught of climate events underline clearly how closely tied European security and stability is to that of our neighbors.

The EUs ability to forge strong partnerships and alliances is crucial for delivering our security, stability, and prosperity. If bold action isnt taken to ensure everyone contributes funding to protect our future, then the EUs ability to assert positive influence on the global stage will be severely hampered, and the trust of Europes allies and partners will waver again.

Its in all of our interests to steer clear of this credibility crisis.

View original post here:
The European Union's Facing a Credibility Crisis. Here's How It Can ... - Global Citizen

Opening the first Inter-Committee Meeting between the European Parliament and the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said: Todays meeting marks the launch of an in-depth, comprehensive and concrete sectorial cooperation between our two institutions. Cooperation that is crucial in view of Ukraine's European path. This is something that Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk and I have discussed and converged over on several occasions... because there is no question that Ukraines future is as a Member of the European Union. Rest assured that Ukraine will always find a friend and ally in the European Parliament. My hope is that accession negotiations will be able to start already this year."

At the meeting, where committee chairs of the European Parliament and the Verkhovna Rada debated the nature and challenges of the EU accession process, MEPs stated their firm condemnation of the illegal and unjustified Russian war of aggression. The EU as well as the European Parliament, they said, are strong allies of Ukraine and will continue to stand with the country and its people in their fight for freedom.

Looking at future cooperation between both parliaments, MEPs expressed their willingness to deepen institutional ties and offer more support and expertise to their Ukrainian colleagues for the countrys path towards EU membership, including in the areas of alignment with EU laws and in post-war recovery. When it comes to the reconstruction of Ukraine, MEPs stressed it is essential to build back better and link reconstruction efforts to a reform process that secures Ukraines European integration.

MEPs highlighted the need to establish an adequate governance architecture for reconstruction efforts that ensures Ukrainian ownership, and is transparent, accountable and inclusive, with the proper involvement of both the European Parliament and the Verkovna Rada.

You can watch the introductory remarks of European Parliament President Roberta Metsola and the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk here.

Go here to see the original:
Leading MEPs reaffirm their strong support for Ukraine's path to the ... - European Parliament