European Union

France will evacuate French and European citizens from Niger starting on Tuesday (1 August), its foreign ministry said, days after a junta seized power in the west African country.

Threats to Sweden have increased after recent Koran burnings, the country's government said on Tuesday (1 August), adding that it would strengthen border and internal controls and give police wider authority to stop and search people as a result.

The production of non-alcoholic beer in Germany almost doubled over the last decade, according to new data published on the occasion of this week’s world beer day, while alcoholic beer consumption has seen a slight downward trend.

The general supply of uranium to France, a key raw material in nuclear fission, is not at risk, nuclear conglomerate Orano said, after Nigerien authorities announced they would freeze French exports.

Berlin has been making “good progress” in its talks with the European Commission on the potential scope of national subsidies for hydrogen power plants, according to German Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck.

With our summer holidays coming up, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on the past year and share some news about the coming one.

With the rise of anti-gender campaigns and movements, the ninth anniversary of the Istanbul Convention has never been more important, especially in the current climate of backlash to gender equality in the Euro-Mediterranean region.

Forming a government in Spain amidst complex negotiations and a polarised political landscape poses a challenging task, with the potential for repeat elections - there is a need for vigilance, as Vox poses a severe threat to Spanish democracy, writes Laura Gaspar.

After a period of calm following the Coronavirus pandemic, discussions on EU public finances are back on the table and are expected to liven up the last months of 2023, with heated debates over EU and national budgets.

A coalition of Belarusian investigative journalists based abroad has identified officials cooperating with the Russian authorities in children’s abductions from the occupied territories of Ukraine and their indoctrination.

The United States on Monday (31 July) imposed sanctions against four top Bosnian Serb officials, including the Serb member of the country's presidency, for undermining a US-sponsored peace deal that ended the Balkan country's war in the 1990s.

Economic sanctions have been the biggest headache for Russia's business elite since the start of the war in Ukraine, but a drone strike in the heart of Moscow's financial district is forcing companies to think about their employees' safety.

The junta that seized power in Niger last week detained senior politicians on Monday (31 July), their party said, defying international calls to restore democratic rule, while fellow military rulers in West Africa expressed their support.

Troops at the spearhead of Ukraine's counteroffensive say a battle last week along the front in the southeast proved to be tougher and bloodier than expected, with plans going awry and an enemy that was well-prepared.

Thousands of Bulgarians took to the streets on Monday (31 July) to protest violence against women after a harrowing case of a teen cut hundreds of times shocked the Balkan nation.

The Niger coup marks the end of a largely-failed French military ‘Barkhane’ operation in the Sahel, broadly due to a lack of resources, and an underlying sense of neocolonialism, according to experts EURACTIV spoke with.

Bulgaria benefits from an EU derogation allowing it to import Russian oil for its only refinery owned by Lukoil. However, the financial and political interests served by this derogation are not those of Bulgarian consumers, but those of Lukoil and the Kremlin, write Martin Vladimirov and Ruslan Stefanov.

The EU and the Philippines will restart negotiations on a free-trade agreement as they seek to accelerate "a new era of cooperation", European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday (31 July).

 

International Shipping and Emissions: Background

 

Although international shipping accounts for approximately 3% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, its share of global emissions is projected to continue to rise in the coming decades.  

 

Accordingly, international shipping’s current trajectory is incompatible with the Paris Agreement and its 1.5° warming objective. At the 80th session of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC 80), members of the London-based UN agency finalised negotiations around a revised IMO strategy to reduce GHG emissions within international shipping. 

 

On 7 July 2023, the MEPC adopted the IMO 2023 Strategy on Reduction of GHG Emissions from Ships. The strategy establishes the following targets: 

 

• Reduce emissions by 20% (compared to 2008 levels), striving for 30%, by 2030 
• Reduce emissions by 70%, striving for 80%, by 2040 
• Net-zero GHG emissions “by or around, i.e., close to, 2050” 

 

To get there, the IMO will employ a basket of economic and technical measures, leaving the door open for carbon pricing and other tools to be used. Although the 2023 IMO Strategy was not as ambitious as science and many states had called for, it was a multilateral compromise.  

 

Thanks to the UACES microgrant, I saw that compromise being reached firsthand.  

 

My Research Interest in Climate Diplomacy

 

As part of my PhD, I looked at the European Union’s (EU) climate diplomacy with respect to four multilateral negotiations, including the 2018 IMO Initial Strategy on Reduction of GHG Emissions from Ships. For the Initial Strategy negotiation, EU member states supported Pacific Small Island Developing States in driving ambition within the IMO and in ultimately delivering the Initial Strategy. Since then, the EU has pushed forward on its own, with the inclusion of a shipping-related provision within the European Green Deal. Shipping will soon be included within the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS): a cap-and-trade mechanism aimed at reducing GHG emissions. Needless to say, I was very interested in seeing how these developments would shape the 2023 negotiations. 

 

Impact of The UACES Microgrant

 

When I began my PhD in 2019, I had every intention of conducting in-person interviews and participant observation as part of my data collection. Like many other PhD researchers, my plans were turned upside down with the COVID-19 pandemic. I relied heavily on WebEx and Microsoft Teams to speak with officials and diplomats. MEPC 80 was thus one of the first opportunities I had to observe a negotiation in person and interact with delegates. 

 

Going into MEPC 80, I was relatively confident – from an academic perspective – in my understanding of the IMO and multilateral negotiations. I quickly learned that practice and theory are very different things! It is one thing to read about the negotiation process, but observing in person how a compromise comes together is an entirely different matter. I feel privileged to have followed the process. To give a few examples, I observed impassioned interventions and unwavering efforts by Pacific Island States to increase ambition, diplomats huddled during coffee breaks in order to broker a deal on text, and an impressive spirit of camaraderie in the room when the 2023 Strategy was adopted.  

 

I am a much better scholar for having attended MEPC 80 as an academic observer and look forward to applying this rich data to my current research project. 

The post UACES Microgrant Report: Getting to the 2023 IMO Revised GHG Strategy appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Eurozone inflation fell further in July and most measures of underlying price growth also eased, in a largely comforting sign for the European Central Bank (ECB) as it considers ending its severe run of interest rate hikes.