Feed aggregator

Tuesday 26 September 2017
09.00 Meeting with Brexit EU Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier
London
(local time)
12.30 Meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May

Thursday 28 September 2017
13.30 Phone call with Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem
Tallinn
(local time)
21.00 Informal dinner with EU Heads of State or Government

Friday 29 September 2017
Tallinn Digital Summit
(local time)
10.00 Meeting with Prime Minister of Bulgaria Boyko Borissov
11.00 Arrival and welcome by Prime Minister Jüri Ratas at the Tallinn Creative Hub
11.10 Meeting with Prime Minister of Croatia Andrej Plenković
11.30 Meeting with President of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid
12.00 Opening address by President Kersti Kaljulaid
12.30 Session 1: working lunch on the Future of Governments
15.00 Family photo
15.15 Meeting with German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel
15.45 Session 2 on the Future of Economy and Society
18.15 Press conference

Mit grossem Interesse verfolgt die kurdische Diaspora in Europa die aktuellen Vorgänge in der Region Kurdistan. In Brüssel traf Euronews Ebubekir

The European Union (EU) referendum result has led to the unfolding of a domestic constitutional drama in the United Kingdom, which on its current trajectory could lead to its break-up. This is the first of two blog posts which maps the initial trajectory by considering the roles of the key institutional actors in the drama so far. The second post  will consider the impact of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, published in July 2017 and to be debated by the UK Parliament in Autumn 2017, on this constitutional drama.

Setting the scene

Within the framework of the current devolution settlement, the UK’s withdrawal from the EU will mean that Scotland also leaves, despite 62% of the Scottish electorate voting to ‘remain’. However, EU law is embedded within Scotland’s devolved constitutional landscape – the devolved administrations are required to honour the obligations of EU law – and a UK withdrawal from the EU will have direct and significant impacts on the devolution settlement as currently designed.

This sets the scene for a constitutional drama which has been slowly unfolding since 24 June 2016.

Act 1

Enter – the Scottish Government

The referendum result has prompted calls from Scotland’s First Minister to ‘take all possible steps and explore all options to give effect to how people in Scotland voted.’ Short of a second independence referendum which, if successful, would allow Scotland to become an EU Member State in its own right, consideration, as promised, has been given to whether Scotland could remain in the EU without seeking independence in two position papers: Scotland a European Nation and Scotland’s Place in Europe.

Although legally feasible, implementation of the plan set out in these papers would require a high level of political will and legal creativity at both the UK and the EU level. However, the UK Prime Minister has not so far shown any signs of willingness to permit Scotland to negotiate a differentiated position as part of the Brexit negotiations.

Act 2

Enter – The UK Government

The UK Government’s reaction to its counterpart’s calls from Holyrood to respect the decision of Scottish voters to remain in the EU has been muted. Aptly summarised under the title of the ‘May Doctrine’ the UK Government is said to be proceeding on the basis of two assumptions: first, that a certain course of action, namely Brexit – however vaguely defined in its specifics – is irresistible. Second, that the UK executive alone has direct responsibility for the implementation, delineation and definition of Brexit (Blick, 2016).

The ‘May Doctrine’ is clearly enunciated in Theresa May’s Brexit speech, given on 17 January 2017, in which the Prime Minister made it clear that there would be no accommodation of Scotland’s desire for a differentiated relationship with the EU. Doubts were also cast in this speech, and in the government’s subsequent White Paper, over the future remit of the Scottish Parliament. It is often assumed that those powers currently exercised by the EU which fall within devolved competence will be repatriated to the Scottish legislature. In her speech, Theresa May instead suggested instead that it would be left to the UK Parliament (with no mention of the devolved administrations) to decide on any future changes to the law. This position has been confirmed in the publication of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill; a preliminary overview of which can be found here (for more detail on the devolution aspect see blog post 2).

Despite much rhetoric to the contrary the UK government’s position on Brexit expounded to date appears to diminish rather than value the devolved constitutional landscape of the UK and the voices of the administrations within that. There is no legal means by which those voices can be taken into account and a flawed intergovernmental talking shop (the Joint Ministeral Committee) is apparently not providing a meaningful forum for genuine discussions based on mutual trust and respect. With the stakes so high, this is a sorry situation indeed, and in all likelihood, a constitutional collision course in the making.

Act 3

Enter – The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has taken the place of the third actor in this constitutional drama. In R (on the application of Miller and Dos Santos) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5 the Court was asked whether the UK Government had the power to give formal notice of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU (to ‘trigger article 50 TEU’) without prior parliamentary authorisation through a legislative Act. The outcome of the case in respect of this question is well known: namely that an Act of Parliament is required to authorise ministers to give notice of the decision of the UK to withdraw from the EU. However, the Court was also asked to examine the role of the Sewel Convention which provides that the UK Parliament will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament. Given that the decision to leave the EU directly impinges on a considerable part of the work of the Scottish Parliament and Scottish government on issues ranging from agriculture and fisheries, environmental protection to higher education and research, the argument was led that the UK Parliament required the consent of the Scottish Parliament before it could trigger Article 50 TEU.

The Supreme Court unanimously held that the Sewel Convention effectively restates a constitutional convention rather than a legally binding obligation. The Court did not reach a conclusive decision on whether consent was required as a matter of convention but did decide that the devolved legislatures lack the legal power to block the triggering of Article 50 TEU.

The decision of the Court in this respect may well contribute to the heightening of tensions within our current constitutional drama as the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill will be subject to approval by the Scottish Parliament through a legislative consent motion. Both the Welsh and Scottish governments have indicated their refusal of consent following the publication of the Bill (see blog post 2).

Act 4

Enter – The UK Parliament

The Supreme Court’s decision in Miller has been described as simply putting ‘the Brexit ball firmly back in the [UK] parliament’s court.’ Only it, through the adoption of a statute – and not the UK Government – could allow Article 50 TEU to be triggered and both the House of Commons and the House of Lords agreed to give the Prime Minister the power to trigger Article 50 TEU. The UK’s notification of withdrawal was sent on 29 March 2017. The UK Parliament will have a significant role to play in relation to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill and will be required to adopt a raft of additional legislation (yet to be drafted) within an extremely short timescale.

Final Curtain?

All eyes are now back on the Houses of Parliament as the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill makes its way through the legislative process. The disappointing outcome of June’s general election which returned a ‘hung’ parliament has seemingly emboldened some (government and opposition) MPs to question the government’s stance on Brexit. At the same time, the Scottish government’s position has been seriously weakened by the loss of many of its MPs in the election.

The Bill itself may result in fundamental changes being made to the devolution settlement and given that devolution has embedded itself increasingly into the fabric of the UK constitution over its almost 20 year history, it seems unconscionable that it might be at breaking point – but on the basis of performances given thus far in the drama, it is, at least when viewed from North of the Border.

This blog post is a shortened version of a longer piece
which appeared as M. Fletcher and R. Zahn,
‘Brexit, the UK and Scotland: the story so far:
A constitutional drama in four acts’
in G. Hassan and R. Gunson, Scotland, the UK and Brexit:
A Guide to the Future, Luath Publishing, Edinburgh, 2017

The post Brexit, Scotland, and the Kingdom: a constitutional drama in four acts appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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On Thursday, September 21, 2017 IPI held its fifth Ministerial Dinner on Peace Operations in its Trygve Lie Center for Peace, Security, and Development. The dinner was attended by foreign and defense ministers, a United Nations senior official, and former members of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), who discussed the recent debates on the reform of peacekeeping operations and adoption of Security Council Resolution 2378, as well as the broader reforms proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres.

The event was chaired by Terje Rød-Larsen, President of IPI, and co-hosted by Finland, Uruguay, Indonesia and Rwanda, represented respectively by Timo Soini, Finland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs; Enrique Loedel, Uruguay’s Vice-Minister of Political Affairs; Dian Triansyah Djani, Indonesian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and Valentine Rugwabiza, Rwanda’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Member of the Cabinet.

In a roundtable debate, conducted under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution, attendees had an open discussion on the most pressing issues confronting contemporary UN peace operations, while taking into account the recommendations contained in the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) and the reforms proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres.

The discussion began with Arthur Boutellis, Director of the Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations at IPI, briefly presenting the (forthcoming) IPI Peace Operations Reform Scorecard 2017, which analyzes the implementation of the recommendations from the HIPPO.

Jean-Pierre Lacroix, Under-Secretary-General of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, presented some of the progress made and challenges remaining on peace operations reform, and how the reforms proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres will help address some of the latter.

The ensuing discussion stressed the importance of political strategies guiding peace operations, the need to increase women’s participation in peacekeeping and in peace processes, the need to further institutionalize consultations with troop-contributing countries during the mandating process, and the importance of regional partnerships (especially the African Union). Many also emphasized the importance of training, performance and accountability, and for a change in mindset to accompany the reforms proposed by the Secretary-General. Member states represented included Korea, Italy, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, Croatia, Namibia, Norway, Sweden, Ghana, Japan, Estonia, France, Mexico, Netherlands, Turkey, Nigeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan and the Slovak Republic.

Chinese VP22 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle

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Joan M. Larrea, The Chief Executive Officer of Convergence, said that when she was first asked to participate in conversations about how business interacts with peace processes, she thought everyone knew that peace is good for business, “and I also thought it was obvious that business is good for peace.”

“But,” she said, “apparently it’s not that obvious to all parties, hence this report.”

Her reference was to the report “A New Way of Doing Business: Partnering for Peace and Sustainable Development,” a collaboration between IPI, the Sustainable Development Goals Fund and Concordia, and the focus of a September 21st IPI policy forum on “Changing the ‘Business as Usual’ Model: A New Way to Partner for Peace and the 2030 Agenda,” sponsored by the same three organizations.

“We’re long past everybody thinking of business as a rapacious race to the bottom,” Ms. Larrea told the forum. “Economic growth is a prerequisite for peace, and economic growth comes from business, it comes from companies, it comes from investment. So for me the link is obvious.” With emphasis, she concluded, “Peace is really good for business, but business is really, really good for peace.”

Terje Rød-Larsen, President of IPI, said the institute had decided to explore the linkages as part of its research into applying the Sustainable Development Goals “because without business, implementation of the SDGs is not possible. In the end the UN needs the business community, and vice-versa.”

Matthew Swift, co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Concordia, said his organization felt there was a need for translating the public and private sectors to each other.

“Those sectors speak very different languages, but as an institute that focuses on what public-private sector cooperation can achieve, it’s important to get both on the same page,” he said. “And the SDGs do a very nice job communicating to CEOs around the world ways in which they can follow this framework of the seventeen goals towards both changing the way they do business but also thinking about the role the private sector has in various communities.”

Paloma Durán, Director of the SGD Fund, said putting into effect these synergies in the context of the UN presented a particular set of challenges.

“How to engage the private sector, keeping in mind that the private sector is not one homogenous actor and there are different sizes, different regions with different practices,’ she said. She also emphasized that businesses needed to be responsible partners and to incorporate the 2030 Agenda into their core business strategies and policies.

While it was important for the UN to engage big corporations with large resources, she said, “we need to work with small and medium-sized business; not because we want the private sector only as a donor, but because we want a real actor working with us.”

Peter van der Vliet, Director of Multilateral Organizations and Human Rights of the Netherlands, said he was encouraged by the opportunities for collaboration offered by the SDGs and by the growing interest of business in having an impact beyond simply making money. “Whether it’s big multinational corporations or small enterprises, the private sector is increasingly not only about making a profit,” he said. “And try to find one SDG where the private sector does not have an impact, just one. From goal one to goal seventeen, the role and conduct of business is crucial.”

Hedayetullah Al Mamoon, Senior Secretary in the Ministry of Finance of Bangladesh, said that “we should be careful about the difference between developed countries and developing countries because our private sector is not so strong.” He stressed that less developed countries need support to use and scale up innovative financial mechanisms to attract more private investments. The report highlights how new partnerships can be forged to finance the SDGs.

Mats Granryd, the Director-General of GSMA, the trade body that represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide and is focused on leveraging broad-based technologies for sustainable development, said members of his group reached more than 5 billion people in their effort “to connect everyone and everything to a better future.”

“There’s no better way of describing that better future than the SDGs,” he said.

Tonye Cole, co-founder and Executive Director of the Sahara Group, said the SDGs had shaped a defining rationale for his business operations, particularly in Africa.

“The SDGs in themselves have created a tool,” he said, “a mechanism for business so we can look at ourselves and say we actually have a voice.”
“And now we can itemize them and say, ‘I do SDG five, I believe in SDG eight, I actually have for years been doing SDG one’,” he said. “Now businesses can actualize it and put words to it.”

Arrêté au début de l’année, cet « émir » jouait un rôle important dans les réseaux de l’Etat islamique.

Arrêté au début de l’année, cet « émir » jouait un rôle important dans les réseaux de l’Etat islamique.

To meet the scale and ambition of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the private sector will have to play a central role. The agenda provides a window of opportunity for the private sector, governments, the UN, and civil society to collaborate with each other through a new global partnership.

This report explores what is needed to make this new partnership a reality, including the steps that both the UN and the private sector need to take. It also seeks to understand how the private sector can contribute to achieving peace as both an enabler and an outcome of the 2030 Agenda. Finally, the report aims to address how to mitigate the risk companies face in investing in countries facing challenges in attracting private domestic and international investments.

The report offers a number of recommendations for the private sector, the UN, and governments to engage in new forms of collaboration:

• To make the 2030 Agenda’s call for a new global partnership a reality, businesses should embed the SDGs across their supply chains and in their core business strategies and improve reporting. The UN, governments, and businesses should all deepen their engagement with each other and in particular with small and medium enterprises. Engagement of the private sector should be based on the recognition that investing in the 2030 Agenda is not only good for people and the planet; it can also improve bottom lines.
• Businesses should take a sustaining peace approach to all operations and investments. They should assess not only how to avoid contributing to conflict but also how to support efforts to build and sustain peace, including by working closely with national governments, building trust with communities, engaging with local small and medium enterprises, and striving to be more inclusive in their own policies and practices.
• Lack of resources is not the main challenge to financing the 2030 Agenda. Achieving the agenda requires expanding the scale of projects related to its implementation and reducing the risks for greater private sector engagement. The UN, governments, and businesses should partner to scale up investments in countries that need it most through innovative, long-term, self-sustaining funding models and a wider diversity of investors.

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AMENDMENTS 200 - 357 - Draft report Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World 2016 and the European Union’s policy on the matter
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Prime Minister Ratas has asked me to chair our dinner ahead of the Tallinn Digital Summit, which is why I am writing to you.

On 29 June 2016, a few days after the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, we decided to begin a reflection on the future of a European Union of 27 Member States. The first meeting devoted to this, in September 2016, resulted in the Bratislava roadmap. We agreed to focus our attention on the issues of most immediate concern to our citizens: migration, security as well as economic and social matters. We further developed this agenda in Malta and in Brussels this year, leading to the Rome declaration, which outlined a more comprehensive vision for the years to come.

In parallel, we set out to deliver on this agenda also during our regular European Councils. We managed to sort out several issues, which is why the situation in Europe is better today and we can look to the future with more optimism. On migration, we focused first on the Eastern Mediterranean Route, then the Central Mediterranean Route, regaining control of our external borders and bringing down the number of irregular migrants and deaths at sea. On security, we continued to strengthen our instruments against terrorism and made important progress on European defence, including in cooperation with NATO. On the economic front we embarked on a reorientation of our trade policy so that negative effects of globalisation are mitigated. We are maintaining high ambitions in terms of market opening (trade agreements with Canada and Japan) while strengthening the robustness of our response to unfair trading practices.

On each of these issues, we still have important and hard work ahead of us. We need to consolidate our external migration policy, improve our capacity for returns and reach durable solutions on a reformed asylum system. We must continue to strengthen European defence, in the first instance by launching the Permanent Structured Cooperation in December. Equally, we need to continue to improve our economic base, including through the digital single market (Tallinn summit), while ensuring that it is socially balanced (Gothenburg summit in November).

We must also decide on the further development of the Euro. There is no silver bullet to complete the Economic and Monetary Union once and for all. But I am convinced that we have the obligation to improve the functioning of the EMU and strengthen it step by step. Our priority should be to complete the Banking Union in line with the agreed roadmap so that the euro area is strengthened structurally. This means that we have to prepare a common backstop to the Banking Union, to advance further risk reduction and pave the way for a European deposit insurance scheme. We should also enhance Europe's capacity to act, which could involve developing the ESM towards a European Monetary Fund. A number of ideas on governance and budgetary resources specific to the euro area have been introduced, on which much more discussion will be needed. In order to advance this agenda I will call a Euro Summit in December in an inclusive format. Concrete decisions on these issues should be taken at the European Council by June next year at the latest.

At the same time, we should continue to develop the international role of the Union, in our neighbourhood as well as at the global level. In the October European Council I suggest that we discuss our reaction to developments in relations with Turkey, and in May next year I propose, in agreement with Prime Minister Borisov, that we gather in Bulgaria for a Western Balkans summit. Trade will also remain an important priority for our work.

Looking beyond these immediate priorities, we have a big task in front of us when it comes to the next multiannual EU budget. This discussion, which will shape our policies for the years to come, will start in earnest once we have concluded the agreement on the UK's withdrawal. It will be an important item on our agenda until we reach consensus in time for the entry of the new Multiannual Financial Framework in 2021.

We cannot deal with, let alone decide on, all these questions in Tallinn. But I do think that this meeting will be a good opportunity to discuss how we approach this debate, particularly given the many interesting voices we have recently heard on substance, method as well as objectives. I will be seeking your guidance with a view to deciding, after our discussion, how to organise the work of the European Council in this respect. In order to ensure an open, frank and informal exchange on these issues, there will be no texts on the table, and no written conclusions will be drawn from our discussion.

Finally, we should all be aware that Brexit remains one of the main tasks for us. This will be the subject of our next meeting at 27 in October, on the basis of Article 50.

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Speaking at the 10th annual Trygve Lie Symposium on Fundamental Freedoms at IPI, Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende said that religious minorities are the “most vulnerable people in the world” and that it was impossible to “separate freedom of religion from other civil rights like the rights to privacy and assembly and expression.”

The title of this year’s symposium, co-sponsored by IPI and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and held on September 21, 2017, was “Promoting the Freedom of Religion or Belief,” and Mr. Brende noted that “collective religious hatred is not a natural phenomenon, it is man made.” Therefore, he argued, we have the power to end it, and “it is our moral obligation to work for a solution.”

Pointing out how widespread religious persecution is, IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen opened the meeting by noting that three quarters of the world’s population “still live in countries with high restrictions when it comes to freedom of religion or belief.”

Zeid bin Ra’ad Al-Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that religious systems have been “among the roots of human rights law and International Humanitarian Law” and that he was convinced that “religious leaders with their considerable influence over the minds of millions can be consequential human rights actors in the world today.”

He added that religious minorities must be “free to fully participate in all areas of society, though it must be clear that they cannot impose their beliefs on others.”

Retno Marsudi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia, noted that her country, the world’s largest Muslim nation, also was home to Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucianists and many other faiths. “Freedom of religion is in the DNA of Indonesia,” she said. “Tolerance is what holds us together as a nation.”

In a reference to the dangers of both Islamic fundamentalism and Islamophobia, she said, “Religious extremism has falsely used religion to justify their inhuman policies and they abuse the guarantee of freedom of expression promised by democracy.”

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the British Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the UN, said the key to tackling extremism was resisting intolerance. “You must be intolerant of intolerance,” he said. “If we nip it in the bud, that intolerance will not rear its ugly head as discrimination, and that will not turn into persecution, and persecution will not turn into human suffering.”

Mark Lattimer, Executive Director of Minority Rights Group International, warned against treating religious identity as something separate from a human right.

“When we speak about freedom of religion and belief, it is not just about freedom to worship,” he said. “Those are vital rights, but if you look at the face of religious rights, what you see is targeted persecution based on religious identity.”

He said that “the individual right to freedom of religion and belief, the collective persecution on account of identity, the mobilization of communities for political purposes all are different phenomena with different solutions, and we need to be careful about abandoning human rights solutions in favor of others.”

Ulrik Vestergaard Knudsen, Denmark’s Permanent Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, reported that his government raised the issue of religious freedom in international meetings “as much as possible” and at home was about to create the new post of ambassador for religious minorities.

Norwegian parliamentarian Abid Raja said that the three-year-old International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief, of which he is a member, now had representatives in more than 65 countries and was growing.

Several speakers referred to persisting instances of religious persecution, particularly the forced expulsion of the Rohingya Muslim minority from Myanmar. In his comment, Mr. Borge said, “The fact that we are using the words ‘genocide’ and “ethnic cleansing’ to describe events unfolding in 2017, 70 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a disgrace.”

IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen moderated the discussion.

The Council has closed the excessive deficit procedure for Greece. It confirmed that the country's deficit is now below 3% of GDP, the EU's reference value for government deficits. 

On 25 September 2017, the Council repealed its 2009 decision on the existence of an excessive deficit. 

"After many years of severe difficulties, Greece's finances are in much better shape. Today's decision is therefore welcome", said Toomas Tõniste, minister for finance of Estonia, which currently holds the Council presidency. "We are now in the last year of the financial support programme, and progress is being made to enable Greece to again raise money on the financial markets at sustainable rates." 

From a deficit of 15.1% of GDP reached in 2009, Greece's fiscal balance has steadily improved, turning into a 0.7% of GDP surplus in 2016. Although a small deficit is projected for 2017, the fiscal outlook is expected to improve again thereafter. Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio peaked at 179.0% in 2016 and is expected to decrease over the coming years. 

In the light of this, the Council found that Greece fulfils the conditions for closing the excessive deficit procedure. 

Greece will now be subject to the preventive arm of the EU's fiscal rulebook, the Stability and Growth Pact. Monitoring will continue until August 2018 under its macroeconomic adjustment programme, and post-programme monitoring will follow. The Greek authorities have committed to maintaining a primary surplus of 3.5% of GDP until 2022 and a fiscal trajectory after that that is consistent with EU fiscal requirements.

When the excessive deficit procedure was opened in April 2009, the Council called on Greece to correct its deficit by 2010. 

In February 2010 the Council stepped up the procedure, having found that Greece had not taken effective action. It set out a timetable of measures to be taken and extended the deadline for correction to 2012. 

However, the deterioration of its financial situation led the Greek government to request financial support. In May 2010 the Eurogroup agreed on the provision of bilateral loans from the other eurozone member states, in conjunction with assistance from the IMF. A loan facility agreement was signed and the deadline for correcting the deficit was extended to 2014. Since March 2012, eurozone support has taken the form of loans from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). 

In December 2012, the Council granted Greece a further two years to correct its deficit. It set a new deadline of 2016 and relaxed the annual adjustment path previously set. This followed an agreement between the Greek government and the 'troika' of international creditors (Commission, European Central Bank and IMF) on the disbursement of further tranches of financial assistance. Despite having taken effective action, Greece again faced a worsening economic scenario and a deteriorating outlook for its public finances. 

In July 2015 Greece requested further financial assistance, this time from the European Stability Mechanism that meanwhile had been established to take over from the EFSF. Agreement was reached on the provision of up to €86 billion in loans. A third macroeconomic adjustment programme started the following month and is scheduled to run until 20 August 2018. Its main aim is to secure for Greece a return to sustainable economic growth. And under the excessive deficit procedure, the Council issued a recommendation setting out a new timetable of measures to be taken. It extended the deadline for correcting the deficit by a further year, to 2017. 

Greece's general government balance has steadily improved since the peak reached in 2009. The deficit declined to 5.9% of GDP in 2015 (3.2% of GDP if the net impact of financial sector support is excluded) and turned into a 0.7% of GDP surplus in 2016. The deficit reduction was driven broadly equally by expenditure restraint and fiscal consolidation. 

Taking into account measures agreed under the third macroeconomic adjustment programme, the Commission in its spring 2017 economic forecast projects a 1.2% of GDP deficit for 2017. Based on a no-policy-change scenario, it projects a surplus of 0.6% of GDP for 2018. Measures outlined in Greece's 2018-21 fiscal strategy are expected to improve the fiscal outturn for 2018 and the medium term. Thus the deficit is set to remain below the 3% of GDP reference value over the forecast horizon. 

In the light of this data, the Council concluded that Greece's deficit has been corrected. 

The decision was taken without discussion at a meeting of the General Affairs Council.

La multiplication des micro-partis est un phénomène qui existe depuis plusieurs années, et précède généralement une grande élection. Mais à l'heure des crises d'existence des grands partis et des réflexions...

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

DIIS bidrager til fællesnordisk forskningsprojekt

Die Länder des Westbalkans kämpfen mit politischer Instabilität, schwachen Institutionen und Korruption. Einzig Kroatien etablierte sich bisher als Mitgliedsland der EU und der NATO und könnte ein Vorbild für andere Balkanstaaten sein.

A napokban, 2017. szeptember 14-én megérkezett Izraelbe a soron következő 2 F-35A Lighting II (Adir) típusú ötödik generációs vadászrepülőgép a Nevatim légibázisra.

Les tensions dans la péninsule coréenne sont venues rappeler, si besoin en était, que la zone Asie-Pacifique recèle d'une série de défis sécuritaires "durs". Revendications territoriales, menace de nucléarisation des États de la région, mise en exergue...

A Brazil Légierő tervek szerint 2017 októberében-novemberében veheti majd át az utolsó 2, az Embraer Defense and Security által modernizált F-5FM Tiger II típusú vadászrepülőgépeit – írja a Jane’s Defence Weekly.