European Union

5,000 Brussels citizens have used their right to petition to be heard in front of the regional parliament to demand that Brussels should be declared a “region outside CETA” and that a popular consultation be organised on the subject. In...

Left-wing politician and former Minister-President of Thuringia, leftist Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke), was elected to lead the former east German state of Thuringia in the third round of voting yesterday (4 March). His election brings an end to the state’s...

Two Iranian students in Hungary tested positive for the coronavirus, Orbán posted on his Facebook page.  While one of the students is studying at the Semmelweis medical school in Budapest and the other is studying in the country’s sixth-largest city,...

Hungary’s stance against illegal migration has become the generally accepted approach in Europe, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told the Visegrad Group summit in Prague. “It was us who announced a policy against Muslim migration” the PM added, referring to the...

Maybe it’s the coronavirus, maybe it’s the floods, maybe it’s the excitement around the Prime Minister’s engagement/child-to-be, but we seem to have largely given up talking about Brexit any more.

Sure, there’s debate if you want it, tucked away in the Westminster/Brussels bubble and deep in the inside sections of the paper, but it’s a small fraction of what it was before.

Partly this is about the churn of people that I’ve written about before, but equally it’s about the other stuff that clamours for our attention. Stockpiling for a virus is newer/more engaging than boring old stockpiling for a no-deal.

Rather than ascribe this to some masterplan on the part of Number 10 (or anyone else), largely it comes down to the concatenation of events that followed the December general election. Parliament faded to irrelevance, Labour disappeared to sort itself out, the cliff-edge was averted, the impossible was done.

So, sure it’s tough again, but nothing like before and we get out of that tight corner, so how about we focus on the bloke on the bus with the sniffle?

Importantly though, as much as this is the product of circumstance, it doesn’t mean no-one cares.

David Gauke wrote a thread about this at the weekend, which I responded to:

Have been turning this over all day. It makes sense, but only if you neglect where it leaves you.

1/ https://t.co/c5qTvmgKMZ

— Simon Usherwood (@Usherwood) February 29, 2020

Rather than type out again both views, I’d note that as much as the government might see a no-deal outcome from the current round as not that bad, they still have to demonstrate that through their actions.

Critically, as several tweeps responded to me, prepping for no-deal is actually not so different from prepping for the deal the UK is seeking. Most obviously, Northern Ireland needs an operational system in any case, because of the commitments in the Withdrawal Agreement.

Failure to secure infrastructure, personnel and procedures in time for any part of this coming arrangement merely heightens the costs to the UK and generates more pressure for subsequent action to resolve it.

Even if you can blame the EU for that, it doesn’t change the necessity of the EU’s role as a necessary counterparty to those talks on sorting out the mess.

The argument might be made that the EU would be so embarrassed by the failure of the process that it makes significant concessions to get out of the hole. Quite part from being hugely optimistic, it also neglects the legal constraints that the organisation operates under: the kind of concessions that you hear British politicians talk about are just the kind of concessions the EU is bound not to make. Rules play a much more fundamental part of the EU’s nature than they do in the UK, precisely because the former isn’t underpinned by an affective community that can weather such challenges.

But this is to get ahead of ourselves.

Today sees the end of the first round of formal negotiation talks between the two sides. There is a process in place for helping the two to try to find a mutual-acceptable outcome. Breakfast food choices aside, there has been no public spat at this stage.

Strikingly, compared with the Article 50 process, the level of public scrutiny is much less. No photos and analysis of How Many Notebooks Did You Bring To The First Meeting, no prominent briefing to friendly journalists.

That makes life somewhat easier for those involved: not having to provide a running commentary means both more time to talk with counterparts and less need to play to the gallery.

Whether that’s enough to move this through to a stable and productive conclusion remains to be seen.

The post Fade to meh appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Flybe, a British regional airline, has gone into bankruptcy citing coronavirus as one of the reasons for its demise. "All Flybe flights are cancelled. Please do not go to the airport as your Flybe flight will not be operating," the British civil aviation authority said Thursday. The firm's demise comes after British tour operator Thomas Cook went bust in September, with trade unions saying the government should have recused Flybe.

One of Britain's biggest airlines, Flybe, collapsed Thursday (5 March) with all its flights grounded, the company said, as the coronavirus epidemic takes a heavy toll on airlines around the world.

Two EU officials have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus - amid different efforts by EU institutions to halt the spread of the virus.

The EU's border agency Frontex says Greece may have to wait until next week before receiving any extra border guards.

Turkey has accused Greece of using live ammunition against migrants, killing one man, amid growing violence on the EU border.

"Nature doesn't bargain, and you cannot make deals with physics", activist Greta Thunberg, and a group of 30 youth environmentalists warned, after dubbing the unprecedented EU climate law 'a surrender' for ignoring a carbon budget.

The EU's reluctance to take in hundreds of thousands more refugees means the bloc's best option is to try to renew migration co-operation with Turkey - even if this leaves a bitter taste in its mouth.

Italy shut all schools and universities on Wednesday (4 March) in a bid to stop the deadly coronavirus from spreading, as Germany warned the outbreak had turned into a global pandemic.

Italy adopted on Wednesday new emergency measures to contain the spread of coronavirus, as the country registered over 3,000 cases and 107 deaths. All schools and universities will be closed until 15 March, Reuters reported. The minister for education, Lucia Azzolina, said that she wants to ensure "essential public service, albeit from a distance" to students. Italy, the most-affected country in the EU, followed by Germany, France and Spain.

German chancellor Angela Merkel told German conservative MPs on Tuesday she favoured the creation of safe zones in Idlib, northwest Syria, where Turkish forces and their rebel allies are facing off against the Syrian government backed by Russia, Reuters reports. The Dutch foreign minister went a step further and called in an official statement to "stop humanitarian catastrophe with a no-fly zone over Idlib".

After two rounds of voting in the state parliament, Bodo Ramelow (Linke/Gue) has been elected as the new minister-president of the eastern German state of Thüringen. The former minister-president, the liberal Thomas Kemmerich (FDP/Renew), was elected with the support of CDU, FDP and the far-right AfD, which created a political crisis in Germany and the resignation of CDU party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Ramelow will lead now a minority government.

Ukraine's parliament approved on Wednesday Denys Shmygal as the new prime minister, following the resignation of his predecessor Oleksiy Goncharuk after six months in the job after he was caught out criticising the president by a leaked recording, AFP reported. Before the vote, president Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped that "we will finally have a government for people". Shmygal was previously deputy prime minister and minister of regional development.

Facebook is considering redesigning the Libra cryptocurrency project so that the network also accepts cash issued by central banks, such as the dollar or the euro, in a possible attempt to please regulators, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. In 2019, the Libra Association project was funded by Facebook to create its cryptocurrency and virtual wallet. According to the report, the launch of Facebook's virtual wallet will now be postponed until autumn.

The former EU commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker told a court on Wednesday (4 March) that he had not authorised illegal wiretapping that forced him in 2013 to resign from his post as Prime Minister of Luxembourg.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg discussed EU plans to tackle the climate emergency with Parliament’s environment committee on Wednesday 4 March.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP