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VIDÉOS - Le ministre de la Cohésion des territoires est mis en cause par l'hebdomadaire, pour une décision prise, en 2011, par les Mutuelles de Bretagne qu'il dirigeait alors. Matignon a réagi, assurant que son «honnêteté n'est pas en cause».

The referendum to leave the European Union was, despite what some Leavers such as Boris Johnson say, fought and decided on immigration. The issue dominated the discussion and became the focus point of the campaign with the phrase ‘pulling up the drawbridge’ being constantly used.

Yet while the argument about migrants and immigrants crossing the channel was debated several times, the issue of the Irish border was largely ignored. With Article 50 triggered, the problem of creating a new border in Ireland has been brought into sharp focus.

The border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland was a key battleground during the troubles. It was infamous for the long queues, army checkpoints, and terrorist attacks until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement brokered a peace deal. Since the agreement, Ireland has operated the border without trouble. Brexit is about to undo years of hard fought peace and create numerous problems between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The British government and the EU have so far disagreed on nearly every aspect of the Brexit negotiations. Not returning to a hard boarder in Ireland is one of the few points they have found common ground. Yet despite the goodwill the practicality of the situation is raising many questions.

Several ideas have been banded about with Politico reporting that one ambitious idea is to create a virtual border where tariffs would be registered and paid online. While this would reduce the need to check paperwork it would be difficult to police without a customs check.

The other big issue would be immigration, the central topic of the referendum. The government doesn’t want Ireland to become a backdoor to the UK, yet it also doesn’t want to return to passport controls. The Irish Times stated that one solution that has been voiced is to create a hard border across the Irish Sea.

This would see border checkpoints appearing in ports such as Liverpool. While this would stop the flow of immigrants coming to mainland Britain it would turn Northern Ireland into a sort of neutral zone and create a number of legal problems. British citizens may also have to prove their citizenship to enter a part of the UK.

The cost of the border has yet to be measured. Reports show that prices are going to go up with the food industry taking a big hit. Currently the UK and Europe have the same food safety standards, yet once the UK leaves the EU these are likely to change as Britain opens its food market to the USA. Some experts have pointed to the trade agreement between Sweden and Norway as a possible example of how a trade route could continue unimpeded despite a EU border. However, Norway is part of the EEA and follows EU custom laws, something the British government has ruled out.

Northern Ireland isn’t the only border problem that Brexit has caused.

UK political experts believe that the relationship Gibraltar has with the EU will become a highly contested part of the negotiations. Like Northern Ireland, the border that will separate Gibraltar from the EU will cause numerous legal and trade problems.

The future of Ireland now lies in the hands of the negotiators. There will be no easy answer. Like the rest of Britain, Ireland can only wait and hope that they don’t return to the past.

The post Brexit and the Irish Border appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump join King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, and the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, to participate in the inaugural opening of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology. (Official White House Photo / Shealah Craighead)

Donald Trump left Saudi Arabia on Monday still basking in the glow of the reception the House of Saud had put on for him. It’s easy to see why: from the moment he arrived in Riyadh, Trump was ushered past billboards plastered with his own tweets to the Ritz-Carlton, where an image of his face was projected onto the facade. Over the course of two days, the Saudis astutely sized up Trump and gave him a welcome tailor-made to appeal to his ego and self-perception.

The outcome was an unbridled success for the Gulf monarchy, not least because Trump himself came away congratulating himself on a diplomatic success. Considering the future president was taking to Twitter to castigate both Saudi Arabia the US-Saudi partnership less than three years ago, $110 billion in arms sales and other trade deals represent a stunning about-face for both sides.

Even more importantly for his hosts, Trump fully embraced the shared mistrust of Riyadh’s arch-rival Iran. In his Sunday speech, he accused Tehran (not without reason) of sponsoring sectarian violence across the region. Engaged in hybrid struggles against Iranian proxies in both Syria and Yemen, the Saudis were thrilled to have the US president so forcefully evince their own view of the region’s geopolitics. For all the fears prompted among the Saudi elites by Trump’s campaign rhetoric, his administration has turned out to be a welcome departure from Obama’s attempts to mend ties with Iran.

The glowing show of friendship evidently served its purpose, but the glamor also served to mask a shift in Saudi Arabia’s strategic priorities. Despite the symbolism of the “glowing orb” and the ceremony where Saudi Arabia’s King Salman awarded Trump his very own medal of honor, both Salman and his potential successors taken the advice offered by Lebanese professor Fawaz A. Gerges. Speaking a day before Trump arrived in Riyadh, Gerges said he hoped “that the Arab leaders, with all modesty, will not put most of their eggs in this basket. The basket of Donald Trump is full of holes.”

In fairness to Donald’s basket full of holes, that decision was taken well before he took office. With President Obama seen in both capitals as a begrudging ally, Riyadh began hedging its bets on American support years ago. The Kingdom has been looking to diversify both its native defense industries and its economic partnerships to wean itself off decades of dependence on the US. That kind of diplomatic diversification might have been unthinkable a decade ago, when ties between the House of Saud and the Bush family were so close whole books were written about them, but times have changed on both sides.

Like the rest of the world, the Saudis see much of their own future in East Asia. In March, Salman took on a major tour of Asia and visited Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan before wrapping up his trip in China. These weren’t just courtesy visits, either. Japan is a major buyer of Saudi oil, and Softbank is a joint partner in the Saudi public investment fund that just hit the threshold of $93 billion in capital. In China, Xi Jinping joined Salman to sign $65 billion worth of trade deals covering energy, culture, education, and technology, but most critically defense.

At the same time, the Saudis have been busy shoring up other existing alliances. In April, it was Theresa May’s turn to come to Riyadh. Like the Saudis, May herself is in the market for new friends and economic openings. The British prime minister arrived on a key leg of her overseas visit after triggering Article 50, pushing the country’s largest Middle Eastern trading partner to assist her in expanding UK-Saudi relations while Brexit throws the UK’s role in the global economy into doubt.

Setting the stage for Trump a few weeks later, May offered her hosts exactly what they were looking for. She spoke highly of the government’s Vision 2030 plan to pursue wholesale privatization, and insisted London would be the perfect place to list the mother of all privatizations: the initial public offering of Saudi Aramco. The City of London is going to great lengths to keep itself in the running for the Aramco listing. Within the framework of the wider Gulf Cooperation Council, Britain’s closest Arab allies have met her halfway. Perhaps even further than halfway, since the Gulf states are putting together their own signature-ready agreement for May’s government to sign.

Ironically, this willingness to branch out is exactly what Trump advocated on the campaign trail. Trump the candidate constantly put all US partners, including NATO and the Gulf states, on notice that Washington would no longer be in the business of writing blank checks for friends without expecting anything in return. Of course, Trump’s brand of “fair” international relationships mostly consists of other countries paying what amounts to protection money for the privilege of hosting the US military or benefiting from security guarantees. The new president has never really troubled himself with the nuances of why these strategic partnerships are valuable or important to US foreign policy. Regardless, Saudi Arabi’s ability to call on multiple partners would represent a sea change in the US-Saudi partnership.

Saudi Arabia has benefited enormously from American assistance and protection, but that crutch impedes sound reasoning on the Saudi side and complicates life for US presidents who want to revisit the orthodoxy of antagonizing Iran. The Saudis might be thankful to see an American president share their desire to weaken a threat, but the shift in the sands is unmistakable. Arms for oil is no longer enough to justify the dynamics of the relationship. Besides, with someone as erratic as Donald Trump in the White House, the Saudis are right to wonder how long even that will last.

The post Donald Trump’s Arabian Nights appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2017 - EP

Two peacekeepers of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) were killed and another injured on Tuesday morning in an ambush in the northern Kidal region.

Un article paru mercredi dernier sur 444.hu invite ses lecteurs à soutenir ce site d’information. Sans ce soutien, 444.hu ne mettra sans doute pas la clé sous la porte demain, mais le fait que l’équipe de Péter Uj choisisse cette voie montre bien à quel point il est très difficile de maintenir à flot des médias qui ne soient pas inféodés au gouvernement. Tribune publiée le 19 mai 2017 dans Kettős Mérce. Traduite du hongrois par Ludovic Lepeltier-Kutasi.

Alors que le dirigeant de PestiSrácok a déclaré dans un entretien que son site vit à 80% « d’annonces » publiques, la situation des médias indépendants qui se partagent le marché publicitaire non contrôlé par le Fidesz est quant à elle de plus en plus difficile. Le gouvernement cherche actuellement à augmenter de 2,2% l’imposition des entreprises publicitaires alors que la marge qu’elles se font sur le marché des médias représente 2 à 3% de leurs bénéfices. Cela signifie que l’augmentation de la taxe sur les publicités annihilerait leurs recettes dans le secteur de la presse.

Il faut également prendre en compte la déclaration de guerre adressée aux médias indépendants depuis maintenant plusieurs mois. L’accusation de collusion entre 444.hu et George Soros, l’achat d’Index par Lajos Simicska ou encore l’opprobre continu jeté sur 24.hu et HVG n’exercent pas seulement une pression psychologique sur les lecteurs et les journalistes, mais également sur les annonceurs. Ces agressions sont des signaux envoyés aux entreprises privées, afin de leur montrer chez qui il ne faut pas annoncer sous peine d’être exposé à quelques désagréments ou bien se voir bloquer l’accès aux commandes publiques.

Ces attaques n’atteignent bien évidemment pas Index ou RTL Klub, dans la mesure où ceux-ci restent indispensables pour relayer une campagne médiatique non mue par des considérations politiques. Les annonceurs n’ont en revanche pas tant besoin que ça des plus petits sites à l’instar de 444.hu (bien sûr, avec un lectorat jeune, urbain et bénéficiant de revenus élevés, 444.hu parvient quand même à en intéresser beaucoup d’entre eux).

Restons honnêtes. La pression politique exercée sur les annonceurs ne date pas de 2010 et il ne faut pas remonter à très loin pour avoir entendu des témoignages comme quoi des annonceurs avaient tenté, avec ou sans succès, de faire disparaître des sujets qui auraient nuit à leurs affaires, à leurs profits ou à leur crédibilité. La situation actuelle reste néanmoins inédite, dans la mesure où le pouvoir – le plus puissant depuis la fin du communisme – essaye de compliquer, voire faire taire (pensons simplement à Origo et Népszabadság), les médias qui ne lui plaisent pas, en pratiquant une gigantesque OPA du parti gouvernemental sur le marché de la presse, en faisant peur à leurs annonceurs, voire en proférant à leur encontre des menaces concrètes.

L’agression à l’encontre des médias libres et indépendants de toute pression partisane, politique et économique a franchi un nouveau seuil, ce qui justifie que nous, citoyens, franchissions aussi une nouvelle étape dans notre soutien aux institutions de la presse libre.

Bien sûr, la situation inconfortable des rédactions n’est pas seulement le fait de la pression du gouvernement et des annonceurs, mais relève également d’une tendance globale liée à l’accroissement du monopole des entreprises de services technologiques qui aspirent annonceurs et contenus, à l’instar de Google et Facebook qui captent de plus en plus de revenus publicitaires, lesquels parviennent de moins en moins aux sociétés de presse qui produisent l’information.

Le fait que 444.hu ait commencé à rassembler des soutiens ne montre pas uniquement l’ampleur alarmante de la menace ainsi que la difficulté de la conjoncture globale dans laquelle se retrouvent les entreprises de presse, cela montre aussi le fait qu’il existe des voies par lesquelles ces médias peuvent se défendre. Cela fait quatre ans pour Átlátszó.hu, deux ans pour Direkt36 et nous, que nous avons choisi de solliciter notre lectorat pour financer en grande partie (dans notre cas à 100%) la pérennité de nos titres.

Si demain, en dépit de leurs orientations et opinions politiques, 10000 citoyens choisissaient de contribuer au fonctionnement des titres de presse, ces derniers n’auraient pas besoin de recourir au soutien des oligarques, des partis et de l’État. Et ils pourraient faire leur travail à partir de leurs seules forces.

Si au moins 10000 personnes étaient prêtes à payer chaque mois pour financer au moins ces quatre médias, alors la situation de la presse indépendante se renforcerait considérablement en Hongrie.

Pour ma part, je m’y suis déjà mis, ce qui fait qu’il n’y a désormais besoin plus que de 9999 contributeurs. J’ai programmé un virement de 1000 forint par mois pour 444.hu, Direkt36 et Átlátszó. Soutenez-les, soutenez-nous, de façon à ce que les médias hongrois ne dépendent pas du parti au pouvoir, mais de vous !

En meeting avec François Baroin, le président de la région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes a tiré à boulets rouges contre les ministres LR.

Barkhane vendredi, Sentinelle samedi, Percy lundi, aujourd'hui, c'était au tour du personnel du
Plus d'infos »

ÄNDERUNGSANTRÄGE 27 - 152 - Entwurf einer Stellungnahme Eine Unionsregelung für die Kontrolle der Ausfuhr, der Verbringung, der Vermittlung, der technischen Unterstützung und der Durchfuhr betreffend Güter mit doppeltem Verwendungszweck (Neufassung)
Ausschuss für auswärtige Angelegenheiten

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2017 - EP

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2017 - EP

Le point de vue de Pascal Boniface, directeur de l’IRIS.

Des chefs d'États, des délégations de ministres des Finances et des gouverneurs de banques centrales se sont réunis à Ahmedabad, en Inde, pour assister à la conférence annuelle de la BAD, qui se tient du 23 au 25 mai. Elle met l'accent sur l'agriculture et la coopération entre l'Afrique et l'Asie. Compte-rendu.

Cet article Sécurité alimentaire, coopération Asie-Afrique… Ce qui s’est dit lors de la réunion annuelle de la BAD en Inde est apparu en premier sur JeuneAfrique.com.