Agrégateur de flux

La moitié du Sénat français, soit 170 sièges, est renouvelée ce dimanche pour une durée de six ans, lors d'élections au suffrage indirect. Un total de 45 circonscriptions sont concernées. Quelque 79 000 "grands électeurs" sont appelés à voter.

La Yougoslavie a été à l'origine de la création du Mouvement des non-alignés à l'époque de la Guerre froide. Un projet politique solidaire et fraternel, dont les idéaux pacifistes et décoloniaux sont plus que jamais d'actualité. La réalisatrice serbe Mila Turajlić en raconte les débuts dans un nouveau documentaire. Entretien.

- Articles / Bosnie-Herzégovine, Courrier des Balkans, Croatie, Kosovo, Macédoine du Nord, Monténégro, Serbie, Slovénie, Histoire, Culture et éducation, Balkans monde arabe

La Yougoslavie a été à l'origine de la création du Mouvement des non-alignés à l'époque de la Guerre froide. Un projet politique solidaire et fraternel, dont les idéaux pacifistes et décoloniaux sont plus que jamais d'actualité. La réalisatrice serbe Mila Turajlić en raconte les débuts dans un nouveau documentaire. Entretien.

- Articles / Bosnie-Herzégovine, Courrier des Balkans, Croatie, Kosovo, Macédoine du Nord, Monténégro, Serbie, Slovénie, Histoire, Culture et éducation, Balkans monde arabe

La Yougoslavie a été à l'origine de la création du Mouvement des non-alignés à l'époque de la Guerre froide. Un projet politique solidaire et fraternel, dont les idéaux pacifistes et décoloniaux sont plus que jamais d'actualité. La réalisatrice serbe Mila Turajlić en raconte les débuts dans un nouveau documentaire. Entretien.

- Articles / Bosnie-Herzégovine, Courrier des Balkans, Croatie, Kosovo, Macédoine du Nord, Monténégro, Serbie, Slovénie, Histoire, Culture et éducation, Balkans monde arabe

La Yougoslavie a été à l'origine de la création du Mouvement des non-alignés à l'époque de la Guerre froide. Un projet politique solidaire et fraternel, dont les idéaux pacifistes et décoloniaux sont plus que jamais d'actualité. La réalisatrice serbe Mila Turajlić en raconte les débuts dans un nouveau documentaire. Entretien.

- Articles / Bosnie-Herzégovine, Courrier des Balkans, Croatie, Kosovo, Macédoine du Nord, Monténégro, Serbie, Slovénie, Histoire, Culture et éducation, Balkans monde arabe

La Yougoslavie a été à l'origine de la création du Mouvement des non-alignés à l'époque de la Guerre froide. Un projet politique solidaire et fraternel, dont les idéaux pacifistes et décoloniaux sont plus que jamais d'actualité. La réalisatrice serbe Mila Turajlić en raconte les débuts dans un nouveau documentaire. Entretien.

- Articles / Bosnie-Herzégovine, Courrier des Balkans, Croatie, Kosovo, Macédoine du Nord, Monténégro, Serbie, Slovénie, Histoire, Culture et éducation

La Yougoslavie a été à l'origine de la création du Mouvement des non-alignés à l'époque de la Guerre froide. Un projet politique solidaire et fraternel, dont les idéaux pacifistes et décoloniaux sont plus que jamais d'actualité. La réalisatrice serbe Mila Turajlić en raconte les débuts dans un nouveau documentaire. Entretien.

- Articles / Bosnie-Herzégovine, Courrier des Balkans, Croatie, Kosovo, Macédoine du Nord, Monténégro, Serbie, Slovénie, Histoire, Culture et éducation

La Yougoslavie a été à l'origine de la création du Mouvement des non-alignés à l'époque de la Guerre froide. Un projet politique solidaire et fraternel, dont les idéaux pacifistes et décoloniaux sont plus que jamais d'actualité. La réalisatrice serbe Mila Turajlić en raconte les débuts dans un nouveau documentaire. Entretien.

- Articles / Bosnie-Herzégovine, Courrier des Balkans, Croatie, Kosovo, Macédoine du Nord, Monténégro, Serbie, Slovénie, Histoire, Culture et éducation

La Yougoslavie a été à l'origine de la création du Mouvement des non-alignés à l'époque de la Guerre froide. Un projet politique solidaire et fraternel, dont les idéaux pacifistes et décoloniaux sont plus que jamais d'actualité. La réalisatrice serbe Mila Turajlić en raconte les débuts dans un nouveau documentaire. Entretien.

- Articles / Bosnie-Herzégovine, Courrier des Balkans, Croatie, Kosovo, Macédoine du Nord, Monténégro, Serbie, Slovénie, Histoire, Culture et éducation

La Yougoslavie a été à l'origine de la création du Mouvement des non-alignés à l'époque de la Guerre froide. Un projet politique solidaire et fraternel, dont les idéaux pacifistes et décoloniaux sont plus que jamais d'actualité. La réalisatrice serbe Mila Turajlić en raconte les débuts dans un nouveau documentaire. Entretien.

- Articles / Bosnie-Herzégovine, Courrier des Balkans, Croatie, Kosovo, Macédoine du Nord, Monténégro, Serbie, Slovénie, Histoire, Culture et éducation

La Yougoslavie a été à l'origine de la création du Mouvement des non-alignés à l'époque de la Guerre froide. Un projet politique solidaire et fraternel, dont les idéaux pacifistes et décoloniaux sont plus que jamais d'actualité. La réalisatrice serbe Mila Turajlić en raconte les débuts dans un nouveau documentaire. Entretien.

- Articles / Bosnie-Herzégovine, Courrier des Balkans, Croatie, Kosovo, Macédoine du Nord, Monténégro, Serbie, Slovénie, Histoire, Culture et éducation

Still not very far away

We’re at a bit of a junction in EU-UK relations right now.

Having bumped back from the questions of good faith with February’s Windsor Framework, the two sides got to work on the next obvious target: Horizon membership.

Seven months later – and with enough discretion that I could record a podcast saying it wasn’t coming soon, two days before it came – we got a deal.

And now?

Well, now we appear to have slipped into a gap of some kind.

Certainly, there are things that need attention right now, like car batteries, but despite pressure on both sides to rework tariff schedules, the Commission seems not to want to play ball. On the UK side, joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) Convention also looks a bit distant.

Outside the narrow confines of the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA), the UK is also still working out how it handles the European Political Community (EPC) summit it’s supposed to host next summer (dates and location still TBC).

In short, there’s not much sign of things going on. Which is either because those things that are going on are being kept very far from the limelight, or because there aren’t things going on.

To be clear, there is a baseline of on-going contact and interaction, to service the various agreements, but that’s rather different from substantive work on opening out new areas.

If we assume that an absence of public comment is the best marker of in-camera activity, then Breton’s statement on car batteries looks like a signifier of inactivity, or impasse. And that’s for the most obvious next step in working together.

Which takes us back round to my title: are we in a holding pattern right now, and if so, what kind of holding pattern is it?

As I’ve argued before, Sunak has approached EU relations through a strong lens of his domestic political situation. Windsor made sense as a closing-off of an obvious problem (plus a clear differentiation from his predecessor but one), and Horizon was self-contained enough to be worth the effort, but getting into bigger resets looks like a hiding to nothing, either with his backbench or with voters that increasingly don’t rate the matter as that important.

So the British government is arguably in a fire-fighting mode for the rest of this administration.

But what about the EU?

Domestic factors obviously apply here too. We’re on the run-in to European elections next spring – witness Von Der Leyen’s State of the EU speech last week, with all its pitch – which means lots of people changing jobs, even if the underlying political balance doesn’t move very much.

Add to that all the other things the EU is concerned with, from rule of law to enlargement to post-Covid reconstruction, and it might be understandable if attention is elsewhere than the UK.

But at the same time, the Union has held a long-term position of deepening ties with its neighbourhood, especially with those bits of it that aren’t actively antagonistic. That’s an uneven track, but as a rule of thumb, there’s a clear preference to doing more together.

Perhaps the current hiatus is a temporary thing, a product of everyone waiting to clear the coming election year on both sides, so that everyone can pick up in late 2024 with a clearer sense of what’s what.

However, Windsor shouldn’t leave us thinking that we’re back to regular business. The scars of the Internal Market Bill and the Retained EU Law Bill and the noises off about ECHR membership are still there and still fresh in the minds of EU policymakers.

Even if there is a change of party in London next year, that will still leave issues.

Firstly, Labour have put so many fences around policy that there might not be scope for doing much. With dynamic alignment apparently also off the table, some in Brussels might be forgiven for thinking that a full and frank discussion in the UK of trade-offs might not be about to happen.

Secondly, even if Labour are willing to conclude new deals, then at least half an eye will be on the trajectory of the Conservatives in opposition. With the possible sole exception of Michael Heseltine, the general view is that the party will drift right under new leadership, given its membership. While that might make a second Labour term more likely, the past seven years will give enough pause for thought about What Britain’s Like. Is there risk in setting up more entanglements with Labour, if a returning Tory government is going to tear things up again?

Such views are understandable, but also come with the risk of setting up a new stasis.

As a case in point, look to Switzerland.

Here we have a much closer relationship, but one with significant issues, both political and institutional. Both sides bump along, sometimes making progress, but often not: we’re nearing a decade of to-and-fro on an institutional accord that still has no clear endpoint, even if the Swiss are moving once again to get things going.

In both the Swiss and the British case, the EU has arrangements that function acceptably, even if other opportunities are left on the table, so if there are more pressing issues to work on, why not just leave things as they are, on a semi-permanent basis?

The EU’s built up a lot of experience and expertise in handling crises (you can read about this is in a couple of volumes (here and here) that I’ve contributed to), but we’re not in a crisis any more.

Regular governance doesn’t have the glamour of an emergency situation, but it still requires attention and effort. Not least because several of the crises the EU has faced have come out of the failings of that regular governance: Brexit is a case in point.

As a recovering historical institutionalist, I’ll end by noting that institutions are sticky: the arrangement you put in place in a hurry because you had to often end up sticking around for a very long time, even when they don’t really work so well. Again, the Swiss model is a good example.

Whether the UK is now locked into the TCA model remains to be seen, but the next year will give us a pretty good idea.

The post Pausing, stalling or stuck? Thinking about the next steps of the EU-UK relationship appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Tous les records sont en train de tomber au championnat international de position couchée de Plužine, dans le nord du Monténégro. Les quatre derniers concurrents sont allongés depuis 34 jours. Cette épreuve a vu le jour en 2001, pour tourner en dérision le stéréotype qui prétend que les Monténégrins seraient paresseux.

- Le fil de l'Info / Sports, Culture et éducation, Monténégro, Courrier des Balkans

Les résultats des élections sénatoriales ont confirmé dimanche la stabilité du Sénat, dominé par la droite, et les difficultés pour Renaissance, dans un scrutin marqué par le retour du RN au Palais du Luxembourg, avec trois élus. 

Boeing relies on Fortnite technology to upgrade the B-52. A popular 3D computer graphics game engine, developed by Epic Games and first showcased in 1998, is helping Boeing in the upgrade of the iconic Stratofortress [...]

The post Fortnite’s Game Engine Is Helping Boeing Upgrading The B-52 appeared first on The Aviationist.

Mistaken beliefs in foreign affairs, including ones that are widely held and drive major policies, can persist for a long time. Contrary events sometimes force a re-evaluation of such beliefs, of course, but that depends on the nature and salience of the events. Dramatic, attention-grabbing happenings can suddenly overturn whole ways of thinking, such as how the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor turned many isolationists into internationalists overnight.

Developments that are less dramatic, less sudden, and less salient are unlikely to have much effect on popular beliefs even if their probative value is just as great as some of the more dramatic ones. They simply do not get enough public and political attention to change minds.

This is especially true of parts of the evidentiary record that involve things that do not happen, even though non-events can disprove some beliefs as much as things that do happen. Most people do not have the focus of Sherlock Holmes to draw appropriate conclusions from dogs that do not bark.

So it is with the role of Afghanistan in international terrorism. Americans have had etched in their minds—as a result of the 9/11 attack, one of those highly salient, attitude-changing events—the belief that the status and political future of Afghanistan is a major determinant of whether more Americans will fall victim to terrorism. That belief sustained support for what became America’s longest war, which cost more than $2 trillion and the lives of more than 6,000 Americans, both military and civilian.

Most of whatever that two-decade-long U.S. effort accomplished was accomplished in the first few weeks, with the rousting of the group that perpetrated 9/11 and the ousting from power of the Taliban regime that had been its host. What followed was a long, mission-creeping effort at nationbuilding, the fecklessness of which was demonstrated by the rapidity with which what was built collapsed in August 2021.

Over time, other issues were raised as reasons to continue a fight against a return of the Taliban to power—such as the group’s medieval attitudes regarding the role of women. But terrorism was the issue that, more than any other, sustained support for an ultimately unsuccessful war. The logic was that we needed to fight the bad guys over there so we do not have to fight them at home.

Based on that thought, much of the criticism when Joe Biden’s administration finally pulled the plug on the war in 2021 centered on terrorism. Nathan Sales, who was the State Department counterterrorism coordinator in the Trump administration, declared that the terrorism risk to the United States was going to be “dramatically worse” because “it is virtually certain that Al Qaeda will reestablish a safe haven in Afghanistan and use it to plot terrorism against the United States and others.’’ Republican critics charged that the withdrawal was turning Afghanistan into a “hotbed of terrorists.”

Partisan criticism then was as contrived as such criticism usually is, and in this case, conveniently overlooked that Biden was implementing a withdrawal agreement that the Trump administration had negotiated. But the criticism resonated with many Americans, beyond party affiliation. Polling at the time showed that the great majority of Americans believed that Taliban control of Afghanistan posed a security threat to the United States, with nearly half of those polled believing it to be a “major” threat.

Such a belief had two principal components. The first was that having a geographic safe haven similar to what the Al Qaeda leadership once had is a critical component of whether a group poses a significant terrorist threat. The second was that Afghanistan has a special status as a terrorist haven above all others.

Both of those components are false. As I wrote at the time of the withdrawal:

Of all the factors affecting the ability and willingness of any group to attack the United States, having a place to set up camp in a land thousands of miles away is one of the less important ones. The 9/11 operation itself is an example, having been prepared at least as much in apartments in Hamburg, resorts in Spain, flight schools in the United States, and cyberspace as it was in Afghanistan.

Moreover, I continued, “To the extent that an overseas physical safe haven matters at all, there is nothing unique about Afghanistan. If a group needs some unstable country for a place to pitch its tent, there are numerous other options,” with the closest calls in post-9/11 anti-U.S. terrorism originating in other countries such as Yemen.

I further explained why, considering the Taliban’s history and objectives, a re-establishment of anything like their previous arrangement with Al Qaeda was unlikely. The Taliban’s earlier hosting of Al Qaeda came amid an Afghan civil war in which the Taliban were dependent on what Osama bin Laden’s group could contribute to the fight—a circumstance no longer existent as of 2021. The Taliban is one of the most insular ruling groups in the world, with no interest in international terrorism. The biggest setback the Taliban ever suffered—its ouster from power when the U.S. military intervened in late 2001—was a direct result of a terrorist attack by a group with a presence in Afghanistan. Now back in power, the Taliban have every reason to combat—not to condone—anything that looks like an international terrorist operation brewing on Afghan soil.

More than two years later, it is the scenario I described, not the alarmist one pitched by critics of the U.S. withdrawal, that has turned out to be true. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius recently addressed this subject with a report, partly based on official sources, that describes how the Taliban regime has become a counterterrorism partner “as a matter of self-interest for the mullahs.” Ignatius quotes the head of the National Counterterrorism Center as stating that Al Qaeda “is at its historical nadir in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and its revival is unlikely,” with the group’s ability to threaten the United States from Afghanistan “at its lowest point” since the group moved there in 1998.

Ignatius describes how the Taliban have not only “suppressed any foreign operations” of the small, aging remnants of Al Qaeda in the country but also conducted “a brutal but effective campaign” against the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan, also known as ISIS-K. In the words of former National Counterterrorism Center director Michael Leiter, “We’re lucky, our interest and the Taliban’s interest align” as far as counterterrorism is concerned.

If the alternative, alarmist scenario about terrorism and Afghanistan had come to pass—especially if punctuated by an Afghanistan-originated terrorist attack against an American target—the public and political attention would have been great, no doubt accompanied by “I told you so” declarations from those who in 2021 were talking about Afghanistan becoming a hotbed of terrorists and about the supposed certainty of Al Qaeda mounting anti-U.S. operations from that country.

But the actual situation, offering no single dramatic event, has gone largely unnoticed. As Ignatius aptly puts it, “The villains just seem to have slipped off into irrelevance, with people paying little attention to their apparent demise…The calamitous story appears to be over, but we missed the ending.”

Thus, mistaken beliefs about Afghanistan and terrorism will persist. Those who badly misanalyzed the situation as of August 2021 are not forced to admit their mistakes, and their mistaken beliefs will continue to color much discussion about policy toward Afghanistan today and about how to think of the U.S. withdrawal two years ago. The denouement of the Ashraf Ghani regime at that time exhibited a fragility that would have made messy any withdrawal, however carefully managed. The plug should have been pulled much earlier.

The mistaken beliefs also will infect discussion about counterterrorist policy generally, which is unfortunate in that international terrorist threats to U.S. interests certainly continue.

Paul R. Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. His most recent book is Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy. He is also a contributing editor for this publication.

Image: Shutterstock.

In the race for control over the world’s energy market, China has set its sights on an unlikely target. Vast discoveries of offshore oil deposits in Guyana have turned the country of barely 800,000 into a global treasure. Given China’s current dominance in the region, the United States would be wise to combat the spread of authoritarian corruption by collaborating with the Guyanese government and investing in the region’s economic development.

Since 2015, a consortium of companies, including ExxonMobil and Hess, began to finance large energy projects that seek to tap into a projected 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil in Guyana. The former British colony’s economy is projected to grow by 23 percent in 2023 thanks to the oil boom and companies like ExxonMobil, which are developing most of the oil platforms.

To get in on this explosive growth, both foreign companies and governments—including China—have stepped up to provide loans for major infrastructure projects. Washington cannot allow China to secure another oil-rich ally in the region by buying up strategic assets in the country. Existing U.S. engagement in Guyana is minimal outside of public health programs. To combat China’s subversive influence, we must work together with established energy companies in the region to build ties with the Guyanese government.

Chinese investment in Guyana stands to yield major dividends for Beijing. China Railway Group, a state-controlled company, is currently building and funding the Amaila Falls hydroelectric plant, expected to produce 1,047 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity. China has also taken the lead in funding bridges, roads, and projects in Guyana’s interior to bolster its energy infrastructure. This is the largest roadblock to its economic development, but with Chinese help, it won’t be for long. Multiple Chinese state-owned enterprises have received contracts in the coastal capital of Georgetown to build a new harbor and expand the Cheddi Jagan International Airport. The Guyanese government is even working with Huawei on a smart cities surveillance plan.

It’s no wonder that Guyana’s politicians support Chinese expansionist projects in their country. Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali expressed support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Global Development Initiative (GDI), as well as for greater collaboration in the mining, energy, and manufacturing sectors.

However, working with China involves hidden costs in the form of mounting foreign debt for Guyana. Recognizing this, the country’s former Auditor General––Anand Goolsarran––cautioned against accumulating too much debt with China due to the high cost of the harbor and airport projects.

These fears are well-founded: next door in Suriname, a Chinese state bank seized funds when the country could not keep up with debt payments. Opaque clauses and additional interest rates have caused some countries, most notably Sri Lanka, to be unable to pay back Chinese loans, having to exchange crucial strategic or economic assets for debt forgiveness.

While China, Venezuela, and Russia are already deeply involved in Guyana, U.S. engagement is almost nonexistent outside private energy companies. Even worse, the projects that American companies have invested in are mired in geo-political conflict. ExxonMobil just announced its sixth Guyanese project, worth $12.9 billion and projected to produce 250,000 barrels of oil per day. Yet the country’s hundred-year-old dispute with Venezuela threatens to undermine the project.

Though Venezuela has claimed more than 62,000 square miles of Guyanese territory since the nineteenth century, the Maduro regime has recently reignited these claims, which affect thirty of Exxon Mobil’s oil wells. Due to a collapse in oil production from Maduro’s socialist policies, Venezuela needs an economic lifeline to uplift its economy in the face of U.S. sanctions for human rights abuses. Maduro is visiting China this month to try and win economic support; Russia has already provided Caracas with security and economic aid, along with joint military exercises.

Greater collaboration between China, Russia, and Venezuela poses a direct threat to the United States. China has made its intentions clear by sponsoring an intelligence base in Cuba, one of Venezuela’s closest historical allies. Russia has repeatedly helped shore up Venezuela’s regime as well as Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua. If Venezuela were to capitalize on Guyana’s oil boom, then the Russian-backed regime of Maduro could encourage greater drug trafficking in the region, to the detriment of the United States.

The Venezuelan regime already allows cocaine growers and traffickers to operate within the country with impunity. Allowing Venezuela to access Guyanese oil profits via a Chinese state-owned bank or through collaborations with Chinese companies regarding economic development in Guyana would create a strong, anti-American front in South America.

To counter this authoritarian dominance, the U.S. government must build stronger ties with Guyana by ensuring that U.S. energy companies invest the profits gained from this oil boom into the nation’s economy, public education, and standard of living. In this way, the United States can keep Guyanese profits from getting tied up in Chinese debt schemes and ensure that they are instead used to improve the standard of living in Guyana. Championing anti-corruption and closer collaboration with Guyana’s government will benefit both Guyana’s future and America’s diplomatic and security interests.

Roy Mathews is a Writer for Young Voices. He is a graduate of Bates College and a 2023 Publius Fellow at The Claremont Institute. He has been published in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Law & Liberty.

Image: Shutterstock.

In June, the European Union issued its first-ever European Economic Security Strategy, and this week, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen delivered a powerful State of the Union address. Simply put, the world’s largest trading bloc has a new economic compass and has charted an ambitious new course.  

Considering these developments, it’s hard to fathom that just over two-and-a-half years ago, the EU was on the precipice of launching into its EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment. After seven years of negotiations, and having been championed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the agreement was wisely frozen by the European Parliament. After an examination of the new economic security strategy and the detailed points in von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech, it is clear the EU is on a very different course.

In our geopolitical world, nothing is static. With the EU being well known for its bureaucracy and deliberate methods for administering the business of the union, it is interesting how fast the EU has responded to a plethora of new challenges. The thematics behind both the security strategy and the State of the Union speech are complimentary and outline a pragmatic view of the EU’s required responses to today’s economic and geopolitical challenges. The State of the Union address was notably short on diplomatic ambiguity and remarkably high on pragmatism.

Perhaps more than any other event, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been an awakening for the EU. Efforts to wish away the inconvenient truth of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and half-hearted sanctions only encouraged the bully in Vladimir Putin. The ominous clouds of war preceding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were equally dismissed with the desperate hope that it would be a bluff designed to gain some type of concessions. At the same time, China’s role in supporting Russia was recognized for what it was—a threat to the world order, and specifically to the EU. The state of denial is now over. An indisputable change in the global order has been accepted, demanding the EU navigate a new and very different course.

In a changing global economy, the EU’s focus on strengthening competitiveness is inherently related to economic security. Yet to be competitive, it is essential that de-risking be part of the formula. Ensuring resilience across all supply chains to achieve greater diversity in types and sources of critical needs will be a foundational element for moving forward. Promoting technological supremacy while seeking to maintain open markets will not be easy. As a result, a new initiative will be led by former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi to make Europe competitive globally.

The weight of the European market in the global economy has shrunk in the last twenty years from 20 percent in 2001 to 14.5 percent in 2023, while the Chinese economy has grown from 7 percent to 19 percent. Boosting competitiveness is key as the EU economy is forecasted to grow less than 1 percent in 2023, compared to almost 4 percent last year. As von der Leyen acknowledged, there is a critical need for policy changes to improve the ease of doing business for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The true backbone of the European economy, SMEs make up more than 99 percent of businesses and employ around 100 million people.

Tacking the issue of competitiveness will require actions to address the skills shortages that 74 percent of the SMEs are facing. Only by investing in programs that develop human talent can innovation be achieved and sustained. Research and development (R&D) is another area needing immediate attention. Compared to the United States and China, which spend 3.45 percent and 2.4 percent of their respective GDP on R&D, the EU only spends 2.2 percent or $328 billion. Chinese spending in R&D has increased eleven-fold since the early 2000s, reaching $439 billion in 2022. New European investments in automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence will prove to be cost-effective in the long term by providing security and prosperity within the community. However, investment in R&D needs to be structured as a proprietary investment for the benefit of the EU. In this regard, de-risking R&D activities requires a zero-based review of all ongoing R&D agreements between China and EU member states to protect the EU’s competitiveness.

When it comes to de-risking supply chains vis-à-vis China, there is a clear alignment between the Biden administration’s new economic doctrine and the EU’s proposals to establish export controls on specific technologies. Especially in fields such as cleantech, solar industry, and electric vehicles, these controls are based on the U.S. model. While the EU’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) regulation was established to make the European economies better equipped to identify and mitigate the risks of foreign investment to security and public order, it was a direct response to China’s increased influence in the European market using unfair practices and state subsidies. It remains to be seen whether the EU will also follow the lead of the United States in establishing an outbound investment screening mechanism, as it did for the inward FDI screening mechanism. In 2022, we witnessed a sudden increase of European FDI toward the Chinese market, despite slowing overall FDI in China, as EU investment grew by a staggering 92 percent.

While laying out an economic security strategy and a speech may be timely, there are other challenges affecting the state of the union—some acute. The impact of illegal migration in Italy and Greece has been neglected for far too long and needs a quantifiable solution. Without a doubt, the Western Balkans are the soft underbelly of Europe and a flashpoint for nefarious bad actors to cause problems. It’s time for the EU to amplify its efforts and serve as a forcing function to resolve disputes in the Western Balkans. The EU has the expertise and capacity to help advance aspirant countries’ compliance with achieving accession protocols and fast-track their entry into the EU. At the same time, the EU has unlimited tools to promote the rule of law and hold leadership accountable for not taking action that supports their people.

Von der Leyen pointed out that a new generation of voters is entering the stage. This new generation, guided by the wisdom and experience of the current generation of leaders, can achieve great things. This might be a defining point for the EU. Challenging and exciting times lie ahead.

Dr. Valbona Zeneli is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Visiting Scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center of European Studies at Harvard University.

Joseph Vann is a National Security expert and former Deputy Assistant Director of NCIS.

Image: Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com

L'exposition multimédia « Verre de Paraćin : Nostalgie cristalline », conçue par Hristina Mikić et Estela Radonjić-Živkov, sera inaugurée le 2 septembre 2023 à 19h30.
L'exposition est consacrée à la verrerie en Serbie présentée à travers le développement historique de l'Usine de verre serbe de Paraćin et de la production de cristal, ainsi qu'à travers les expressions contemporaines en cristal des designers locaux, grâce auxquelles ce cristal vit sa nouvelle vie.
Le programme de (...)

- Agenda / Région parisienne, Serbie

The annual commemoration of Operation Market Garden marked the end of the Falcon Leap exercise. On the outskirts of Arnhem, RNLAF and NATO transport aircraft combined forces to participate in the demonstration that was part [...]

The post RNLAF And NATO Join Forces For Falcon Leap Exercise And Op. Market Garden Commemoration appeared first on The Aviationist.