By Tamira Gunzberg
BRUSSELS, Jun 18 2015 (IPS)

My colleagues just got back from Munich, where we held a summit bringing together over 250 young volunteers from across Europe. These youngsters campaigned in the run-up to and at the doorstep of the G7 Summit in Schloss Elmau, as one of the key moments in a year brimming with opportunities to tackle extreme poverty.

It’s inspiring to work with these young activists – their enthusiasm and creativity are humbling. But the other thing about young people is that they don’t let anyone pull the wool over their eyes. Euphemisms don’t stick; skirting the point doesn’t get you very far. They keep us on our toes and that is not a bad thing at all.

Courtesy of Tamira Gunzburg

But some phenomena I am simply at a loss to explain. One such paradox is the fact that only a third of aid goes to the very poorest countries, and that aid to those countries has been declining. Yet in the so-called ‘Least Developed Countries’, 43 percent of the population still lives in extreme poverty, compared to 13 percent in other countries.

This begs so many questions it is dizzying. How are we going to eradicate extreme poverty if we don’t prioritise the countries that need aid the most? What is aid for if not helping the poorest?

Why are we cutting aid to the poorest countries when it is the middle income countries that are becoming more able to mobilise their own sources of financing for development? And why aren’t leaders doing anything to reverse this perverse trend?

Instead, EU development ministers in May recommitted to the existing promise of providing 0.7 percent of national income in aid, and up to 0.2 percent of national income in aid to the least developed countries – this time “within the timeframe” of the post-2015 agenda to be adopted in September.

But even if they achieved both targets by say, 2025, that would still mean a share of only 28.6 percent of total aid going to the poorest countries. In other words: business as usual. This is where any young person would detect the glaring no-brainer, and unapologetically probe “… but isn’t that too little, too late?”Ending extreme poverty by 2030 and leaving no one behind will become harder as we near the zero zone.

Whereas the Millennium Development Goals – global anti-poverty goals agreed in the year 2000 – allowed us to pick the ‘low-hanging fruit’ in terms of bringing down average levels of extreme poverty and child mortality, this year’s new set of ‘Global Goals’ is all about finishing the job.

Ending extreme poverty by 2030 and leaving no one behind will become harder as we near the zero zone. We need to frontload our efforts and put the poorest and most vulnerable at the centre of our approach from the get-go.

That is why donors must commit to spending at least half of their aid on the poorest countries, and to doing this by 2020, so that those countries have time to tackle the Global Goals in time for the 2030 deadline.

This is but one of the debates that are heating up in the final weeks before the Summit in Addis Ababa in July, where world leaders will come together to decide on how to finance development. Negotiations touch upon topics that go well beyond aid, and rightly so, in an attempt to unlock new sources of financing such as domestic resource mobilisation and private sector investment.

Sadly though, many of the discussions are still being held hostage by the impasse on aid commitments. Indeed, donor countries’ laborious reaffirmation of decade-old broken promises does not inspire confidence that they are committed to doing things differently this time.

What, then, can change the game at this point? For one, let’s kick things up a level and bring in the big bosses. We fully expect heads of state to be in attendance in Addis – but even before then, the leaders of all 28 EU Member States are getting together for their own summit at the end of June.

Here they have the authority to agree on a more ambitious commitment than the development ministers managed to broker last month. Announcing an EU-wide intent to direct at least half of collective aid to the least developed countries would send a strong political message that could spark a much-needed race to the top in the final sprint towards Addis.

Another sure way to guarantee the success of this Summit is to inject more political will into the discussions that go beyond aid. For example, several countries are coming together to harness the “Data Revolution” to ensure that we collect the statistics needed to track progress and achieve the new Global Goals.

Right now, the world’s governments do not have more than 70 percent of the data they need to measure progress. Clearly, we need to aim for more with the new Global Goals.

Further, it will be crucial to agree on minimum per capita spending levels on essential services to deliver, by 2020, a basic package for all. In order to fund these efforts, governments should increase domestic revenues towards ambitious revenue-to-GDP targets and halve the gap to those targets by 2020 by implementing fair tax policies, curbing corruption and stemming illicit flows.

The list is long and time is running out, but as our youth activists would unwaveringly note, there is still ample opportunity for leaders in both North and South to rise to the occasion and throw their weight behind ending extreme poverty. Pesky questions aside, leaders really should take note of these young voices, because it is quite literally their future world that leaders are shaping this year.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Apr 29 2014 (Columnist Service)

For weeks now, the mainstream media have been unanimously engaged in denouncing Vladimir Putin’s action in Crimea first and Ukraine now. The latest cover of The Economist depicts a bear swallowing Ukraine, with the title “Insatiable”.

Media unanimity is always troubling, because it means that some knee-jerk reflex is involved. Could it be possible that we are just following the inertia of 40 years of Cold War?

This inertia has not really gone away. Just say or write “communist President Raul Castro,” and nobody will blink. But use the same logic and call President Barack Obama a capitalist, and see how it is received.

Roberto Savio. Credit: IPS

Here in Italy, Silvio Berlusconi was able for 20 years to rally his voters against the threat of “communists”, as he called members of the left-wing Democratic Party, now in power with a devout Catholic at its head, Matteo Renzi.

There are at least four points of analysis that are conspicuously missing in the chorus.

The first is that there is never any allusion to the responsibilities of the West in this affair. Let us recall that Mikhail Gorbachev agreed with George H. W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand to let the reunification of Germany go ahead, as long as the West refrained from invading Russia’s zone of influence.

Of course, once Gorbachev was out of the way, the game opened up again. Boris Yeltsin’s total docility towards the United States is well known.

What is much less well-known is that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made a 3.5 billion dollar loan to support the ruble. The loan went to the Bank of America, which distributed the money to various Russian accounts.

None of it ever reached the Central Bank of Russia, going instead to the oligarchs so that they could buy up Russia’s public companies – and never a word of protest from the IMF. Then along came the unknown Putin, put in power by the departing Yeltsin on the understanding that he would cover up Yeltsin’s cronyism.

Here goes a brief summary of how the West gradually encircled Russia:

After Yeltsin, Putin supported Washington’s then imminent invasion of Afghanistan in a way that would have been unthinkable during the Cold War. He agreed that U.S. planes could fly through Russian air space, and that the U.S. could use military bases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia, and he ordered his military to share their experience in Afghanistan.

Then in November 2001, Putin visited George W. Bush at his Texas ranch, in a flourish of hype along the lines of “Putin is a new leader who is working for world peace…by working closely with the U.S.”

A few weeks later, Bush announced that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, so that it could build a system in Eastern Europe to protect the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) from Iran – a move that was seen as directed against Russia in reality, to Putin’s dismay.

This was followed by Bush’s 2002 invitation to seven nations from the extinct Soviet Union (including Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) to join NATO (which they did in 2004).

Then in 2003 came the invasion of Iraq, without the consent of the United Nations and over the objections of France, Germany and Russia, turning Putin into an open critic of the U.S.’s claim that it was promoting democracy and upholding international law.

In November of the same year, the Rose Revolution brought Mikheil Saakashvili, a pro-Western president, to power in Georgia. Four months later, street protests in Ukraine turned into the Orange Revolution, carrying another pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, to power.

In 2006, the White House asked for permission to land Bush’s plane in Moscow to refuel, but made it clear that Bush had no time to greet Putin. In 2008 came Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia, with the support of the U.S., much against Russia’s will.

Then Bush asked NATO to grant membership to Ukraine and Georgia, a slap in Moscow’s face. So it should have been no surprise when, in 2008, Putin intervened militarily after Georgia tried to regain control of the breakaway pro-Russian region of South Ossetia, taking it under Russian control along with another breakaway region, Abkhazia. Yet we all remember how the media talked about an unreasonable action.

Obama tried to repair the damage done to international relations under Bush. He asked for a “reset” of relations with Russia.

And at the beginning, everything went well. Russia agreed to the use of its space for getting military supplies to Afghanistan. In April 2010, Russia and the U.S. signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), reducing their nuclear arsenals. And Russia supported strong U.N. sanctions against Iran, and cancelled the sale of its S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran.

But then, in 2011, it became clear that the U.S. was expressing its views about Russia’s parliamentary elections. The Western media were against Putin, who accused the U.S. of injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into opposition groups. The then U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, called this an exaggeration: he said that only tens of millions of dollars had been provided to civil society organisations.

Putin was elected again in 2012, already obsessed with the Western threat to his power, and in 2013 he gave asylum to National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Obama cancelled a planned summit meeting – the first time a U.S. summit with the Kremlin had been cancelled in 50 years.

And while all this was going on, the Arab Spring broke out. Russia authorised military action in Libya, but only to provide humanitarian aid. In fact, this was used to back a change of regime, and Russia felt that it had been duped, and protested to no avail.

Then came Syria, and the West tried to obtain Russian support again for a change of regime, and became upset when Putin refused.

And finally, now, there has been the intervention in Ukraine to get the country into the European Union and away from an economic bloc that Russia was trying to create, with Belarus. So, Ukraine should be seen in a specific context….

The second point is that no political action, short of a war, can really reduce Russia to a local power. It has the largest mass land of any country, it is at the borders of the European Union, and it extends to the Far East. It is both Europe and Asia.

It is in rivalry with China in Asia, has territorial conflicts with Japan, and faces the U.S. across the Bering Strait. It is a prominent producer of oil and a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and it has a nuclear arsenal.

Any effort to encircle or weaken it, now that ideological confrontations are gone, can only be seen as part of an old imperial policy. Russia is not a threat as the Soviet Union was.

Russia’s GDP is 15 percent that of the European Union’s – a bloc of close to 500 million people that accounts for 16 percent of the world’s exports. China has 1.3 billion people and nine percent of world trade.

Russia has 145 million people (its population is shrinking by close to one million people every year) and 2.5 percent of world exports. It has few industries, also because Putin is not interested in the modernisation of the country, which would inevitably increase the size of the educated professional class, which is already against him.

The third point, therefore, is that we should take the Ukraine affair with a pinch of salt. It is a very fragile state, where corruption controls politics, and it has structural economic problems. Its western part is more rural, while the eastern part is more industrialised.

The workers there know that entering the European Union would mean the phasing out of many factories. In the western part, during the Second World War, many sided with the Nazi forces, and today there is a strong nationalist movement, close to fascism. Ukraine is a very messy and costly affair.

It is clear that to intervene just to challenge Putin, and offer money (which is basically what the European Union did), seems very shallow thinking. Are we really ready to change the criteria of the European Union, accept a country which is totally out of sync with these criteria, and take on an enormous burden, just to appear to have won against a strongman?

Which brings us to the fourth and final point: Putin is an ex-KGB officer, who feels that Russia was treated unfairly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that the West is trying to unseat him. All his efforts for reaching an entente with the West have been continuously betrayed, with successive enlargements of NATO, a network of military bases surrounding Russia, clear Western support for all of his opponents, and mediocre trade treatment.

He knows that his feelings about Russian decline are shared by a large majority of his citizens. But he is also an arrogant autocrat, to say the least, who is doing nothing to foster economic modernisation because, by keeping trade and production in his hands, he can maintain control. For him, Ukraine was politically unacceptable.

Another autocrat, Viktor Yanukovych, president of Ukraine from February 2010 to February this year and very much in Putin’s style, was deposed by massive street protests sponsored and supported by the West. Any possible contagion should have been stopped in its tracks. So Putin is playing the role of saviour of Russian citizens, which allows him to intervene wherever there are Russian minorities.

The question is: if Putin goes away, will we have a democratic, participatory, clean, non-corrupt Russia? Those who know Russia well do not think so. History is full of examples which show that removing autocrats does not, by itself, bring democracy.

So, the policy is to continue to surround Putin in the name of democracy. But are we sure that this is not playing his game, by becoming the defender of the Russian people?

They also have the inertia of the Cold War, and they look to the West not exactly as an ally. Today, Putin is the only binding force in Russia. If he goes, most probably there would be a long period of chaos.

This is clearly not in the interest of Russia’s citizens…and it is always dangerous to play a game of power without looking to the stability of Europe as such. Of course, this is not the thinking of the strategists in the West who would love to eliminate any other power!

As Naomi Klein writes, the only winners in this affair are the energy companies. They are engaged in a campaign for the world to become independent from Russian oil and gas.

So, let us speed up production of oil in the U.S., regardless of what happens to the environment. And let Europeans stop using Russian gas; we will export it to them. The problem is that there are no structures to do that, and it will take several years to build them.

But just when everybody was debating how to bring climate change under control, and reduce the use of fossil energy, an overall important strategy is pushing this issue into the background. Sri Lankan journalist Tarzie Vittachi once said: “Everything is about something else”…and there are not many examples of oil and democracy going hand-in-hand.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Environmentalists protesting against coal outside the Polish Ministry of Economy. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS.

By Claudia Ciobanu
WARSAW, Apr 20 2014 (IPS)

A European ‘energy union’ plan proposed by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk as an EU response to the crisis in Ukraine could be a Trojan horse for fossil fuels.

On account of Poland’s proximity and deep historical ties to Ukraine, the country’s centre-right government led by Donald Tusk has assumed a prominent position in attempts to ease the crisis in Ukraine. Notoriously, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski helped negotiate a February deal between then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and opposition leaders of Euromaidan, the name given to the pro-EU protests in Kiev.Asking for a prominent role for coal and shale gas is mostly a Polish game.

The Polish government’s assertiveness came with quick electoral gains. According to a poll conducted in early April by polling agency TNS Polska, Tusk’s Civic Platform for the first time in years took a lead in voters’ preferences over the conservative Peace and Justice Party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

“Not only is Civic Platform back in the lead, but also more Poles are ready to vote and vote for the government,” Lukasz Lipinski, an analyst at think tank Polityka Insight in Warsaw, told IPS. “All opposition parties now want to move the debate [ahead of the May 25 European elections] to domestic issues because on those it is much easier to criticise the Civic Platform after six years of government.”

Yet Tusk’s executive insists on Ukraine because of the benefits the topic can still bring. In the last weekend of March, the prime minister announced a Polish proposal for a European energy union that would make Europe resilient to crises like the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

“The experience of the last few weeks [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] shows that Europe must strive towards solidarity when it comes to energy,” said Tusk speaking in Tychy, a city in the southern coal-producing Silesia region.

He went on to outline the six dimensions of the ‘energy union’: the creation of an effective gas solidarity mechanism in case of supply crises; financing from the European Union’s funds for infrastructure ensuring energy solidarity in particular in the east of the EU; collective energy purchasing; rehabilitation of coal as a source of energy; shale gas extraction; and radical diversification of gas supply to the EU.

“It is very disappointing to note the total absence of energy efficiency measures from this vision, even though it featured centrally in the March European Council on Crimea conclusions,” Julia Michalak, EU climate policy officer at the NGO coalition Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, told IPS. “If the Crimea crisis did not make the government realise that energy efficiency is the easiest and cheapest way to achieve real energy security for Europe, I’m not sure what would.”

While some of the measures proposed by Tusk would indeed lead (assuming they could be implemented) to increased European solidarity in the energy sector, asking for a prominent role for coal and shale gas is mostly a Polish game.

At the moment, the EU has no common binding EU policies on shale gas – various EU countries such as France and Bulgaria even have moratoriums on exploration. And the EU’s long-term climate objectives, primarily the 2050 decarbonisation goal, make a true coal resurrection unlikely.

According to Michalak, the coal and shale gas elements of the Polish six-point plan must be understood, on the one hand, as aimed at domestic audiences who want to see their government play hard ball and, on the other, as a negotiating tool meant to draw some specific gains out of Brussels.

The Tusk government has made herculean efforts to persuade foreign companies interested in shale gas to stick to the country, including firing environment minister Marcin Korolec during the climate change talks COP19 last year for reportedly not being shale gas friendly enough. Nevertheless, in April this year, France’s TOTAL became the fourth company to announce dropping exploratory works in Poland, as shale gas here is proving more scarce than initially thought.

The Polish national consensus on coal too is starting to show minor cracks.

Nearly 90 percent of electricity used in Poland comes from coal, and the government’s long-term energy strategy envisages a core role for coal up to 2060. Tusk’s executive has been unsuccessfully trying to torpedo the EU’s adoption of decarbonisation targets, so at the moment it is unclear how authorities will reconcile EU commitments with a coal-dependent economy.

Last year, the chief executive of state energy company PGE resigned, arguing that an expansion by 1,800 MW of Opole coal plant in south-western Poland is unprofitable. The government chose to go ahead with expansion plans anyway.

Despite the generalised perception in Poland that coal is a cheap form of energy, this month saw leading newspapers (including the conservative Rzeczpospolita) discussing externalities of coal following a study by think tank Warsaw Institute for Economic Studies showing that, between 1990-2012, Polish subsidies for coal amounted to 170 bn PLN (40 billion euros).

In 2013, a series of international financial institutions, including the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, announced significant restrictions to their financing of coal – lending to Polish coal, for instance, would be impossible for these institutions under the new guidelines.

Poland also has to implement the EU’s Industrial Emissions Directive which calls for stricter pollution standards at energy producing units as of 2016 or closure of plants which do not comply. And it is potentially in this space that some of the benefits of Poland’s tough game on coal in Brussels could be seen.

In February, the European Commission allowed Poland to exempt 73 of its energy producing units from the requirements of the Directive, including two outdated units at Belchatow coal plant in central Poland, Europe’s largest thermal coal plant (5,298 MW) and biggest CO2 emitter.

Additionally, it has emerged this month that Poland intends to use regional funds meant for tackling urban air pollution from the next EU budget (2014-2020) to finance modernisation measures at the country’s biggest coal and gas producers, both private and state-owned.

Independence Square in Kiev on Monday. In the aftermath of the revolution Ukraine now faces a difficult path to EU integration. Credit: Natalia Kravchuk/IPS.

By Pavol Stracansky
KIEV, Feb 25 2014 (IPS)

Ukrainians are facing years of pain and upheaval if the country moves towards closer EU integration – or the prospect of the country being left to “rot” if they do not, experts say following the weekend’s revolution.

European leaders have pledged support for the East European state following the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych’s regime while the interim government has suggested it will push for closer ties with Europe.

Although this will please many who took part in the protests over the last three months – as well as enrage many in the generally pro-Russian eastern and southern parts of the country – some analysts have warned there should be no illusions about what Ukraine will gain, and lose, if it starts on the long path to EU integration."They do not know entirely what kind of pain they will have to endure and that they will have to make their way through a valley of tears."

“The people who will gain from European integration expect some ‘pain’ as reforms are undertaken, such as unemployment and economic problems,” Lilia Shevstova, senior associate at the Moscow Carnegie Centre, told IPS.

“But they do not know entirely what kind of pain they will have to endure and that they will have to make their way through a valley of tears. And if they fail or stumble, Ukraine will rot and collapse.”

While the months-long demonstrations which culminated in the ousting of Yanukovych had become a protest over the wider failings of the former president’s regime long before they reached their bloody end, European integration – or the lack of it – remained one of the key drivers of demonstrators’ discontent.

The initial mass gatherings on Kiev’s Independence Square following news that there would be no signing of an EU Association Agreement offering free trade underlined how important many Ukrainians felt closer ties to Europe were.

The EU says that this agreement is on the table once again.

Some analysts say that while it offers long-term economic benefits, these only come following reforms that would be largely costly and unpopular.

It is questionable whether a population which has already endured years of a faltering economy and its effects will be able to keep its enthusiasm for the EU over the many years it would take for the reforms to be fully carried out.

“These structural reforms will demand an enormous effort from Ukrainians,” Balasz Jarabik of the Central European Policy Institute in Slovakia told IPS. Slovakia joined the EU in 2004 after many difficult years spent transforming its economy and meeting EU criteria.

At the same time, closer European integration could have severe consequences for much of Ukraine’s heavy industry as relations with Russia become strained and trade links with its Eastern neighbour are lost. Russia is one of Ukraine’s most important economic partners and the export destination for goods from much of the country’s industrial-military complex.

“Those sectors of the Ukrainian economy which are Soviet in origin, including those linked to the military and to Russian industry, will suffer heavily, collapsing or being restructured,” Shevstova told IPS.

“Even the people who are left working at obsolete plans and factories will suffer. This will be the price of restructuring.”

Apart from what the EU could do, if anything, to compensate this long-term destruction of industry, it is unclear whether it can, even in combination with other international partners, come up with a sufficient package to help the Ukrainian economy meet its immediate financial needs, estimated at around 35 billion dollars this year.

Jarabik told IPS: “While it is not that big an amount as a proportion of EU GDP and the financial support should come from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) anyway, taking into account the political consequences [of such a move] as well as in the context of the Greek and Cypriot bailouts, I don’t think EU taxpayers have much appetite for bailing out Ukraine.”

However, for many pro-European Ukrainians it is not just enhanced trade benefits an Association Agreement offers that makes the EU important. Many feel it will finally turn Ukraine away from Russia and its ideological and social influences.

Critics of the Yanukovych administration accused it of being a Kremlin puppet regime, with corruption, cronyism, nepotism and a flagrant disregard for human rights mirroring the ways of Moscow.

As the protests went on, some demonstrators said they faced a straight choice between Ukraine under Yanukovych being essentially a Russian vassal state adopting repressive Kremlin ideology, or a modern country functioning under EU principles of a rule of law and with an open, free society.

But many Ukrainians say not everyone is fully aware what they will get out of closer ties with the EU and signing an Association Agreement which brings only limited economic benefits.

Vera Kovalenko, a sales assistant from Kiev, told IPS: “Of the people that protested, few had read the Association Agreement. Most thought that immediately after it was signed they would be able to travel to Europe without a visa and that there would be an end to corruption in Ukraine and life would be like it is in Europe. That wasn’t going to be the case.”

Much has also been made in Western media of a perceived anti-EU stance among the population of the East and South of the country which is home to about a sixth of Ukraine’s population that is ethnic Russian.

Widespread antipathy to the recent protests and often very public pro-Russian sentiment in the region has led to European integration being framed as a West and North Ukraine vs. East and South Ukraine struggle.

But this is not the case, say some.

Vladimir Pavlenko, 42, a salesman, from Kiev, told IPS: “The EU is a divisive issue, but less so for younger, educated people. They want closer ties with the EU almost regardless of what region they are from.

“Among older people, those from the West and North are more pro-EU, while those from the East and South are more pro-Russian. But, most of them have no idea what the EU really is anyway.”

Meanwhile, others see a bright future for a Ukraine allied neither to Europe nor to Russia.

Katia Gerus, 39, a secretary from Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine, told IPS: “I don’t think Ukraine should join the EU. We just need to consolidate the situation in the country and then we can move on as an ordinary, independent country open to cooperation with all countries.

“We have our own resources and can find our own path ahead. We have an opportunity to do things properly on our own.”

Swiss voters have approved an initiative by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) aimed at limiting immigration. The result not only threatens the free movement of people, but all agreements between Switzerland and the European Union.

The voting results have been a shock for open-minded Swiss citizens, foreigners living in the country and the whole European audience.“Those who have voted for the SVP initiative regard migrants not as human beings, but as pure workforce."

In all 50.3 percent of the Swiss voted in favour of the SVP’s “initiative against mass immigration”, which demanded the introduction of quantitative limits and quotas for foreigners and a renegotiation of the “Agreement on the free movement of people” with the EU. The Swiss government now faces the difficult task of introducing the new constitutional measures at the legislative level.

Several foreign ministers of EU member states, and the European Commission (EC), the executive arm of the EU, have regretted the Swiss decision. In its initial statement, the EC wrote that the introduction of quantitative limits to immigration “goes against the principle of free movement of persons” and that the EC intends to “examine the implications on this initiative on EU-Swiss relations as a whole.”

Martin Schultz, president of the European Parliament, said that as long as the Swiss government didn’t suspend its bilateral agreements with the EU, they would remain valid, signalling that the EU for now will not terminate either the agreement on the free movement of people or any of the other accords.

However, Schultz stated that it would be “difficult to limit the free movement of citizens and not limit the free movement of services, for example.” He made it clear that if Switzerland is no longer able to fulfil the conditions of the agreement, all other bilateral agreements were at risk.

Currently, about 430,000 Swiss citizens live in the EU, while more than a million EU citizens call Switzerland their home, and another 230,000 commute to their Swiss workplaces daily. Major sectors of the Swiss economy such as construction, the hotel and restaurant industry, and health services depend on foreign workers.

There’s been strong resistance in Switzerland to joining the EU. However, the two entities are bound by at least a hundred bilateral agreements. As regards trade in goods and services, Switzerland is the EU’s third-largest economic partner, while 57 percent of Swiss exports in goods go to EU member states and 78 percent of its imports come from there.

For Andreas Kellerhals, Director of the Europe Institute at the University of Zurich (EIZ), the EU’s reaction to the Swiss vote isn’t just a strategic threat.

“In the eyes of the EU, the Agreement on the free movement of people isn’t negotiable, as freedom of movement is one of its four basic pillars,” Kellerhals told IPS. He points out that in 1999, the EU only agreed to the bilateral path because the Swiss gave in to an accord on the free movement of people.

The Federal Council is now exploring ways to put its relationship with the EU on a new footing, as it hardly sees how immigration quotas could be compatible with the principle of free movement of people.

“Legally, that isn’t possible,” Kellerhals agrees. “Technically, Switzerland could set the quotas high enough so they couldn’t be exceeded; however I don’t think the EU will accept that.”

Further, that strategy would jar with the SVP initiative and allow the right-wing party to further criticise and pressure the Swiss government. No matter how the Federal Council negotiates with the EU, it can only lose.

For foreigners living and working in Switzerland, the vote was a disaster. Or, as Rita Schiavi, member of the executive board of the largest Swiss trade union Unia puts it: “A slap in the face of nearly two million migrants, who have a huge hand in making Switzerland as prosperous at it is.” Schiavi told IPS that migrants are frustrated and alienated.

In concrete, the SVP demands a return to the so-called Saisonnierstatut, a regulation for seasonal workers that had been in place for seven decades. It means that migrant workers wouldn’t be allowed to bring with them their families, that they would depend on their employers, and would risk losing their stay permits in case of unemployment.

“Those who have voted for the SVP initiative regard migrants not as human beings, but as pure workforce,” said Schiavi.

Returning to some kind of Saisonnierstatut wouldn’t just harm affected migrants, but the Swiss economy as a whole. Swiss companies have a strong desire for skilled foreign personnel, who in the future may find Switzerland less attractive than before, despite higher wages.

Switzerland’s economic lobby has long fought the initiative against immigration, as a return to quotas and contingents would complicate their business and reduce planning reliability. “Multinational companies may relocate or strengthen their branches abroad which could threaten the jobs of Swiss employees, too,” said Schiavi.

In Schiavi’s opinion, urgent political action is now required to deal with those worries and fears that had motivated voters to approve the SVP initiative. It’s measures that trade unions have demanded for many years: “We need to reduce wage dumping, improve job protection, introduce measures in the housing sector and set a national minimum wage,” said Schiavi.

For the moment, half of the Swiss population is licking their wounds, while the other half led by the SVP triumphs. Nevertheless, the right-wing effort to regain control over immigration and the Swiss-EU relations may lead to the opposite: to a massive loss in sovereignty. Soon the Swiss delegation travelling to Brussels may have no option but to hope for the EU’s goodwill.

A Greek protester takes a step against austerity measures at a barricade in Athens. Credit: Infowar Productions/IPS.

By Apostolis Fotiadis
ATHENS, Feb 19 2014 (IPS)

A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Greece and other recession-hit European countries as they undergo harsh austerity measures in exchange for a bailout. At the heart of it is the Troika, say trade unions, civil society and rights activists.

The Troika – as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission (EC) have together come to be dubbed – represents international creditors.“The Troika ought to know now that they can’t hide any more behind their immunity in order to avoid Greek courts for the violations of human right in this country.”

It is increasingly being accused of demanding economic reforms that have driven insolvent countries in South-Eastern Europe into deep recession while undermining human rights.

The International Federation for Human Rights has completed a fact-finding mission in Greece aiming to assess the impact of the crisis on human rights and outline the need to hold accountable those responsible for violations.

“Our visit was aimed at collecting evidence that the austerity measures and structural reforms which the government has had to implement as a condition for bailout have led to a situation where not only economic and social but also civil and political rights and the very democratic foundations on which the state is built are under threat,” Elena Crespi, Western Europe programme officer with the Federation, told IPS.

“Our ultimate goal is also to warn against the risk that what started as a global economic crisis would turn into a global human rights crisis, whose effects can easily be foreseen but might be very hard to contain,” she said.

On Jan. 21, 20 trade unions, human rights and civil society organisations throughout Europe addressed Martin Schultz, President of the European Parliament, asking him to commission a report on the situation of human rights, the rule of law, and democracy in Greece.

“Reading the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, it is hard to find a single article that has not been violated by the Greek government during the last three years as part of the policies it has implemented against its own people,” the letter said.

Greece has borrowed about 230 billion euros (315 billion dollars) in the last four years in exchange for a massive austerity programme overseen by the Troika. The policy has backfired, with the economy sinking into unprecedented recession and unemployment soaring to 30 percent.

Signatories to the letter included the European Association for the Defence of Human Rights (AEDH), an umbrella organisation of 30 groups in 22 EU member states, major Greek trade unions, the 167,000-strong Belgian private sector union CNE as well as smaller political and civil society organisations, including the European Attack Network and the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO).

CEO has launched a new project called Troika-Watch, which aims to create a network of citizens to monitor the body that represents creditors in counties implementing austerity programmes. This will produce a monthly newsletter in nine different European languages.

A resolution proposed by the Committee of Legal Affairs and Human Rights (PACE) was adopted on Jan. 31 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Its draft recommendations on the “Accountability of international organisations for human rights violations” proposed that “international organisations should be subject to binding accountability mechanisms and that their immunity should be limited.”

According to the Assembly, “member states should also be held responsible for the role they play in international organisations and by assisting them in implementing their decisions.”

Greek MP Notis Marias, a representative of the Anti-Federalist Democrats group in the Council of Europe, who has proposed some of the amendments, said, “The Troika ought to know now that they can’t hide any more behind their immunity in order to avoid Greek courts for the violations of human right in this country.”

Basic wages have reportedly gone down 22 percent since the austerity measures began, unemployment among the youth is over 60 percent and over one million people do not have any kind of medical insurance any more.

In June 2013, the IMF admitted mistakes in handling the Greek debt crisis that caused the recession scenario to deteriorate. But the Troika never produced an impact assessment report prior to requesting social reforms and fiscal measures.

Andreas Fischer-Lescano, professor of European law and politics at the University of Bremen, was appointed by the European Trade Union Confederation to examine the legality of memorandums of understanding (MoUs) signed between bailed out countries and their lenders. His conclusions came out at the end of January.

In a draft document, seen by IPS, Fischer-Lescano argued that “it is the Commission and the ECB which on behalf of Europe lay down the conditions that are driving millions of Europeans to despair.

“MoUs have to be de-legitimised. There is no obligation to implement illegal provisions. National courts and also international courts such as the European Court of Justice and the European Court for Human Rights and human rights committees will have to clarify this,” he told IPS.

“The legal struggle against austerity is just beginning. The aim must be to defend core principles of social justice in Europe.”

The Greek Council of State has already found unconstitutional an emergency property tax passed in Greece in 2011.

On Jan. 28, the special committee of inquiry appointed by the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament to evaluate the role the Troika played in bailed out countries visited the Greek parliament. It had previously stopped by in Cyprus, Portugal and Ireland.

In Greece, the head of the committee admitted the Troika had committed mistakes but said it fulfilled its role to save the country from bankruptcy. The committee will publish its findings before the European elections in May.

By then a new strong brinkmanship is expected to evolve around the future of Greece’s fiscal consolidation programme, given that the credit put aside for the country is almost used up.

An extra 15 to 20 billion euros (20 to 27 billion dollars) will be necessary to keep the country afloat but many believe this will not come in the form of a new MoU.

Already a German proposal is taking shape that aims to lower interest rates and extend repayment terms for over 50 years.

Economists say through such measures the political elite are hoping to tame public opinion, which in creditor countries is unlikely to tolerate a new loan for bankrupt Greece and which in Greece is steadily moving towards anti-MoU and extreme right-wing parties.

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Oct 31 2013 (Columnist Service)

Much has been written about U.S. brinkmanship with default, but the clear lesson that can be drawn from this unprecedented situation is that a lunatic fringe can block democracy.

Lawmakers belonging to the Tea Party movement, who forced the Republican Party to enter a war without fall-back positions, are not worried about their re-election.

The redrafting of electoral districts is now heavily in favour of incumbents, and makes electoral colleges safe for the large majority of senators in the seven states where Republicans had complete control over the redrafting process.

Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency. Credit: IPS

Republican Party candidates to the House of Representatives in the 2012 elections received 16.7 million votes while Democratic Party candidates received 16.4 million votes. The redistricting resulted in Republican victories in 73 of the 107 seats concerned.

The radical right wing enjoys a far superior electoral machine, financed by the two billionaire brothers Koch, who are intent to wipe out moderate Republicans, to get rid of President Barack Obama and the state, and restore a world where the American dream will again be possible.

That American dream is gone, and the U.S. political fabric is in tatters. At every election, the number of white voters declines by two percent, making it probable that the next president will be a Democrat and the Congress Republican, because of the district electoral system.

The Founding Fathers of the U.S. established a system of checks and balances between the legislative, executive and judiciary arms of the state, but they could not foresee the birth of the Tea Party movement. And they could not foresee that the judiciary (the Supreme Court) would become deeply politicised and give way to uncontrolled funding from corporations and billionaires, fundamentally altering democracy.

Of course, the Republican Party has taken a good beating, and perhaps the Tea Party movement is a passing fad. But, contrary to a myth running in the Left, crisis tends to reinforce the Right.

The Tea Party movement, therefore, is a signal of the crisis of the U.S., which is coming to realise that it no longer has an exceptional destiny, and that it is slipping from its position as the sole world power.

Social inequality is growing fast (every day there are 3,000 new poor), unemployment has become chronic, and there is ample depiction of a “new economy” in which labour would become minimal and finance would provide the economic lift. Gone is the dream that, by working hard, you can become a millionaire.

Insecurity and fear play a powerful role in the ascendancy of the Tea Party movement as a grassroots, anti-establishment, anti-globalisation, anti-state and anti-immigrant movement. But this is not just a U.S. phenomenon; it is happening all over the West, where populism is on the rise.

In Europe, there was also a dream: a decent job, a stable life, access to education and healthcare, and political stability. That dream is now vanishing as austerity and dismantlement of welfare are becoming a vicious circle everywhere, with the partial exception of Germany.

The young are the most visible victims of this “new economy” and the sense of insecurity and fear is feeding the counterparts of the Tea Party movement.

Every crisis needs its scapegoats; today, they are immigrants and, in particular, the Roma, or gypsies. Economists agree that Europe needs at least 20 million new people to remain competitive internationally.

U.N. and European Union studies universally converge on the fact that immigrants take jobs that locals do not want, that they stimulate demand and improve economic performance, and that only by having more people than provided for by a negative birth rate can the pension system of an ageing population remain viable.

Yet, no government is making any attempt to educate its citizen about this reality. On the contrary, there is a general tendency to restrict immigration.

The simple fact is that, as a recent Financial Times survey showed, Europeans have lost their sense of solidarity. A total of 71 percent of those interviewed wanted their government to eliminate social benefits given to other European Union citizens living in their country.

Asked if they would vote for an anti-European party, 19 percent answered yes. This means that, with a probable low turnout, the result of next year’s European elections will be a dysfunctional European parliament – and this will provide the ground for common space among all the populist parties.

Will the traditional parties be able to stop this phenomenon? No more than the Republicans in the U.S. have been able to ignore the Tea Party movement. On the contrary, the trend is to erode the platform of those parties.

The problem is that the 13 progressive parties in power (out of the 28 countries of the European Union) are all following more or less the same strategy and, of course, people will prefer to vote for the original rather than the copy, as the polls indicate.

Centre-left parties are in serious crisis, reducing the social safety system, dismantling hospitals and affordable education, and applying austerity measures. The lack of economic growth eliminates redistribution and neoliberal globalisation continues to exert downward pressure on wages and working conditions, while the demographics of ageing societies with a shrinking young workforce make welfare benefits and pensions harder to sustain.

In all this, the statistics on growing social inequality are staggering. According to the London School of Economics, we will have returned to the times of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) within 20 years, wiping out a long period of social progress.

Populism was the ground from which Adolf Hitler sprang, and social injustice the ground from which Vladimir Lenin came. History does not repeat itself, but it will be interesting to see how a new solution will turn out for well-known old problems … hopefully without the blood and tears that humankind has shed since the days of Queen Victoria.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Thousands of civil servants have marched through the Greek capital, Athens, and the second largest city, Thessaloniki, amid a two-day nationwide strike against planned job cuts.

Schools and courts were closed and hospitals were functioning with reduced staff on Wednesday and Thursday while trains were halted for four hours, and journalists joined in with a three-hour work stoppage, pulling news broadcasts off the air.

Efforts to reduce the 600,000-strong civil service, long seen by critics as wasteful and corrupt, have been resisted by labour unions who say the scheme will only worsen the plight of Greeks enduring a sixth year of recession.

The latest strikes, called by public-sector umbrella union ADEDY, came days before representatives of the “troika” of European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) lenders visit Athens to check on progress made on promised reforms.

“A long, onerous and painful winter has begun,” said ADEDY, which together with private-sector union GSEE represents about 2.5 million workers in this country of 11 million people.

“The truth is that with every troika visit, our national dignity is destroyed. The economy and society are ruined,” it added.

Policy defended

Speaking for the government, health minister Adonis Georgiadis told Al Jazeera: “Greece was the last Soviet state in the European Union. This has to be ended and we will end it now. This is for the benefit of the Greek people.

“We will be liberals and we will let the market work as all ordinary and good and serious people are doing in the rest of the world. Why be afraid of that?”

Government plans call for the suspension on partial pay of 25,000 civil servants this year in a drive to reduce the size of the public sector and meet conditions to continue receiving rescue loans.

Many of those suspended are expected to eventually lose their jobs.

Officials have, however, pledged not to back down.

The government claims it will set up basic state insurance for the 1.4 million jobless and the poor by the end of the year.

It will also take some of the pressure off hospitals through a chain of primary healthcare centres.

But it admits that a lot of state health care may end up being outsourced to the private sector.

Al Jazeera’s John Psaropoulos, reporting from Athens, said: “Slimmer state services in health and education may bode well for the bottom line but they will likely deepen the divide between the haves and the have-nots.

“These state workers fearful of losing their jobs know which camp they’re likely to end up in.”

Austerity measures

Greece has been depending on bailout loans from the IMF and other European countries since May 2010.

In return, it has implemented a series of strict austerity measures to reform its economy.

James Meadway, a senior economist at the New Economics Foundation think-tank in London, believes the protesters are right in their demands.

“Austerities of increasing severities have been applied in some European countries and we are not seeing any serious or sustained recoveries in these economies,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Precisely because austerity is the thing that drives recession. You are setting up this vicious circle of decline in which Greece is very much trapped.

“There are different options like investment and spending by government and creating jobs or perhaps looking to institutions like the German state bank KFW, which has created some 200,000 jobs a year over the last few years and the government action could be used to actually promote recovery in places like Greece, Spain or Portugal.

“But Greece is doing the exact opposite.”

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency designated sugarcane ethanol as an advanced biofuel because it lowers GHG emissions by more than 50 percent as compared to gasoline. Pictured here is a sugarcane harvester in Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava /IPS

By Daan Bauwens
BRUSSELS, Jul 12 2013 (IPS)

In an unexpected move, European parliamentarians have approved a new biofuel regulation that will take emissions from indirect land use change into account. The new text allows the biofuel sector to expand, sending a clear signal to world food markets and jeopardising food security for the world’s poorest.

The European Parliament’s Environment Committee (ENVI) voted Thursday in favour of a proposal that limits the use of biofuels to 5.5 percent. This percentage is a compromise between the European Greens who asked for a cap of three percent and the centre-right European People’s Party that wanted a cap of 6.5 percent.

The cap was introduced by the European Commission a year ago after criticism that the policy boosted food prices, causing hunger in developing nations.

The approved proposal also requires companies to measure the amount of indirect land use change (ILUC) caused by their fuels. ILUC refers to the clearing of rainforest, peatlands and wetlands rich in sequestered carbon to fulfill the demand for more land, and causing extra emissions. When the indirect land use change factor is accounted for, many biofuels turn out to cause more emissions than fossil fuels.

“The introduction of indirect land use change is the most important element in this vote,” Bas Eickhout, member of parliament for the European Green Party told IPS. “Furthermore, the cap of 5.5 percent includes all land-based biofuel crops that compete with food production in the use of land and water. This is a setback for the industry that just wanted to continue business as usual.

“But it is not over yet. This text still has to be approved at the plenary meeting. We know the industry is now getting ready for a heavy fight.”

Environmental campaigners have mixed feelings about the approved regulation. “From the point of view of the climate, this result is unexpectedly positive: from now on only truly sustainable biofuels will be subsidized,” Marc-Olivier Herman, Oxfam International’s biofuel expert, told IPS.

“But as far as food security is concerned, the result is outright negative. Last year the Commission proposed 5 percent to protect the existing industry while blocking its expansion. Everything higher than this percentage is unjustifiable. It signifies a subsidised growth of the sector, resulting in more speculation on land and food, causing more food insecurity and hunger.”

The move to increase the percentage comes despite calls from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter. De Schutter wrote to parliamentarians on Apr. 23 and visited the European parliament on Jun. 19 to make clear what detrimental effects the European Union’s policy has on food security in developing nations.

“The EU’s agriculture and energy policies have huge impacts on developing countries whose markets are interlinked with those of the EU,” De Schutter told IPS ahead of the meeting. “Biofuel mandates send a strong signal to investors, and therefore trigger commercial pressures on land in developing countries and increase price volatility.”

De Schutter cites research by the EU Joint Research Centre showing that by 2020 EU biofuel targets could push up the agricultural price of vegetable oils by 36 percent, maize by 22 percent, wheat by 13 percent and oilseeds by 20 percent.

Furthermore, according to De Schutter, smallholders in developing countries fall victim in two different ways.

“EU biofuels demand has increased the existing pressures on land in developing countries,” he said. “It has stacked the odds in favour of large-scale export-oriented projects and against the interests of small-scale farmers who need secure access to land and resources.

“Indeed, the smallholders whose access to land and resources is threatened by large-scale investments are often among those most affected by rising food prices. The poorest farmers, though they depend on subsistence agriculture for part of their consumption, are often net food buyers, contrary to common perception.

“My mandate is to offer a rights-based assessment of major policies which have impacts across the world and to remind policymakers of the requirements of the right to food,” De Schutter told IPS.

Kseniya Sobchak, a well-known Russian political activist and social butterfly, is an outspoken critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. But, curiously, she seems to be taking a much softer line on Azerbaijan’s authoritarian-minded ruler, Ilham Aliyev.

After visiting Baku last April, Sobchak marveled at the transformation of the Azerbaijani capital, comparing it favourably to Moscow. To her credit, she did mention the non-democratic nature of the Azerbaijani regime in comments that were published in Snob, a leading Russian cultural magazine.

Yet overall, after reading her take on Baku, one is left with an impression of a country ruled by a benevolent “Oriental ruler” who, although occasionally harsh, cares about the well-being of his subjects. Her somewhat glowing review of Aliyev’s leadership is especially ironic when set against her views on Putin.

Also recently, when a senior European diplomat was confronted with the seeming inconsistency of the EU’s policy toward authoritarian regimes in Belarus and Azerbaijan – sanctions and isolation in the case of the former, cooperation and engagement with the latter – he replied that there are two major reasons for the discrepancy.

First, while Belarus is at the centre of Europe, Azerbaijan is located “between Chechnya and Iran,” he explained, the implication being that the democratic bar is set higher for Belarus; secondly, the diplomat bluntly stated that there are important strategic interests in relations with Azerbaijan, such as cooperation in energy sector and regional security issues, not least in containing Iran, which is widely believed to be pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.

While perhaps distasteful, the “strategic interests” argument is easily defensible. It’s simply prudent policy to work with a government that is prepared to cooperate with the West on a whole range of strategic issues.

Such pragmatism may not please human rights defenders in Azerbaijan and elsewhere, but it’s only realistic to accept the fact that foreign policy is not exclusively shaped by human rights issues.

At the same time, the double standard inherent in the diplomat’s comments, and more subtly contained in Sobchak’s assessment, is damaging. The “geographic argument” endorses a concept in which a less than perfect democracy is acceptable for an “Oriental” country like Azerbaijan.

Such thinking represents a serious misreading of the emerging public mood in Azerbaijan that could end up harming U.S. and EU strategic interests down the road.

There are plenty of people in Azerbaijan who yearn for a full-fledged democratic system. Tolerating anything less, then, means that the United States and EU are prepared to sell these Azerbaijani citizens short. Azerbaijanis want good governance, transparency and accountability from their rulers, just like people in Europe and elsewhere.

Evidence of widespread popular discontent with the current system is mounting in Azerbaijan. Over the past year, the country has experienced rallies against the deaths of the conscripts in the army, riots of traders over exorbitant taxes, protests of Muslims over what they see as curtailment of their religious rights, and explosions of unrest in provincial towns of Guba and Ismayilli.

Social networking and pro-democracy youth movements such as NIDA played an increasing role in harnessing discontent and mobilising it into protests.

Television viewing preferences also indicate that the population wants much more than what they are now getting. Since authorities tightly control the national media, more people, especially in the provinces, tune in the Turkish TV-based programme Azerbaycan Saati (Azerbaijan’s Hour), which provides a more pluralistic coverage of the events in Azerbaijan.

This two-hour programme has proven to be so popular that local officials in some provincial areas are said to ordering the closure of teahouses for the duration of the programme, in order to prevent people from gathering and watching it. Many Baku-based experts agree that the people increasingly are losing fear to speak out against what they see as the regime’s abuses.

Where the argument of bad geography rings superficially true is in the fact that while Belarus borders three countries of the European Union, Azerbaijan has no consolidated democracies in its neighbourhood. But even here the situation is dynamic.

Azerbaijan’s neighbour Georgia has made significant democratisation strides in the past decade, most notably experiencing a peaceful transition of power via the ballot box last year. Meanwhile, Turkey, Azerbaijan’s main ally, greatly improved its democratic practices in the 2000s, motivated in large part by the prospect of EU membership.

If Turkish democracy is backsliding today, it is due to the unique combination of negative external and internal political factors, not because of cultural impediments stemming from Turkey’s geography.

Most important of all, Azerbaijan itself has declared its Euro-Atlantic orientation and embraced extensive commitments on democracy and human rights. There is no reason why its European partners should go soft when Baku fails to deliver on these commitments.

Ultimately, strong emphasis on reform is in the EU’s long-term strategic interests: if Baku heeds calls for reform, the EU can gain a partner with enhanced domestic legitimacy. If it doesn’t, the EU can call Baku’s bluff: whatever the rhetoric of some Azerbaijani officials, they are aware that the EU remains an essential partner and cannot be easily ignored.

Most importantly, it will preserve the EU’s credibility among Azerbaijanis. The worst possible signal that either the United States or the EU can send right now is that it that they will settle for an ‘Oriental’ style ‘democracy’ for Azerbaijan.

*Editor’s note: Eldar Mamedov is a political adviser to the Socialists & Democrats Group in the European Parliament, who writes in his personal capacity.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

“Give gas” was the original name for the Goj motorbikers parade intended for Apr. 21, a day when Hungary’s large Jewish community commemorates the Holocaust in the Peace March.

The Gojs (which means gentile – non-Jew – in Hebrew) planned to ride in front of Budapest’s largest synagogue. Only energetic protests from Jewish leaders prompted authorities to prohibit the event, which took place after changes to the original route and name.

Hungary, a country of 10 million now governed by the conservative Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, had not seen such overt expressions of far-right ideas since the infamous 1940s.

Last November, the ultranationalist Jobbik deputy Márton Gyöngyösi, whose party obtained 17 percent of the vote in the 2010 legislative elections, suggested that the names of Hungarians of Jewish origin should be kept on a registry as they constitute “a national security risk.” He later corrected his statement to mean dual Israeli-Hungarian citizens.

The are more parallels with the 1940s: during the last few years paramilitary militias have marched in Hungarian villages with large gypsy communities in order to intimidate them and bring a message of law and order. Several instances of physical aggression, gunshot wounds and fires have been linked to these marches.

In the case of the marginalised gypsy community, representing up to 7 percent of the population, authorities have done little to protect them from abuse, as was noted in a report published last year by Amnesty International.

Moreover, high-profile supporters of the government have contributed to the atmosphere of hate prevailing in the country: Zsolt Bayer, one of Fidesz’s founders and a close friend of Orbán, wrote last January in the pro-government paper Magyar Hirlap that gypsies “ought not to exist” and called for an immediate solution to the ‘problem’ “regardless of the method.”

Bayer added that running over a gypsy child is correct as long as one “does not think about stopping and steps hard on the accelerator.”

Orbán failed to publicly condemn any of these incidents. Critics claim the Prime Minister fears alienating the most extremist sections of his electorate, which may join the ranks of the far-right Jobbik.

Instead, Orbán has been more preoccupied with purging the various political, judicial, cultural and media institutions of dissenting elements, empowered by Fidesz’s spectacular electoral victory in 2010, which gave it a two-third constitutional majority in parliament.

The overhaul of the country’s institutions has been justified with an alleged need to cleanse public life of the lingering influence of communism.

The government’s actions have also alienated the country from the EU: this month saw Fidesz officials involved in verbal disputes with Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission, over the country’s constitutional reforms, which were also the subject of fresh debates in the European Parliament.

The latest constitutional reform has been criticised for criminalising the homeless and favouring the government during electoral campaigns. These same laws had been presented separately in parliament and rejected by the Constitutional Court, leading the government to include them in the country’s fundamental law.

Moreover, the Court has lost its power to revise future constitutional amendments, severely weakening the formal separation of powers in Hungary and leading the European Commission to ring the alarm bell.

Yet analysts claim that talk of Hungary turning into a dictatorship is misplaced: “What we have is a narrow political elite riding mass waves of disenchantment with liberal democracy and economic neoliberalism that manages to establish a rule by decree where there is no space for dissent, for participatory decision-making or consensus-building,” Gábor Halmai, a sociologist and human rights activist told IPS.

“However, this strong-handed politics is supported by a very large and mobilised part of society.”

András Deák, an analyst at the Budapest-based Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, similarly claims the Orbán government “has clearly authoritarian features and obviously tests the limits of democratic governance,” but points out that “all these measures were legitimate in terms of domestic legislation.”

Deák moreover notes the uniqueness of the Hungarian case. “It is difficult to find any post-World War II government in Europe, at which the wish to shake up the country’s political system coincided with such an overwhelming electoral legitimation,” he told IPS.

This may be one of the reasons why Brussels has refrained from going beyond public criticism and infringement procedures which, while common to many other European states, are accumulating at an alarming pace in the case of Hungary.

Moreover, anti-EU sentiments are on the rise in Hungary, with large swaths of the population feeling “their interests are at odds with those of Brussels,” says Deák.

This was made particularly clear by some of the government’s economic measures, namely the taxing of banks and multinational corporations to benefit the middle-class and the national bourgeoise.

The measures were criticised by the EU but enjoyed substantial popular support.

With the EU angered, Orbán’s latest strategy involves attracting more Chinese and Russian investment, coupled by statements criticising the “decadence” of the Western capitalist model. As long as the EU remains merged in a financial crisis, many Hungarians will follow his lead.

As European Commission leaders make calls for EU countries to raise their spending on development aid for the world’s poor, groups working in underdeveloped states have warned that without more effective aid policies and networks, extra financing may be wasted.

Speaking as the European Report on Development (ERD) – an independent report prepared by NGOs and commissioned by EU member states – was launched Tuesday, European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs told journalists: “I was shocked and disappointed when it became apparent that there had been a trend of developing nations reducing their aid spending in recent years.

“This trend must be reversed, we must do more and raise our development aid financing.”

But assembled speakers at the launch event in Brussels were quick to point out that rich nations must look very carefully at the wider development agenda if they are to get “value for money” from their aid contributions.

Dr Debapriya Battacharya, Chair of Southern Voice on Post-MDG International Development Goals – a network of more than 40 think tanks from South Asia, Africa and Latin America, told IPS: “Just giving money to poorer countries and telling them to meet some arbitrary targets is a ‘lose-lose’ situation for all involved.

“The donor states’ taxpayers do not get value for money if nothing is changed and it is no good for the developing countries if they get money but can’t use it to their own requirements.”

The report, among other things, outlines a role for the EU in a future global development aid framework post 2015 when a replacement for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals is hoped to be introduced.

A recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed spending of official development assistance in its member states had fallen by 4 percent last year in real terms, following a 2 percent drop in 2011.

In some individual EU states the falls have been dramatic. In Spain, overseas aid funding is at its lowest level in 22 years.

There has been widespread criticism of the fall, and European Commission (EC) officials speaking at the launch of the ERD made constant references to the need to reverse the trend.

NGOs which have been critical of governments cutting back on development aid to meet domestic austerity targets agreed that rich countries needed to up their aid spending.

But they said that simply increasing aid financing would not be enough.

Gerard Vives, European coordinator for the European NGO CONCORD’s ‘Beyond2015’ campaign, told IPS: “The European Union must champion a global framework that places people at its centre. This means focusing on human rights and accountability. The framework must be accompanied by robust accountability mechanisms at all appropriate levels so that people can hold their governments to account for commitments made.

“Emerging consensus on a framework that tackles poverty and sustainability together is important as these issues are inextricably linked.”

But leaders and NGOs from some of the world’s least developed countries say that rich countries’ approach to development aid, while ostensibly well-intentioned, can often be flawed.

They complain that there is a lack of understanding about the development needs of individual countries and that setting arbitrary targets or goals internationally is not always useful at a local level.

Battacharya told IPS: “Any global development aid framework must be aligned to national needs, although how that is to be done is a great challenge and something for which there is no easy answer.”

And there is a feeling among some groups that richer countries, including those in the EU, do not listen carefully enough to the voices of those in poorer nations about aid.

Battacharya told IPS: “This whole post-2015 debate is about a balance of power and there is a definite asymmetry of power in favour of the North, notably in terms of knowledge. There is an elaborate process of consultation going on but it does not necessarily produce critical knowledge.

“We need to make sure that voices are brought in from the South where we know from experience what has worked and what has not from the MDGs.”

However, the ERD does address some of these issues directly, making clear that any aid will be misspent unless it is used to help create ‘sustainable and inclusive’ development, including, among others, creating long-term job opportunities, addressing climate change and global financial transparency, inequality, lack of social inclusion and justice.

But some experts are unconvinced that this is the right approach to take and that it could in fact make it harder to raise development around the globe.

Jan Vandemoortele, a co-architect of the MDGs and now an independent author and lecturer, told IPS: “There is a misconception that the MDGs mismatched with national targets. But if you go to individual countries, you see that they have adapted the MDGs to their own targets, sometimes higher than the global targets, and sometimes lower, depending on their individual income.

“Not every country has to hit MDG targets for the world to fulfil the global target. If we all do our bit the global target is met.”

He added: “Now, everyone around the table wants their issue included in the new replacement for the MDGs. That cannot work. Someone has to make a decision to leave something out. You have to ask is the new framework about a means to a development end or about the ultimate end itself? I think it has to be about the ultimate end itself and issues like trade and finance are a means, not an end, and they should be left out.

“I am not confident that a new global framework will be found. It has become very politicised with so many governments using it to push national or regional agendas.”

The European Commission has unveiled a blueprint for global development aid and called on world leaders to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with an international aid framework based on sustainable and inclusive development tackling poverty at its roots.

While praising how the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had “inspired an unprecedented global movement for development,” the European Report on Development 2013 – an independent report commissioned by European states and setting out recommendations for the post-MDG aid agenda – said its replacement would need to go much further to provide help for poor nations.

Speaking at a conference in Brussels as the report was released Tuesday, European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs said: “Efforts to end poverty in the post-2015 world must go hand in hand with sustainable development. It is vital that aid is used in the best way to make effective change.

“Aid alone is not sufficient. We need to look beyond just financing.”

The independent report was prepared by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM). The European Commission (EC) stresses that it is not a reflection of any policy it may have on post-2015 aid and is designed to add to current debate on global development aid.

Pedro Martins of ODI told IPS: “What the report is trying to do is to look at some of the things that are not being so widely talked about – sustainability, social inclusion, inequality – in the global development debate and give a voice on those issues. We don’t think it is the final answer, just a contribution to thinking.”

Piebalgs said though that the report “complemented and supported” the EC’s aid work.

The report identified a number of key failings with the MDGs which its authors say must be fixed in any future global aid programme.

The MDGs mask inequalities and omit some issues of key importance to development, including the need for productive employment, issues related to climate change, governance, migration, conflict, security and disability, according to the report.

It also criticised rich countries for not fully honouring MDG commitments and said that there was often a mismatch between national policy needs and MDG targets which meant that some aid was essentially squandered.

Third sector groups monitoring development aid and its effective use have previously been critical of the fact that in a bid to meet targets or specific aims projects have been undertaken which, while well-intentioned, have been poorly thought through and resulted in ‘white elephants’ or been virtually useless to the people who they are aimed at.

But its authors stated that, crucially, the biggest failure was that the international community had not reached an agreement on key issues such as climate change and trade, nor had it managed to create a stable and transparent international financial system.

Since the UN set up a High Level Panel (HLP) to draw up a successor to the MDGs, independent development aid groups and representatives of some of the world’s poorest countries have said that these issues are arguably the chief barriers to eradicating extreme poverty.

There is concern that states in Africa – one of the world’s richest continents in terms of natural resources, but its least developed – for example, are losing precious revenues as corporations manipulate tax regimes and use offshore financial havens as well as taking advantage of unfair royalty agreements on commodities to pay little or nothing in taxes and fees to governments.

Meanwhile, some of the world’s poorest and most underdeveloped nations continue to be blighted by environmental disasters robbing them of essential crops and foodstuffs and exacerbating existing problems.

Dr Shamshad Akhtar, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, speaking at the report’s launch, said: “The economic course adopted by some countries which has allowed them to become some of the most developed in the world has also led them to being some of the highest greenhouse gas emitters in the world as well.

“The economic development of some countries is indeed on a collision course with the need to protect the environment and climate in a sustainable way.”

The ERD clearly states that richer countries, such as those in the EU, need to extend collective action in all areas important to development, including drawing up international financial regulation, beneficial agreements in trade, helping deal with problems connected with migration, including improving conditions for economic migrants, as well as climate change.

They also say there is a need for a new understanding of poverty to address issues of relative poverty incorporating aspects of social inclusion and inequality.

By doing this, the report’s authors argue, global aid can grow to include a wider range of instruments than simply official development assistance – the main tool of the MDGs – and encourage the foundation of a new approach to development assistance.

However, Jan Vandemoortele, a co-architect of the MDGs and now an independent author and lecturer, warned that while it was quite right to look at including issues such as climate change, social inclusion, new definitions of poverty and others, it would be impossible to produce a global aid framework to satisfy everyone.

“It’s not possible to have a concise, global aid framework that is also completely comprehensive and that gives a clear list of targets while at the same time covering all the complexities of development,” he told IPS.

Crossing the Belgian-German border in the heart of Europe should be a smooth experience, with no border controls, since the Schengen free movement area came into existence. Yet identity checks at this border and others inside Schengen are not uncommon, despite the contorted logic applied to prove their legality.

The Schengen area, included in the structure of the EU in 1997, is touted as one of the proudest achievements of European integration. Including most EU countries apart from the UK, Ireland, Romania and Bulgaria, plus non-EU states Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, it guarantees people the right to move freely within the Schengen space. It literally means no border checks between these countries.

The checks that happen today at these borders are not border controls, at least from a legal perspective.

They are, rather, national controls of identity documents that take place in areas very close to Schengen borders, sometimes as close as 500 metres.

As an example, as soon as a train enters Germany from Belgium, the German police could be checking documents of some of the travellers, often entire wagons. It is usually a neat affair to which hardened European travelers have gotten used: show your passport or some recognisable national ID and go through.

Occasionally, things get messier: the police might not recognise an Eastern European national ID, so name and birth date have to be verified with police headquarters; more dramatically, travellers without proper IDs are taken off the train, in which case the police also go through the motions of separating the person from other travellers until he or she is removed from the vehicle.

According to the European Commission (the EU executive), two core features distinguish these national checks from border controls: (1) their spirit: “police measures may not be considered equivalent to border checks when they do not have border control as an objective, are based on general police information and experience regarding possible threats to public security and are aimed, in particular, at combating cross-border crime”; (2) their execution: they cannot be systematic, but rather should be spot checks, and they should be subjected to limitations regarding their frequency and intensity.

The German Ministry of Interior, responding to IPS on what distinguishes their national ID checks in border areas from border control, replied that “these police questionings are not associated with the act of crossing the border but determined by the context, knowledge and experience of the controlling officer” and “particularly serve to prevent and stop illegal entry and thus the combating of trafficking.”

According to political blogger Jon Worth, who writes about Schengen breaches, there is one more important distinction that should exist between these two types of checks: the nature of the identification documents that have to be presented.

While in some countries, a driver’s licence would be enough to satisfy the conditions of a national ID check, the police of those countries can insist on seeing passports close to the border. Or Swiss police claiming to do customs controls (the country is not a part of the EU Customs Union) asks to see passports but not luggage or sums of money in possession of travellers.

“The heads of police know very well what national ID checks in border areas should look like to be compatible with Schengen,” Worth told IPS, “but this distinction often gets lost with the officers on the ground.”

Asked by IPS about how the Commission monitors national ID checks, the office of Home Affairs European Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom explained that the EC is currently investigating, either on its own initiative or following complaints from citizens, any potential national checks that are equivalent to border controls, and can take punitive measures if needed.

Moreover, a Commission proposal to update the Schengen legislation would give the EU executive the means to make more systematic controls of national behaviour; the proposal, still to be approved by the other two deciding bodies in the EU, the Parliament and the Council, has so far met with resistance from some member states.

Meanwhile, Jon Worth is preparing to launch a website mapping experiences of travellers that appear to be Schengen breaches.

“The European Commission is aware of the problem and is concerned about such breaches, but for the moment it lacks the data to back illegality claims as well as the capacity to conduct thorough checks,” Worth says. “Our website is meant to provide the Commission with examples of where national ID checks could be used systematically as border controls so that they can be properly investigated by the European executive. We want to make sure EU law is applied correctly.”

Christian Kaunert, an expert in EU Justice and Home Affairs at UK’s Dundee University, explains that such national ID checks may be legal, but they nevertheless go against the spirit of Schengen.

“These types of checks are not new, they have always existed in one form of another since the introduction of Schengen, and have been only one of the manifestations of the dichotomy between the desire for further integration and the wish to maintain sovereignty that is at the core of the EU,” Kaunert told IPS.

“What is happening now, though, is that some of these interventions against Schengen have become very high profile and go very strongly against the spirit of Schengen,” Kaunert says. “This is made possible by the current political climate in Europe in which, because of the economic crisis, populist anti-migration discourses which have been on the rise over the past decade in many European countries are playing very well.”

According to Kaunert, the national controls are just one of the manifestations of the current predominance in the EU of security concerns over more freedom and more integration.

Another relevant example is the continuous postponement of the entry of Romania and Bulgaria, the newest EU members, into the Schengen area, despite the two countries having met all the technical conditions for joining.

Kaunert argues that the refusal of these countries’ entry to Schengen must be seen in the context of a fear that migrants incoming via Turkey, currently blocked by Greece, could find new routes via Bulgaria and Romania.

Ruth Dreifuss, the former Swiss president and chancellor of the University for Peace, may never have heard of Dennis Ramjattan, and vice versa, although they occupy opposite sides of a longstanding debate in this twin-island state.

“My mother didn’t deserve to die like this,” he told IPS shortly after 70-year-old Carmen Ramjattan was bludgeoned to death on Feb. 20. “My mother never got into any trouble with the law, never even a parking violation. I would like them (the government) to stop talking and put their money where their mouths are.”

The brutal killing was just one of many in Trinidad and Tobago, where drugs and gang-related violence prompted the government to declare a state of emergency in August 2011, and the national security minister ordered the police to stop releasing murder statistics last fall.

While capital punishment remains popular, no one has been executed here since 1999.

But opinions could be slowly changing, at least as far as mandatory application of the death penalty is concerned.

At a debate on abolition at the University of the West Indies (UWI) organised by the British High Commission this week, Dreifuss noted that that “for 100 years slavery was accepted, for 100 years forced labour was accepted, for 100 years torture was accepted.

“If a country is part of an international treaty which does not accept the mandatory death penalty, then it’s something the government of that country should look at,” she added.

The coalition People’s Partnership government of Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar needs the support of the opposition to revamp existing legislation so it can try to bypass the London-based Privy Council, the country’s highest court, on hangings.

“The Privy Council has been viewed by some critics as a court that actively frustrates the execution of the death penalty, which, at least nominally, remains on the books of most Caribbean territories, despite very few hangings in recent decades,” said David Rowe, an adjunct professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law and a member of the Jamaica Bar Association.

“In a sharp contrast to Europe, capital punishment often finds wide support from Caribbean voters due in part to high murder rates in the region,” he said.

Writing in the Miami-based Caribbean Journal on Tuesday, Rowe argued that some commentators regard the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), established in 2001 to replace the Privy Council, “as an institutional strategy to re-introduce hanging”.

In 2011, the Trinidad and Tobago government tabled the constitutional amendment (capital offences) bill which would have provided for different categories of murder.

“It was intended to reserve the death penalty for the most heinous of murders, which is similar to what obtains in the United States where you have murder in varying degrees. So for example, crimes of passion and so on and where you have extenuating circumstances could be dealt with in a different way,” said Attorney General Anand Ramlogan this week.

A 2011 study found that 89 percent of the population in Trinidad and Tobago supports the death penalty, although a majority also believes that judges should have discretion in sentencing. Twenty-six percent favour the current law, which makes the death penalty mandatory for all murders, whatever the circumstances.

Interestingly, 36 percent of those who supported the mandatory death penalty and 54 percent of those in favour of a discretionary system also said that more executions were the least likely policy to reduce violent crime.

UWI Law Faculty lecturer and a member of the Rights Advocacy Project, Professor Arif Bulkan, said that three-quarters of those interviewed did not support the mandatory death penalty after it was explained to them.

The researchers concluded that the findings of the survey, taken in conjunction with two previous studies, strongly supported the abolition of the mandatory death penalty and its replacement by a discretionary system.

The European Union is lobbying countries impose a moratorium as a first step towards abolition. British High Commission political officer here Matt Nottingham acknowledged the EU is on a worldwide campaign to abolish the death penalty, with a strong focus on the Caribbean. Nottingham told the conference the EU’s drive is tied in with its human rights objective.

Law student Antonio Emmanuel strongly opposes the death penalty. “I believe if we have proper sentencing, proper prison systems, proper reform systems in place we can take a better handle on crime,” he told IPS.

The negotiations launched this week for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Thailand and the European Union have raised concerns among both Thai and European non-governmental organisations, who fear that EU demands could have a negative impact on Thailand’s progressive public health policies.

Launched during Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s visit to Brussels on Mar. 6, the negotiations will include the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, an international accord that lays down rules for dealing with intellectual property such as branded medicine. If the EU pushes the interests of its pharmaceutical companies, access to generic drugs in Thailand could be at risk, according to some NGOs and European parliamentarians.

“The interest of big pharmaceutical companies is to have a higher price for their medicine, and the interest of a state such as Thailand is to have access to generic medicine that is cheaper, so there’s a real issue,” Leila Bodeux, a Brussels-based spokesperson for Oxfam told IPS.

“It’s very important to consider that Thailand has made a great deal of effort to improve its public health system and now has a universal health scheme. But for the scheme to function well, it has to rely on affordable medicine.”

Oxfam and other groups including Dutch-based Health Action International (HAI) and Action Against AIDS Germany say that excessive intellectual property protection and enforcement can restrict makers of generic drugs. The consequence is that market monopolies are propped up, with high prices for medicine, thus “affecting access to affordable treatment.”

Thailand has gained international admiration for its public health programme which is based on providing inexpensive medicine to its population, says Oxfam, which works to eliminate poverty around the world. In the treatment of HIV/AIDS, the Asian country has managed to provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) to 80 percent of those living with the disease.

The fact that most ART drugs are produced by India for other developing countries has reduced the treatment’s cost enormously.

But activists say that these advances could be rolled back by the Free Trade Agreement, particularly if the EU introduces “investor-state dispute provisions” in the FTA.

NGO leaders point to the case of U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. which has brought a lawsuit against Canada under the North American free trade agreement, demanding 100 million dollars in compensation for Canadian court rulings that stripped the company of its patent for medicine used to treat attention-deficit disorder. Thailand could find itself in a similar position to Canada if makers of generic drugs are seen to infringe existing patents, warn NGOs.

“We are particularly worried that the EU will push to have intellectual property provisions that go beyond the TRIPS agreement,” said Bodeux. Such provisions, known as TRIPS-plus, may have the support of multinational drug firms but would be detrimental to the Thai public health budget, Oxfam says.

Bodeux told IPS that the EU may try to seek a longer “patent term” for drugs than the current 20 years agreed under World Trade Organisation rules. In addition, the EU may request “data exclusivity” provisions, which means that Thailand would not be able to give out certain clinical trial information during a specified time frame.

The European Commission says that the launch of FTA negotiations “marks an important step in EU-Thai relations, already strengthened by a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement.”

The Commission stated that the aim “is to conclude a comprehensive agreement covering tariffs, non-tariff barriers and other trade related issues such as services, investment, procurement, regulatory issues, competition, and sustainable development.”

It adds that the FTA with Thailand “should deliver substantial economic gains and put the EU on a par with partners who have already concluded FTAs with Thailand (China, India, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand).” The first negotiating round is expected to take place possibly in May, before the summer break.

Like the NGOs, some members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are keeping a close eye on the negotiations and the aspects of the FTA that could have a harmful impact. Franziska Keller, German MEP from the Green alliance, told IPS that she shared the concerns of civil society organisations.

“I completely agree that the government of Thailand should not let itself get into TRIPS-plus talks,” she said. “I also think that the EU should absolutely not force TRIPS. Medicine is an important part of Thailand’s budget and if generic medicine cannot be used, cannot be produced, this is going to be much more expensive for the Thai government.”

Realising what is at stake, demonstrators in Thailand have recently tried to draw attention to how the FTA may affect the cost of medicine and agricultural products in the country. They say the government has not adequately consulted with civil society in the talks on the multi-billion-dollar bilateral trade.

“The IP provisions, the enforcement measures and the investment chapter are all areas where the stakes are really high,” said Tessel Mellema, policy advisor for Health Action International.

She told IPS that Thailand may feel pressured to give concessions because of the impending expiration of its general system of trade preferences with the EU, due to end in early 2015. But Mellema said NGOs want Thailand to have “political room” to negotiate without pressure from the EU.

Thailand is the EU’s third largest trading partner in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the EU is also Thailand’s third biggest trading partner. According to the European commission, trade between the bloc and Thailand reached nearly 32 billion euros last year.

It says that the EU is one of the biggest investors in Thailand with investment stocks valued at more than 14 billion euros in 2011.

EU exports comprise mainly high-tech products including machinery and electrical appliances, pharmaceutical products, vehicles, precious metals and optical instruments, the Commission said, while imports from Thailand include machinery and electrical appliances, foodstuffs, vehicles, precious metals, pearls, and plastics and rubber. (END)

Newspapers on sale in Istanbul. But the freedom of Turkish journalists is seriously threatened. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
ISTANBUL, Feb 1 2013 (IPS)

As negotiations in Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union remain stalled, many worry that the Turkish government has little incentive to curb its ongoing crackdown on media freedoms and freedom of expression.

“Reviving Turkey’s accession process to the EU is crucially relevant to press freedom in the country for the simple reason that the process provides the government with a fundamental incentive to make progress,” wrote former European ambassador to Turkey Marc Pierini in a policy paper for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“The EU needs a prosperous, stable and democratic Turkey irrespective of whether it is a member, a strategic ally, or a neighbour. More importantly, it needs a Turkey that is at peace with itself and manages coexistence and tolerance between various strands of its society,” Pierini wrote.

In recent years, local and international human rights groups have condemned the Turkish government under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), for placing severe restrictions on media freedoms, and, in particular, for jailing large numbers of journalists.

According to a report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) titled Turkey’s Press Freedom Crisis, Turkey imprisoned the largest number of journalists in the world in 2012, ahead of Iran, Eritrea and China.

In August alone, 76 Turkish reporters were in imprisoned; 70 percent of these were Kurdish citizens of the state. Many journalists were charged for their coverage of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which Turkey deems a terrorist group.

“Authorities have imprisoned journalists on a mass scale on terrorism or anti-state charges, launched thousands of other criminal prosecutions on charges such as denigrating Turkishness or influencing court proceedings, and used pressure tactics to sow self-censorship,” CPJ stated.

In response, Turkish Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin called the allegations included in the CPJ report “exaggerated” and stated that criticism of press freedom in Turkey was being used as a political tool against the government.

“We, as the Government, would not want any single person, whether a journalist or not, to be victimised because of their thoughts or expressions,” Ergin wrote. “Turkey is making an effort to strike the right balance between preventing the praising of violence and terrorist propaganda, and the need to expand freedom of speech.”

Still, many have pointed to Turkey’s flawed penal code as a major factor in suppressing freedom of the press. The country’s vague anti-terror legislation – writing an article can lead journalists to be accused of belonging to, or aiding, a terrorist group, for example – has been especially condemned.

According to Hugh Pope, a researcher on Turkey at the International Crisis Group (ICG), the upcoming fourth judicial reform package which the Turkish government is expected to unveil shortly must address this problematic definition of terrorism.

“The definition of terrorism is completely out of sync with the European norm and it has to change,” Pope told IPS. “It’s absolutely essential to adjust the definition of terrorism to something that is more rational and thereby allow the release of several thousand people currently in jail on terrorist charges that wouldn’t be considered to be terrorists anywhere else in Europe.”

Turkey was declared eligible to join the European Union in 1997, and accession negotiations began in 2005. The process has been stalled since 2006, however, largely due to Turkey’s conflict with Cyprus over Turkish control of half the island territory.

“It doesn’t help that in Europe, Turkey is perceived as a gagger of the press, but I think that’s not the main problem. The main problem is the major European reservations about Turkey,” Pope added. “But if Turkey had a more defensible media scene, that would make Turkey seem more European.”

Last year, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) launched a solidarity campaign for imprisoned Turkish journalists, called “Set Turkish Journalists Free”. EFJ representatives also attended court hearings in Turkey in solidarity with the jailed reporters.

“It is very important (for Turkish journalists) to feel that they are not isolated, (that) they are not alone. The visits to the court hearings have shown enormous support,” EFJ director Renate Schroeder told IPS.

“All journalists know what it is to want to write the truth even though we all know how difficult it is. Just to be critical, that’s why you are a journalist. There is a real bond and solidarity,” Schroeder said.

In its last progress report on Turkey’s EU accession aspirations released in October, the European Commission said while space exists for debating sensitive issues, and opposition views are expressed in Turkey, the state’s reforms on freedom of expression fall short.

It stated that the arrests and imprisonment of journalists, the application of the state’s anti-terror legislation, and high-ranking government and army officials who have launched cases against journalists are the most pressing problems.

“All of this, combined with a high concentration of the media in industrial conglomerates with interests going far beyond the free circulation of information and ideas, has a chilling effect and limits freedom of expression in practice, while making self-censorship a common phenomenon in the Turkish media,” the Commission found. (END)

By Ignacio Ramonet
PARIS, France, Jan 9 2013 (IPS)

Having survived the announced end of the world on Dec. 21, we can now try to foretell our immediate future, based on geopolitical principles that will help us understand the overall shifts of global powers and assess the major risks and dangers.

Ignacio Ramonet

Looking at a map of the world, we can immediately see some hotspots lit up in red. Four of them represent high levels of danger: Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.

In the European Union (EU), 2013 will be the worst year since the beginning of the crisis in 2008. Austerity is the only creed and deep cuts to the welfare state continue because Germany, which for the first time in history dominates Europe and is ruling it with an iron fist, wills it so.

In Spain, political tensions will rise as the Generalitat de Catalunya (Government of Catalonia) decides the terms of a local referendum on independence for this autonomous community (province), a process that will be watched with great interest by the separatists in Euskadi, the Basque Country.

As for the economy, already in dire straits, it all depends on what happens – in the Italian elections in February; and on how the markets react to a possible win by conservative candidate Mario Monti, who has the support of Berlin and the Vatican, or by centre-left candidate Pier Luigi Bersani, who is the frontrunner in the polls.

Social explosions could occur in any of the countries of southern Europe (Greece, Portugal, Italy or Spain), exasperated as their people are with the constant cutbacks. The EU will not emerge from the doldrums in 2013, and everything could get worse if, on top of it all, the response of the markets is brutal (as neoliberals are urging) in France under the very moderate socialist President François Hollande.

In Latin America, 2013 will also be a year of challenges. In the first place, in Venezuela, which since 1999 has been a driver of progressive changes throughout the region, the unforeseen relapse in the health of President Hugo Chávez – re-elected Oct. 7 – is creating uncertainty.

There will also be elections on Feb. 17 in Ecuador. President Rafael Correa, another key Latin American leader, is expected to be re-elected. On Nov. 10 important elections will be held in Honduras, where former president Manuel Zelaya was toppled on Jun. 28, 2009. The Electoral Tribunal has authorised the registration of the Partido Libertad y Refundación (LIBRE – Freedom and Refoundation Party), led by Zelaya.

Chileans are due to go to the polls on Nov. 17. The unpopularity of conservative President Sebastián Piñera opens the way for a possible victory by socialist candidate and former president Michelle Bachelet.

International attention will be focused on Cuba as talks continue in Havana between the Colombian government and the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) with the aim of putting an end to Latin America’s last armed conflict.

Meanwhile, there again appears to be a stalemate in the Middle East, the location of the most disturbing events in the world.

The Arab Spring uprisings toppled several dictators in the region: Zine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

But subsequent elections allowed reactionary Islamist parties, like the Muslim Brotherhood, to come to power. Now, as we are seeing in Egypt, they want to hold onto it at all costs, to the consternation of the secular segments of society who had been the first to rise up in protest, and are refusing to accept this new form of authoritarianism. Tunisia faces the same problem.

After following with interest the explosions of freedom in the spring of 2011, European societies have again become apathetic about what is going on in the Middle East.

For example, the inexorably deepening civil war in Syria clearly shows how the big Western powers (the United States, the United Kingdom and France), allies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, have decided to support – with money, arms and instructors – the Sunni Islamist insurgents. On all fronts, they are gaining ground. How long can the government of President Bashar al-Assad last?

In the face of the “Shiite Front” (Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Syria and Iran), the United States has built a broad regional “Sunni Front” (from Turkey and Saudi Arabia to Morocco, including Egypt, Libya and Tunisia). Its goal: to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and deprive Teheran of its big regional ally by next spring.

Why? Because on Jun. 14 Iran will hold presidential elections, in which incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not eligible to stand. In other words, for the next six months Iran will be immersed in a violent election campaign between partisans of a hard anti-Washington line and supporters of negotiations.

Given this situation in Iran, Israel will no doubt be preparing for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. The Jan. 22 elections in Israel will probably result in victory for the ultra-conservative coalition that supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is all for bombing Iran as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama is looking toward Asia, a priority region for Washington since it decided on a strategic redirection of its foreign policy. The United States is attempting to curb the expansion of China by surrounding that country with military bases and relying on the support of its traditional partners: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

China’s seas have become the areas with the greatest potential for armed conflict in the Asia Pacific region. Tensions between Beijing and Tokyo caused by the sovereignty dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands could be heightened following the Dec. 16 electoral victory of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, led by the new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, who is a nationalist hawk.

China is moving full speed ahead with the modernisation of its navy. On Sept. 25 it launched its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, with the intention of intimidating its neighbours. Beijing is increasingly intolerant of the U.S. military presence in Asia. A dangerous “strategic distrust” is building between the two giants, which will doubtless leave its mark on international politics in the 21st century.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

A Third World War is not impossible, but fortunately is rather unlikely. Let us explore why, and what can be done to prevent it.

Johan Galtung

The worst-case scenario is a world war between the West — NATO, U.S., EU with Japan-Taiwan-South Korea — and the East—the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with Russia, China, Central Asia as members and India, Pakistan, Iran as observers. With four nuclear powers on each side, and West versus Islam as a major issue. In the centre is the explosive mix of a divided territory (Israel-Palestine) and Jerusalem, a capital divided by a wall.

We have been there before: the Cold War, with West versus Communism as a major issue. In the centre was the explosive mix of a divided Germany, and Berlin, a capital divided by a wall; and a divided Korea, by a demilitarised zone. And yet no direct, hot war, except by proxies; Korea, Vietnam. Why?

No doubt nuclear deterrence was one factor. They went to the brink but turned around–like in the 1962 Cuba-Turkey missile crisis. And no doubt nuclear deterrence also plays a role today, limiting the attacks on Israel, U.S. support for Israeli attacks on Arab-Muslim states ­ Syria-Iran in particular ­and any attack on Russia-China. But nuclear deterrence is not the material out of which positive peace is made: no depolarisation, and certainly no solution and conciliation.

The Cold War NATO-Warsaw Pact system was polarised, with secret police controlling contacts, speech and thoughts, looking for traitors. But the world was not polarised: there was the huge non-aligned movement. Europe was not polarised: there were the 10 neutral, or non-aligned, countries. And ultimately a strong movement against war emerged.

The NATO+-SCO+ system is less polarised, but the world and Europe more. So far, no non-aligned movement, and no strong peace movement.

The United Nations vote showed a 3/4 world united in YES for Palestine, NO to USA-Israel. Both are turning any moral high ground into moral deficit through continued expansion-occupation-siege and invasion-occupation-extrajudicial killings. The world is not against U.S.-Israel defending true homeland borders or 1967 borders but against the force and excesses they seem incapable of reversing. Reverse those policies and they could regain the moral high ground.

But still no actors carrying concrete peace policies like the Helsinki Accords. The reason lies in the difference between the West-Islam and the West-communism conflicts. Islam, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, covers more of the world territory and population than the West, but has few friends outside; unlike the West, emulated and admired by Russia-China-India, by Latin America and Africa. In all but Israel, Islam has a huge and growing diaspora by immigration-birth-conversion. Not a superpower, not an alliance, only “Islamic cooperation”; but present everywhere.

The result is uncertainty and fear: what do they want? A challenge to other worldviews, guaranteed by the freedoms of speech and religion. Islam offers healing togetherness and sharing to a West suffering from materialist individualism and egoism.

But Islam also threatens Western institutions with unwanted change. Western secular states won the struggle against the church with a secularism also exported to the Muslim colonies as loyalty to the state and the empires behind them. Today parts of the Islamic diaspora hit back, demanding loyalty to Alla’h and the ummah (community) beyond loyalty to Western states.

For immigration to be a peace-building effort, immigrants must respect laws and customs of the host country and be met with curiosity and respect in dialogues, for mutual learning benefiting all. If broken by either or both, stop immigration, and build ummah at home.

How about the other danger spots and zones in the world?

Afghanistan is coming to a close, not only with NATO withdrawal–except to guard what it was all about: a base for a possible war with China and an oil pipeline. There may be wars between India and Pakistan, but no other country feels strongly enough about Kashmir to participate. The world is concerned with Israel not because of anti-Semitism, but because of an alliance that may involve so much of the rest of the world.

North Korea has both nuclear arms and missiles, and will neither attack nor be attacked. The fight for peace treaty and normalisation with the U.S. will probably bear fruits, in the interest of all.

Taiwan and China will slowly converge toward a Hong Kong style solution of one country-two systems, Taiwan as part of China yet highly autonomous. Wisdom would urge the same for a limited Tibet. In neither case do we have conflicts out of which a third world war is made. For that to happen the ties have to be tight, like U.S. to other NATO countries and to Israel. Or, presumably, Russia and China to each other.

We are left with West-Islam. The lack of cohesion on the Islamic side helps. But we are missing a non-aligned Hindu India, lined up with the West in any major confrontation. Indonesia and Egypt are on the Islamic side, neutral Yugoslavia no longer exists, Latin America is Christian-West, and Africa is divided.

We need moderates on both sides. Tunisia-Turkey and the non-aligned powers, Egypt and Indonesia. And the West—maybe Germany, experienced in inter-faith dialogue? Germany should play a major peace role!

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University, is author of “The Fall of the US Empire–And Then What?” (www.transcend.org/tup)

The global economy weakened significantly towards the end of 2011 and further downward pressure emerged in the course of 2012. The growth rate of global output, which had already decelerated from 4.1 percent in 2010 to 2.7 percent in 2011, is expected to slow down even more in 2012 to around 2.3 per cent. Developed economies as a whole are likely to grow by only slightly more than one per cent in 2012, owing mainly to the recession currently gripping the European Union (EU).

Supachai Panichpakdi

This contrasts with a much stronger performance in developing and transition economies, where growth should remain relatively high, at around five and four percent respectively. However, even in these economies growth is losing steam, showing that they cannot avoid the impacts of economic troubles in the developed countries.

On top of already weak private demand, fiscal tightening has been adopted in several developed countries with a view to reducing public debt and restoring the confidence of financial markets. However, these policies have further weakened domestic demand and growth, which is detrimental to the goals of fiscal consolidation and improved confidence.

Some governments are trying to stimulate growth through increasing exports, and are working to improve their competitiveness by reducing nominal wages and other costs. For several European countries within the monetary union, this would be the way to achieve a real devaluation. The danger with this policy is that it will severely damage domestic demand before it can help to regain competitiveness, thus putting into question the adjustment process.

Developed economies should therefore change the focus of their policies from fiscal consolidation and internal devaluation to restoring growth, because this is the only way in which they can avoid a recurrence of a financial and fiscal crisis. Countries with larger fiscal space and current account surpluses should take the lead by expanding their domestic demand. This would be in line with their commitments at the last G-20 Summit, and contribute to a growth-friendly global rebalancing.

Most developing and transition economies have actually supported their growth by encouraging domestic demand and pursuing countercyclical policies, including the provision of fiscal stimulus and expansionary credit. They have also succeeded in preventing a significant rise in unemployment, and have enabled the continued growth of real wages. All this, together with public transfers in several countries, has promoted private consumption, and consequently, productive investment, even though this has not always been sufficient to avoid growth deceleration.

Indeed, the developing and transition economies are being affected by slow growth or economic contraction in the developed countries. This is reflected in stagnating export volumes to those markets and a declining trend in commodity prices since the second quarter of 2011.

Moreover, financial instability and excessive reliance on monetary policies in developed countries is affecting financial flows to emerging market economies and adding to the inherent volatility of commodity prices.

Therefore, the risk of a new major shock in global financial markets cannot be excluded, with a potentially large impact on international trade volumes, asset and commodity prices, risk spreads, capital flows and exchange rates, all of which would affect developing and transition economies.

Some governments are looking to implement structural reforms to overcome the crisis. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has always supported the need for structural reforms, since no development process can happen without changes in economic and social structures. However, today, structural reforms are often focused on attempts to introduce greater labour market flexibility.

Yet, such reforms would undermine the incentives for investment and innovation. Indeed, if less efficient firms can compensate for their lower profits by cutting wages, they are not forced to increase their productivity to survive and expand. Such reforms also threaten to further undermine domestic demand. In order to revitalise sustained growth, governments must take measures to reduce income inequality, by assuring the participation of all social groups in productivity gains stemming from economic and technological advancement.

Labor market reforms are not a way out of the crisis, because the crisis did not originate in the labor market. Additionally, structural policies cannot be a substitute for pro-growth macroeconomic polices. Structural reforms have to address the very roots of the present crisis, namely the fragility of the financial system and the trend towards increasing income inequality.

In contrast, the structural reforms being adopted by a number of developing countries have tended to create or reinforce social safety nets and to expand the role of public policies for supporting investment and structural change. Most of these measures are countercyclical, as they aim to safeguard employment and support economic activity in troubled times.

The renewed fragility of the world economy, and the growing downside risks, including for developing countries, have brought us to the brink of a second recession. The developing countries cannot bear the burden of supporting global growth alone. Urgent action is therefore needed to restore growth, particularly in the developed world, and to take measures to prevent a recurrence of the financial and economic crisis. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Supachai Panitchpakdi is the secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Leaders of the European Union (EU) will gather in Oslo this Monday to receive an increasingly controversial Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor and industrialist, established the five prizes by his will in 1895 and there is a growing international awareness that his prize “for the champions of peace” does not go to the recipients Nobel had in mind.

Tomas Magnusson

There is, of course, always an element of peacemaking in people and nations getting together, talking, and making agreements, but nowhere has the EU declared a political ambition to promote the global peace order of demilitarised nations that Nobel described with unmistakable clarity in his will. Quite to the contrary, the EU has a multitude of programmes for development of arms and armies, a defence agency, battle groups and arms production and trade.

In the last weeks of November four laureates ­ the International Peace Bureau (IPB, the 1910 laureate), Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Perez Esquivel, protested against the EU prize as unlawful, and the IPB demanded an intervention from the Swedish authorities.

Norwegian politicians are entitled to have their opinion on the EU as a contributor to “peace” and they are free to throw great parties for political friends. But they are not free to use the entrusted money and the prestige of the Nobel prizes to promote their own agendas. A will is a legally binding instrument, yet, in the last decade, the prize has become totally disconnected from Nobel’s disarmament purpose, with the allocation of prizes to Finnish politician Martti Ahtisaari (2008), U.S. president Barack Obama (2009), for democracy in China (2010) and for the EU (2012). By insisting on using their own, entirely open concept of “peace” as their criterion, Norwegian politicians have taken over the prize and use it for any purpose they like.

In the will, Nobel formulated his purpose in unmistakable terms: he wished to free the world from the scourge of militarism and wars and ensure that resources were used for the benefit of people rather than feeding the voracious appetite of arms races.

Nobel gave his peace prize to the world, wishing to foster innovative changes that would “confer the greatest benefit on mankind”. At the time Norwegian politicians were in the vanguard of a global peace order and support for the peace movement, and he believed the Norwegian Parliament would be his best help in appointing a five-member committee devoted to the promotion of his visionary peace plan.

Today this parliament, conditioned by the Cold War and an increasingly militarist Western culture, holds the direct opposite view of the one Nobel wished to support. They appear unable even to envisage the global peace plan that Nobel wished them to promote. It is a breach of the testament and the law that can no longer be tolerated when the Norwegian Parliament does not appoint protagonists of the Nobel approach to peacemaking.

Just as bad as the betrayal of Nobel and the peace movement entitled to his support is the betrayal of normal democratic practice and the rule of law. Over five years have now passed since a former vice president of the IPB, Fredrik S. Heffermehl, a Norwegian lawyer and author, rediscovered the true purpose and encouraged the Nobel Committee to immediately rethink its task and responsibility as managers of the prize. He stated that Nobel established “a peace prize, not a prize for the environment, not for economics and not for humanitarian work…Nobel endeavoured a radical change in international politics”.

Today, Heffermehl says, one thing is clear: “Today’s Norwegian Nobel awarders have reacted with direct hostility to being informed on Nobel and his actual purpose. For five years they have not once showed the least interest in Alfred Nobel and his peace vision. (…) This is made even more outrageous by the fact that the present chair of the Nobel committee is also the secretary-general of the Council of Europe and his handling of the Nobel Prize is a total affront to all principles he should promote in that capacity.”

In March 2012 Heffermehl succeeded in obtaining a direct order from the Foundations Authority of Sweden requesting the awarders to respect the description of purpose in the Nobel testament, and further ordering the Nobel Foundation to oversee all awards, including the peace prize. Still, the Norwegian Parliament and Nobel Committee continue with unabated force to reward a prize for “peace” in general and ignore the precise purpose specified in the will.

But now the IPB, one of the worlds oldest and most comprehensive peace networks, in a request to Swedish authorities on Nov. 22, have taken the first steps to protect the legitimate rights of “the champions of peace”. The IPB, which sprang from the same ideological and political roots as the Peace Prize, won its Nobel in 1910, and 13 of its leaders have received the prize over the years.

The legitimate Nobel winner should be an opponent rather than a proponent of military programmes and policies. The world spends exorbitant amounts on a busted model of security and an illusion that it can be achieved in confrontation rather than cooperation. To use the peace prize to promote the visionary peace plan of Nobel would be the best thing that could happen to the poor and unhappy of the world, to the environment, human rights, democracy, women and children, victims of war ­ everywhere, every year.

Tomas Magnusson is co-president of the International Peace Bureau.

On Nov. 29, 138 member states of the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour of giving Palestine “non-member observer state” status. Only nine voted no, 41 abstained. Beyond Middle East politics, the vote also mirrors the limits of the U.S. global, and the Israeli regional, empires: 138 defy their grip and favour change, 41+9=50 do not for various reasons. Who wants what?

Johan Galtung

First: the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) did not yield to U.S.-Israel in spite of the efforts against the Arab awakening. Israel is alone in the region: Greece-Turkey-Cyprus all voted yes.

Second: more than half of the states not in favour of the move were Eastern Europe (16) and the Pacific (10 – nine mini-states, and Australia). Add seven from Latin America, five from Africa, three from Asia (not Japan) and we get 41.

Third: Western Europe-NATO was divided. The Nordic European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) were in favour, as well as Austria, France and GIPSI (Greece-Italy-Portugal-Spain-Ireland), the indebted EU periphery. Not in favour: UK, Germany, Netherlands; three mini-states; and the hard core, U.S.-Israel-Canada, making 50, only a quarter of the U.N. members.

The General Assembly is the closest we have to world democracy: no Security Council ‘big power’ veto. Israel has no regional support and the U.S. only little, shaky, insignificant, world support. U.S. clout does not even reach Afghanistan-Iraq-Libya, recently bombed-invaded-occupied. The UK remains at heel, like poodle to master.

Read the vote in terms of a world regionalisation process: Green light for OIC; some political leadership is needed in the Latin America-Caribbean, Africa and Asia regions. The Nordic-EFTA moral light is intact, and the new Third World, GIPSI, is joining the old.

The U.S. is out of touch. Stop droning, killing; make a beautiful North America with Mexico and Canada.

But empires also crumble from within through demoralisation. With political demoralisation, world clout is disappearing. Also watch the “fiscal cliff” for doubts about the U.S. political process: two parties, at loggerheads. No cancelling of mortgage debts, no lifting of the bottom 16 percent – many not knowing where the next meal comes from – into the economy, increasing domestic demand.

With economic demoralisation: the West is outcompeted. And the financial crisis and Great Recession scared the wits out of most Americans –cautious, risk-averse and defensive- spending less and saving more. Not a single person was imprisoned for exorbitant commissions and bonuses, secret deals and obscure derivatives; but Wall Street continues to lobby against new legislation.

With military demoralisation: the U.S.-NATO is losing. And consider the lifestyle and affair of a top U.S. Army official in Afghanistan and director of the CIA, killing machines: general David Petraeus. Imagine the effect on soldiers risking their lives for an unwinnable and dubious war while the top fools around.

With cultural demoralisation: faith in U.S. exceptionalism is decreasing. Public figures ignore what happens in the real world. Truth will soon dawn upon them.

With social demoralisation: the U.S. birthrate plummets to the lowest level since the 1920s. This may imply a decline in the U.S. population and in tax revenue, as in much of the West.

Add it all up: the fall of the U.S. empire is on track.

How about Israel? Heading for a cliff of its own making.

The United Nations vote was on the 65th anniversary of the U.N. two-state resolution 181. Shortly after the adoption of the resolution, Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte was murdered by the Zionist group Lehi. Then the Nakba, the expulsion of Palestinians from their land in 1948. The problem is not Zionism but hard, revisionist Expansion-Occupation-Siege (E-O-S) Zionism driving to the cliff.

The U.N. vote legitimised Palestine and delegitimised that kind of Israel.

Direct negotiations lead nowhere: the Oslo process left security, Jerusalem, refugees, Israeli settlements, boundaries, for “later”.

But Israel had to react to the rockets! Yes, by dropping E-O-S for ‘2-6-20+’: two States in a six-state community with Arab neighbors in a 20+ states Organisation for Security and Cooperation with a nuclear free zone. But Israel delegitimised itself by choosing violence. Israel also reacts to nonviolence-boycott, non-cooperation, civil disobedience, with violence, as it did against boats trying to break the siege. And delegitimises itself even further.

Together with mainstream U.S., Israel tries to control the discourse by branding all critics as anti-Semites and self-hating Jews. A non-starter in democracies. Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Richard Falk, to mention some recently branded that way, are neither anti-Jewish nor anti-Israel, but use transparency and dialogue – the hallmarks of democracy – constructively. Stifle that, and we get two elites listening only to themselves.

Travel these roads: delegitimise yourself, meet violence with violence, meet nonviolence with violence, control discourse, and down the road, very close to the cliff, the South African scenario is waiting. The U.S. decides one day that Israel is more of a liability than an asset.

Israel is out of touch. A regime change from within is needed. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University, is author of ‘The Fall of the US Empire – And Then What?’, published by the TRANSCEND University Press.

The Korean Women’s Peasant Association won the 2012 Food Sovereignty Prize for its efforts on behalf of the survival of small-scale and ecologically sustainable farming in South Korea.

The announcement was made Wednesday at the fourth annual Food Sovereignty Prize ceremony in New York. In addition to its work on sustainable farming, the Korean Women’s Peasant Association(KWPA) also focuses on the consumer’s right to healthy and affordable food, decent wages and working conditions for farmers, and the right of female workers to receive the same wages as the men.

Jeomok Bak, chairperson of Korean Women’s Peasant Association, center, receives a Food Sovereignty Prize from Leticia Alanis, executive director of La Union, left, and Nancy Oritz-Surun, director of La Finca del Sur, right. Credit: Stuart Ramson/Insider Images for WhyHunger

“It is a great honour. I am really pleased that our work is being recognised,” Jeomok Bak, president of KWPA told IPS at the award ceremony. “Food is closely connected to women because women feed their families and children. The right to food is linked to women’s rights,” Bak added.

Apart from the winning organisation, three other initiatives fighting for food sovereignty were honoured at the ceremony, held at the National Museum of the American Indian and hosted by WhyHunger.

One of those initiatives, the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan Region, did not have a representative at the event. Envoys from this Honduran association of over 2,500 landless peasants, working for the right to land in a country where governmental land grabbing for biofuel plantations is commonplace, were not allowed to leave their home country.

Instead, Lucy Paguada from Honduras Solidarity NYC, originally a Honduran citizen and now a U.S. resident, held a speech on behalf of her Honduran friends.

“We want to name those responsible for our social tragedy,” she said. “First, the United States government, for financing and training the Honduran police and army.”

Paguada went on to criticise leading politicians and landowners in Honduras, calling them “puppets of the U.S.”. She also expressed her anger at the assassination of Antonio Trejo Cabrera on September 22. The Honduran human rights lawyer, who defend the peasants movement, was gunned down after leaving a wedding south of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.

“He had previously denounced his killers on television,” Paguada said.

The two other initiatives being honored, National Fisheries Solidarity Movement from Sri Lanka and Coalition of Immokalee Workers from the state of Florida in the United States, were able to send representatives to the awards.

Rights for tomato workers

Lucas Benitez from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers told the audience about his movement’s struggle to improve working conditions at tomato farms in Florida. “90 percent of the tomatoes consumed in the U.S. in winter comes from Florida,” he explained. “This industry… is one of the richest and most powerful in this country.”

Despite the industry’s profits, in the past tomato pickers working in extreme heat were not provided with shade. Female employees who were sexually harassed had nowhere to go to report assaults. Working extremely long hours was standard, according to Benitez.

But the struggles of the CIW have helped to bring about a new code of conduct for the tomato industry in Florida. “Last week, we signed an agreement with Chipotle,” Benitez announced with pride, his voice strong.

The restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill is a major purchaser of tomatoes in the United States and has now committed to buying the vegetables at a fair price.

Still, many fast food conglomerates and supermarkets still refuse to pay respectable prices for tomatoes, Benitez stated, and so the CIW’s work must continue. “We will not stop until we feel that we are treated with the respect that all human beings are being entitled to.”

A global dilemma

Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, was a special guest at the Food Sovereignty Prize ceremony. He delivered a passionate speech about the meaning of food sovereignty.

The definition of the term is “the right of people to define their own food policy”, De Schutter said. The basic idea is that needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food – not the demands of markets and corporations – shall determine food policies.

“About 15 percent of the food being produced is traded across borders. It is not much,” De Schutter continued. “Yet that segment of the food system is determining all the rest to a large extent.”

“In many developing countries I see that investment goes to export agricultural products, not to the small farmers trying to feed their families. And look at how agricultural research and development is being financed. For whom? For the export market. For the large producers.”

The Belgian-born De Schutter also lashed out at his native Europe. “The European Union uses 614 million hectares (of land) annually to feed itself… 50 percent of this land that is used to satisfy the needs of the E.U. is land that is outside the Union, land in developing countries,” he said.

“Food does not go where the need is, it goes where the money is today.”

De Schutter also linked food sovereignty to climate change. “It is exactly because of climate change that we must deconcentrate food production, so that all regions are able to produce as much as they can for themselves. That is how resilience can be built.”

The event ended with a highly applauded performance by musician and activist Tom Morello, an original member of the bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, who also had a few concluding words: “Some people choose between Rolls Royce and Lamborghini. Others choose between which dumpster they are going to get their food from tonight. That is a crime.”

EU's Bernard Savage at a project site: Credit: EU mission

By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Aug 19 2012 (IPS)

Sri Lanka is in for some hard bargaining when it negotiates a new aid pact in 2013 with the European Union (EU), which withdrew a key trade concession  two years ago over this country’s human rights record.

Bernard Savage, head of the EU delegation to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, says political differences do not affect trade. “There are no specific irritants (at the moment) and I would like to stress that in the normal run of affairs political differences do not affect trade.”

Savage told IPS in an interview that the issue of withdrawal of  EU trade concessions was a specific case. “But, if you look at the broad spectrum of trade relations … that was not affected by short-term considerations.”

However, well-known human rights lawyer J.C. Weliamuna believes that trade and aid are invariably linked to human rights and corruption – two sectors where Sri Lanka has been asked to show tangible progress.

“What is promised on paper (by the government) is exactly the opposite of what is implemented on the ground,” the lawyer, a board member of Transparency International, told IPS.

The EU is among Sri Lanka’s largest providers of development assistance and has allocated an overall sum exceeding 478 million dollars for the  2007-2013 period for projects dealing with water and sanitation, housing, income generation, infrastructure, schools, health facilities, food security and others.

“The level of assistance for the next programme – 2013 to 2020 – will be more or less the same. It won’t decrease,” Savage said.

Sri Lanka had won generous tax concessions under the Generalised System of Preferences Plus (GSP+)  for the July 2005  – August 2010, but this facility was withdrawn over unaddressed human rights concerns.

EU investigations had found ”shortcomings in respect of Sri Lanka’s implementation of three United Nations human rights conventions – the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

However, it was widely understood that the concessions were withdrawn owing to Sri Lanka’s failure to address alleged war crimes during the last stages of the country’s ethnic conflict.

The impact of lost EU concessions is now being felt with garments exports to Europe dropping by 15-20 percent in the five months up to May, said Rohan Abeykoon, chairman of the Sri Lanka Apparel Exporters Association.

Garments, Sri Lanka’s biggest export item, account for more than 50 percent of exports to Europe.

“It’s not the job losses that we are worried about because there is demand for labour, but lost contracts are affecting small and medium businesses,” Abeykoon said. “Local companies are losing out while those with multinational connections will shift production elsewhere.”

Abeykoom told IPS that he has urged the government to reapply for the facility, though there is no sign of that happening yet.  “With regard to GSP + we have had no request from the government for a new facility,” Savage confirmed.  

Trade unions are also backing the call for a revival of the  concessions. Palitha Athukorala, president of the Progress Union of Sri Lankan Apparel Workers, said the government seems unconcerned and has made no attempt to apply for GSP +.

“They (government) should ask for it. We are badly affected as small factories are closing and workers are losing jobs,” Athukorala told IPS.

Padmini Weerasuriya, coordinator of the Women’s Centre, a non-government organisation active in the country’s free trade zones, says there are no job losses owing to the loss of GSP + concessions, though this may change.  

“Our members (workers) have reported a drop in orders which then affects other incentives outside the monthly wage,” she said. Unions have already been campaigning for decent living wages.

On the political front, Sri Lanka this month did a major about-turn to invite the U.N. Human Rights Council to visit the country to review the human rights situation.

Earlier, Sri Lanka had even refused entry to a EU team examining Sri Lanka’s application for a renewal of GSP+ benefits.

The government has prepared an action plan on human rights and sent it to Geneva, five months after the U.N. passed a United States-backed resolution urging Sri Lanka to address alleged human rights abuses.

The March U.N. motion had called on Colombo to address violations of international humanitarian law; implement the recommendations of a local commission that probed the conflict; and encourage the U.N. Human Rights office to offer Sri Lanka advice and assistance and the government to accept such advice.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has repeatedly denied claims of large-scale civilian casualties during the last stages of the battle against Tamil separatist rebels that ended in May 2009.

Strained relations with the West have forced the government to rely on allies in the neighbourhood like China, Iran, Libya and India for war-related and development aid.

Constant international pressure and the March U.N. resolution – which was backed by India, a long-time Sri Lanka supporter – has  forced Sri Lanka to make conciliatory gestures to the West.

The respected Sunday Times newspaper said on Aug. 5 that the government’s decision to implement the full U.N. resolution and allow a U.N. team to visit the country would pave the way for a long-standing visit by U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, considered a vocal critic.

Weliamuna said issues in which the international community is concerned – human rights, declining rule of law, growing impunity and corruption – are relevant. “The government knows it cannot continue in this manner and is trying to convince the world that it has changed,” he said.

Abeykoon says the devaluation of the Sri Lankan rupee against the US dollar,  which has pushed the  rupee down to 132 per dollar, against 110 in February, has helped the garment industry. “If not, our exports (to the EU) would have worsened.”

For Savage, the GSP + is a “closed chapter”, using a phrase borrowed  from Sri Lanka’s external affairs minister Gamini Lakshman Peiris. “The fact is GSP+ was withdrawn and Sri Lanka has not reapplied. We need to move on,” Savage said.

Lallmamode Mohamedally, a Mauritian fisher, points to a European vessel offloading its catch at the port near Les Salines, a fishing town close to the country’s capital Port Louis. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Aug 9 2012 (IPS)

“Look out there, the blue one…. that is a European Union fishing vessel that is threatening our livelihood,” says Lallmamode Mohamedally, a Mauritian fisherman, as he points to a boat offloading its catch at the Les Salines port, close to the country’s capital Port Louis.

He is one of the fishers who have returned after a hard day at sea with their boats almost empty. Pollution and tourist activity have reduced the fish catch on the island’s lagoons over the past few years.

But local fishers say a February agreement between the EU and this Indian Ocean island nation, which allows European vessels to catch 5,500 tonnes of fish a year for three years at a cost of 660,000 euros annually, has made the situation worse.

While there are no official figures to confirm this, the 3,500 local fishers, who now have to compete with modern industrialised fishing boats, say that their catch has gone down by 50 to 60 percent.

And the Les Salines fishers believe that the 86 vessels from companies based in the EU, which are fishing in the area, are stealing their livelihoods.

“These big vessels are scratching the sea around Mauritius and taking away all the fish,” says Mohamedally.

While most fishers want the EU vessels to leave, Mohamedally says he would not mind them operating in Mauritian waters “only if they fish like everybody else, like the Taiwanese and the Japanese.”

“Only longliners please. No seines. Those vessels catch all types of fish, small and big alike,” he says.

Long line fishing is a commercial technique that uses hundreds or sometimes thousands of baited hooks, which hang from a single line. This type of fishing commonly targets swordfish, tuna, halibut, and sablefish. Seines use surrounding nets.

However, Mauritian authorities believe that this is the only way to exploit its vast exclusive economic zone or EEZ of 2.3 million square kilometres.

Local fishing companies here are small and do not have the ability to fish on such a large scale. The 5,500 tonnes of fish that Mauritius has allowed the EU to catch each year is in stark contrast to the few tonnes the 34 fishermen of Les Salines catch in a year.

Currently the fisheries sector in Mauritius represents only one percent of the country’s GDP, and the local fish production is only 5,100 tonnes.

Mohamedally says that in the past fish were abundant three to four nautical miles from the coast. Today, the fishers travel almost 15 nautical miles out to sea, but many still come back without a catch.

“What will happen in five years time to our jobs? They are giving us an egg and taking an ox out of our sea,” adds Mohamedally, referring to the 660,000 euros annually that Mauritius has agreed in payment by the EU in exchange for fishing rights in its EEZ.

Judex Rampol, chairman of the Syndicat des Pêcheurs, a fishers’ association, is furious about this. “This is peanuts,” he tells IPS. If local fisherfolk had the capacity to fish so far out at sea, they would earn about 15 million euros for the 5,500 tonnes of fish the EU is now allowed to catch.

However, Minister of Fisheries Nicolas Von-Mally believes Mauritius needs help to exploit its vast EEZ.

“We have no fishing vessels. Should we depend on locals, many fishes would have long died of old age,” he says.

Von-Mally adds that canning factories on the island process the tuna caught by the EU vessels. However, it is sold mainly on the European market.

He adds that tuna is migratory, and if it is not caught in the Mauritian EEZ, it will swim to the zones of the neighbouring Indian Ocean islands of Seychelles and Maldives. “We’ll thus lose revenue,” he says.

Bahim Khan Taher, manager of Taher Seafoods, a small local fishing company, tells IPS that he would like to exploit Mauritius’ fish stock, but he needs modern vessels, equipment and financial incentives to fish in the EEZ.

“If we get some help from the government in terms of fiscal incentives, we could also go out fishing there. This would boost our seafood hub exports,” Taher says.

Meanwhile, environmentalists are concerned that overfishing may deplete tuna stocks in the Indian Ocean. Mauritian oceanographer and environmental engineer Vassen Kauppaymoothoo is one of them.

“The EU vessels are here because the stocks in the other oceans have collapsed. They have been overfished by vessels from Portugal, France and Spain. The only ocean where there is still some fish is the Indian Ocean,” he tells IPS, adding that 5,500 tonnes a year was overfishing and would deplete resources.

He adds that while Mauritius does not have the capacity to fish its EEZ, this does not mean that they should allow foreigners to do so. He says Morocco decided to close its EEZ to foreigners in a decision to solely keep its fish stock for its local population.

“There is no reason to loot my house because I do not have the means to exploit its wealth,” Kauppaymoothoo argues.

But the head of the EU Delegation in Port Louis, Alessandro Mariani, tells IPS that they are helping to create jobs, not take them away.

“In Mauritius alone, 5,500 jobs benefit from the tuna that is disembarked by the EU vessels,” he says.

Mariani claims that there is no competition between the EU fleet and the local fishers because they operates very far away from each other. The EU vessels fish 15 nautical miles from the coast, and the locals at three nautical miles.

“We are also targeting different fish species,” he says.

Mariani says the EU is very sensitive about the tuna stocks in the Indian Ocean.

“Our fishing efforts are guided by scientific research. The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission Scientific Committee said in October 2011 that there is no overfishing in this region,” he says.

Von Mally adds: “We are not shooting at our own feet. We want fish to be always available in our seas for future generations.”

They both deny that the EU placed pressure on the Mauritian government to sign the agreement. “This is simply not true. Mauritius and the EU are partners and we always discuss things about the interest of both the EU and Mauritius,” says Mariani.

Caught between a proverbial rock and a hard place, African and Pacific countries are still unsure whether they should follow the lead of their Caribbean counterparts and sign a wide-ranging Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe.

African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) ministers are meeting here ahead of their joint Council of Ministers meeting with Europe on Thursday and Friday. However, they are still far from completing the negotiations that would allow them to participate in the accord that Europe is using as its main vehicle for trade and other assistance.

Namibia is looking to diversify its beef exports to countries in the global South in order to lessen its dependency on the lucrative EU market. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

In 2008, the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM), comprising the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Dominican Republic, signed the accord. Ironically, Guyana, which had been reluctant to sign until it received certain assurances, is the only one so far to have ratified the EPA.

“At the time of signing Guyana was able to secure a joint declaration which is appended to the CARIFORUM-EPA indicating that within a five-year period there will be a review of the implementation process to examine to what extent it is adversely affecting our development strategies and this is something… we hope will be incorporated in the other regions as they work to conclude their agreements,” the country’s ambassador to Brussels Dr. P.I. Gomes told IPS.

In its report to the conference here, the Pacific region has described the negotiations with Europe that began in 2004 as “a long and challenging process”.

Tonga’s Labour, Commerce and Industries Minister Isieli Pulu, the lead spokesman for the Pacific grouping, said that while two Pacific states have signed an interim EPA – mainly to avoid market access restrictions – it was always understood that the interim accord “would be a stepping stone towards a comprehensive EPA”.

The Cotonou Agreement signed in 2000 puts in place a cooperation framework aimed at liberalising trade between both the ACP and EU, and also specified that a new World Trade Organization (WTO) compatible regime or an EPA must be agreed by the end of 2007.

Pulu said that the Pacific countries have reaffirmed this commitment and their leaders have mandated “that we continue to negotiate a comprehensive EPA as single region with the European Union which should be concluded by 2012.

But he said while this commitment has been made, the Pacific group wants an EPA “based on principles and objectives enshrined in the Cotonou Agreement” and it “must go far beyond market access arrangements and constitute a trade and development cooperation agreement that will form the basis for the elaboration of a true, strengthened and strategic partnership over time between the Pacific ACP region and the European Union”.

Pulu has accused Europe of “stalling”, noting that it “has continually deferred meeting with the Pacific region for a formal negotiating session since 2009.

“Furthermore, they have not responded to the Pacific’s proposals and market access offers submitted in July 2011. This has seriously threatened the possibility of concluding the negotiations on a comprehensive EPA as called for by the Pacific ACP leaders. Instead, the European Commission has been coercing the Pacific ACP region to accept the interim EPA,” Pulu told the meeting.

He said the delay has reduced the alternatives for several Pacific countries wishing to conclude “a beneficial trading arrangement” with Europe given the implications of the commission’s proposals to amend EU market access regulations.

“In the Pacific region, Fiji could be forced to ratify the interim EPA if the region is not able to satisfactorily conclude a comprehensive EPA by 2014. Major industries in Fiji could face disruption and could collapse as they are dependent on duty-free and quota-free access to the European market,” he said.

For their part, the African countries, grouped under several bodies, have also expressed reservations.

Central Africa, for instance, has indicated that three countries – Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon – have specific concerns regarding cooperation with the European Union.

Cameroon, which signed the “Stepping Stone” agreement in 2009 as proposed by Europe to safeguard market access to the European Union, but has not yet ratified it, has indicated it would be penalised by having the European market access benefits withdrawn by January 2014.

The decision to withdraw the regulations applies to all countries signatory to interim EPA agreements that have not yet ratified them, ACP officials told IPS.

In the case of Equatorial Guinea, it is faced with financial restrictions on some of the regional projects under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF) for having failed to fully ratify the first revised Cotonou Agreement of June 2005.

Because of an increase in its resources, that country will soon graduate from LDC (least developed country) status to middle income country status, according to U.N. classification, the ACP ministers meeting here was informed.

Gabon, already classified as an “upper-range middle income country”, could see its General System of Preferences (GSP) regime revoked, with Central Africa noting that “in fact the GSP, which is a non-negotiable scheme, continues to be applied at the discretion of the European side”.

The East African Community, which includes countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia, say they have noted “with great concern that our partners seem to be imposing unrealistic deadlines on the conclusions of the negotiation talks and have gone ahead to propose an amendment to EC market access regulations that would deny a group of 18 countries preferential market access to the EU with effect from Jan. 1, 2014 if they have not ratified the EPAs.

“We view this move as not only putting undue pressure on the ongoing EPA negotiation process and therefore the possibility of not concluding an agreement capable of meeting the intended objectives but also an affront to our regional integration,” the EAC added.

The 16 West African countries and those comprising the East South Africa (ESA) grouping have also voiced similar concerns.

The West African countries, which include Ghana and Nigeria, say given the EU’s position of excluding countries that have concluded EPA agreements, but have not yet ratified them, the region must consider “alternative solutions”.

The poverty-stricken countries of Central America will face major challenges when the Association Agreement to be signed in late June with the European Union, including commitments on trade, political dialogue and cooperation, comes into effect.

“The region could benefit if all of its products, especially fruit and vegetables, other crops and some manufactured goods, are given privileged access” to the European market, Jonathan Menkos, an expert with the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (ICEFI), told IPS.

Menkos said this is the conclusion reached by impact studies carried out by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Under the European Union-Central America Association Agreement (EU-CAAA), both sides will open their markets to industrial products from the other. This will primarily benefit the EU, which will be able to sell its vehicles and machinery in this region, and invest in services like finances, communications and transport, experts said.

Central America, on the other hand, will be able to take advantage of quotas for the sale of beef, rice, sugar and textiles to the EU, a market of 500 million people, and of other concessions for the sale of coffee, bananas and rum.

In Menkos’ view, “the success of the agreement depends on generating public goods in the rural areas of our region that are today almost non-existent, such as education, health, roads, highways and other infrastructure for trade.”

Half of Central America’s 43 million people live in poverty, which is concentrated in rural areas. Because of this, Menkos suggested, the region should also aim at other markets, such as South Africa, Russia, China or India.

The EU and the governments of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama signed the basic agreement in May 2010, after three years of negotiations. Now, following lengthy technical adjustments, the final accord will be signed this month.

Javier Sandomingo, head of the European Commission delegation to Central America and Panama, announced that the definitive agreement would be signed Jun. 28-29 in Tegucigalpa, when Honduras hands over the rotating presidency of the Central American Integration System (SICA) to Nicaragua.

After the signing ceremony, the European Parliament and the legislatures of the Central American countries must ratify the agreement for it to enter into force.

Francisco Robles Rivera of the University of Costa Rica told IPS that the EU’s aim is merely “to consolidate the legal framework for its investments in the region.

“This is important in the present context, when Spanish companies, especially in the energy sector, are being nationalised in the public interest in Bolivia and Argentina,” he said.

“The EU wants new legislation on investments to safeguard, expand and facilitate the operations of European capital in the region, especially in the fields of mining, and insurance, telecommunications, tourism and other services,” he said.

Virgilio Álvarez, of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), told IPS that “unfortunately, all bilateral and multilateral trade agreements ultimately are of greatest benefit to the wealthiest partners, and are therefore asymmetric.”

Nevertheless, Álvarez said it was “important and necessary” to sign an association agreement with the EU. “It will allow us to move forward with Central American integration, and unlike the free trade agreement with the United States (DR-CAFTA), non-trade elements are included,” he said.

The EU-CAAA includes cooperation goals for the region, such as improvement of the situation of indigenous people, justice, security, protection of the environment, fighting climate change, and transport.

It also encompasses an agenda for political dialogue, seeking to promote a series of common values between the parties, such as respect for democratic principles and basic rights.

“We could expect Europe to bring the wealth of its experience to the Central American integration process, but this will depend greatly on our capacity to absorb that experience,” said Álvarez.

Other organisations, in contrast, view the Association Agreement with the EU as a serious threat to Central America.

“Europe gave higher priority to its trading interests than to its traditional economic cooperation for the consolidation of democracy, governance and development in Central America,” says the Mesoamerican Initiative on Trade, Integration and Sustainable Development (CID), a civil society organisation.

“Central America obtained meagre access quotas for agricultural products such as sugar, textiles, beef and rice,” whereas the EU “gained full opening of Central American markets for a wide range of key agricultural and industrial goods, such as dairy products, vehicles, medicines and machinery,” it says in a communiqué.

Moreover, on intellectual property, CID questions the major concessions granted to the EU in terms of protected geographical designations, patents and copyright: in the area of services, the bloc was granted complete access in the fields of finance, transport and energy, among others.

Meanwhile, “Central America has yielded ground in terms of workers’ rights and environmental protection compared with other treaties,” since “the agreement with the EU does not provide for penalties for those who infringe these rights for the sake of commercial interests,” says CID.

The EU is one of Central America’s main trading partners, but the EU is by far the stronger partner, with a trade surplus in 2010 of 5.2 billion euros (6.4 billion dollars) and sales to Central America worth 25.9 billion euros (32 billion dollars), according to the European Commission.

Marco Antonio Barahona of the Central American Institute for Political Studies (INCEP) told IPS that Central America still has a lot of work to do on integration in order to be able to face up to these trade challenges. “We have not even been able to create a customs union in our region,” he said.

Besides, “we mainly export products that Europe can do without, such as bananas, coffee and sugar, as opposed to oil, for example, which fuels the economy,” he told IPS.