In the past week the death toll from the earthquakes that hit Syria and Turkey, flattening buildings and laying waste to towns and cities, has rocketed.
Journalist Ruth Michaelson has been travelling around the devastated area, meeting survivors who have been waiting for days for rescue and relief efforts to reach them. One man told her how he waited five days for his in-laws to be pulled from the rubble, another that he had to not only help extract his grandparents’ bodies from the rubble but drive them to the graveyard himself. The long wait for support is taking its toll.
There is a growing frustration in Turkey with the government of President Erdoğan – who himself came to power after dissatisfaction at how a previous administration dealt with an earthquake. Meanwhile in Syria, the US has had to make an exemption to its sanctions to allow aid through, while a rebel leader previously affiliated with al-Qaida has called for international aid. So how likely is it that the survivors will get the help they need?
Photograph: Svet Jacqueline/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock
Support The Guardian
The Guardian is editorially independent.
And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all.
But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work.
Support The Guardian
[ad_2]
#anger #growing #Turkey #week #catastrophic #earthquakes #podcast
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The visit is a marked shift in tone from previous engagements. French President Emmanuel Macron accused the U.S. of “hurting” his country when Congress passed its landmark Inflation Reduction Act.
European officials had initially pushed President Joe Biden and senior U.S. lawmakers to make the law more inclusive of European companies. The law provides $369 billion in subsidies and tax credits that aim to incentivize purchases of electric vehicles and build up green infrastructure. One of the most hotly contested provisions, a $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit, is limited to cars built in North America and with battery critical minerals sourced domestically or from a free trade agreement partner — which the EU is not.
Habeck and Le Maire say they haven’t given up that campaign. But in the face of uncertainty about how far the Biden administration will go to address their concerns, the officials said the European Union, one America’s most important trading partners, deserves at least a transparent accounting of how the U.S. government will use the law to funnel money to industry.
“We agreed on the necessity of full transparency on the level of subsidies and tax credits,” Le Maire told reporters after the meetings, as well as “necessity to ensure constant communication at the ministerial level, especially on the strategy on tax credits.”
“You cannot have any fair competition if there is not full transparency on the level of public subsidies and public tax credits that are granted to private companies,” he added.
But outside of pledges for transparency and cooperation, the meetings with U.S. officials did not appear to yield any concrete agreement to alleviate the EU’s top concern with the IRA — the North American assembly requirement for subsidized electric vehicles.
Le Maire said the sides agreed in principle that the “implementation of the IRA should include as many EU components as possible.” But he declined to detail if that meant the U.S. had budged on the EV tax credit terms, or if they would seek to maximize EU parts under existing the parameters.
The economic dustup has shown how complex and potentially adversarial the race toward a clean energy future will be. Even as they pursue their own self-interests, economies like the U.S. and EU have at least one shared goal beyond slowing climate change: ensuring China does not dominate supply chains for battery production and renewables.
For their part, European nations are already developing their own subsidy scheme to prevent a feared migration of EU manufacturing to the U.S., where energy costs are lower and states are standing by with sweeteners to dish out. After meeting with U.S. officials, the ministers said the need for Europe to respond with its own subsidy package is clearer than ever.
“One conclusion we have to draw from the meetings,” Le Maire said, is that “we see the absolute necessity for Europe to arrive at the definition and implementation of a European green tech plan.”
U.S. officials have encouraged the EU to boost its own industries, often noting there is ample room in the market for widespread government support for clean energy.
A Treasury Department readout of the meeting said Yellen stressed the need for innovation and development of technology “on both sides of the Atlantic to speed the transition to green energy and meet our collective climate goals.”
The Treasury Department provided preliminary guidance in late December on how it is going to implement key features of the electric vehicle tax credits and promised complete details in March. In a win for the EU, it hinted at adopting an expansive definition of which countries are considered U.S. free trade agreement partners. It also said imported electric vehicles would be eligible for a separate credit for commercial clean vehicles. However, many legal experts said it’s unlikely the administration could bend the law any further.
The German and French officials emphasized a promise to cooperate on creating a common market for the components that go into many clean energy products, with Habeck hailing the creation of a “critical minerals club” between the trading partners. France and Germany had already agreed last year to join a “minerals security partnership” to bolster critical mineral supply chains.
“The idea is we will find concrete measures … on how we reach more diversity in the supply chain,” Habeck said. “If that is reached, then we might have the steps for further agreements, for further alignment for the goods that are produced out of the critical minerals.”
Habeck and Le Maire also met Tuesday with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), who played a key role in crafting the final details of the IRA, particularly the electric vehicle consumer tax credit.
Speaking at an online event hosted by the news outlet Semafor before that meeting, Manchin defended the IRA bill as an important step toward achieving U.S. energy security and said it was never his or Congress’ intention to hurt Europe.
“We can bring them in to basically participating [in the IRA provisions],” Manchin said. “But every country does what they can to stimulate their market, to keep their people working, to have a strong economy. They can’t deny us from doing the same thing.”
Manchin also encouraged European officials to offer incentives to increase investment in clean energy and technologies to fight climate change. He expressed concern the EU wants “to continue to beat the living crap out of people by charging carbon taxes, carbon fees and everything [else they’re] doing, rather than giving them incentives, basically, to mature these industries quicker.”
[ad_2]
#Europe #moves #anger #acceptance #U.S #climate #law
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Anger is mounting in EU capitals at a “massive” and “super aggressive” $370bn US green subsidy package that many fear will deal a hammer blow to Europe’s industry and economy. But the bloc is deeply divided over how to respond.
Signed into law last August, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers huge subsidies and tax credits to companies investing in electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies, such as batteries, solar panels and wind turbines – as long as the products and parts they manufacture are made in America.
The bloc’s riposte is being hampered by fierce disagreements between member states over relaxing strict EU state aid rules – which mostly bar such generous corporate tax breaks – as well as over the prospect of more joint borrowing.
At stake, analysts warn, could be the fate of Europe’s manufacturing base, squeezed not only by record energy prices and an “aggressive” China, but now also by a US administration seen as heedlessly protectionist. Some have warned of potential deindustrialisation of Europe barring concerted action.
“The EU has never had an industrial policy worthy of the name,” said Luuk van Middelaar, a historian. “Faced with China and the US now increasingly exercising their power in this way, it really needs one now – but getting it right will really not be straightforward.”
The EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has pledged a targeted and temporary relaxation of state aid rules and a common fund to protect the bloc’s green tech industry from wipeout. National leaders are due to discuss the IRA at a summit in February.
Building on that theme in a speech at Davos on Tuesday, Von der Leyen said Brussels would propose asovereignty fund to boost medium-term resources for innovation, research and green industrial projects, with a bridging solution – more immediate funds – to provide “fast and targeted support”.
Whether, and how soon, member states can agree on a package, however, is open to question. “Finding the right response to the IRA will be a key political issue for the EU this year,” said Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia group. “Reforming strict state-aid rules will not be easy. Nor will be debates over an EU fund to maintain a level playing field in the single market.”
EU officials and national politicians alike have railed against the IRA, saying it discriminates against European companies selling to the US and – with US energy costs up to four times lower than in Europe – could prove catastrophic for industrial investment.
“I understand the importance of the IRA from the US perspective but on the side of Europe it is seen as much more controversial,” the Czech industry minister, Jozef Síkela, told a round table at Davos. “It is saying to European investors ‘go to the US, because it is more profitable to you’.”
Alexander De Croo, Belgium’s prime minister, went further last week, accusing the US of actively enticing European companies to move. “They are calling firms, in a very aggressive way, to say ‘don’t invest in Europe, we have something better’,” he said.
The Dutch foreign trade minister, Liesje Schreinemacher, has described the IRA as “very worrying”, and Germany’s finance minister, Christian Lindner, called it “enormously protectionist”. His French counterpart, Bruno Le Maire, said that subsidies four to 10 times greater than EU rules allow would upend the “level playing field that is the core of the transatlantic trade relationship”.
The commission has formally expressed “serious concerns” and warned of “retaliatory measures” – which potentially includes a complaint to the World Trade Organization on grounds that the IRA’s provisions on locally produced content violate WTO rules.
Although Washington has promised to look into possible adjustments, European officials expect no big changes and view the only tweaks so far – tax credits for electric vans and trucks – as altogether inadequate.
The EU’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, has toured EU capitals to float a “European clean tech act” as a way to channel cash to the bloc’s green tech industry, noting that all were aware of the need for “fast, coordinated, action”.
But Breton’s plan is in its early stages and its funding is unclear amid continuing discord among member states over how to pay for any combined response by the EU27 to what France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, called the “super-aggressive” IRA.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, last week announced a review of state aid rules, saying European industry faced a number of challenges, including the very real risk of the IRA “luring some … EU businesses into moving investments to the US”.
State subsidies are, however, a notoriously touchy subject within the bloc, with smaller countries in particular fearing laxer rules would allow big countries with more financial firepower – such as France and Germany – to offer unfair support to their companies, fatally distorting the single market.
Paris and Berlin have issued calls for aid rules to be quickly eased. France wants nothing less than a wholesale remodelling of EU industry support, calling for a “modernisation and simplification shock” including higher notification thresholds for projects in key green tech sectors.
But smaller, less interventionist, countries such as the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, have been far from reassured by recent data showing, perhaps unsurprisingly, that German and French companies hogged nearly 80% of state aid in the EU last year. According to commission data 53% of all state aid permitted in 2022 under a temporary easing of the rules to deal with the energy crisis went to companies in Germany, and 24% went to companies in France – despite the other 25 member states accounting for at least 50% of the EU’s total GDP.
Vestager has acknowledged this danger, calling members’ wildly differing capacities to afford big state subsidies “a risk for the integrity of Europe”, and proposed that any relaxation of state aid rules to counter the IRA should be accompanied by a “collective European fund”, probably financed with joint EU debt.
That idea is supported by France. Italy’s new prime minister, GiorgiaMeloni, too, said she would back a European sovereignty fund. But Germany and other influential member states, including the Netherlands, are far from keen on the idea if it involves any more joint EU borrowing.
Lindner was particularly adamant at a meeting of EU finance ministers last December. “A sovereignty fund must not be a new attempt at joint European borrowing,” he said. “We see no reason for additional European debt.”
[ad_2]
#anger #Bidens #protectionist #green #deal #translate #effective #action
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
