Tag: Belgium

Belgian intelligence puts Huawei on its watchlist

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Belgium’s intelligence service is scrutinizing the operations of technology giant Huawei as fears of Chinese espionage grow around the EU and NATO headquarters in Brussels, according to confidential documents seen by POLITICO and three people familiar with the matter.
In recent months, Belgium’s State Security Service (VSSE) has requested interviews with former employees of the company’s lobbying operation in the heart of Brussels’ European district. The intelligence gathering is part of security officials’ activities to scrutinize how China may be using non-state actors — including senior lobbyists in Huawei’s Brussels office — to advance the interests of the Chinese state and its Communist party in Europe, said the people, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
The scrutiny of Huawei’s EU activities comes as Western security agencies are sounding the alarm over companies with links to China. British, Dutch, Belgian, Czech and Nordic officials — as well as EU functionaries — have all been told to stay off TikTok on work phones over concerns similar to those surrounding Huawei, namely that Chinese security legislation forces Chinese tech firms to hand over data.

The scrutiny also comes amid growing evidence of foreign states’ influence on EU decision-making — a phenomenon starkly exposed by the recent Qatargate scandal, where the Gulf state sought to influence Brussels through bribes and gifts via intermediary organizations. The Belgian security services are tasked with overseeing operations led by foreign actors around the EU institutions.
The State Security Service declined to comment when asked about the intelligence gathering.
A Huawei spokesperson said the company was unaware of the company’s Brussels office staff being questioned by the intelligence service.
China link
Belgian intelligence officers want to determine if there are any direct ties between the Chinese state and Huawei’s Brussels office, the people said. Of particular interest, they added, are Huawei representatives who may have previously held posts in Brussels institutions with access to a network of EU contacts.
At the core of Western concerns surrounding Huawei — which is headquartered in Shenzhen, China — is whether the firm can be instrumentalized, pressured or infiltrated by the Chinese government to gain access to critical data in Western countries.
Huawei’s EU lobbying offices — one located in between the European Parliament and European Commission and Council buildings and the other a “cybersecurity transparency center” close to the U.S. embassy — have been a major lobbying power in EU policymaking over the past decade. The most recent corporate declarations put the firm among the top 30 companies spending most on EU lobbying in Brussels, with a declared maximum spending of €2.25 million per year. In 2018 — right at the start of the geopolitical storm that struck the firm — it entered the top 10 of lobbying spenders in Brussels.
The company’s Shenzhen headquarters has also strengthened its control over its Brussels office activities over the past decade. In 2019 it replaced its then-head of the EU office Tony Graziano — who had a long track record of lobbying the EU and had led Huawei’s Brussels office since 2011 — with Abraham Liu, a company loyalist who had risen up the ranks of its international operations. Liu was later replaced with Tony Jin Yong, currently the main representative of Huawei with the EU. It has also consistently brought in Chinese staff to support its public affairs activities.
The Chinese telecoms giant last year started ramping down its EU presence, folding its activities across Europe into its regional headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany, POLITICO reported in November. Part of that shake-up was to let go of some of the firm’s Western strategists, who had worked to push back on bans and blocks of its equipment in the past years.
The scrutiny of Huawei’s EU activities comes as Western security agencies are sounding the alarm over companies with links to China | Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images
Huawei has continuously stressed it is independent from the Chinese state. “Huawei is a commercial operation,” a spokesperson said. Asked whether the company had a policy to check which of its staff are members of the Chinese Communist Party, the spokesperson said: “We don’t ask about or interfere with employees’political or religious beliefs. We treat every employee the same regardless of their race, gender, social status, disability, religion or anything else.”
One key concern brought up by Western security authorities in past years is that Huawei as a China-headquartered company is subject to Beijing’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, which requires companies to “support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts” as well as “protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.”
Asked how it handles legal requests from the Chinese government to hand over data, the spokesperson referred to the company’s frequently asked questions page on the matter, which states: “Huawei has never received such a request and we would categorically refuse to comply if we did. Huawei is an independent company that works only to serve its customers. We would never compromise or harm any country, organization, or individual, especially when it comes to cybersecurity and user privacy protection.
Eye on EU
Huawei has faced pushback from Belgian security services in past years. The country’s National Security Council in 2020 imposed restrictions on its use in critical parts of 5G networks.
Belgium — while being a small market — is considered strategically important for Western allies because of the presence of the EU institutions and the headquarters of the transatlantic NATO defense alliance.
The Belgian State Security Service’s interest in Huawei follows an increasing interest in China’s operations in the EU capital. In 2022, the service released an intelligence report laying out its findings on the operations of Chinese-backed lobbyists in Brussels. In it, the VSSE hit out at the Chinese state for operating in “a grey zone between lobbying, interference, political influence, espionage, economic blackmail and disinformation campaigns.”
In response to the study, the Chinese embassy in Belgium said the intelligence services “slandered the legitimate and lawful business operation of Chinese companies in Belgium, seriously affecting their reputation and causing potential harm to their normal production and operation.”
It’s not just China. “Undue interference perpetrated by other powers also continues to be a red flag for the VSSE,” the intelligence service said in its report. “The recent interference scandal in the European Parliament is a case in point.”
As far as that case goes, the Belgian authorities have so far charged several individuals in the ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of bribery between Qatar and EU representatives, with police raids yielding €1.5 million in cash.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

March 23, 2023
Beyond the pale? Why the EU is regulating breast milk

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The European Union regulates all sorts of banks: money banks, blood banks, sperm banks.
Its next target? Breast milk banks.
Brussels bureaucrats want to homogenize the rules overseeing the donation and use of donor breast milk across the bloc.

It’s part of the European Commission’s proposed revamp of the laws covering safety and quality standards for substances of human origin (SoHO) intended for human use. Currently, the laws cover blood, tissues and cells, but the EU wants to extend coverage to all SoHO — including donor breast milk.
While, at first glance, it might seem like the EU is trying to milk its regulatory powers, experts are largely in favor of the plan to set EU-wide standards, saying it will improve its availability and safety.
With lawmakers and EU countries debating the revamp, POLITICO walks you through the issue.
What are breast milk banks?
Women who make more breast milk than their babies need can donate it to a breast milk bank.
These banks screen donors and collect, process and distribute the milk to infants in need — those whose mother’s own milk is not available or sufficient.
While exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for all babies in the first six months of their life, it’s especially important for premature or sick newborns, experts say.
Among many other benefits, breast milk contains antibodies that are important for newborns’ immune systems. Babies born before 30 weeks of pregnancy are especially susceptible to infections, particularly from necrotizing enterocolitis, a type of gut inflammation that can be fatal. Their survival rates improve when they get human milk as compared with formula, said Elien Rouw, a breastfeeding medicine specialist in Germany and president-elect of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine.
There are currently 282 breast milk banks in Europe, including Turkey and Ukraine, according to the European Milk Bank Association.
Aren’t they already regulated?
Donor breast milk is regulated differently in different countries. For example, it’s considered a health product in France, a food in Germany, and is uncategorized and unregulated in Romania. And while the safety standards are set at the national level in France, for instance, they are set at the regional level in Belgium.
The Commission wants to harmonize breast milk safety standards across the EU | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
There is some level of convergence though. For example, most national guidelines in the world recommend donor breast milk should be pasteurized, according to the European Milk Bank Association.
In France, for example, the milk is first tested for bacteria and highly contaminated milk is thrown out, explains Jean-Charles Picaud, professor of pediatrics specialized in neonatology at Hôpital de la Croix-Rousse in Lyon, and president of the French Human Milk Bank Association. The rest is then pasteurized at precisely 62.5 degrees Celsius for exactly 30 minutes and then retested before being made available for babies.
What does the Commission want to do?
The Commission wants to harmonize safety standards across the EU, not only to ensure the safety of the babies that consume breast milk, but also to make it easier for donor breast milk — and other SoHO — to cross borders.
Donor milk banks are unevenly spread out across the Continent. There are over 30 in France, for example, but only four in Belgium and one in Romania. And parts of Europe are facing a shortage of donor breast milk, while it remains in limited supply elsewhere.
“There are children dying in Germany because they didn’t have, or didn’t have enough, human milk,” Rouw, the breastfeeding medicine specialist in Germany, said. Centers in Germany caring for extremely premature babies without direct access to a milk bank are buying it in part from Belgium and the United States, she added.
Experts agree that having harmonized safety standards would make the cross-border exchange of breast milk easier, improving babies’ access to it. These include things like donor selection criteria, maternal blood tests for infections, hygiene standards during collection, cold chain conditions during transport, and testing the milk for bacteria, said Picaud, president of the French Human Milk Bank Association.
However, while the Commission is setting out the principle of bloc-wide standards in its regulation, it aims to leave it to expert bodies — the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare (EDQM) — to hammer out the precise scientific and technical details so that these can be more easily updated should the need arise.
Should donors get paid?
The debate over paying for substances of human origin is a divisive one. Germany’s Human Milk Bank Initiative, a nongovernmental organization that promotes nonprofit donor milk banks, warned in a position statement to the Commission in 2020 that “ethically questionable approaches” have been used globally to acquire human milk from “lactating mothers in resource-limited regions or from socio-economically disadvantaged populations.”
EU countries take varying approaches when it comes to donor compensation for breast milk. Donors in France, for instance, receive no financial compensation. In Sweden, donating mothers receive a nominal 250 Swedish krona (€22.56) per liter of donated milk.
The Commission’s proposed revision includes guidance on compensation for all SoHO donors, to allow any financial losses to be covered — but leaves it to EU countries to determine whether to allow it and if so, the conditions for it, ensuring they remain “financially neutral.”
As well as human milk banks, the new law would also apply to any company looking to commercialize breast milk as an ingredient.
A nurse checks reserves of breast milk in the Sant’Anna hospital in Turin, Italy | Diana Bagnoli/Getty Images
Given the growing body of research showing the clinical benefits of donor breast milk for premature babies, hospital-affiliated milk banks around the world are expanding their activities — and there’s also growing commercial interest, a Commission spokesperson told POLITICO.
At least one company is using breast milk to make fortifiers for sick and premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit, which are then added to either a mother’s milk or donor milk.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

March 2, 2023
Shock, anger, betrayal: Inside the Qatargate-hit Socialist group

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BRUSSELS — The European Parliament’s Socialists are warily eyeing their colleagues and assistants, wondering which putative ally might turn out to be a liar as new details emerge in a growing cash-for-favors scandal.
Long-simmering geographic divisions within the group, Parliament’s second largest, are fueling mistrust and discord. Members are at odds over how forcefully to defend their implicated colleagues. Others are nursing grievances over how the group’s leadership handled months of concerns about their lawmaker, Eva Kaili, who’s now detained pending trial.
Publicly, the group has shown remarkable solidarity during the so-called Qatargate scandal, which involves allegations that foreign countries bribed EU lawmakers. Socialists and Democrats (S&D) chief Iratxe García has mustered a unified response, producing an ambitious ethics reform proposal and launching an internal investigation without drawing an open challenge to her leadership. Yet as the Parliament’s center left ponders how to win back the public’s trust ahead of next year’s EU election, the trust among the members themselves is fraying.

“I feel betrayed by these people that are colleagues of our political group,” said Mohammed Chahim, a Dutch S&D MEP. “As far as I am concerned, we are all political victims, and I hope we can get the truth out in the open.”
S&D MEPs are grappling not only with a sense of personal betrayal but also a fear that the links to corruption could squash otherwise promising electoral prospects.
Social democrats were looking forward to running in 2024 on the bread-and-butter issues at the top of minds around the bloc amid persistent inflation, buoyed by Olaf Scholz’s rise in Germany and the Continent-wide popularity of Finland’s Sanna Marin. Now, the group’s appeal to voters’ pocketbooks could be overshadowed by suitcases filled with cash.
“We were completely unaware of what was going on,” said García, vowing that the group’s internal inquiry will figure out what went wrong. “We have to let the people responsible [for the investigation] work.”
The ‘darkest plenary’
Shock, anger and betrayal reverberated through the 145-strong caucus in early December last year when Belgian police began arresting senior S&D figures, chief among them a former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri and Eva Kaili, a rising star from Greece who had barely completed a year as one of Parliament’s 14 vice presidents.
“The Qatargate revelations came as a terrible shock to S&D staff and MEPs,” an S&D spokesperson said. “Many felt betrayed, their trust abused and broken. Anyone who has ever become a victim of criminals will understand it takes time to heal from such an experience.”
When the S&D gathered for a Parliament session in Strasbourg days after the first arrests, few members took it harder than the group’s president, García, who at one point broke down in tears, according to three people present.
“We are all not just political machines, but also human beings,” said German MEP Gabriele Bischoff, an S&D vice chair in her first term. “To adapt to such a crisis, and to deal with it, it’s not easy.”
“I mean, also, you trusted some of these people,” she said.
An Italian court ruled that the daughter of former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri can be extradited to Belgium | European Union
In Strasbourg the group showed zero appetite to watch the judicial process play out, backing a move to remove Kaili from her vice presidency role. (She has, through a lawyer, consistently maintained her innocence.)
The group’s leadership also pressured MEPs who in any way were connected to the issues or people in the scandal to step back from legislative work, even if they faced no charges.
“It was of course the darkest plenary we’ve had,” said Andreas Schieder, an Austrian S&D MEP who holds a top role on the committee charged with battling foreign interference post Qatargate. “But we took the right decisions quickly.”
The S&D hierarchy swiftly suspended Kaili from the group in December and meted out the same treatment to two other MEPs who would later be drawn into the probe.
But now many S&D MEPs are asking themselves how it was possible that a cluster of people exerted such influence across the Socialist group, how Kaili rose so quickly to the vice presidency and how so much allegedly corrupt behavior went apparently unnoticed for years.
Like family
The deep interpersonal connections between those accused and the rest of the group were part of what made it all so searing for the S&D tribe.
Belgian authorities’ initial sweep nabbed not only Panzeri and Kaili but also Kaili’s partner, a longtime parliamentary assistant named Francesco Giorgi, who had spent years working for Panzeri. Suddenly every former Panzeri assistant still in Parliament was under suspicion. Panzeri later struck a plea deal, offering to dish on whom he claims to have bribed in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Maria Arena, who succeeded Panzeri as head of the Parliament’s human rights panel in 2019, also found herself under heavy scrutiny: Her friendship with her predecessor was so close that she’d been spotted as his plus-one at his assistant’s wedding. Alessandra Moretti, another S&D MEP, has also been linked to the probe, according to legal documents seen by POLITICO.
The appearance of Laura Ballarin, García’s Cabinet chief, raising a glass with Giorgi and vacationing on a Mediterranean sailboat with Kaili, offered a tabloid-friendly illustration of just how enmeshed the accused were with the group’s top brass.
“I was the first one to feel shocked, hurt and deeply betrayed when the news came out,” Ballarin told POLITICO. “Yet, evidently, my personal relations did never interfere with my professional role.”
Making matters worse, some three months later, the scandal has largely remained limited to the S&D. Two more of its members have been swallowed up since the initial round of arrests: Italy’s Andrea Cozzolino and Belgium’s Marc Tarabella — a well-liked figure known for handing out Christmas gifts to Parliament staff as part of a St. Nicholas act. Both were excluded, like Kaili, from the S&D group. They maintain their innocence.
Whiter than white
That’s putting pressure on García, who is seen in Brussels as an extension of the power of her close ally, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is one of S&D chief Iratxe García most important allies | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
However, she has not always been able to leverage that alliance in Brussels. A prime example is the backroom deal the political groups made to appoint the Parliament’s new secretary-general, Alessandro Chiocchetti, who hails from the center-right European People’s Party. García emerged mostly empty-handed from the negotiations, with the EPP maneuvering around her and The Left group securing an entirely new directorate general.
Kaili, from a tiny two-person Greek Socialist delegation, would also have never gotten the nod to become vice president in 2022 without García and the Spanish Socialists’ backing.
Yet when it comes to trying to clean house and reclaim the moral high ground, the Socialist chief has brought people together. “She deserves to be trusted to do this correctly,” said René Repasi, a German S&D lawmaker.
In the new year, the S&D successfully pushed through the affable, progressive Luxembourgish Marc Angel to replace Kaili, fending off efforts by other left-leaning and far-right groups to take one of the S&D’s seats in the Parliament’s rule-making bureau. In another move designed to steady the ship, the Socialists in February drafted Udo Bullmann, an experienced German MEP who previously led the S&D group, as a safe pair of hands to replace Arena on the human rights subcommittee.
And in a bid to go on the offensive, the Socialists published a 15-point ethics plan (one-upping the center-right Parliament president’s secret 14-point plan). It requires all S&D MEPs — and their assistants — to disclose their meetings online and pushes for whistleblower protections in the Parliament. Where legally possible, the group pledges to hold its own members to these standards — for example by banning MEPs from paid-for foreign trips — even if the rest of the body doesn’t go as far.
Those results were hard won, group officials recounted. With members from 26 EU countries, the group had to navigate cultural and geographic divisions on how to handle corruption, exposing north-south fault lines.
“To do an internal inquiry was not supported in the beginning by all, but we debated it,” said Bischoff, describing daily meetings that stretched all the way to Christmas Eve.
The idea of recruiting outside players to conduct an internal investigation was also controversial, she added. Yet in the end, the group announced in mid-January that former MEP Richard Corbett and Silvina Bacigalupo, a law professor and board member of Transparency International Spain, would lead a group-backed inquiry, which has now begun.
The moves appear to have staved off a challenge to García’s leadership, and so far, attacks from the Socialists’ main rival, the EPP, have been limited. But S&D MEPs say there’s still an air of unease, with some concerned the cleanup hasn’t gone deep enough — while others itch to defend the accused.
Some party activists quietly question if the response was too fast and furious.
Arena’s political future is in doubt, for example, even though she’s faced no criminal charges. Following mounting pressure about her ties to Panzeri, culminating with a POLITICO report on her undeclared travel to Qatar, Arena formally resigned from the human rights subcommittee. The group is not defending her, even as some activists mourn the downfall of someone they see as a sincere champion for human rights causes.
Vocal advocacy for Kaili has also fueled controversy: Italian S&D MEPs drew groans from colleagues when they hawked around a letter about the treatment of Kaili and her daughter, which only garnered 10 signatures.
“I do not believe it was necessary,” García said of the letter. “[If] I worry about the situation in jails, it has to be for everyone, not for a specific MEP.”
The letter also did nothing to warm relations between the S&D’s Spanish and Italian delegations, which have been frosty since before the scandal. The S&D spokesperson in a statement rejected the notion that there are tensions along geographical lines: “There’s no divide between North and South, nor East and West, and there’s no tension between the Italian and Spanish delegations.”
In another camp are MEPs who are looking somewhat suspiciously at their colleagues.
Repasi, the German S&D member, said he is weary of “colleagues that are seemingly lying into your face” — a specific reference to Tarabella, who vocally denied wrongdoing for weeks, only to have allegations surface that he took around €140,000 in bribes from Panzeri, the detained ex-lawmaker.
Repasi added: “It makes you more and more wonder if there is anyone else betting on the fact that he or she might not be caught.”
Jakob Hanke Vela, Karl Mathiesen and Aitor Hernández-Morales contributed reporting.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

March 2, 2023
Xinjiang governor cancels EU visit amid Uyghur abuse blowback

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BRUSSELS — The governor of the Xinjiang region in China has canceled his controversial trip to Paris and Brussels, three people with knowledge of his plan told POLITICO.
The cancelation of Erkin Tuniyaz’s tour followed widespread concerns from lawmakers and activists that Europe would be rolling out the red carpet for the man in charge of the Chinese region where extreme measures against the Uyghur Muslim community amounted to what the U.N. calls potential crimes against humanity.
News of the trip being called off was relayed to people invited to his reception parties planned by Chinese diplomats in France and Belgium. “Due to scheduling reasons … [the event] is postponed,” according to an email sent to the EU guests in Brussels, the text of which was seen by POLITICO.
The one sent to invitees in Paris cited “an important domestic agenda.” Those sharing the information with POLITICO did so on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the Xinjiang governor’s trip publicly.
An emailed inquiry from POLITICO to the Chinese embassy in London, where Tuniyaz was supposed to begin his tour on Monday, was not answered. It remains unclear whether he will still go to London.
POLITICO reported on his planned trip to Brussels last week following a report by the Guardian on his London visit. It later emerged that he was also scheduled to go to Paris.
Critics questioned the British Foreign Office and the EU foreign policy arm for an initial plan to invite Tuniyaz for meetings during his trip. Some threatened legal action against him while he’s on European soil. The EU later defended its decision, saying they turned down Beijing’s requests to meet more senior EU officials.
The Chinese foreign ministry didn’t confirm Tuniyaz’s initial trip plan.

On the other hand, it announced that the Chinese foreign policy chief, Wang Yi, will be visiting Russia and four EU countries: France, Germany, Italy and Hungary. He’s also expected to speak at the Munich Security Conference. This will be Wang’s first trip to Europe since his promotion from foreign minister to the Communist Party Politburo late last year.
In the meantime the EU is expected to relaunch the human rights dialogue with China later this month, the first time since Beijing imposed sanctions on European diplomats, lawmakers and scholars in 2020, according to an EU official on foreign policy.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 8, 2023
Russian diamonds lose their sparkle in Europe

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In the European bubble in Brussels, diamonds aren’t anyone’s best friend anymore.
The Belgian government’s reluctance to ban imports of Russian diamonds, which would hurt the city of Antwerp, a global hub for the precious stones, has outraged Ukraine and its supporters within the EU.
Ukraine has been pushing to stop the import of Russian rough diamonds because the trade enriches Alrosa, a partially state-owned Russian enterprise.

While such a crackdown wouldn’t inflict the same damage on Vladimir Putin’s economy as a prohibition on all fossil fuels, for example, the continuing flow of Russian diamonds has become a symbol of Western countries putting their national interests above those of Ukraine.
New plans for a fresh round of sanctions against Putin have now reignited the debate over the morality of Europe’s trade in diamonds from Russia.
Belgium is fed up with being scapegoated. According to Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, Putin’s ability to sell diamonds to all western markets now needs to be shut off.
“Russian diamonds are blood diamonds,” De Croo said in a statement to POLITICO. “The revenue for Russia from diamonds can only stop if the access of Russian diamonds to Western markets is no longer possible. On forging that solid front, Belgium is working with its partners.”
The West’s economic war against Russia has already had an impact. Partly because of U.S. sanctions, the Russian diamond trade in Antwerp has already been severely hit. But those rough Russian diamonds are diverted to other diamond markets, and often find their way back to the West, cut and polished.
That’s why Belgium is working with partners to introduce a “watertight” traceability system for diamonds, a Belgian official said. If it works, this could hurt Moscow more than if Washington or Brussels are flying solo.
“Europe and North America together represent 70 percent of the world market for natural diamonds,” the official said. “Based on this market power, we can ensure the necessary transparency in the global diamond sector and structurally ban blood diamonds from the global market. The war in Ukraine provides for a strong momentum.”
Sanctions at last?
Belgium’s offensive comes just when its position on sanctioning Russian diamonds is under renewed attack — not just from other EU countries and Belgian opposition parties, but also within De Croo’s own government.
According to Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, Putin’s ability to sell diamonds to all western markets now needs to be shut off | Laurie Dieffembacq/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images
The EU is preparing a new round of sanctions against Russia ahead of the first anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Countries such as Poland and Lithuania are again urging the EU to include diamonds. However, one EU diplomat said the discussion is now more an “intra-Belgian fight than a European one.”
De Croo leads a coalition of seven ideologically diverse parties. The greens and socialists within his government are pushing him to actively lobby for hitting diamonds in the next EU sanctions round.
In particular, Vooruit, the Dutch-speaking socialist party, is making a renewed push. Belgian MP Vicky Reynaert will be introducing a new resolution in the Belgian Parliament proposing an import ban.
“It’s becoming impossible to explain that Belgium is not open to blocking Russian diamonds,” Reynaert said. “We want Belgium to actively engage with the European Commission to take action.” Belgian socialist MEP Kathleen Van Brempt is pushing the same idea at the European level.
But the initiative from the socialists isn’t likely to deliver an import ban, or even import quotas, four officials from other Belgian political parties said. De Croo is now set on an international solution instead. No one expects the socialists to destabilize De Croo’s fragile Belgian coalition government over the issue of diamonds.
Even if all seven parties in the Belgian government did agree to hit Russian diamonds, there would be another key obstacle.
In the complicated Belgian political system, the regional governments would have a say as well. The government of the northern region of Flanders is against an import ban. That government is led by the Flemish nationalists, whose party president, Bart De Wever, is also the mayor of Antwerp. “Nothing will change their minds on this,” one of the Belgian officials said of the nationalists’ position.
Blood diamonds
Belgium hopes that by building an international coalition to trace Russia’s “blood diamonds” it will finally stop being seen as a roadblock to action.
The industry agrees. “Sanctions are not the solution,” said Tom Neys of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre. “An international framework of complete transparency, with the same standards of compliance as Antwerp, can be that solution,” he said.
Such a transatlantic plan would have a huge impact, according to Hans Merket, a researcher with the International Peace Information Service, a human rights nonprofit organization. “That would have much more effect than the current U.S. sanctions, which are being circumvented,” said Merket.
But the devil will be in the details. Will Belgium succeed in building a transatlantic coalition? Are consumers willing to pay more for their diamonds, or does it still risk diverting the goods to other markets where traders are less diligent?
One of the Belgian officials was doubtful of Belgium’s chances of success. If the international alliance falters, Belgium and the EU should consider moving ahead on their own to convince the rest of the world to act. “But let’s give De Croo a shot at this,” the official said.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

January 24, 2023
Europe is running out of medicines

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When you’re feeling under the weather, the last thing you want to do is trek from pharmacy to pharmacy searching for basic medicines like cough syrup and antibiotics. Yet many people across Europe — faced with a particularly harsh winter bug season — are having to do just that.
Since late 2022, EU countries have been reporting serious problems trying to source certain important drugs, with a majority now experiencing shortages. So just how bad is the situation and, crucially, what’s being done about it? POLITICO walks you through the main points.
How bad are the shortages?
In a survey of groups representing pharmacies in 29 European countries, including EU members as well as Turkey, Kosovo, Norway and North Macedonia, almost a quarter of countries reported more than 600 drugs in short supply, and 20 percent reported 200-300 drug shortages. Three-quarters of the countries said shortages were worse this winter than a year ago. Groups in four countries said that shortages had been linked to deaths.

It’s a portrait backed by data from regulators. Belgian authorities report nearly 300 medicines in short supply. In Germany that number is 408, while in Austria more than 600 medicines can’t be bought in pharmacies at the moment. Italy’s list is even longer — with over 3,000 drugs included, though many are different formulations of the same medicine.
Which medicines are affected?
Antibiotics — particularly amoxicillin, which is used to treat respiratory infections — are in short supply. Other classes of drugs, including cough syrup, children’s paracetamol, and blood pressure medicine, are also scarce.
Why is this happening?
It’s a mix of increased demand and reduced supply.
Seasonal infections — influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) first and foremost — started early and are stronger than usual. There’s also an unusual outbreak of throat disease Strep A in children. Experts think the unusually high level of disease activity is linked to weaker immune systems that are no longer familiar with the soup of germs surrounding us in daily life, due to lockdowns. This difficult winter, after a couple of quiet years (with the exception of COVID-19), caught drugmakers unprepared.
Inflation and the energy crisis have also been weighing on pharmaceutical companies, affecting supply.
Last year, Centrient Pharmaceuticals, a Dutch producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients, said its plant was producing a quarter less output than in 2021 due to high energy costs. In December, InnoGenerics, another manufacturer from the Netherlands, was bailed out by the government after declaring bankruptcy to keep its factory open.
Commissioner Stella Kyriakides wrote to Greece’s health minister asking him to take into consideration the effects of bans on third countries | Stephanie Lecocq/EPA-EFE
The result, according to Sandoz, one of the largest producers on the European generics market, is an especially “tight supply situation.” A spokesperson told POLITICO that other culprits include scarcity of raw materials and manufacturing capacity constraints. They added that Sandoz is able to meet demand at the moment, but is “facing challenges.”
How are governments reacting?
Some countries are slamming the brakes on exports to protect domestic supplies. In November, Greece’s drugs regulator expanded the list of medicine whose resale to other countries — known as parallel trade — is banned. Romania has temporarily stopped exports of certain antibiotics and kids’ painkillers. Earlier in January, Belgium published a decree that allows the authorities to halt exports in case of a crisis.
These freezes can have knock-on effects. A letter from European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides addressed to Greece’s Health Minister Thanos Plevris asked him to take into consideration the effects of bans on third countries. “Member States must refrain from taking national measures that could affect the EU internal market and prevent access to medicines for those in need in other Member States,” wrote Kyriakides.
Germany’s government is considering changing the law to ease procurement requirements, which currently force health insurers to buy medicines where they are cheapest, concentrating the supply into the hands of a few of the most price-competitive producers. The new law would have buyers purchase medicines from multiple suppliers, including more expensive ones, to make supply more reliable. The Netherlands recently introduced a law requiring vendors to keep six weeks of stockpiles to bridge shortages, and in Sweden the government is proposing similar rules.
At a more granular level, a committee led by the EU’s drugs regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), has recommended that rules be loosened to allow pharmacies to dispense pills or medicine doses individually, among other measures. In Germany, the president of the German Medical Association went so far as to call for the creation of informal “flea markets” for medicines, where people could give their unused drugs to patients who needed them. And in France and Germany, pharmacists have started producing their own medicines — though this is unlikely to make a big difference, given the extent of the shortfall.
Can the EU fix it?
In theory, the EU should be more ready than ever to tackle a bloc-wide crisis. It has recently upgraded its legislation to deal with health threats, including a lack of pharmaceuticals. The EMA has been given expanded powers to monitor drug shortages. And a whole new body, the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) has been set up, with the power to go on the market and purchase drugs for the entire bloc.
But not everyone agrees that it’s that bad yet.
Last Thursday, the EMA decided not to ask the Commission to declare the amoxycillin shortage a “major event” — an official label that would have triggered some (limited) EU-wide action— saying that current measures are improving the situation.
A European Medicines Agency’s working group on shortages could decide on Thursday whether to recommend that the Commission declares the drug shortages a “major event” — an official label that would trigger some (limited) EU-wide action. An EMA steering group for shortages would have the power to request data on drug stocks of the drugs and production capacity from suppliers, and issue recommendations on how to mitigate shortages.
At an appearance before the European Parliament’s health committee, the Commission’s top health official, Sandra Gallina, said she wanted to “dismiss a bit the idea that there is a huge shortage,” and said that alternative medications are available to use.
And others believe the situation will get better with time. “I think it will sort itself out, but that depends on the peak of infections,” said Adrian van den Hoven, director general of generics medicines lobby Medicines for Europe. “If we have reached the peak, supply will catch up quickly. If not, probably not a good scenario.”
Helen Collis and Sarah-Taïssir Bencharif contributed reporting.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

January 24, 2023