Germany and Japan agreed on Saturday to strengthen cooperation on economic security in the aftermath of tensions over global supply chains and the economic impact of the war in Ukraine.
In the first high-ministerial government consultations held between the two countries, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reached out to Tokyo to seek to reduce Germany’s dependence on China for imports of raw materials.
“The current challenges of our time make it clear: It is important to expand cooperation with close partners and acquire new partners. We want to reduce dependencies and increase the resilience of our economies.” the German chancellor said in a tweet.
Scholz and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said they believe the agreement will allow both countries to diversify value chains in order to be able to reduce economic risks.
In a joint statement, the two countries said they will work on establishing “a legal framework for bilateral defense and security cooperation activities,” including ways to protect critical infrastructures, trade routes and to secure future supply of sustainable energy.
Germany’s decision to prioritize consultations with Japan came after the Asian country put forward an economic security bill last year aimed at securing the uptake of technology and bolstering critical supply chains.
Japan is Germany’s second-largest trading partner in Asia after China, with a bilateral trade volume of €45.7 billion mainly based on the import and export of machinery, vehicles, electronics and chemical products.
The two leaders also exchanged views on the situation in Ukraine, cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and the G7 meeting in Hiroshima scheduled for May.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
As he jets off for a state visit to Moscow this week, China’s President Xi Jinping is doing so in defiance of massive international pressure. Vladimir Putin, the man Xi once called his “best, most intimate friend,” has just become the world’s most wanted alleged war criminal.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin on March 17 for his alleged role in illegally transferring Ukrainian civilians into Russian territories. But that isn’t deterring Xi, who broke Communist Party norms and formally secured a third term as Chinese leader this month.
But why is China’s leader so determined to stand by Putin despite the inevitable backlash, at a time when the West is increasingly suspicious of Beijing’s military aims — and scrutinizing prized Chinese companies like TikTok — more closely than ever?
For a start, Beijing’s worldview requires it to stay strategically close to Russia: As Beijing’s leaders see it, the U.S. is blocking China’s path to global leadership, aided by European governments, while most of its own geographical neighbors — from Japan and South Korea to Vietnam and India — are increasingly skeptical rather than supportive.
“The Chinese people are not prone to threats. Paper tigers such as the U.S. would definitely not be able to threaten China,” declared a commentary on Chinese state news agency Xinhua previewing Xi’s trip to Russia. The same article slammed Washington for threatening to sanction China if it provided Russia with weapons for its invasion of Ukraine. “The more the U.S. wants to crush the two superpowers, China and Russia, together … the closer China and Russia lean on each other.”
It’s a view that chimes with the rhetoric from the Kremlin. “Washington does not want this war to end. Washington wants and is doing everything to continue this war. This is the visible hand,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this month.
10-year bromance
To understand Xi’s preference for Putin even though China’s economy is so intertwined with the West, analysts say it’s not just important to factor in Beijing’s vision for the future, but also to grasp the history that the Chinese and Russian leaders share.
“They’re just six months apart in terms of age. Their fathers both fought in World War II … Both men had hardships in their youths. Both have daughters,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank and an expert on Russo-Chinese relations. “And they are both increasingly like an emperor and a tsar, equally obsessed with Color Revolutions.”
Their “bromance,” as Gabuev put it, began in 2013 when Xi met Putin toward the end of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bali — on Putin’s birthday. Citing two people present at the impromptu birthday party, Gabuev said the occasion was “not a boozy night, but they opened up and there was a really functioning chemistry.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Nusa Dua in 2013 | Mast Irham/AFP via Getty Images
According to Putin himself, Xi presented him with a cake while the Russian leader pulled out a bottle of vodka for a toast. The pair then reminisced over shots and sandwiches. “I’ve never established such relations or made such arrangements with any other foreign colleague, but I did it with President Xi,” Putin told the Chinese CCTV broadcaster in 2018. “This might seem irrelevant, but to talk about President Xi, this is where I would like to start.”
Those remarks were followed by a trip to Beijing, where Xi presented Putin with China’s first friendship medal. “He is my best, most intimate friend,” Xi said. “No matter what fluctuations there are in the international situation, China and Russia have always firmly taken the development of relations as a priority.”
Xi has stuck to those words, even after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine just over a year ago. Less than three weeks beforehand, Putin visited Beijing and signed what China once referred to as a “no limits” partnership. Chinese officials have steered clear of criticizing Russia — and they wouldn’t even call it a war — while echoing Putin’s narrative that NATO expansion was to blame.
Close but not equal
Concerns are mounting over Beijing’s potential to provide Russia with weapons. Last week, POLITICO reported that Chinese companies, including one connected to the government in Beijing, have sent Russian entities 1,000 assault rifles and other equipment that could be used for military purposes, including drone parts and body armor, according to customs data.
Chinese and Russian armed forces have also teamed up for joint exercises outside Europe. Most recently, they held naval drills together with Iran in the Gulf of Oman.
During Xi’s visit this week, the two leaders are expected to conclude up to a dozen agreements, according to Russian media TASS. Experts say Xi and Putin are likely to sign further agreements to boost trade — especially in energy — as well as make more efforts to trade in their own currencies.
Xi is also expected to reiterate China’s “position paper” with a view to settling what it calls the “Ukraine crisis.” The paper, released last month, mentions the need to respect sovereignty and resume peace talks, but also includes Russian talking points such as dissuading “expanding military blocs” — a veiled criticism of U.S. support for Ukraine to potentially join NATO. There are also reports that Xi could be talking by phone with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the Moscow visit.
But Beijing’s overall top priority is to “lock Russia in for the long term as China’s junior partner,” wrote Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. “For Xi, cementing Russia as China’s junior partner is fundamental to his vision of national rejuvenation.”
To achieve this, Putin’s stay in power is non-negotiable for Beijing, he wrote: “China’s … objective is to guard against Russia failing and Putin falling.”
What better way, then, to show support than attending a state banquet when your notorious friend needs you most?
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
PARIS — Vegetarian sushi and rugby brought the leaders of Britain and France together after years of Brexit rows.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday held the two countries’ first bilateral summit in five years, amid warm words and wishes for closer post-Brexit cooperation.
“This is an exceptional summit, a moment of reunion and reconnection, that illustrates that we want to better speak to each other,” Macron told a joint press conference afterward. “We have the will to work together in a Europe that has new responsibilities.”
Most notably from London’s perspective, the pair agreed a new multi-annual financial framework to jointly tackle the arrival of undocumented migrants on small boats through the English Channel — in part funding a new detention center in France.
“The U.K. and France share a special bond and a special responsibility,” Sunak said. “When the security of our Continent is threatened, we will always be at the forefront of its defense.”
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission, putting an end to a long U.K.-EU row over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland, and stressing it marks a “new beginning of working more closely with the EU.”
“I feel very fortunate to be serving alongside you and incredibly excited about the future we can build together. Merci mon ami,” Sunak said.
It has been many years since the leaders of Britain and France were so publicly at ease with each other.
Sunak and Macron bonded over rugby, ahead of Saturday’s match between England and France, and exchanged T-shirts signed by their respective teams.
Later, they met alone at the Élysée Palace for more than an hour, only being joined by their chiefs of staff at the very end of the meeting, described as “warm and productive” by Sunak’s official spokesman. The pair, who spoke English, had planned to hold a shorter one-to-one session, but they decided to extend it, the spokesman said.
They later met with their respective ministers for a lunch comprising vegetarian sushi, turbot, artichokes and praline tart.
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission | Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images
Speaking on the Eurostar en route to Paris, Sunak told reporters this was the beginning of a “new chapter” in the Franco-British relationship.
“It’s been great to get to know Emmanuel over the last two months. There’s a shared desire to strengthen the relationship,” he said. “I really believe that the range of things that we can do together is quite significant.”
In a show of goodwill from the French, who pushed energetically for a hard line during Brexit talks, Macron said he wanted to “fix the consequences of Brexit” and opened the door to closer cooperation with the Brits in the future.
“It’s my wish and it’s in our interests to have closest possible alliance. It will depend on our commitment and willingness but I am sure we will do it,” he said alongside Sunak.
Tackling small boats
Under the terms of the new migration deal, Britain will pay €141 million to France in 2023-24, €191 million in 2024-25 and €209 million in 2025-26.
This money will come in installments and go toward funding a new detention center in France, a new Franco-British command centre, an extra 500 law enforcement officers on French beaches and better technology to patrol them, including more drones and surveillance aircraft.
The new detention center, located in the Dunkirk area, would be funded by the British and run by the French and help compensate for the lack of space in other detention centers in northern France, according to one of Macron’s aides.
According to U.K. and French officials, France is expected to contribute significantly more funding — up to five times the amount the British are contributing — toward the plan although the Elysée has refused to give exact figures.
A new, permanent French mobile policing unit will join the efforts to tackle small boats. This work will be overseen by a new zonal coordination center, where U.K. liaison officers will be permanently based working with French counterparts.
Sunak stressed U.K.-French cooperation on small boats since November has made a significant difference, and defended the decision to hand more British money to France to help patrol the French northern shores. Irregular migration, he stressed, is a “joint problem.”
Ukraine unity
Sunak and Macron also made a show of unity on the war in Ukraine, agreeing that their priority would be to continue to support the country in its war against Russian aggression.
The French president said the “ambition short-term is to help Ukraine to resist and to build counter-offensives.”
“The priority is military,” he said. “We want a lasting peace, when Ukraine wants it and in the conditions that it wants and our will is to put it in position to do so.”
The West’s top priority should remain helping Ukrainians achieve “a decisive battlefield advantage” that later allows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sit down at the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin from a stronger position, Sunak said en route to the summit.
“That should be everyone’s focus,” he added. “Of course, this will end as all conflicts do, at the negotiating table. But that’s a decision for Ukraine to make. And what we need to do is put them in the best possible place to have those talks at an appropriate moment that makes sense for them.”
The two leaders also announced they would start joint training operations of Ukrainian marines.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Chandigarh: The Haryana Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee will manage the historic gurdwaras in the state and the government will extend all cooperation and assistance, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said on Wednesday.
“…If the Haryana Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee needs any cooperation from the (state) government, including construction of educational institutions and hospitals, it will be provided,” Khattar said.
Last year, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of the Haryana Sikh Gurdwara (Management) Act, 2014, under which a separate committee was formed to manage gurdwaras in Haryana.
However, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee — the apex religious body of Sikhs — has rejected the committee.
Khattar was speaking after paying obeisance at Sri Thada Sahib Gurdwara in Yamunanagar, according to an official statement issued here.
Haryana Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee chief Baba Karmjit Singh felicitated Khattar with a ‘siropa (robe of honour)’.
During the occasion, Khattar also extended his greetings on International Women’s Day.
LONDON — Britain was rebuffed by the Biden administration after multiple requests to develop an advanced trade and technology dialogue similar to structures the U.S. set up with the European Union.
On visits to Washington as a Cabinet minister over the past two years, Liz Truss urged U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and senior Biden administration officials to intensify talks with the U.K. to build clean technology supply chains and boost collaboration on artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors.
After Truss became prime minister in fall 2022, the idea was floated again when Raimondo visited London last October, people familiar with the conversations told POLITICO. But fear of angering the U.S.’s European partners and the U.K.’s diminished status outside the EU post-Brexit have posed barriers to influencing Washington.
Businesses, lawmakers and experts worry the U.K. is being left on the sidelines.
“We tried many times,” said a former senior Downing Street official, of the British government’s efforts to set up a U.K. equivalent to the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council (TTC), noting Truss’ overtures began as trade chief in July 2021. They requested anonymity to speak on sensitive issues.
“We did speak to Gina Raimondo about that, saying ‘we think it would be a good opportunity,’” said the former official — not necessarily to join the EU-U.S. talks directly, “but to increase trilateral cooperation.”
Set up in June 2021, the TTC forum co-chaired by Raimondo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. trade chief Katherine Tai gives their EU counterparts, Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis, a direct line to shape tech and trade policy.
The U.S. is pushing forward with export controls on advanced semiconductors to China; forging new secure tech supply chains away from Beijing; and spurring innovation through subsidies for cutting-edge green technology and microprocessors.
The TTC’s 10 working groups with the EU, Raimondo said in an interview late last year, “set the standards,” though Brussels has rebuffed Washington’s efforts to use the transatlantic body to go directly after Beijing.
But the U.K. “is missing the boat on not being completely engaged in that dialogue,” said a U.S.-based representative of a major business group. “There has been some discussion about the U.K. perhaps joining the TTC,” they confirmed, and “it was kind of mooted, at least in private” with Raimondo by the Truss administration on her visit to London last October.
The response from the U.S. had been ‘’let’s work with what we’ve got at the moment,’” said the former Downing Street official.
Even if the U.S. does want to talk, “they don’t want to irritate the Europeans,” the same former official added. Right now the U.K.’s conversations with the U.S. on these issues are “ad hoc” under the new Atlantic Charter Boris Johnson and Joe Biden signed around the G7 summit in 2021, they said, and “nothing institutional.”
Last October, Washington and London held the first meeting of the data and tech forum Johnson and Biden set up | Pool photo by Olivier Matthys/AFP via Getty Images
Securing British access to the U.S.-EU tech forum or an equivalent was also discussed when CBI chief Tony Danker was in Washington last July, said people familiar with conversations during his visit.
The U.K.’s science and tech secretary, Michelle Donelan, confirmed the British government had discussed establishing a more regular channel for tech and trade discussions with the U.S., both last October and more recently. “My officials have just been out [to the U.S.],” she told POLITICO. “They’ve had very productive conversations.”
A U.K. government spokesperson said: “The U.K. remains committed to working closely with the U.S. and EU to further our shared trade and technology objectives, through the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the U.S.-U.K. Future of Atlantic Trade dialogues, and the U.K.-U.S. technology partnership.
“We will continue to advance U.K. interests in trade and technology and explore further areas of cooperation with partners where it is mutually beneficial.”
Britain the rule-taker?
Last October, Washington and London held the first meeting of the data and tech forum Johnson and Biden set up. Senior officials hoped to get a deal securing the free flow of data between the U.S. and U.K. across the line and addressed similar issues as the TTC.
They couldn’t secure the data deal. The U.K. is expected to join a U.S.-led effort to expand data transfer rules baked into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trading agreement as soon as this year, according to a former and a current British official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The next formal meeting between the U.K. and U.S. is penciled in for January 2024.
Ongoing dialogue “is vital to secure an overarching agreement on U.K.-U.S. data flows, without which modern day business cannot function,” said William Bain, head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC). “It would also provide an opportunity to set the ground rules around a host of other technological developments.”
In contrast, the U.S. and EU are always at work, with TTC officials in constant contact with the operation — though questions have been raised about how long-term the transatlantic cooperation is likely to prove, ahead of next year’s U.S. presidential election.
“Unless you have a structured system or setup, often overseen by ministers, you don’t really get the drive to actually get things done,” said the former Downing Street official.
Right now cooperation with the U.S. on tech issues is not as intense or structured as desired, the same former official said, and is “not really brought together” in one central forum.
Britain has yet to publish a formal semiconductor strategy | Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images
“This initiative [the TTC] between the world’s two regulatory powerhouses risks sidelining the U.K.,” warned lawmakers on the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee in a report last October. Britain may become “a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker,” MPs noted, citing the government’s “ambiguous” position on technology standards. Britain has yet to publish a formal semiconductor strategy, and others on critical minerals — like those used in EV batteries — or AI are also missing.
Over the last two years, U.S. trade chief Tai has “spoken regularly to her three successive U.K. counterparts to identify and tackle shared economic and trade priorities,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. Trade Representative, adding “we intend to continue strengthening this partnership in the years to come.”
All eyes on Europe
For its part, the EU has to date shown little interest in closer cooperation with the U.K.
Three European Commission officials disregarded the likelihood of Britain joining the club, though one of those officials said that London may be asked to join — alongside other like-minded countries — for specific discussions related to ongoing export bans against Russia.
Even with last week’s breakthrough over the Northern Ireland protocol calming friction between London and Brussels, the U.K. was not a priority country for involvement in the TTC, added another of the EU officials.
“The U.K. was extremely keen to be part of a dialogue of some sort of equivalent of TTC,” said a senior business representative in London, who requested anonymity to speak about sensitive issues.
U.K. firms see “the Holy Grail” as Britain, the U.S. and EU working together on this, they said. “We’re very keen to see a triangular dialogue at some point.”
The U.K.’s haggling with the EU over the details of the Northern Ireland protocol governing trade in the region has posed “a political obstacle” to realizing that vision, they suggested.
Yet with a solution to the dispute announced in late February, the same business figure said, “there will be a more prominent push to work together with the U.K.”
TTC+
Some trade experts think the U.K. would increase its chances of accession to the TTC if it submitted a joint request with other nations.
But prior to that happening, “I think the EU-U.S. TTC will need to first deliver bilaterally,” said Sabina Ciofu, an international tech policy expert at the trade body techUK.
Representatives speak to the media following the Trade and Technology Council Meeting in Maryland | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
When there is momentum, Ciofu said, the U.K. should join forces with Japan, South Korea and other advanced economies to ask for a TTC+ that could include the G7 or other partners. At the last TTC meeting in December, U.S. and EU officials said they were open to such an expansion around specific topics that had global significance.
But not all trade experts think this is essential. Andy Burwell, director of international trade at the CBI, said he doesn’t “think it necessarily matters” whether the U.K. has a structured conversation with the U.S. like the TTC forum.
Off the back of a soon-to-be-published refresh of the Integrated Review — the U.K.’s national security and foreign policy strategy — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak should instead seize the opportunity, Burwell said, to pinpoint where Britain is “going to own, collaborate and have access to various aspects of the supply chains.”
The G7, Burwell said, “could be the right platform for having some of those conversations.”
Yet the “danger with the ad hoc approach with lots of different people is incoherence,” said the former Downing Street official quoted above.
Too many countries involved in setting the standards can, the former official said, “create difficulty in leveraging what you want — which is all of the countries agreeing together on a certain way forward … especially when you’re dealing with issues that relate to, for example, China.”
Mark Scott, Annabelle Dickson and Tom Bristowcontributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Iran pledged to re-install monitoring equipment at its nuclear facilities and to assist an investigation into uranium traces detected at undeclared sites, the head of the U.N.’s nuclear agency said Saturday after a visit to Tehran.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other top officials in Tehran on Saturday.
“Over the past few months, there was a reduction in some of the monitoring activities” related to cameras and other equipment “which were not operating,” Grossi told reporters upon his return to Vienna. “We have agreed that those will be operating again.”
A joint statement issued on Saturday by the IAEA and Iran’s nuclear agency included assurances that Tehran would address long-standing complaints about access to its disputed nuclear program. But the text went into little detail, and similar promises by Iran have yielded little in the past.
“Iran expressed its readiness to continue its cooperation and provide further information and access to address the outstanding safeguards issues,” according to the joint statement.
“These are not words. This is very concrete,” Grossi said of the assurances he received in Tehran, the Associated Press reported.
The visit to Iran followed a recent report from the IAEA, seen by CNN and other media, that confirmed that uranium particles enriched to 83.7 percent purity, close to the 90 percent needed to make a nuclear bomb, were found at an Iranian nuclear site. The report raised concerns that Tehran was speeding up its enrichment.
Grossi said the Iranians had agreed to increase inspections at that site by 50 percent, the AP reported.
Iran also will allow the re-installation of extra monitoring equipment that had been put in place under the 2015 nuclear deal, but then removed last year as the agreement fell apart, Reuters reported.
The 2015 deal gave Tehran relief from most international sanctions as long as it allowed the U.N. watchdog to monitor its nuclear activities. But it began to unravel after the U.S.’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump.
Iran also “will allow the IAEA to implement further appropriate verification and monitoring activities,” according to Saturday’s joint statement. “Modalities will be agreed between the two sides in the course of a technical meeting which will take place soon in Tehran,” it said.
Grossi said there was a “marked improvement” in his dialogue with Iranian officials, according to the AP. “I hope we will be seeing results soon. We will see.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Stockholm: The leaders of Sweden, Finland and Norway vowed to strengthen defence cooperation in the face of common security challenges.
Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto, Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store met on Wednesday in Harpsund, nearly 120 km southwest of Stockholm.
Harpsund is a country retreat for the Prime Minister of Sweden. The three discussed common security challenges and cooperation on foreign, security and defence policy issues.
A Swedish government statement released on Wednesday said that the security situation had deteriorated due to the Russia-Ukraine war, Xinhua news agency reported.
“Norway, Finland and Sweden, together with our Nordic neighbours, have a shared responsibility to respond to security challenges in the region, including in our northern areas,” the statement said, adding that as Sweden and Finland are on their way to join the NATO, “we are working in a more integrated way to strengthen security.”
“We will continue to deepen our cooperation in large-scale exercises in the coming years. Our defence cooperation is closely coordinated with our Nordic neighbours and our close partners, including the US and the UK,” it said.
“Our countries’ northernmost regions are more sparsely populated than other areas, and their climate and geography present particular challenges. At the same time, there is great potential for deeper cooperation in these areas, given their location and unique conditions for collaboration on the green transition, space and the extraction of rare earth metals,” it added.
Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO in May 2022 in the wake of the outbreak of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Their accession to NATO requires the approval of all member states of the military alliance. Turkey and Hungary, both members of NATO, have yet to give their approval.
Vladimir Putin said “Russia and China are reaching new levels of cooperation” after meeting Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in Moscow on Wednesday.
The Russian president hailed the relationship between Beijing and Moscow as important to “stabilize the international situation,” adding that he awaits a visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to the BBC.
Shortly before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin and Xi signed a statement proclaiming that there were “no limits to Sino-Russian cooperation.” While Russia has become economically more dependent on China since the start of the conflict, Beijing has refused to publicly provide military support.
Wang told Putin that the relationship between China and Russia would “not succumb to pressure from third parties,” and pledged to deepen strategic cooperation with Moscow.
Earlier Wednesday, China’s top foreign policy official also met Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, at the end of a tour of European capitals.
Shortly after meeting Wang, Putin spoke at a rally at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium to mark the one-year anniversary of launching his war on Ukraine, which falls on Friday. He praised Russian soldiers who “fight heroically, courageously, bravely” and said the war is taking place on Russia’s “historical frontiers.”
LONDON — It was clear when Boris Johnson was forced from Downing Street that British politics had changed forever.
But few could have predicted that less than six months later, all angry talk of a cross-Channel trade war would be a distant memory, with Britain and the EU striking a remarkable compromise deal over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland.
Private conversations with more than a dozen U.K. and EU officials, politicians and diplomats reveal how the Brexit world changed completely after Johnson’s departure — and how an “unholy trinity” of little-known civil servants, ensconced in a gloomy basement in Brussels, would mastermind a seismic shift in Britain’s relationship with the Continent.
They were aided by an unlikely sequence of political events in Westminster — not least an improbable change of mood under the combative Liz Truss; and then the jaw-dropping rise to power of the ultra-pragmatic Rishi Sunak. Even the amiable figure of U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly would play his part, glad-handing his way around Europe and smoothing over cracks that had grown ever-wider since 2016.
As Sunak’s Conservative MPs pore over the detail of his historic agreement with Brussels — and await the all-important verdict of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland — POLITICO has reconstructed the dramatic six-month shift in Britain’s approach that brought us to the brink of the Brexit deal we see today.
Bye-bye Boris
Johnson’s departure from Downing Street, on September 6, triggered an immediate mood shift in London toward the EU — and some much-needed optimism within the bloc about future cross-Channel relations.
For key figures in EU capitals, Johnson would always be the untrustworthy figure who signed the protocol agreement only to disown it months afterward.
In Paris, relations were especially poisonous, amid reports of Johnson calling the French “turds”; endless spats with the Elysée over post-Brexit fishing rights, sausages and cross-Channel migrants; and Britain’s role in the AUKUS security partnership, which meant the loss of a multi-billion submarine contract for France. Paris’ willingness to engage with Johnson was limited in the extreme.
Truss, despite her own verbal spats with French President Emmanuel Macron — and her famously direct approach to diplomacy — was viewed in a different light. Her success at building close rapport with negotiating partners had worked for her as trade secretary, and once she became prime minister, she wanted to move beyond bilateral squabbles and focus on global challenges, including migration, energy and the war in Ukraine.
“Boris had become ‘Mr. Brexit,’” one former U.K. government adviser said. “He was the one the EU associated with the protocol, and obviously [Truss] didn’t come with the same baggage. She had covered the brief, but she didn’t have the same history. As prime minister, Liz wanted to use her personal relationships to move things on — but that wasn’t the same as a shift in the underlying substance.”
Indeed, Truss was still clear on the need to pass the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which would have given U.K. ministers powers to overrule part of the protocol unilaterally, in order to ensure leverage in the talks with the European Commission.
Truss also triggered formal dispute proceedings against Brussels for blocking Britain’s access to the EU’s Horizon Europe research program. And her government maintained Johnson’s refusal to implement checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, causing deep irritation in Brussels.
But despite the noisy backdrop, tentative contact with Brussels quietly resumed in September, with officials on both sides trying to rebuild trust. Truss, however, soon became “very disillusioned by the lack of pragmatism from the EU,” one of her former aides said.
“The negotiations were always about political will, not technical substance — and for whatever reason, the political will to compromise from the Commission was never there when Liz, [ex-negotiator David] Frost, Boris were leading things,” they said.
Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation outside 10 Downing Street in central London on October 20, 2022 | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
Truss, of course, would not be leading things for long. An extraordinary meltdown of the financial markets precipitated her own resignation in late October, after just six weeks in office. Political instability in Westminster once again threatened to derail progress.
But Sunak’s arrival in No. 10 Downing Street — amid warnings of a looming U.K. recession — gave new impetus to the talks. An EU official said the mood music improved further, and that discussions with London became “much more constructive” as a result.
David Lidington, a former deputy to ex-PM Theresa May who played a key role in previous Brexit negotiations, describes Sunak as a “globalist” rather than an “ultra-nationalist,” who believes Britain ought to have “a sensible, friendly and grown-up relationship” with Brussels outside the EU.
During his time as chancellor, Sunak was seen as a moderating influence on his fellow Brexiteer Cabinet colleagues, several of whom seemed happy to rush gung-ho toward a trade war with the EU.
“Rishi has always thought of the protocol row as a nuisance, an issue he wanted to get dealt with,” the former government adviser first quoted said.
One British officialsuggested the new prime minister’s reputation for pragmatism gave the U.K. negotiating team “an opportunity to start again.”
Sunak’s slow decision-making and painstaking attention to detail — the subject of much criticism in Whitehall — proved useful in calming EU jitters about the new regime, they added.
“When he came in, it wasn’t just the calming down of the markets. It was everyone across Europe and in the U.S. thinking ‘OK, they’re done going through their crazy stage,’” the same officialsaid. “It’s the time he takes with everything, the general steadiness.”
EU leaders “have watched him closely, they listened to what he said, and they have been prepared to trust him and see how things go,” Lidington noted.
Global backdrop
As months of chaos gave way to calm in London, the West was undergoing a seismic reorganization.
Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered a flurry of coordinated work for EU and U.K. diplomats — including sanctions, military aid, reconstruction talks and anti-inflation packages. A sense began to emerge that it was in both sides’ common interest to get the Northern Ireland protocol row out of the way.
“The war in Ukraine has completely changed the context over the last year,” an EU diplomat said.
A second U.K. official agreed. “Suddenly we realized that the 2 percent of the EU border we’d been arguing about was nothing compared to the massive border on the other side of the EU, which Putin was threatening,” they said. “And suddenly there wasn’t any electoral benefit to keeping this row over Brexit going — either for us or for governments across the EU.”
A quick glance at the electoral calendar made it clear 2023 offered the last opportunity to reach a deal in the near future, with elections looming for both the U.K. and EU parliaments the following year — effectively putting any talks on ice.
“Rishi Sunak would have certainly been advised by his officials that come 2024, the EU is not going to be wanting to take any new significant initiatives,” Lidington said. “And we will be in election mode.”
The upcoming 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday peace agreement on April 10 heaped further pressure on the U.K. negotiators, amid interest from U.S. President Joe Biden in visiting Europe to mark the occasion.
“The anniversary was definitely playing on people’s minds,” the first U.K. official said.“Does [Sunak] really want to be the prime minister when there’s no government in Northern Ireland on the anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement?”
The pressure was ramped up further when Biden specifically raised the protocol in a meeting with Truss at the U.N. General Assembly in New York in late September, after which British officials said they expected the 25th anniversary to act as a “key decision point” on the dispute.
The King and I
Whitehall faced further pressure from another unlikely source — King Charles III, who was immediately planning a state visit to Paris within weeks of ascending the throne in September 2022. Truss had suggested delaying the visit until the protocol row was resolved, according to two European diplomats.
The monarch is now expected to visit Paris and Berlin at the end of March — and although his role is strictly apolitical, few doubt he is taking a keen interest in proceedings. He has raised the protocol in recent conversations with European diplomats, showing a close engagement with the detail.
One former senior diplomat involved in several of the king’s visits said that Charles has long held “a private interest in Ireland, and has wanted to see if there was an appropriately helpful role he could play in improving relations [with the U.K].”
By calling the deal the Windsor framework and presenting it at a press conference in front of Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences, No. 10 lent Monday’s proceedings an unmistakable royal flavor.
The king also welcomed von der Leyen for tea at the castle following the signing of the deal. A Commission spokesperson insisted their meeting was “separate” from the protocol discussion talks. Tory MPs were skeptical.
Cleverly does it
The British politician tasked with improving relations with Brussels was Foreign Secretary Cleverly, appointed by Truss last September. He immediately began exploring ways to rebuild trust with Commission Vice-President and Brexit point-man Maroš Šefčovič, the second U.K. official cited said.
His first hurdle was a perception in Brussels that the British team had sabotaged previous talks by leaking key details to U.K. newspapers and hardline Tory Brexiteers for domestic political gain. As a result, U.K. officials made a conscious effort to keep negotiations tightly sealed, a No. 10 official said.
“The relationship with Maroš improved massively when we agreed not to carry out a running commentary” on the content of the discussions, the second U.K. official added.
This meant keeping key government ministers out of the loop, including Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, an arch-Brexiteer who had been brought back onto the frontbench by Truss.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is welcomed by European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič ahead of a meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on February 17, 2023 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
The first U.K. official said Baker would have “felt the pain,” as he had little to offer his erstwhile backbench colleagues looking for guidance while negotiations progressed, “and that was a choice by No. 10.”
Cleverly and Šefčovič “spent longer than people think just trying to build rapport,” the second U.K. officialsaid, with Cleverly explaining the difficulties the protocol was raising in Northern Ireland and Šefčovič insistent that key economic sectors were in fact benefiting from the arrangement.
Cleverly also worked at the bilateral relationship with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, while Sunak made efforts to improve ties with French President Emmanuel Macron, Lidington noted.
A British diplomat based in Washington said Cleverly had provided “a breath of fresh air” after the “somewhat stiff” manner of his predecessors, Truss and the abrasive Dominic Raab.
By the Conservative party conference in early October, the general mood among EU diplomats in attendance was one of expectation. And the Birmingham jamboree did not disappoint.
Sorry is the hardest word
Baker, who had once described himself as a “Brexit hard man,” stunned Dublin by formally apologizing to the people of Ireland for his past comments, just days before technical talks between the Commission and the U.K. government were due to resume.
“I caused a great deal of inconvenience and pain and difficulty,” he said. “Some of our actions were not very respectful of Ireland’s legitimate interests. I want to put that right.”
The apology was keenly welcomed in Dublin, where Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister at the time, called it “honest and very, very helpful.”
Irish diplomats based in the U.K. met Baker and other prominent figures from the European Research Group of Tory Euroskeptics at the party conference, where Baker spoke privately of his “humility” and his “resolve” to address the issues, a senior Irish diplomat said.
“Resolve was the keyword,” the envoy said. “If Steve Baker had the resolve to work for a transformation of relationships between Ireland and the U.K., then we thought — there were tough talks to be had — but a sustainable deal was now a possibility.”
There were other signs of rapprochement. Just a few hours after Baker’s earth-shattering apology, Truss confirmed her attendance at the inaugural meeting in Prague of the European Political Community, a new forum proposed by Macron open to both EU and non-EU countries.
Sunak at the wheel
The momentum snowballed under Sunak, who decided within weeks of becoming PM to halt the passage of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in the House of Lords, reiterating Britain’s preference for a negotiated settlement. In exchange, the Commission froze a host of infringement proceedings taking aim at the way the U.K. was handling the protocol. This created space for talks to proceed in a more cordial environment.
An EU-U.K. agreement in early January allowed Brussels to start using a live information system detailing goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, seen as key to unlocking a wider agreement on physical checks under the protocol.
The U.K. also agreed to conduct winter technical negotiations in Brussels, rather than alternating rounds between the EU capital and London, as was the case when Frost served as Britain’s chief negotiator.
Trust continued to build. Suddenly the Commission was open to U.K. solutions such as the “Stormont brake,” a clause giving the Northern Ireland Assembly power of veto over key protocol machinations, which British officials did not believe Brussels would accept when they first pitched them.
The Stormont brake was discussed “relatively early on,” a third U.K. official said. “Then we spent a huge amount of effort making sure nobody knew about it. It was kept the most secret of secret things.”
Yet a second EU diplomat claimed the ideas in the deal were not groundbreaking and could have been struck “years ago” if Britain had a prime minister with enough political will to solve the dispute. “None of the solutions that have been found now is revolutionary,” they said.
An ally of Johnson described the claim he was a block on progress as “total nonsense.”
The ‘unholy trinity’
Away from the media focus, a group of seasoned U.K. officials began to engage with their EU counterparts in earnest. But there was one (not so) new player in town.
Tim Barrow, a former U.K. permanent representative to the EU armed with a peerless contact book, had been an active figure in rebuilding relations with the bloc since Truss appointed him national security adviser. He acquired a more prominent role in the protocol talks after Sunak dispatched him to Brussels in January 2023, hoping EU figures would see him as “almost one of them,” another adviser to Sunak said.
Ensconced in the EU capital, Barrow and his U.K. team of negotiators took over several meeting rooms in the basement of the U.K. embassy, while staffers were ordered to keep quiet about their presence.
Besides his work on Northern Ireland trade, Barrow began to appear in meetings with EU representatives about other key issues creating friction in the EU-U.K. relationship, including discussions on migration alongside U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
Barrow “positioned himself very well,” the first EU diplomat quoted above said. “He’s very close to the prime minister — everybody in Brussels and London knows he’s got his ear. He’s very knowledgeable while very political.”
But other British officials insist Barrow’s presence was not central to driving through the deal. “He has been a figure, but not the only figure,” the U.K. adviser quoted above said. “It’s been a lot of people, actually, over quite a period of time.”
When it came to the tough, detailed technical negotiations, the burden fell on the shoulders of Mark Davies — the head of the U.K. taskforce praised for his mastery of the protocol detail — and senior civil servant and former director of the Northern Ireland Office, Brendan Threlfall.
The three formed an “unholy trinity,” as described by the first U.K. official, with each one bringing something to the table.
Davies was “a classic civil servant, an unsung hero,”the official said, while Threlfall “has good connections, good understanding” and “Tim has met all the EU interlocutors over the years.”
Sitting across the table, the EU team was led by Richard Szostak, a Londoner born to Polish parents and a determined Commission official with a great CV and an affinity for martial arts. His connection to von der Leyen was her deputy head of cabinet until recently, Stéphanie Riso, a former member of Brussels’ Brexit negotiating team who developed a reputation for competence on both sides of the debate.
Other senior figures at the U.K. Cabinet Office played key roles, including Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and senior official Sue Gray.
The latter — a legendary Whitehall enforcer who adjudicated over Johnson’s “Partygate” scandal — has a longstanding connection to Northern Ireland, famously taking a career break in the late 1980s to run a pub in Newry, where she has family links. More recently, she spent two years overseeing the finance ministry.
Gray has been spotted in Stormont at crunch points over the past six months as Northern Ireland grapples with the pain of the continued absence of an executive.
Some predict Gray could yet play a further role, in courting the Democratic Unionist Party as the agreement moves forward in the weeks ahead.
For U.K. and EU officials, the agreement struck with Brussels represented months of hard work — but for Sunak and his Cabinet colleagues, the hardest yards may yet lie ahead.
This story was updated to clarify two parts of the sourcing.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
New Delhi: In the face of growing global concerns over energy security triggered by the Ukraine conflict, India and the US are giving a fresh look at exploring practical cooperation in the civil nuclear energy sector after failing to move forward since inking a historic agreement over 14 years back for partnership in the area.
Ways for possible cooperation in nuclear commerce under the framework of the India-US nuclear agreement of 2008 figured prominently in the talks US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey R Pyatt had with his Indian interlocutors in Delhi on February 16 and 17.
In an exclusive interview to PTI, Pyatt described India as a “very crucial” partner for the US in ensuring global energy security in view of serious disruptions in supplies of fossil fuel resulting from Russia’s “brutal” invasion of Ukraine.
“I am very focused on how we can develop opportunities for future civil nuclear cooperation, recognising that if we are stuck at issues, we have to work them through, the famous liability question,” he said.
“The business model of the civil nuclear industry is changing. In the US, we made a huge commitment to small and marginal reactors which could be particularly suitable to the Indian environment as well,” he said without elaborating further.
The senior Biden administration official also said the US supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “incredibly ambitious” energy transition goal of having 500 GW (gigawatt) of energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.
Pyatt served at the US Embassy in New Delhi as Political Counselor from 2002 to 2006 and as Deputy Chief of Mission from 2006 to 2007, a period that saw intense negotiations between the two sides on the civil nuclear pact.
The actual cooperation in the civil nuclear energy sector eluded in the last over 14 years primarily due to differences between the two sides over India’s liability rules relating to seeking damages from suppliers in the event of an accident.
“It was the first big thing that our two governments did together. It was so powerful for the rest of the world,” Pyatt said about the 2008 pact.
The US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy said the “civil nuclear renaissance” that the people were talking about got derailed to some considerable degree following the accident at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011.
However, he said Japan is now reconsidering the importance of nuclear power as part of its overall response to the “incredible disruptions of the global energy markets that (Russian President) Vladimir Putin has caused with his invasion of Ukraine,” he said, adding the climate crisis is another reason for preferring clean energy.
Pyatt suggested that New Delhi is very keen to take forward civil nuclear energy cooperation as part of the overall bilateral energy ties.
“The US-India energy and climate agenda is one of the most important that we have anywhere in the world,” he said.
In 2016, US energy firm Westinghouse and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCI) broadly agreed on terms for setting up of six nuclear reactors in India. However, the negotiations were derailed after the American company declared bankruptcy in 2017.
There has been renewed focus globally on nuclear energy after the Ukraine war resulted a fossil fuel crisis.
The US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy said overall energy cooperation between India and the US will form a major part of the strategic ties between the two sides.
“When I look at where our strategic relationship is going, I see the issues that I am now responsible for as being right at the centre of the picture because there is so much potential to build on the strong foundation to do even more,” he said.
Pyatt said the US is keen on forging strong cooperation with India in areas of green hydrogen energy as well.
India on January 4 approved the National Green Hydrogen Mission with an outlay of Rs 19,744 crore to develop a green hydrogen production capacity of five million tonnes a year by 2030.
“The US investment in hydrogen complements the Indian investment in hydrogen and what I am interested in right now is to build bridges between our respective efforts so that we can leverage each other’s expertise,” he said.
To a question, Pyatt said there is significant scope for joint projects between the companies of the two countries in the area.
Pyatt said just like Reliance Industries is looking at green hydrogen in India, ExxonMobil Corporation, an American multinational oil and gas corporation, has also made a big commitment to the clean energy source.
He said India and the US can work in areas of hydrogen fuel cells, and how to scale up storage mechanisms for hydrogen energy and green shipping.
“There is fantastic scope for it. The market is going to have to decide how we use this product,” Pyatt said.
The American diplomat said the US is looking at possible energy cooperation under the framework of Quad as well.
“Quad is a fundamental organising principle for us. If you look at the different ways in which our four governments are active – all four have made a big commitment to hydrogen (energy). Australia has a big hydrogen programme, India has a large commitment. Our hydrogen ecosystem is going to grow very fast, the Japanese have a long-standing interest in hydrogen (energy),” he said.
Besides India and the US, the Quad comprises Japan and Australia.
The top diplomat further added: “This visit is focused on how to build up the US-India bilateral strategic energy partnership. But I think as that partnership becomes stronger and moves into the future-oriented areas, there is a natural opportunity to go from there into the Quad setting.”
Pyatt said the Russian invasion of Ukraine has created an incentive, particularly in places like Europe, to accelerate the energy transition.
“It is important to understand that Putin thought he could bring Europe to its knees by holding back gas resources, (but) that has failed and now that it has failed, he cannot play that card again. We have to make sure that he is never in a position to do that to anybody else,” the senior diplomat said.
