The European Union will launch a new platform to counter disinformation campaigns by Russia and China amid growing worries, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said today.
A so-called Information Sharing and Analysis Center within the EU’s foreign services —the European External Action Service (EEAS) — will seek to track information manipulation by foreign actors and coordinate with the 27 EU countries and the wider community of NGOs.
“We need to understand how these disinformation campaigns are organized … to identify the actors of the manipulation,” said Borrell.
One EEAS official said it would be a decentralized platform to exchange information in real-time with NGOs, countries and cybersecurity agencies, enabling better understanding of emerging disinformation threats and narratives and quicker action to tackle such problems.
Almost a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU continues to fend off Russian attempts to manipulate and distort information about the war. Kremlin-led propaganda seeking to blame the EU for a global food crisis due to its sanctions has also spread to countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Borrell also warned of a “new wave” of disinformation of fabricated images, videos and websites posing as media outlets spreading “five times the speed of light across social networks and messaging services.”
The EU’s existing disinformation unit, the Stratcom division, in a first-ever report, noted that most of the foreign information manipulation in 2022 had centered on narratives supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian and Chinese diplomatic channels were particularly involved.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The EU’s energy war with Russia has entered a new phase — and there are signs that the Kremlin is starting to feel the pain.
As of Sunday, it is illegal to import petroleum products — those refined from crude oil, such as diesel, gasoline and naphtha — from Russia into the EU. That comes hot on the heels of the EU’s December ban on Russian seaborne crude oil.
Both measures are also linked to price caps imposed by the G7 club of rich democracies aimed at driving down the price that Russia gets for its oil and refined products without disrupting global energy markets.
Those actions appear to have bitten into the Kremlin’s budget in a way other economic penalties levied in retaliation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have not.
The Kremlin’s tax income from oil and gas in January was among its lowest monthly totals since the depths of COVID in 2020, according to Janis Kluge, senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
Kluge noted that while Russia’s 2023 budget anticipates 9 trillion rubles (€120 billion) in fossil fuel income, in January it earned only 425 billion rubles from oil and gas taxes, around half compared to the same month last year.
It’s only one month’s figures and the income does fluctuate, but Kluge called it “a bad start.”
Russia’s gas sales to Europe have also collapsed — in part as a result of Moscow’s own energy blackmail — with its share of imports declining from around 40 percent throughout 2021 to 13 percent for November 2022, according to the latest confirmed European Commission monthly figure.
But it’s oil that matters most to Kremlin coffers.
On Friday, EU countries struck a deal on two price caps which will come into full force later this year following a 55-day transition period. A cap of $100 will apply to “premium” oil products, including diesel, gasoline and kerosene. A cap of $45 will be enforced on “discount” products, such as fuel oil, naphtha and heating oil.
The EU ban and the G7 price caps are meant to work in tandem. While the EU bans Russian oil, cutting off a vital market, the price caps ensure that insurance and shipping firms based in the EU and other G7 countries aren’t completely blocked from facilitating the global trade in Russian oil. They still can, but it must be under the price caps. This way — so the theory goes — Russia’s fossil fuel revenue will take a hit without disrupting the global oil market in a way that could endanger supply and drive up the price for everyone.
Squeezing the Kremlin
Russia is selling more crude to China and India to make up for the lost trade with the EU | iStock
So far, EU leaders think, it’s working.
Buyers in China and India and other countries are hoovering up more Russian crude, making up for the lost trade with Europe. But knowing that Russia has few alternative markets, buyers have been able to drive down the price. “The discounts that Russia has to give, that its partners can demand, are strong and are here to stay,” said one senior European Commission official. Russian Urals crude is trading at around $50 per barrel, around $30 below the benchmark Brent crude price.
“I think in general the EU and the G7 can be quite happy with how things have unfolded with regards to the oil embargo and the price cap up to now,” said Kluge. “There has been no turbulence on global oil markets and at the same time Russia’s revenues have gone down considerably. The key reason here is that the price which Russia receives for its crude has gone down.”
The question is whether the EU can keep up the economic pressure on Russia without harming itself in the process.
So far, at least as far as oil is concerned, it’s been plain sailing. Oil markets have proved remarkably flexible since the EU’s crude ban in December, with export flows simply shifting: Asia now takes more Russian crude — often at a discount — while other producers in the Middle East and the U.S. step in to supply Europe.
So far, it is looking likely that a similar “reshuffle” of global trade will take place with oil products like diesel, said Claudio Galimberti, senior vice president of analysis at Rystad Energy.
The nature of the oil product sanctions means that there’s nothing to stop Russian crude from being exported to a third country, refined, and then re-exported to the EU, meaning that India and other countries are becoming more important oil product suppliers to the West.
China and India, as well as others in the Middle East and North Africa, also look likely to snap up Russian oil products that are no longer going straight into Europe, freeing up their own refining capacity to produce yet more product that they can sell into Europe and elsewhere.
“There is a reshuffle of product the same way there was a reshuffle of crude,” Galimberti said.
There could still be problems, however. “Europe is not going to import Russian diesel, so it needs to come from somewhere else,” Galimberti said, pointing to two major refineries in the Middle East — Kuwait’s Al-Zour and Saudi Arabia’s Jazan — upon which European supply will now be increasingly dependent.
“If you had a blip in one of these refineries you could see a price response in Europe,” said Galimberti. But for now, after a glut of imports in advance of Sunday’s ban, “inventories of distillates are full,” he added.
“Europe is in good shape.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The Oscars are wading into a Russian-Ukrainian geopolitical minefield.
Of the five films shortlisted by the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for this year’s best documentary, one is about Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny and another is “A House Made of Splinters,” about a Ukrainian orphanage in the war-torn east of the country.
While neither film will warm the heart of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the competition between the two has sparked a conflict between Ukrainians and the Russian opposition.
“Ukraine has been invaded by Russia and tens of thousands have been murdered by the Russian army, millions have been kicked out of their homes. Therefore, I can understand that reaction to a film that focuses on the fate of one single — Russian — person,” said Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian investigative journalist who is in the Navalny movie. “This is why I will never start arguing with Ukrainians who are upset about the film getting nominated for an Oscar.”
“Navalny,” directed by Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher and produced by HBO Max and CNN Films, tells the story of the opposition leader who led a growing political movement against Putin, was almost killed by a nerve agent and then returned to Moscow despite the threat of arrest; he’s now languishing in a Russian prison. The movie does touch on Navalny’s nationalist views and his dalliance with far-right forces, but it’s all too little for Ukrainians aghast at Navalny’s stance on the 2014 occupation of Crimea.
At the time he denounced Putin’s annexation as a “flagrant violation of all international norms” but he also said the peninsula wouldn’t go back to Ukraine. “Is the Crimea a sandwich or something you can take and give it back? I don’t think so,” he told Ekho Moskvy radio.
But his political leanings haven’t stopped a wave of support for his bravery in standing up to Putin.
“Navalny” got wide recognition, distribution on HBO Max, a Times Square poster and was praised by Hollywood stars. Actor Hugh Jackman has supported the movie in a video recommendation tweet.
“It is a documentary about a man who is literally risking his life every single day,” Jackman said.
However, Ukrainians, deeply traumatized by the ongoing Russian invasion, see the documentary as an attempt to whitewash Navalny, who they accuse of still being a Russian nationalist despite opposing Putin.
Tetiana Shevchuk, a lawyer with the Anti-Corruption Action Center, complains that Navalny’s backers have been pressing for his release, but haven’t done much to protest the war.
“They were silent for 11 months of the war, but now that Oscar is on the horizon, they have become more active and imitate the anti-war movement. If the Academy awards them an award, it will be another tone-deaf gesture,” Shevchuk said.
Questioning Navalny’s credentials can provoke outrage.
Maria Pevchikh, who heads Navalny’s team of anti-corruption investigators and is one of the producers of the documentary, refused to answer POLITICO’s questions on that topic, saying they were offensive and unprofessional.
However, Pevchikh is scathing about allegations that Navalny and his supporters are pussyfooting around the war to not risk offending nationalist Russians.
“Is that why Navalny’s supporters have been talking about the war to an almost entirely Russian audience of ten million people on a specially created channel since the first day of the war? Without interrupting for a single day? Apparently this is a clever attempt on our part not to lose their audience,” she tweeted.
Less promoted but still visible
“House Made of Splinters,” a co-production of Denmark, Ukraine, Sweden and Finland, tells the story of children from a special orphanage in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk made just before Russia’s full-scale invasion last year; the city is now a field of ruins and under Russian occupation.
“Children are all safe now. They were evacuated abroad. And their educators have been internally displaced to other regions of Ukraine. So, they are also relatively safe,” said Azad Safarov, assistant director of the film. “However, the special orphanage was destroyed after a missile strike.”
Splinters got strong reviews and recognition at cinema festivals last year, but it made less of a splash than “Navalny,” said Darya Bassel of the Moon Man production studio, a Ukrainian co-producer of the film.
“The film, for example, does not have an American distributor. So, the result — an Oscar nomination — indicates that the film really impressed academics and maybe they just advised each other to watch the film, and thus the film was nominated,” Bassel said, calling it: “Word of mouth radio.”
When asked about what she thinks of the Navalny documentary competing for the same award, Bassel said that everyone fights for what is important to them. For her, it is important to talk about Ukraine and how Russia’s war ruins lives in her country.
“I just don’t want us to be placed at the table with Russian opposition and pushed to start a dialogue,” Bassel said.
Navalny’s views
In “Navalny,” Grozev, lead Russia investigator with Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group, helps the opposition leader figure out who tried to kill him by placing Novichok nerve agent in his underwear.
However, Grozev initially had significant reservations about Navalny due to his past public statements about Crimea, his view of Russia and much more.
“I enquired about him from many Russian colleagues who have an uncontested liberal, non-imperialistic worldview, and they all had the opinion that he has evolved from an opportunistic populist to a staunch democrat with liberal democracy values,” Grozev said.
The journalist spent days arguing with Navalny about politics, concluding he was pretty mainstream and not an imperialist. According to Grozev, nowadays Navalny thinks that Russia should be decentralized, the president’s power should be cut down to a minimum and that a successful Ukraine would be a competitive benchmark for Russia.
But Crimea remains a sore point; Navalny can’t break with the overwhelming view among his countrymen of all political views that the peninsula can’t simply be returned to Ukraine.
“We did argue a lot with him over his views on Crimea. While I never agreed with his view, I must also admit that it is very different from that that is claimed now by many anti-Navalny activists,” Grozev said.
According to him, Navalny still views the annexation of Crimea as an egregious violation of international law. But now that it has happened, Russia and Ukraine should sit down and prepare a long-term plan for giving the residents the right to decide which nation they want to belong to — after “advertising campaigns” by both countries and a U.N.-controlled period of independence. However Ukrainians warn that the idea makes no sense as more than 800,000 Russian colonists have moved to Crimea since it was annexed.
“In my opinion, Navalny and his anti-corruption team are now doing everything they can to stop the war — including him shouting against the war in each court hearing, writing anti-imperialistic and anti-war op-eds that get him further punishments, and his organization paying for fines for anti-war protests and running a separate full-time anti-war TV channel,” Grozev said.
“Unfortunately, none of this has led to mass protests in Russia, and I can completely understand many Ukrainians’ sentiment that all Russians bear collective guilt for not doing enough to stop this barbarism,” he added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
KYIV — Heads are rolling in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s expanding purge against corruption in Ukraine, but Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov is denying rumors that he’s destined for the exit — a move that would be viewed as a considerable setback for Kyiv in the middle of its war with Russia.
Two weeks ago, Ukraine was shaken by two major corruption scandals centered on government procurement of military catering services and electrical generators. Rather than sweeping the suspect deals under the carpet, Zelenskyy launched a major crackdown, in a bid to show allies in the U.S. and EU that Ukraine is making a clean break from the past.
Tetiana Shevchuk, a lawyer with the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a watchdog, said Zelenskyy needed to draw a line in the sand: “Because even when the war is going on, people saw that officials are conducting ‘business as usual’. They saw that corrupt schemes have not disappeared, and it made people really angry. Therefore, the president had to show he is on the side of fighting against corruption.”
Since the initial revelations, the graft investigations have snowballed, with enforcers uncovering further possible profiteering in the defense ministry. Two former deputy defense ministers have been placed in pre-trial detention.
Given the focus on his ministry in the scandal, speculation by journalists and politicians has swirled that Reznikov — one of the best-known faces of Ukraine’s war against the Russian invaders — is set to be fired or at least transferred to another ministry.
But losing such a top name would be a big blow. At a press conference on Sunday, Reznikov dismissed the claims about his imminent departure as rumors and said that only Zelenskyy was in a position to remove him. Although Reznikov admits the anti-corruption department at his ministry failed and needs reform, he said he was still focused on ensuring that Ukraine’s soldiers were properly equipped.
“Our key priority now is the stable supply of Ukrainian soldiers with all they need,” Reznikov said during the press conference.
Despite his insistence that any decision on his removal could only come from Zelenskyy, Reznikov did still caution that he was ready to depart — and that no officials would serve in their posts forever.
The speculation about Reznikov’s fate picked up on Sunday when David Arakhamia, head of Zelenskyy’s affiliated Servant of the People party faction in the parliament, published a statement saying Reznikov would soon be transferred to the position of minister for strategic industries to strengthen military-industrial cooperation. Major General Kyrylo Budanov, current head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, would head the Ministry of Defense, Arakhamia said.
However, on Monday, Arakhamia seemed to row back somewhat, and claimed no reshuffle in the defense ministry was planned for this week. Mariana Bezuhla, deputy head of the national security and defense committee in the Ukrainian parliament, also said that the parliament had decided to postpone any staff decisions in the defense ministry as they consider the broader risks for national defense ahead of another meeting of defense officials at the U.S. Ramstein air base in Germany and before an expected upcoming Russian offensive.
Zelenskyy steps in
The defense ministry is not the only department to be swept up in the investigations. Over the first days of February, the Security Service of Ukraine, State Investigation Bureau, and Economic Security Bureau conducted dozens of searches at the customs service, the tax service and in local administrations. Officials of several different levels were dismissed en masse for sabotaging their service during war and hurting the state.
“Unfortunately, in some areas, the only way to guarantee legitimacy is by changing leaders along with the implementation of institutional changes,” Zelenskyy said in a video address on February 1. “I see from the reaction in society that people support the actions of law enforcement officers. So, the movement towards justice can be felt. And justice will be ensured.”
Yuriy Nikolov, founder of the Nashi Groshi (Our Money) investigative website, who broke the story about the defense ministry’s alleged profiteering on food and catering services for soldiers in January, said the dismissals and continued searches were first steps in the right direction.
“Now let’s wait for the court sentences. It all looked like a well-coordinated show,” Nikolov told POLITICO. “At the same time, it is good that the government prefers this kind of demonstrative fight against corruption, instead of covering up corrupt officials.”
Still, even though Reznikov declared zero tolerance for corruption and admitted that defense procurement during war needs reform, he has still refused to publish army price contract data on food and non-secret equipment, Nikolov said.
During his press conference, Reznikov insisted he could not reveal sensitive military information during a period of martial law as it could be used by the enemy. “We have to maintain the balance of public control and keep certain procurement procedures secret,” he said.
Two deputies down
Alleged corruption in secret procurement deals has, however, already cost him two of his deputies.
Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who oversaw logistical support for the army, tendered his resignation in January following a scandal involving the purchase of military rations at inflated prices. In his resignation letter, Shapovalov asked to be dismissed in order “not to pose a threat to the stable supply of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a result of a campaign of accusations related to the purchase of food services.”
Another of Reznikov’s former deputies, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who managed defense procurement in the ministry until December, was also arrested over accusations he lobbied for a purchase of 3,000 poor-quality bulletproof vests for the army worth more than 100 million hryvnias (€2.5 million), the Security Service of Ukraine reported. If found guilty he faces up to eight years in prison. The director of the company that supplied the bulletproof vests under the illicit contract has been identified as a suspect by the authorities and now faces up to 12 years in prison if found guilty.
Both ex-officials can be released on bail.
Another unnamed defense ministry official, a non-staff adviser to the deputy defense minister of Ukraine, was also identified as a suspect in relation to the alleged embezzlement of 1.7 billion hryvnias (€43 million) from the defense budget, the General Prosecutors Office of Ukraine reported.
When asked about corruption cases against former staffers, Reznikov stressed people had to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Reputational risk
At the press conference on Sunday, Reznikov claimed that during his time in the defense ministry, he managed to reorganize it, introduced competition into food supplies and filled empty stocks.
However, the anti-corruption department of the ministry completely failed, he admitted. He argued the situation in the department was so unsatisfactory that the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption gave him an order to conduct an official audit of employees. And it showed the department had to be reorganized.
“At a closed meeting with the watchdogs and investigative journalists I offered them to delegate people to the reloaded anti-corruption department. We also agreed to create a public anti-corruption council within the defense ministry,” Reznikov said.
Nikolov was one of the watchdogs attending the closed meeting. He said the minister did not bring any invoices or receipts for food products for the army, or any corrected contract prices to the meeting. Moreover, the minister called the demand to reveal the price of an egg or a potato “an idiocy” and said prices should not be published at all, Nikolov said in a statement. Overpriced eggs were one of the features of the inflated catering contracts that received particular public attention.
Reznikov instead suggested creating an advisory body with the public. He would also hold meetings, and working groups, and promised to provide invoices upon request, the journalist added.
“So far, it looks like the head of state, Zelenskyy, has lost patience with the antics of his staff, but some of his staff do not want to leave their comfort zone and are trying to leave some corruption options for themselves for the future,” Nikolov said.
Reznikov was not personally accused of any wrongdoing by law enforcement agencies.
But the minister acknowledged that there was reputational damage in relation to his team and communications. “This is a loss of reputation today, it must be recognized and learned from,” he said. At the same time, he believed he had nothing to be ashamed of: “My conscience is absolutely clear,” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Should the International Olympic Committee allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate, the use of official Russian or Belarusian flags, emblems or anthems should be prohibited, Jean-Pierre said during her Thursday press briefing.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged the International Olympic Committee to ban the two countries’ athletes from competing in the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. But last week, the IOC released a statement saying, “No athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport,” and proposing that participants from Russia and Belarus could compete as “neutral athletes.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
PARIS — Vladimir Putin is a “radically rational” leader who is betting that Western countries will grow tired of backing Ukraine and agree a negotiated end to the conflict that will be favorable to Russia, former French President François Hollande told POLITICO.
Hollande, who served from 2012 to 2017, has plenty of first-hand experience with Putin. He led negotiations with the Russian leader, along with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, under the so-called Normandy format in 2014 after Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region.
But those efforts at dialogue proved fruitless, exposing Putin as a leader who only understands strength and casting doubt on all later attempts at talks — including a controversial solo effort led by current French President Emmanuel Macron, Hollande said in an interview at his Paris office.
“He [Putin] is a radically rational person, or a rationally radical person, as you like,” said the former French leader, when asked if Putin could seek to widen the conflict beyond Ukraine. “He’s got his own reasoning and within that framework, he’s ready to use force. He’s only able to understand the [power] dynamic that we’re able to set up against him.”
Ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Hollande added that Putin would seek to “consolidate his gains to stabilize the conflict, hoping that public opinion will get tired and that Europeans will fear escalation in order to bring up at that stage the prospect of a negotiation.”
But unlike when he was in power and Paris and Berlin led talks with Putin, this time the job of mediating is likely to fall to Turkey or China — “which won’t be reassuring for anyone,” Hollande said.
Macron, who served as Hollande’s economy minister before leaving his government and going on to win the presidency in 2017, has tried his own hand at diplomacy with Russia, holding numerous one-on-one calls with Putin both before and after his invasion of Ukraine.
But the outreach didn’t yield any clear results, prompting criticism from Ukraine and Eastern Europeans who also objected to Macron saying that Russia would require “security guarantees” after the war is over.
Hollande stopped short of criticizing his successor over the Putin outreach. It made sense to speak with Putin before the invasion to “deprive him of any arguments or pretexts,” he said. But after a “brief period of uncertainty” following the invasion, “the question [about the utility of dialogue] was unfortunately settled.”
Frustration with France and Germany’s leadership, or lack thereof, during the Ukraine war has bolstered arguments that power in Europe is moving eastward into the hands of countries like Poland, which have been most forthright in supporting Ukraine.
But Hollande wasn’t convinced, arguing that northern and eastern countries are casting in their lot with the United States at their own risk. “These countries, essentially the Baltics, the Scandinavians, are essentially tied to the United States. They see American protection as a shield.”
Former French President François Hollande | Antonio Cotrim/EFE via EPA
“Until today,” he continued, U.S. President Joe Biden has shown “exemplary solidarity and lived up to his role in the transatlantic alliance perfectly. But tomorrow, with a different American president and a more isolationist Congress, or at least less keen on spending, will the United States have the same attitude?”
“We must convince our partners that the European Union is about principles and political values. We should not deviate from them, but the partnership can also offer precious, and solid, security guarantees,” Hollande added.
Throwing shade
Hollande was one of France’s most unpopular presidents while in office, with approval ratings in the low single digits. But he has enjoyed something of a revival since leaving the Elysée and is now the country’s second-most popular politician behind former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, five spots ahead of Macron — in keeping with the adage that the French prefer their leaders when they are safely out of office.
His time in office was racked with crises. In addition to failed diplomacy over Ukraine, Hollande led France’s response to a series of terrorist attacks, presided over Europe’s sovereign debt crisis with Merkel, and faced massive street protests against labor reforms.
On that last point, Macron is now feeling some of the heat that Hollande felt during the last months of his presidency. More than a million French citizens have joined marches against a planned pension system reform, and further strikes are planned. Hollande criticized the reform plans, which would raise the age of retirement to 64, as poorly planned.
“Did the president choose the right time? Given the succession of crises and with elevated inflation, the French want to be reassured. Did the government propose the right reform? I don’t think so either — it’s seen as unfair and brutal,” said Hollande. “But now that a parliamentary process has been set into motion, the executive will have to strike a compromise or take the risk of going all the way and raising the level of anger.”
A notable difference between him and Macron is the quality of the Franco-German relationship. While Hollande and Merkel took pains to showcase a form of political friendship, the two sides have been plainly at odds under Macron — prompting a carefully-worded warning from the former commander-in-chief.
Former French President Francois Hollande with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel | Thierry Chesnot/Getty images
“In these moments when everything is being redefined, the Franco-German couple is the indispensable core that ensures the EU’s cohesion. But it needs to redefine the contributions of both parties and set new goals — including European defense,” said Hollande.
“It’s not about seeing one another more frequently, or speaking more plainly, but taking the new situation into account because if that work isn’t done, and if that political foundation isn’t secure, and if misunderstandings persist, it’s not just a bilateral disagreement between France and Germany that we’ll have, but a stalled European Union,” he said, adding that he “hoped” a recent Franco-German summit had “cleared up misunderstandings.”
The socialist leader also had some choice words for Macron over the way he’s trying to rally Europeans around a robust response to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which offers major subsidies to American green industry. Several EU countries have come out against plans, touted by Paris, to create a “Buy European Act” and raise new money to support EU industries.
During a joint press conference on Monday, Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte agreed to disagree on the EU’s response.
“On the IRA, France is discovering that its partners are, for the most part, liberal governments. When you tell the Dutch or the Scandinavians hear about direct aid [for companies], they hear something that goes against not just the spirit, but also the letter of the treaties,” Hollande said.
Another issue rattling European politics lately is the Qatargate corruption scandal, in which current and former MEPs as well as lobbyists are accused of taking cash in exchange for influencing the European Parliament’s work in favor of Qatar and Morocco.
Hollande recalled that his own administration had been hit by a scandal when his budget minister was found to be lying about Swiss bank accounts he’d failed to disclose from tax authorities. The scandal led to Hollande establishing the Haute autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique — an independent authority that audits public officials and has the power to refer any misdeeds to a prosecutor.
Now would be a good time for the EU to follow that example and establish an independent ethics body of its own, Hollande said.
“I think it’s a good institution that would have a role to play in Brussels,” he said. “Some countries will be totally in favor because integrity and transparency are part of their basic values. Others, like Poland and Hungary, will see a challenge to their sovereignty.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — As nations around the world scramble to secure crucial semiconductor supply chains over fears about relations with China, the U.K. is falling behind.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the world’s heavy reliance on Taiwan and China for the most advanced chips, which power everything from iPhones to advanced weapons. For the past two years, and amid mounting fears China could kick off a new global security crisis by invading Taiwan, Britain’s government has been readying a plan to diversify supply chains for key components and boost domestic production.
Yet according to people close to the strategy, the U.K.’s still-unseen plan — which missed its publication deadline last fall — has suffered from internal disconnect and government disarray, setting the country behind its global allies in a crucial race to become more self-reliant.
A lack of experience and joined-up policy-making in Whitehall, a period of intense political upheaval in Downing Street, and new U.S. controls on the export of advanced chips to China, have collectively stymied the U.K.’s efforts to develop its own coherent plan.
The way the strategy has been developed so far “is a mistake,” said a former senior Downing Street official.
Falling behind
During the pandemic, demand for semiconductors outstripped supply as consumers flocked to sort their home working setups. That led to major chip shortages — soon compounded by China’s tough “zero-COVID” policy.
Since a semiconductor fabrication plant is so technologically complex — a single laser in a chip lithography system of German firm Trumpf has 457,000 component parts — concentrating manufacturing in a few companies helped the industry innovate in the past.
But everything changed when COVID-19 struck.
“Governments suddenly woke up to the fact that — ‘hang on a second, these semiconductor things are quite important, and they all seem to be concentrated in a small number of places,’” said a senior British semiconductor industry executive.
Beijing’s launch of a hypersonic missile in 2021 also sent shivers through the Pentagon over China’s increasing ability to develop advanced AI-powered weapons. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added to geopolitical uncertainty, upping the pressure on governments to onshore manufacturers and reduce reliance on potential conflict hotspots like Taiwan.
Against this backdrop, many of the U.K.’s allies are investing billions in domestic manufacturing.
The Biden administration’s CHIPS Act, passed last summer, offers $52 billion in subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. The EU has its own €43 billion plan to subsidize production — although its own stance is not without critics. Emerging producers like India, Vietnam, Singapore and Japan are also making headway in their own multi-billion-dollar efforts to foster domestic manufacturing.
US President Joe Biden | Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Now the U.K. government is under mounting pressure to show its own hand. In a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak first reported by the Times and also obtained by POLITICO, Britain’s semiconductor sector said its “confidence in the government’s ability to address the vital importance of the industry is steadily declining with each month of inaction.”
That followed the leak of an early copy of the U.K.’s semiconductor strategy, reported on by Bloomberg, warning that Britain’s over-dependence on Taiwan for its semiconductor foundries makes it vulnerable to any invasion of the island nation by China.
Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its territory, makes more than 90 percent of the world’s advanced chips, with its Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) vital to the manufacture of British-designed semiconductors.
U.S. and EU action has already tempted TSMC to begin building new plants and foundries in Arizona and Germany.
“We critically depend on companies like TSMC,” said the industry executive quoted above. “It would be catastrophic for Western economies if they couldn’t get access to the leading-edge semiconductors any more.”
Whitehall at war
Yet there are concerns both inside and outside the British government that key Whitehall departments whose input on the strategy could be crucial are being left out in the cold.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is preparing the U.K.’s plan and, according to observers, has fiercely maintained ownership of the project. DCMS is one of the smallest departments in Whitehall, and is nicknamed the ‘Ministry of Fun’ due to its oversight of sports and leisure, as well as issues related to tech.
“In other countries, semiconductor policies are the product of multiple players,” said Paul Triolo, a senior vice president at U.S.-based strategy firm ASG. This includes “legislative support for funding major subsidies packages, commercial and trade departments, R&D agencies, and high-level strategic policy bodies tasked with things like improving supply chain resilience,” he said.
“You need all elements of the U.K.’s capabilities. You need the diplomatic services, the security services. You need everyone working together on this,” said the former Downing Street official quoted above. “There are huge national security aspects to this.”
Referring to lower-level civil servants, the same person said that relying on “a few ‘Grade 6’ officials in DCMS — officials that don’t see the wider picture, or who don’t have either capability or knowledge,” is a mistake.
For its part, DCMS rejected the suggestion it is too closely guarding the plan, with a spokesperson saying the ministry is “working closely with industry experts and other government departments … so we can protect and grow our domestic sector and ensure greater supply chain resilience.”
The spokesperson said the strategy “will be published as soon as possible.”
But businesses keen for sight of the plan remain unconvinced the U.K. has the right team in place for the job.
Key Whitehall personnel who had been involved in project have now changed, the executive cited earlier said, and few of those writing the strategy “have much of a background in the industry, or much first-hand experience.”
Progress was also sidetracked last year by lengthy deliberations over whether the U.K. should block the sale of Newport Wafer Fab, Britain’s biggest semiconductor plant, to Chinese-owned Nexperia on national security grounds, according to two people directly involved in the strategy. The government eventually announced it would block the sale in November.
And while a draft of the plan existed last year, it never progressed to the all-important ministerial “write-around” process — which gives departments across Whitehall the chance to scrutinize and comment upon proposals.
Waiting for budget day
Two people familiar with current discussions about the strategy said ministers are now aiming to make their plan public in the run-up to, or around, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s March 15 budget statement, although they stressed that timing could still change.
Leaked details of the strategy indicate the government will set aside £1 billion to support chip makers. Further leaks indicate this will be used as seed money for startups, and for boosting existing firms and delivering new incentives for investors.
U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt | Leon Neal/Getty Images
There is wrangling with the Treasury and other departments over the size of these subsidies. Experts also say it is unlikely to be ‘new’ money but diverted from other departments’ budgets.
“We’ll just have to wait for something more substantial,” said a spokesperson from one semiconductor firm commenting on the pre-strategy leaks.
But as the U.K. procrastinates, key British-linked firms are already being hit by the United States’ own fast-evolving semiconductor strategy. U.S. rules brought in last October — and beefed up in recent days by an agreement with the Netherlands — are preventing some firms from selling the most advanced chip designs and manufacturing equipment to China.
British-headquartered, Japanese-owned firm ARM — the crown jewel of Britain’s semiconductor industry, which sells some designs to smartphone manufacturers in China — is already seeing limits on what it can export. Other British firms like Graphcore, which develops chips for AI and machine learning, are feeling the pinch too.
“The U.K. needs to — at pace — understand what it wants its role to be in the industries that will define the future economy,” said Andy Burwell, director for international trade at business lobbying group the CBI.
Where do we go from here?
There are serious doubts both inside and outside government about whether Britain’s long-awaited plan can really get to the heart of what is a complex global challenge — and opinion is divided on whether aping the U.S. and EU’s subsidy packages is either possible or even desirable for the U.K.
A former senior government figure who worked on semiconductor policy said that while the U.K. definitely needs a “more coherent worked-out plan,” publishing a formal strategy may actually just reveal how “complicated, messy and beyond our control” the issue really is.
“It’s not that it is problematic that we don’t have a strategy,” they said. “It’s problematic that whatever strategy we have is not going to be revolutionary.” They described the idea of a “boosterish” multi-billion-pound investment in Britain’s own fabricator industry as “pie in the sky.”
The former Downing Street official said Britain should instead be seeking to work “in collaboration” with EU and U.S. partners, and must be “careful to avoid” a subsidy war with allies.
The opposition Labour Party, hot favorites to form the next government after an expected 2024 election, takes a similar view. “It’s not the case that the U.K. can do this on its own,” Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy said recently, urging ministers to team up with the EU to secure its supply of semiconductors.
One area where some experts believe the U.K. may be able to carve out a competitive advantage, however, is in the design of advanced semiconductors.
“The U.K. would probably be best placed to pursue support for start-up semiconductor design firms such as Graphcore,” said ASG’s Triolo, “and provide support for expansion of capacity at the existing small number of companies manufacturing at more mature nodes” such as Nexperia’s Newport Wafer Fab.
Ministers launched a research project in December aimed at tapping into the U.K. semiconductor sector’s existing strength in design. The government has so far poured £800 million into compound semiconductor research through universities, according to a recent report by the House of Commons business committee.
But the same group of MPs wants more action to support advanced chip design. Burwell at the CBI business group said the U.K. government must start “working alongside industry, rather than the government basically developing a strategy and then coming to industry afterwards.”
Right now the government is “out there a bit struggling to see what levers they have to pull,” said the senior semiconductor executive quoted earlier.
Under World Trade Organization rules, governments are allowed to subsidize their semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, the executive pointed out. “The U.S. is doing it. Europe’s doing it. Taiwan does it. We should do it too.”
Cristina Gallardo contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
A U.S. citizen was arrested for walking a cow through Red Square in Moscow, according to local media.
Alicia Day, “who is a vegetarian and animal rights activist, was walking on Red Square … using a calf as visual propaganda and shouting the slogan ‘animals are not food,’” a judge at Moscow’s Tverskoy district court was quoted as saying.
Day was arrested on Tuesday for participating in an unsanctioned protest. She also allegedly resisted arrest, the court said, and was fined 20,000 rubles (€261).
“I bought the calf [named Doctor Cow] so that it wouldn’t be eaten. I decided to take him to such a beautiful place and show him the country,” Day told the TASS news agency.
“I just wanted to show Doctor Cow the Red Square,” the vegan activist said in her defense, adding that she didn’t regret her actions.
The New Jersey-born vegan activist made headlines in 2019 when she was living in London and kept a pet pig in her flat, spoiling it with trips to restaurants and sharing baths with it.
Love Star Wars? Hate Vladimir Putin? Then there’s good news as Luke Skywalker is to start selling signed posters to raise cash for maintaining the Ukrainian army’s drone supply.
“We decided to sign Star Wars posters, a limited amount,” Mark Hamill, the actor who played Skywalker in the iconic movies, told POLITICO in an exclusive interview. “For real hardcore collectors — especially those that have disposable income — you can get way more money … than you would imagine.”
Exactly how the posters will be put up for sale is yet to be finalized, but the idea of “having hundreds and thousands of people enter [a competition or auction], that’s smart,” Hamill said.
The poster sale is expected to start next week and comes ahead of the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine on February 24, with Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov saying Russia is planning a major offensive.
This really is the return of the Jedi — Hamill revealed he hasn’t sold autographed items since 2017, when “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” came out. “It’s just not something I do,” he said, adding that he is happy to do it to support Ukraine, whose ongoing fight against Russia is “nothing short of inspirational.”
Hamill said that something he learned from the world(s) of Star Wars is doing the “right thing for the good of everyone, rather than being all about self-interest,” adding that comparing the two worlds shouldn’t trivialize “the true horrors of what Ukrainians face.”
“One is really a fairy tale for children, originally that’s what Star Wars was. And the reality, the stark reality of what’s going on in Ukraine, is harrowing.”
Ukrainian servicemen fly a drone on the outskirts of Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine | Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images
The money raised from the sale of the posters will go to the Ukrainian fundraising platform United24. Hamill became an ambassador for the platform’s “Army of Drones” project in September after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy personally asked him to join the fight against “the empire of evil,” as he labeled Russia — a reference to the Galactic Empire, the brutal dictatorship led by evil Palpatine in the Star Wars saga.
The actor says he is “thrilled” that the fundraising project has evolved to this “massive, worldwide event,” saying that “anything I can do, however small it is, is something I feel obligated to do.”
The “Army of Drones” involves drone procurement, maintenance and training, as the drones are used to monitor the frontline, according to the project’s website. “Drones are so vital in this conflict. They are the eyes in the sky. They protect the border, they monitor,” Hamill said.
The project is a joint venture between the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Ministry of Digital Transformation and United24. The latter was set up by Zelenskyy and has so far raised more than €252 million.
Other celebrities — including the band Imagine Dragons and the singer and actress Barbra Streisand — have also been named ambassadors for the platform.
“The light will win over darkness. I believe in this, our people believe in this,” Zelenskyy told Hamill during a video call last year, thanking him for supporting the Ukrainian people.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the amount of money raised by United24.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
KYIV — Pete Reed, an American volunteer medic and founder of the NGO Global Response Medicine, was killed while helping to evacuate civilians in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
Reed, a former U.S. Marine, died on Thursday in the besieged city in the Donetsk region of the country, GRM said late Friday.
“In January, Pete stepped away from GRM to work with Global Outreach Doctors on their Ukraine mission and was killed while rendering aid,” the NGO said. “Pete was the bedrock of GRM, serving as Board President for 4 years,” it said.
Bakhmut has been one of the major hot spots during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the ongoing attempts to seize the city, Moscow has been throwing thousands of troops at the Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut in tactics that have gained the name “meat waves.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the city in December, calling it the “hottest spot” in the war.
“Pete was just 33 years old, but lived a life in service of others, first as a decorated U.S. Marine and then in humanitarian aid,” GRM said. “We fully support Pete’s family, friends, and colleagues during this devastating time.”
Global Outreach Doctors also confirmed the death of Reed, who was the organization’s Ukraine Country director. “Pete was actively aiding in the evacuation of Ukrainian civilians when his evacuation vehicle was hit with a reported missile in Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Feb. 2,” the group said in a statement.
Reed’s wife, Alex Kay Potter, wrote on Instagram that her husband apparently died saving another team member’s life, CNN reported. “He was evacuating civilians and responding to those wounded when his ambulance was shelled,” her post said, according to the CNN report.
“Pete Reed, a volunteer medic, was killed by shelling in Bakhmut, Ukraine, yesterday while trying to evacuate civilians. One of the most selfless people I’ve ever met,” documentary photographer Cengiz Yar wrote in a tweet.
The same day Reed was killed, two other foreign volunteer doctors were injured in a bombing in Bakhmut. The medics — Norwegians Sander Sørsveen Trelvik and Simon Johnsen — were working for Frontline Doctors. They were taken to a hospital in Dnipro for surgery.
They both are recovering and preparing to return to Norway on Tuesday, Grethe Sørsveen, Sander’s mother, wrote on Facebook.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
