Category: Europe

By Julio Godoy* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BARCELONA (IDN) – International negotiations on so-called “free trade agreements” have always had something surreptitious about them. In the late 1990s, the industrialised countries represented at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) wanted to pass a “multilateral agreement on investment” (MAI) with the alleged goal of facilitating – liberating, so to speak – international investment. But, for all the good that such investment was supposed to bring about across the world, the OECD managed the negotiations in a most clandestine way.

With good reason: Only thanks to the extraordinary work of civil rights activists and journalists, it was revealed that the MAI draft constituted a carte blanche for corporations to commit all kind of violations of national legislation on social and environmental matters.

By Julio Godoy* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BARCELONA (IDN) – Last December, the Catalonian parliament adopted a resolution that a referendum be carried out in November 2014, to decide whether the region remains part of Spain, or proclaims its independency. To say that the resolution constitutes a major challenge for the central government in Madrid is a euphemism.

Because, on the one hand, the Spanish constitution does not envisage referendums; and on the other, given the present climate of animosity reigning in Catalonia against Madrid, it is likely that a majority of the Catalonian population follows the ‘separatists’ – I use that term for lack of a better one: Catalonians rallying for independency claim they are not nationalists, but that they simply don’t feel as Spaniards – among the political leaders and proclaims the region as a new independent state, and thus opens the way for other separatist movements in Spain, such as that of the Basque country. Finally, most Catalonians reject the monarchy and would prefer to ground a republic.

By James Mackie* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BRUSSELS (IDN) – While the debate on Scottish independence is heating up prior to the referendum in September 2014, it is important to consider what implications an independent Scotland would have for UK and European development aid. While the UK aid would undoubtedly be affected, this new donor country would need to make an effort to minimize the effect on further aid fragmentation.

Scottish independence would lead to more fragmentation of European development cooperation and a major reduction in Department for International Development (DFID) programmes as a result of an estimated GBP 1 billion cut in its budget, yet neither of these two outcomes are really dealt with in two recent reports on what a Yes vote in the 2014 Scottish referendum would mean for development cooperation.

By Julio Godoy* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – Several recent economic news from the Eurozone illustrate the way the German industry bosses want to have their cake and eat it too: As the German federal statistical office (Destatis) informed earlier in December, the country’s export reached a record of some 100 billion euros, some 135 billion U.S. dollars, the highest amount ever measured in a month.

This record followed another – of surplus in the German trade balance – of more than 20 billion euros, beating the top score of June 2008 by more than one billion, as the Destatis stated in a press release on November 8, 2013.

By Richard Johnson | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

GENEVA (IDN) – The Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation has come up with a Christmas and New Year gift that has the potential of feeding some 2 billion people around the world. The international cooperation agency, based in Berne, is placing $2.7 million at the disposal of three United Nations agencies – the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) – to launch a joint project to tackle the global problem of food losses, beginning with pilot programmes in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda.

By Peter Tase* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (IDN) – Over the past three years, Nicaragua has been trying to deepen ties with major European Union countries, paying special attention to the establishment of various sustainable development initiatives.

Nowhere is the strategy more apparent than in Foreign Minister Samuel Santos’ visit to Brussels and Strasbourg in December of 2010, where he secured financing from the European Commission for the Nicaragua Education Project (PROSEN) and funding for anti-dengue and rural public health campaigns from Luxembourg.

By Richard Johnson | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BRUSSELS (IDN) – The Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), a regional network, working in 12 Arab countries with seven national networks, has criticised the 28-nation European Union’s response to democratic transformations in the Arab Region.

The EU had launched a set of initiatives to support transitions in the Arab region, thus reassessing its previous policies, “which turned a blind eye to dealings with authoritarian and repressive regimes and sacrificed the values of freedom and democracy in order to maintain security and stability and energy resources”, ANND said in a statement.

By Ramesh Jaura | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – Europe is the world’s richest region. Together 28 countries constituting the European Union (EU) are the world’s largest market. EU and its member states provide 56% of about $130 billion global official development assistance. Precisely this obliges Europe not to stay bogged down in ongoing financial and identity crises but accept its international responsibilities wholeheartedly.

This was the upshot of a landmark speech by the European Council President Herman Van Rompuy on November 9, the very day the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, 28 years after it was erected to reinforce post-war division of Germany and Europe. The day was “perhaps the most important tipping point, not just for Germany but in our recent European history,” he said.

By Mirjam van Reisen* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BRUSSELS (IDN) – In the early morning of October 3 a tourist was enjoying the beautiful quiet beach of the Italian Mediterranean Island when three swimmers appeared. Three African young men frantically asked for help. They had left their mothers behind in a ship on sea that was on fire.