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Der Rat hat angesichts des andauernden Angriffskriegs Russlands gegen die Ukraine Sanktionen gegen weitere 61 Personen und 86 Organisationen verhängt.

Council and Parliament reach provisional deal on Euro 7 regulation on cars, vans, and trucks emissions limits.

Der Rat und das Europäische Parlament haben sich auf das Verfahren für die Wahl des Sitzes der künftigen europäischen Behörde zur Bekämpfung der Geldwäsche und Terrorismusfinanzierung geeinigt.

Der Rat hat sich auf das zwölfte Paket wirtschaftlicher und individueller restriktiver Maßnahmen der EU im Zusammenhang mit dem Angriffskrieg Russlands gegen die Ukraine geeinigt.

President Michel received letters of credentials from four new ambassadors to the European Union.

Verringerung von Verpackungsabfällen und Förderung von hochwertigem Recycling in der EU: Der Rat hat heute eine allgemeine Ausrichtung zu neuen Vorschriften festgelegt.

Wochenplan von Präsident Charles Michel, 18.-24. Dezember 2023

President of the Eurogroup Paschal Donohoe, will travel to Austria and Slovakia on 18 - 20 December 2023.

Le Chef de l’État’, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, a mis fin ce soir – 20 décembre 2023 –  aux fonctions du président du CNESE, Sidi Mohammed Bouchenak […]

L’article [URGENT] Tebboune met fin aux fonction du président du CNESE, Bouchenak Khelladi est apparu en premier sur .

DR Congo's 44 million voters have been voting for their next president despite to lengthy delays.

In Travis County, in the city of Austin, Texas, is the headquarters of the American company Tesla. The group specializing in electric vehicles is building a large plant in the state of Nuevo Leon, in northeastern Mexico, with a production capacity of one million electric vehicles. Credit: Tesla

By Emilio Godoy
AUSTIN, Texas, US, Dec 20 2023 (IPS)

The city of Austin, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, had 945,000 residents in 2021 and on average each household owned two cars, hundreds of them electric. Among the manufacturers of these electric vehicles are companies such as the US Tesla, Ford and General Motors (GM).

From Tesla’s plant in Travis County, one of the automaker’s eight global facilities, there is a virtually invisible line to its future subsidiary in Santa Catarina, in the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, two locations separated by about 600 kilometers.

The company produced the largest number of electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids in the second quarter of 2023, followed by the Chinese company Build Your Dreams (BYD).

Tesla has attracted Mexican engineers trained in Nuevo Leon and from Austin supervises the construction of the new plant, whose investment is around 5 billion dollars.

Hundreds of these rolling steel beetles, many of them electric (even from other brands), fill the parking lot of the facility, where Tesla manufactures its Model Y and a cybertruck, and will soon make batteries and cathodes, one of its main parts and which is the electrode that transports the positive electrical charge.

In the morning hours, these vehicles crowd Tesla Street, so rechristened for obvious reasons.

The process involves an issue that is becoming more and more relevant: the transparency of the supply chain. The number of parts in an EV battery varies by model, but in total it’s less than an internal combustion unit.

But, according to specialists interviewed, this chain has different levels of transparency, depending on the company in question. U.S. and European brands are leading the way, while Chinese brands are lagging.

But under pressure from governments, non-governmental organizations and consumers, the situation is showing signs of change.

The supply chain involves the phases of extracting the raw materials for the product, processing and refining them for the preparation of the commodity materials, their coupling for use in the final good, and the end of their useful life, which includes reuse or recycling.

This scaffolding is made up of hundreds of actors, generally disconnected from each other, and involves an enormous effort to trace them and which makes it difficult to clarify who provides which component.

In the research for this report, IPS found that the EV supply chain in Mexico is opaque, which has environmental and human rights repercussions.

In 2021, during the climate summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow, Mexico assumed the voluntary goal of selling only non-polluting cars by 2035. In addition, the U.S. administration of Democrat Joe Biden wants 50% of new cars sold by 2030 to be electric.

 

Global Player

Yong Kwon, the non-governmental Sierra Club’s senior policy adviser, noted that the focus has traditionally been on the greenhouse gas emissions caused by the manufacture of EVs, from the extraction of the minerals needed for the production of batteries and other components to the manufacturing itself.

However, there is increasing pressure to consider other aspects, such as respect for human rights and the presence of child labour.

“We are in the early stages of understanding the full impact of the chain. We don’t know which plants supply steel, for example, to the assembly plants. By having transparency about the environmental impact, you can send signals on other issues. We want to draw attention to them,” he told IPS from Washington.

Mexico is the world’s fourth-largest exporter of light-duty vehicles and the fifth-largest seller of auto parts, but it has yet to weigh in on the global EV market. The automotive sector has about 600 suppliers of original parts, who in turn outsource to another 600 vendors of components or basic services.

In 2021, Mexico was the sixth-largest seller of EVs, with destinations such as the United States, Belgium, and Norway, while importing a low volume of units from the United States, Germany, and China.

It also exported the equivalent of 2% of global electric batteries, while China dominated the sector, with 35%. The main destinations were the United States, Canada and France. Meanwhile, it imported 2.86% of all components, contributed by Poland, the United States and China.

The Asian powerhouse controls almost half of the EV value chain and Contemporary Amperex Technology Company Ltd. (Catl), with its parent company in that country, produces one in three batteries in the whole world.

 

Outside its Austin plant, Tesla has charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs), which are already common in the United States. But the supply chain of materials for the manufacture of EVs has transfer flaws on the part of Tesla and other companies: they do not detail the origin of the raw materials for their production or their components, as well as environmental impact or respect for human rights. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

 

Mass failure

The international platform Lead the Charge, made up of several environmental organizations in the United States (including the Sierra Club), virtually failed all EV producers.

Its objective is to evaluate the automotive industry on the respect for human rights of workers, communities, and Indigenous Peoples, in a sustainable way and without the consumption of fossil fuels.

This assessment is relevant for Mexico, due to its production plant link with the United States, although there is no evaluation of manufacturing in Mexico.

Ford was the highest rated in the examination, with a total score of 33%. In the area of respect for human rights and responsible sourcing, it received 51% and, on the environment, 15%.

GM scored 15 percent overall, with 25 percent on human rights and responsible sourcing and 5 percent on the environment.

Meanwhile, the platform assigned 14% to Tesla, 21% on human rights and responsible sourcing and 7% on the environment.

Another Lead the Charge’s subject was the German BMW Group, to which it gave a total score of 22%, with 26% in environmental aspects and 17% in human rights and responsible sourcing.

The group is investing about $872 million in its plant in the municipality of Villa de Reyes, in the north-central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, which will manufacture electric models and batteries.

For Cecilia Mattea, Battery and Value Chain Policies manager at the non-governmental network European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E), increasing transparency in value chains offers benefits to stakeholders, such as local communities affected by mining.

“Some automakers are taking significant steps to make their operations more transparent, but others are still lagging behind, especially on sustainability commitments, not to mention increasing transparency,” she told IPS from Brussels.

In 2021, Ford began mapping and auditing the EV and battery supply chain to uncover the source of raw materials such as nickel, lithium, cobalt, and graphite.

In its 2022 sustainability report, Ford, whose global headquarters are located in the U.S. city of Detroit, listed 30 appraisals to its suppliers from these four chains and reviews of its nickel, lithium and cobalt due diligence management systems. But the company has not given details about these measures.

At its plant placed in the municipality of Tutltitlán, located in the central state of Mexico (adjacent to Mexico City), the U.S. multinational assembles the Mustang Mach-E electric model, aimed mainly at the U.S. market.

Customs data from Mexico and Comtrade, the United Nations’ trade statistics system, reveal that Ford imports lithium-ion batteries from companies such as LG Chem and Samsung SDI, which have plants in South Korea and China.

It also acquires electronic components, such as sensors and communication systems, from Germany, the United States and China.

Meanwhile, GM is much more succinct with its information and only indicates its plans to get cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo through a multi-year agreement with Australian miner Glencore, as well as lithium from Argentina.

GM assembles batteries and EVs at its factory in the municipality of Ramos Arizpe, in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, for which it imports lithium batteries from LG Chem, which has suppliers in China and Japan.

The case of Tesla is extremely relevant, due to its ambitious EV production goals, its global expansion, including its future plant in Mexico, and its dependence on China, an aspect linked to the level of transparency of its supply.

This manufacturer sources batteries mainly from Japan’s Panasonic and China’s Catl. In addition, it uses battery cells from LG Chem and BYD.

In the case of batteries, its suppliers include Catl, South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, BYD, Panasonic, South Korea’s SK On, Samsung SDI and China’s China Aviation Lithium Battery Co. (Calb), Guoxuan High-tech Co., Sunwoda Electronic Co. and Svolt Energy Technology Co.

Regarding raw materials, Tesla buys lithium from the US-based Albemarle Corporation, which owns a mine in Australia and a refinery in China; Livent, also from the United States; and China’s Ganfeng Lithium Co. and Yahua Industrial Group.

It also purchases cobalt and nickel from China’s CNGR Advanced Material Co. and Huayou, which mines cobalt from Congo, the same case as Glencore Kamoto Copper Company, which owns a cobalt mine in that African nation.

Japan’s Nikkei news agency concluded that nearly 40 percent of the suppliers of materials used in Tesla’s EV batteries are Chinese companies, accounting for 39 percent of the 61 corporations in the battery segment. The report identified more than 13 428 companies that would supply components to Tesla.

China accounted for 40% of the 42 non-ferrous metal smelting companies, excluding aluminum.

These data are relevant for the future plant in Nuevo León, as the same value chain could be repeated.

For Isabel Studer, an academic at the Riverside School of Public Policy at the University of California, the greater participation of the United States and the European Union (EU) means that issues such as human rights and the environment become more relevant.

“There is more robust civil society and laws, and there is growing concern. Critical minerals are sourced from conflict countries and that makes it difficult to have traceability and respect for human rights. As the U.S. develops this industry further, there is going to be more demand for these minerals to come from sources that have no impacts”, she told IPS from Mexico City.

But the expert warned that such a large demand causes a lack of incentives for manufacturers or refiners to check whether the mining companies are complying with basic standards and asked about the timeframe for these requirements to have a positive impact on the supply chain.

GM and Tesla did not respond to IPS’s inquiry, while Ford de Mexico said it did not have a spokesperson available on these issues.

 

Mining Fever

Although the electrification of as many activities as possible is desirable to abandon fossil fuel consumption and reduce polluting emissions, the deployment of electric cars poses major challenges.

In his 2022 book Volt Rush, journalist Henry Sanderson recounts that Elon Musk, Tesla’s flamboyant owner, acknowledged that his firm would need to increase battery production a hundredfold by 2030, enough to make around twenty million cars a year.

But these goals would require four times the amount of lithium the world currently produces. The Paris-based International Energy Agency, which groups the largest consumers of hydrocarbons, predicted that demand for this mineral would grow thirtyfold by 2030 and more than 100 times by 2050.

An EV contains 83 kilograms of copper, triple the amount of a conventional vehicle, as it is present in the battery, electric motor, inverter, and wiring.

The requirement for copper and nickel would grow two- to three-fold to meet the needs of clean cars and clean power grids by 2050, posing environmental and social risks, according to the “2050 Net Zero Roadmap for Copper and Nickel Value Chains.”

If each of the 1 billion cars currently on the road were replaced by a Tesla model, the demand for cobalt would be equivalent to fourteen million tons, twice the size of the world’s identified reserves.

For this reason, the electrification of public and private transport already has serious climate, environmental and social impacts, as evidenced by well-documented cases in Congo (cobalt), Argentina (lithium) and Indonesia (nickel), to mention just a few cases.

 

Tesla built its electric vehicle plant in Travis, in the southern Texas city of Austin, in just over a year. But the construction plant it hopes to put into operation in 2026 in Mexico, in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon, is progressing more slowly.
Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

 

Make-up or depth?

Faced with the maze of supply chains and the impacts observed, several initiatives are emerging to promote transparency and accountability.

In Germany, the law on corporate due diligence obligations, aimed at the prevention of human rights violations in supply chains –applicable to the automotive sector– and specifying obligations to address environmental and human rights risks, came into force in January.

In addition, the implementation of the so-called “battery passport”, developed by the Global Battery Alliance (GBA), the multi-stakeholder entity that emerged in 2017 to establish a sustainable battery value chain by 2030, is underway.

This instrument, backed by companies such as BMW, Calt, LG Chem, Samsung SDI, Sunwoda and Tesla, will be a mandatory requirement in the EU in 2026 and it is not ruled out that other jurisdictions will adopt it as well.

The passport will provide transparency on battery practices and impact across the value chain to all relevant stakeholders, create a framework for comparing those devices based on the criteria for a sustainable and responsible battery, as well as validate and track progress towards sustainable, responsible, and resource-efficient components.

Three pilots carried out by Germany’s Audi and Tesla reveal the vicissitudes of the initiative, as they were only able to track a portion of the lithium and cobalt used in the battery, thus showing gaps in the monitoring.

In addition, the EU is also debating the draft Law on Critical Raw Materials, which aims to strengthen the security of the supply of these ingredients, by defining 34 fundamental elements and 17 strategic ones, as well as actions for regional supply, national research, and diversification of imports.

In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 incentivizes the purchase of EVs under the condition that at least half of the battery’s components are manufactured in North America and 40% of the minerals used in them comes from domestic sources or countries with which the United States has trade agreements –not China or Russia–. Both percentages will rise from 2029.

For these incentives, cheap labor (compared to the United States), lax permits and logistics route, Tesla chose Nuevo León for its new plant, with capacity for one million EVs and which will be in operation in 2026.

A time that is considered very slow because in Shanghai (China), the construction of a similar plant took 10 months and in Austin, just over a year, plus the expansion process throughout 2023.

But one unknown is the execution of these frameworks, given the magnitude of the challenge.

Although Studer, from the University of California, questioned the record of the United States and the EU in the traceability of products, she considered that they can now exert greater influence.

The U.S. “could have a greater impact in introducing traceability standards, to ensure that the chain has better practices. There are going to be certifications (of batteries). To the extent that it imposes these standards, exporters must comply with them. There should be diversification of supply, because as long as China has a virtual monopoly in the stages, it’s not going to happen overnight”, she said.

According to the Sierra Club’s Kwon, the achievement of the standards is linked to improving authorities’ capacities in the United States, Mexico or the EU.

“We hope that international markets will provide tools for producers to comply with the requirements, for Chinese companies, for example, to disclose aspects of the chain. The emerging requirements will be chaotic at first, but they will push players to be more transparent. They can have a positive impact,” he said.

T&E’s Mattea recommended that Mexico and other countries also introduce oversight mechanisms.

“With the EU regulation on batteries, a big step forward has been taken to ensure that value chains are more transparent thanks to the provisions on carbon footprint, due diligence and battery passporting. In the coming years, these rules will be mandatory for batteries introduced on the market” in the EU, she stressed.

In 2023 third quarter, Tesla produced 430 488 vehicles, down 10% from the second-quarter results (479,700).

But as the EVs craze sweeps across North America, its demand for materials, whose origin remains shrouded in opaque layers, is increasing.

 

This article was produced by IPS with support from the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

 

While December's political agreement on the AI Act could deliver a competitive edge for Europe, commercial AI consolidation risks widening the EU’s substantial regional innovation divide.

Le classement Financial Afrik des meilleurs ministres des Finances du continent au titre de l'année 2023 est connu. L'annonce a été faite dans la parution NUMÉRO 106 - DU 15 DÉCEMBRE AU 14 FÉVRIER 2024.
Romuald Wadagni du Bénin et Vera Esperança dos Santos Daves de Sousa, de Angola arrivent en tête à égalité de points (19). Ils sont suivi de Nicolas Kazadi, RDC (17 points), Enoch Godongwana, Afrique du Sud (16 points ) et Mohamed Maait, Egypte (9 points )
Le jury ayant délibéré est composé de cinq (5) personnalités rompues à la tâche. Il s'agit de Ali Benahmed, Leila Ben Hassen, Oloufemi Montetcho, Louis Amédée, Fazila Dahall.

Nous y reviendrons

Some polling stations only opened many hours late, with voting extended into Thursday in some areas.

Gilbert Togbonon est désormais Agent Judiciaire du Trésor (AJT).

L'ancien Procureur Gilbert Togbonon a été nommé en Conseil des ministres, mercredi 20 décembre 2023, Agent Judiciaire du Trésor (AJT).
Deux autres de ses collaborateurs, Romuald Gbénou et Mahugnon Fréjus Lucas Akpotrossou, ont été également nommés en Conseil des ministres.
Gilbert Togbonon a été Procureur spécial près la Cour de Répression des Infractions Économiques et du Terrorisme (CRIET) de 2018 à 2022.
Il est le Directeur Adjoint de Communication du Ministère de la Justice du Bénin avant sa nomination à l'AJT.
L'Agent Judiciaire du Trésor (AJT) est chargé de la défense des intérêts de l'Etat aux fins de recouvrement des créances.
Un projet de loi transmis à l'Assemblée nationale à l'issue du conseil des ministres du 13 décembre dernier prévoit le remplacement de l'AJT par l'Agence Judiciaire de l'Etat.
L'Agence Judiciaire de l'Etat dispose de « pouvoirs plus étendus dans le monopole de la défense des intérêts directs pécuniaires de l'État, au sens de la loi, devant toutes juridictions nationales ou internationales et en arbitrage ». Elle est « chargée de : la représentation de l'État et de la défense des intérêts non pécuniaires des institutions, administrations et démembrements de l'État, des organismes publics non dotés de la personnalité juridique, dans tous les contentieux devant les juridictions, les instances arbitrales et les entités compétentes au plan national et international ; la représentation des intérêts indirects de l'État, c'est-à-dire des intérêts des collectivités territoriales, des sociétés d'État, des sociétés à participation majoritaire de l'État, des établissements publics, des sociétés privées chargées d'une mission de service public dans le cadre des actions en demande ou en défense desdites personnes ; la poursuite et du recouvrement des créances des sociétés ou offices d'État dissous ou liquidés et de l'organisation des suites des affaires de ces sociétés ou offices. Elle intervient également dans le recouvrement des créances cédées à l'État et de toute créance lui appartenant », selon le projet de Loi.
M. M.

Selon Kibangula, ces dysfonctionnements pourraient impacter l'issue du scrutin avec notamment des conséquences sur le taux de participation et sur la légitimité des futurs élus.

En Conseil des ministres, ce mercredi 20 décembre 2023, le gouvernement béninois a annoncé la réhabilitation de bâtiments et acquisition d'équipements au profit des unités de cardiologie interventionnelle et de réadaptation cardiovasculaire du Centre national hospitalier et universitaire Hubert Koutoukou MAGA de Cotonou.

Le gouvernement béninois a décidé de la réhabilitation de bâtiments du Centre national hospitalier et universitaire Hubert Koutoukou MAGA de Cotonou. Selon le Conseil des ministres, les travaux de réhabilitation portent sur des locaux où seront installés les équipements modernes à acquérir dans le cadre de la mise en place du pôle d'excellence de cardiologie interventionnelle et de réadaptation cardiovasculaire dans cet hôpital.

Il s'agit notamment d'équipements de cardiologie interventionnelle, de réadaptation cardiovasculaire, de mobiliers pour les unités qui accueillent ces spécialités, de matériels informatiques et l'installation du réseau informatique dans lesdites unités. L'acquisition des équipements va contribuer à une meilleure prise en charge des patients.

A.A.A

Le Procureur spécial près la CRIET est monté au créneau pour apporter des précisions sur l'affaire OBSSU dans laquelle le Donald Acakpo et deux autres complices sont en détention.
Voici ce qu'il faut retenir dans ce dossier.

Dans le cadre d'une enquête ouverte contre Donald ACAKPO, Directeur Général de l'Office Béninois des Sports Scolaires et Universitaires (OBSSU), TCHIBOZO Vitalien, Agent Comptable de l'OBSSU, Roland ZOSSOU et consorts il a été établi ce qui suit :
Le Directeur Général de l'OBSSU et son Agent comptable ont frauduleusement sorti des caisses de l'office une somme d'argent évaluée, pour l'heure, à deux milliards six cent quatre-vingt-quinze millions quatre cent cinquante-deux mille (2.695.452.000) FCFA sur la période de 2019 à 2023.
Donald ACAKPO a investi une partie de cette somme dans un projet d'intermédiation dans la commercialisation de fibres de coton proposé par son ami ZOSSOU Roland.
Usant de la fausse qualité de neveu de Monsieur Eustache KOTINGAN, Administrateur Général de la SODECO S.A, ZOSSOU Roland a fait croire à Donald ACAKPO que son prétendu parent pouvait leur obtenir de juteux contrats. Pour le convaincre, il a acquis une carte Sim qu'il a insérée dans un téléphone portable différent du sien et a enregistré le numéro de cette Sim dans son propre téléphone portable comme étant celui de Monsieur Eustache KOTINGAN. Il a également communiqué ce faux numéro à Donald ACAKPO comme étant celui de Monsieur Eustache KOTINGAN. A partir de ce faux numéro, il a simulé des échanges de messages qu'il a transférés à Donald ACAKPO. Aux multiples messages de Monsieur Donald ACAKPO à ce numéro, c'est Roland ZOSSOU qui répond. Avec ce stratagème, il a convaincu Monsieur ACAKPO à lui remettre des sommes d'argent.
L'autre stratagème utilisé par Roland ZOSSOU pour provoquer la remise des sommes d'argent a consisté à initier une série de courriers sous l'en-tête de l'Inspection Générale des Finances. Ces correspondances laissaient planer la menace de contrôles au niveau de l'OBSSU. Sollicité par Donald ACAKPO, Roland ZOSSOU s'est proposé d'empêcher les contrôles, moyennant la remise de fortes sommes d'argent.

La perquisition effectuée au domicile de Roland ZOSSOU a permis de retrouver les téléphones ainsi que le numéro configuré au nom d'Eustache KOTINGAN, plusieurs courriers avec l'en-tête de l'Inspection Générale des Finances, et de la SODECO S.A, des cachets au nom de la SODECO S.A et de l'IGF ainsi que des feuilles de papier sur lesquelles Roland ZOSSOU s'est exercé à reproduire la signature de l'inspecteur Général des Finances.
Tels sont les faits à l'origine des poursuites pénales initiées contre Donald ACAPKO, TCHIBOZO Vitalien et Roland ZOSSOU.
C'est le lieu de rappeler à tous les acteurs publics que toute dépense doit être conforme aux règles de la comptabilité publique et dûment justifiée.
C'est également le lieu de rappeler que toute remise de fonds en vue d'empêcher la mise en œuvre des mécanismes de contrôle est un acte délictuel sévèrement puni par les dispositions du code pénal et des lois en vigueur.
Il sied d'ajouter que le détournement de deniers publics est puni de peines allant jusqu'à la réclusion criminelle à perpétuité, outre les peines accessoires et les sanctions disciplinaires.
Les procédures suivent leur cours devant la CRIET et je ne manquerai pas de revenir vers vous en cas de nécessité.

Az oktatási minisztérium megváltoztatta az elsajátítandó készségek tartalmát az állami oktatási programban.

La Banque d’Algérie vient de dévoiler, ce mercredi 20 décembre 2023, des informations cruciales concernant les taux d’intérêt pour le premier semestre de l’année 2024. […]

L’article Banque d’Algérie : seuils des taux d’intérêt bancaires pour le 1er semestre 2024 fixés est apparu en premier sur .