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On Wednesday, MEPs and national governments reached a long-sought agreement to revamp the EU’s asylum and migration legislation.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Da Frankreich sich weigert, ein Ziel für erneuerbare Energien für 2030 vorzulegen, versäumt es, die EU-Richtlinie über erneuerbare Energien umzusetzen. Dies erklärte die Europäische Kommission im Rahmen ihrer "Empfehlungen" zum Entwurf des nationalen Energie- und Klimaplans des Landes.

Credit: Orbon Alija/iStock by Getty Images via IMF

By Rafael Machado Parente and Rodrigo Valdes
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 20 2023 (IPS)

Crime and violence have long been a top-of-mind concern for households across Latin America and the Caribbean. The region accounts for nearly half of the world’s intentional homicide victims, despite representing just over 8 percent of the global population, United Nations data show.

The average homicide rate in the region is 10 times that of other emerging markets and developing economies and twice as high as sub-Saharan Africa. Within the region, Central America stands out as the most violent subregion.

Insecurity has also worsened over time, especially in some parts of the region. For example, Central America and the Caribbean have experienced annual increases in homicide rates of about 4 percent in the last two decades.

Crime directly affects the lives of millions of people and imposes large social costs. Because there is a delicate interplay between economic activity and crime, determining causal effects is not easy.

More economic activity will reduce crime, but less crime would, in turn, boost economic activity. Another factor, such as the strength of rule of law, will also affect both.

Our recent study shows that increases in homicide rates significantly reduce economic growth. In Latin America, a 30 percent increase in homicide rates (equivalent to a historical 1 standard deviation) is estimated to reduce growth by 0.14 percentage points.

We build on previous IMF work on Central America, Panama, and the Dominican Republic using data on criminal deportations from the US to tease out the causal effect of crime on economic activity.

Our study highlights the different channels through which insecurity affects economic growth. Estimates show that crime hampers capital accumulation, by possibly deterring investors who fear theft and violence, and decreases productivity, as it likely diverts resources toward less productive investments such as home security.

The benefits of reducing violence can be substantial. According to the study, bringing the crime level in Latin America down to the world average would increase the region’s annual economic growth by 0.5 percentage points, about a third of Latin America’s growth between 2017-19.

Moreover, confronting insecurity where it is most prevalent seems to have the largest payoffs. For example, fully closing the crime gap in countries with the highest homicide rates could elevate their gross domestic product growth by around 0.8 percentage points.

Smarter spending in security

Governments in Latin America are already allocating a considerable share of their resources to public order and safety. Not surprisingly, higher spending occurs in countries with higher crime rates—countries like El Salvador and Jamaica already spend more than 2 percent of their GDP on this matter.

While this substantial spending may be necessary to mitigate and deter crime, it also suggests that implementing more effective strategies could free up significant resources for other spending priorities. The IADB’s Security and Justice Evidence-based Platform is a valuable resource for scientific evidence on the effectiveness of existing security and justice solutions.

The platform highlights, for instance, that there is little evidence that vehicular license plate recognition technologies reduce transportation-related violence, whereas alcohol tax and price policies are found to effectively reduce violence in some cases.

Crime is an economic and social issue with far-reaching consequences and a variety of intertwined roots. If governments in the region were able to prioritize more effective crime-fighting strategies, these would not only enhance public safety but also improve the region’s economic potential.

This underscores the importance of collaboration between policymakers, international financing institutions, academia, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector to find ways to deal with this important obstacle to growth in the region.

Source: International Monetary Fund (IMF)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Die europäische Windenergiebranche hat sich die Unterstützung aller EU-Länder mit Ausnahme Ungarns gesichert. Sie haben eine gemeinsame Erklärung zum Schutz der europäischen Industrie vor "unfairen Handelspraktiken" aus dem Ausland unterzeichnet.

Portugals Ex-Premier António Costa kommt nach wie vor für höhere EU-Ämter infrage, erklärte der spanische Ministerpräsidenten Pedro Sánchez am Dienstag. Costa war lange mit Spitzenposten in Verbindung gebracht worden, trat dann aber wegen Korruptionsermittlungen zurück.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 20 2023 (IPS)

The World Bank insists commercial finance is necessary for achieving economic recovery and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but does little to ensure profit-hungry commercial finance serves the public interest.

By failing to address pressing challenges within their purview, the second-ever Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings on the African continent, in Marrakech in October 2023, set the developing world even further back.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The International Monetary and Financial Committee, which oversees the International Monetary Fund (IMF), could not agree, by consensus, on the usual end-of-meeting ministerial communique for ‘geopolitical’ reasons. The Development Committee, which governs the World Bank Group, fared little better.

New World Bank playbook
Little was achieved on crucial outstanding issues of governance reform and sovereign debt. Implicitly acknowledging past failure, World Bank Governors endorsed a “new vision to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet”.

After all, even the World Bank now acknowledges recent increases in global poverty have been the worst since the Second World War as economic stagnation, debt distress and inflation spread across the developing world.

The Bank’s new Evolution Roadmap proposes a just energy transition plan to mobilise private capital to scale up, secure and deploy climate finance. This is mainly for mitigation, rather than adaptation, let alone losses and damages.

The blueprint wants international financial institutions to help developing country governments de-risk private investments. For Muchhala, this reflects “the failure of the Bank’s wealthy shareholders to help ensure a more equitable multilateral system that is truly fit for purpose to meet the challenges of the 21st century”.

Blending finance for private profits
The strategy proposes ‘de-risking’ foreign investment with various types of ‘blended finance’ – such as co-financing, loan guarantees, political risk insurance or public equity co-investments – as well as complementary legal and other reforms.

The Bank and its allies have been promoting ‘blended finance’ for development, the environment and global warming since before the 2008 global financial crisis. Their main recommendation has been to induce profit-seeking private capital to fill growing financing gaps.

Undoubtedly, most poor developing countries have limited public resources to make needed social and environmental, including climate investments. In such arrangements, public funds are used to ‘de-risk’ or otherwise subsidise commercial finance, ostensibly to serve public policy priorities.

However, private commercial involvement in public services and infrastructure is costly and risky for the public sector and citizens, by deploying limited public resources for private gain. Civil society and other critics have already expressed grave concerns about the new Roadmap.

The World Bank Group also set up a Private Sector Investment Lab to scale up private finance in developing economies. It claims to be creating a “business enabling environment that unleashes private financing”.

Billions to trillions
The World Bank’s ‘billions to trillions’ slogan has been the pretext for privileging commercial finance as supposedly necessary to achieve the SDGs. But it has done little to ensure that such profit-seeking private investments will help achieve the SDGs or otherwise serve the public purpose.

The Bank does not consider that profit-seeking private investments expecting attractive returns may not serve the public interest and priorities. Nor do they necessarily support desirable transformations. Worse, their economic, social and environmental consequences may be for the worse.

The privatisation of previously public social services and infrastructure has worsened development and distribution. Unequal access to public services – increasingly linked to affordability and ability to pay – threatens hundreds of millions.

Such blended finance arrangements have also contributed to the debt explosion in the Global South – exacerbating, rather than alleviating developmental, environmental and humanitarian crises.

Debt distress spreading
Developing countries are in their worst-ever debt crises, with debt service obligations higher than ever before. Current debt-to-GDP ratios are more than twice those of LICs before the 1996 HIPCs’ debt relief came into effect, and even higher than for Latin American nations before the 1989 Brady plan.

Unlike the 1980s’ sovereign debt crises, market finance is now more important. Much more government debt from commercial sources involves relying on bond markets, rather than commercial bank borrowings.

With official credit much less important, commercial finance has become much more important compared to the 1980s. Unlike official creditors, most private creditors typically refuse to participate in debt restructuring negotiations, making resolution impossible.

Debt servicing costs equal the combined expenditure for education, health, social protection and climate. In Africa, debt servicing has risen by half. Debt service levels of the 139 World Bank borrowers are higher than during the heavily indebted poor countries’ (HIPCs) and Latin American debt crises peaks.

Debt service is absorbing 38% of budget revenue and 30% of spending on average by developing country governments. In Africa, the levels are much higher, at 54% of revenue and 40% of spending!

The BWIs’ joint debt sustainability framework insists debt-distressed economies must have lower debt-to-GDP ratios than other countries, limiting this LICs’ external ratio to 30% or 40%. This BWI policy effectively penalises the poorer and more vulnerable nations.

In 38 countries with over a billion people, loan conditionalities during 2020-22 resulted in regressive tax reforms and public spending cuts. Less expenditure has hit fuel or electricity subsidies and public wage bills, deepening economic stagnation.

Despite severe debt distress in many developing countries, no meaningful debt relief has been available for most. The most recent debt restructuring deals have left debt service levels averaging at least 48% of revenue over the next three to five years.

Debt distress limits government spending capacity, desperately needed to address social and environmental crises. Hence, overcoming stagnation and achieving the SDGs will require much more debt cancellation, relief and borrowing cost cuts.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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As 2023 draws to a close, the European Union is racing against the clock to close as many Green Deal files as possible before the European Parliament goes into recess for the June EU elections.

Über ein Jahr ist es her, dass einer der größten Korruptionsskandale im EU-Parlament ans Licht kam. In der Katargate-Affäre wurde die damalige Vizepräsidentin des EU-Parlaments aufgrund des Vorwurfs der Bestechung durch Marokko und Katar festgenommen. Die Ermittlungen laufen bis heute. 

Dänemark wird die Stationierung von US-Truppen auf seinem Territorium gestatten. Die Abmachung wird Teil eines am Dienstag angekündigten Abkommens mit den USA sein, welches die Verteidigungszusammenarbeit zwischen beiden Ländern ausbauen soll.

The EU Commission on Tuesday (19 December) announced that it would keep tariffs on US steel and aluminium suspended until March 2015 with the goal of reaching a deal on green steel and aluminium until then.

Les 27 espèrent conclure un accord mercredi (20 décembre) sur une réforme des règles budgétaires de l’UE, permettant un équilibre acceptable par tous entre rigueur et flexibilité, après un rapprochement franco-allemand crucial annoncé mardi soir à Paris.

Portugal, Spanien und Frankreich werden ihre Beziehungen im Energiebereich verstärken. Dies geht aus einer Vereinbarung hervor, die am Dienstag in Brüssel zusammen mit der EU-Kommission unterzeichnet wurde.

L’opposition en Serbie a commencé à manifester mardi soir contre les résultats des élections à Belgrade, remportés selon les premiers résultats officiels par le parti du président, que la coalition « Serbie contre la violence » (SPN) accuse d’avoir triché.

Following negotiations, President Metsola and MEPs in charge of Parliament’s position on the asylum and migration pact will hold a press conference on Wednesday at 9.30.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Following negotiations, President Metsola and MEPs in charge of Parliament’s position on the asylum and migration pact will hold a press conference on Wednesday at 9.30.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Following negotiations, President Metsola and MEPs in charge of Parliament’s position on the asylum and migration pact will hold a press conference on Wednesday at 9.30.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Following negotiations, President Metsola and MEPs in charge of Parliament’s position on the asylum and migration pact will hold a press conference on Wednesday at 9.30.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Der spanische Ministerpräsident Pedro Sánchez will sich mehrfach mit den katalanischen Separatistenführern Carles Puigdemont und Oriol Junqueras treffen, um die Beziehungen zu den katalanischen Unabhängigkeitsbefürwortern zu normalisieren. 

Aujourd’hui dans L’Expresso : une amitié infaillible entre Pedro Sánchez et António Costa, la France et la Suède renforcent leur partenariat nucléaire, le Danemark signe un accord de défense inédit avec les Etats-Unis