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The Council sets its priorities for next year’s EU budget.

Der Rat hat einen Beschluss zur Aktualisierung des Aufbau- und Resilienzplans Finnlands angenommen. Die positive Bewertung des finnischen Plans durch den Rat bleibt unverändert.

The Council adopted a decision increasing the financial ceiling of the European Peace Facility to nearly €7.98 billion in current prices.

Member states converged on a number of key elements for the upcoming reform of the EU’s economic governance framework. These common rules serve to ensure the sustainability of public finances and promote convergence while addressing macroeconomic imbalances.

The Council sets its priorities for next year’s EU budget.

A Tanács határozatot fogadott el Finnország aktualizált helyreállítási és rezilienciaépítési tervéről. A Tanács továbbra is kedvezően értékeli a finn nemzeti tervet.

The Council adopted a decision increasing the financial ceiling of the European Peace Facility to nearly €7.98 billion in current prices.

Szankciók bevezetését követelte a belgrádi vezetéstől Oroszország ellen Rade Basta szerb gazdasági miniszter.

A politikus közleménye szerint Szerbia „már eddig is nagy árat fizetett azért, mert nem vezetett be szankciókat Oroszország ellen, és ez már elviselhetetlenné kezd válni”.

„Hogy én miniszterként azt nézzem, milyen nyomás nehezedik Aleksandar Vucic köztársasági elnökre, mi pedig hallgassunk, ezt nem tudom elfogadni. Ezért támogatom, hogy vezessünk be szankciókat Oroszország ellen. Vucic elnök mellett állok az állami és nemzeti érdekek megvédésében, és teljesen megbízom benne. Ezért Szerbia kormányától és minden minisztertől azt kérem, hogy nyilvánítsanak véleményt a kérdésben” – húzta alá a tárcavezető, aki szerint el kell dönteni, milyen irányba haladjon az ország.

Basta arra is emlékeztetett, hogy Szerbiának is szembe kellett néznie szankciókkal, és az állampolgároknak nehéz gazdasági következményeket kellett elviselniük, ezért mindeddig nem akart döntést hozni a büntetőintézkedésekről, mert abban reménykedett, hogy az orosz-ukrán konfliktus lezárul.

„A háború kezdete óta elítéljük az orosz agressziót, ugyanakkor védtük nemzeti érdekeinket az Oroszországgal fenntartott kapcsolatban. Emiatt első körben nem csatlakoztunk ahhoz a nagyszámú országhoz, amely az agresszor állam ellen szankciókat vezetett be. Ugyanakkor a helyzet napról napra egyre bonyolódik, a nyugati államok pedig élesen bírálják Szerbiát, amiért nem csatlakozott a szankciókhoz” – részletezte a szerb gazdasági miniszter.

Véleménye szerint Szerbia vezetése mindent megtesz annak érdekében, hogy megőrizze a békét és stabilitást. „A gazdaság kulcsfontosságú Szerbia számára, ezért gazdasági miniszterként azt mondom, hogy a nehéz külpolitikai helyzet ellenére is meg kell őriznünk a gazdasági növekedést, és azért kell küzdenünk, hogy állampolgáraink jobban éljenek. Szerbiának komoly, felelősségteljes és önálló politikája van, és folytatni fogja az állampolgárok védelmét” – szögezte le.

Az európai országok közül eddig egyedül Szerbia nem csatlakozott az Oroszország elleni büntetőintézkedésekhez. Ezt a Belgrád és Moszkva közötti történelmi, vallási és kulturális kapcsolatokkal magyarázták, illetve azzal, hogy amikor az 1992-1995-ös délszláv háború, illetve az 1998-1999-es koszovói háború idején a Nyugat Jugoszlávia ellen vezetett be szankciókat, azok nem jártak eredményekkel.

Az Európai Unió viszont közölte, mindaddig nem folytatódhat az uniós csatlakozás folyamata, amíg ez nem történik meg. Vucic pedig ezzel összefüggésben arról is beszélt, akár a külföldi befektetések is leállhatnak. Az államfő egy múlt heti televíziós interjúban már utalt arra, hogy Szerbia is szankciókat vezethet be Moszkva ellen, amikor úgy fogalmazott: nem esküdne meg arra, hogy Szerbia nem fog csatlakozni a szankciókhoz.

 

The post A szankciók működnek: a szerb gazdasági miniszter is az Oroszország elleni megszorítások bevezetését követeli appeared first on .

Wednesday, 15 March

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Wednesday, 15 March

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Wednesday, 15 March

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Wednesday, 15 March

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Protests in Myanmar. Credit: CIVICUS

By Mandeep S.Tiwana
NEW YORK, Mar 15 2023 (IPS)

On 29 and 30 March, the US government, in partnership with Costa Rica, Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia, will co-host the second virtual Summit for Democracy. Several elected leaders and state representatives will come together to highlight achievements in advancing democratic principles.

This online global gathering intends to ‘demonstrate how democracies deliver for their citizens and are best equipped to address the world’s most pressing challenges’. Yet evidence gathered by civil society researchers indicates that all is not well with the state of democracy worldwide. Civic space, a key ingredient of democracy, is becoming increasingly contested.

Pundits have long argued that democracy is not just about majoritarian rule and nominally free elections. The essence of democracy lies in something deeper: the ability of people – especially the excluded – to organise, participate and communicate without hindrance to influence society, politics and economics.

Civic space is underpinned by the three fundamental freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression, with the state having responsibility to defend and safeguard these freedoms.

Yet, as revealed by the 2022 People Power Under Attack report from the CIVICUS Monitor, a collaboration of over 20 research organisations across the globe, states themselves are the biggest violators of civic freedoms.

Among the top violations recorded globally are harassment and intimidation of activists, journalists and civil society organisations to deter them from their human rights work; arbitrary detentions of protesters as punishment for speaking out against those in power; and restrictive laws designed to prevent people mobilising and exercising their fundamental civic freedoms.

Shockingly, two billion people – 28 per cent of the world’s population – live in the 27 countries where civic space is absolutely shut down, where mere expressions of democratic dissent can mean prison, exile or death.

These countries categorised as ‘closed’ on the CIVICUS Monitor include powerful authoritarian states such as China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, as well as well as dictatorships with one-party or one-family rule such as Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Syria and Turkmenistan, among others.

However, the problem extends beyond autocracies. Worryingly, there’s been a perceptible decline in civic space in democracies. In the UK, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 gives police unprecedented powers to restrict protests on grounds of preventing serious ‘distress, annoyance, inconvenience or loss of amenity’.

A deeply draconian public order bill to further limit protests in response to civil disobedience activities of climate and environmental activists is also on the cards. As a result, the country has been downgraded to the ‘obstructed’ category on the CIVICUS Monitor.

Civic space in India, which calls itself the world’s biggest democracy, is under attack, with continuing intimidation of independent media, think tanks and civil society groups that oppose serious human rights violations and high-level corruption.

Tactics include raids on office premises of organisations on flimsy grounds and denial of permission to access international funding. Prominent victims include the BBC, Centre for Policy Research and Oxfam India.

Tunisia, where democracy was until recently starting to grow roots, is now experiencing severe regression due to the high-handed actions of President Kais Saied, who has assumed emergency powers, undermined judicial independence and misused the law enforcement machinery to persecute critics.

India and Tunisia are now both in the second lowest category, ‘repressed’, on the CIVICUS Monitor.

Despite continuing civic space impediments, people are speaking out: the CIVICUS Monitor recorded significant protests in over 130 countries in 2022. The rising costs of food and fuel have sparked mobilisations even in authoritarian contexts.

Protests initially driven by people’s financial pain have tended to grow quickly into mass mobilisations against regressive economic policies, corruption by political leaders and systemic injustice.

Women have often been at the forefront of protests, as seen in Iran, where a brave mobilisation to demand rights has seen thousands of protesters ruthlessly persecuted through mass imprisonment, police brutality and targeted executions.

The gendered nature of repression against women and LGBTQI+ protesters seeking equal rights remains a sadly persistent reality.

However, in the midst of civic space regressions, some successes spurred by civil society action have also come. In Honduras, a group of water and environmental rights activists called the Guapinol defenders were released in February 2022 after two and a half years of pretrial detention following a concerted global campaign calling for an end to their unjust imprisonment.

In Sri Lanka, mass protests led to the resignation in July 2022 of corrupt authoritarian president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who presided over widespread economic mismanagement and civic space restrictions; however, since then the old guard has reasserted its control over government, resuming repressive tactics to undermine constitutional guarantees, pointing to the need for continuous vigilance over civic space.

Some countries have seen significant improvements in civic space conditions following elections and political shifts, including Chile and the USA. Both countries have moved from the ‘obstructed’ to ‘narrowed’ category on the CIVICUS Monitor.

In Chile, initiatives by President Gabriel Boric’s government to provide reparations for human rights abuses and establish a framework to protect activists and journalists have contributed to an improvement in civic freedoms.

In the US, new policies by the Biden administration to strengthen police accountability, workplace organising and humanitarian assistance, as well as the adoption of a less adversarial position towards independent news outlets, are key reasons for the upgrade.

Nevertheless, civic space remains contested globally. Our research shows that just 3.2 per cent of the world’s population live in the 38 countries rated as ‘open’, where states actively enable and safeguard the enjoyment of civic space.

The scale of global civic space challenges is enormous, and the price paid by civic space advocates can be heavy. In January, human rights lawyer and democracy activist, Thulani Maseko, was gunned down at his home in Eswatini. His killers continue to roam free.

The need to safeguard civic space is great. Many of us in civil society hope that this month’s Summit for Democracy will help build international resolve to recognise civic space challenges and catalyse action to end impunity.

Mandeep S. Tiwana is chief programmes officer at the global civil society alliance, CIVICUS. The People Power Under Attack 2022 report collates findings from the CIVICUS Monitor which rates civic space conditions in 197 countries and territories along five categories: open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed and closed.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Die CS-Kundinnen und Kunden haben bei der Schweizer Grossbank letztes Jahr viel Geld abgezogen. Auch viele Schweizerinnen und Schweizer haben sich ihr Geld zurückgeholt.

Die ukrainische Tennisspielerin Lesia Tsurenko gibt vor ihrem Duell in der dritten Runde in Indian Wells Forfait – wegen «schockierenden Aussagen» von WTA-Chef Steve Simon.

Financing climate change mitigation and adaptation in Asia is critical for its population and economies but also for those of the world. This editorial provides a commentary and overview of ten articles within this special issue of Climate Policy on ‘Green Finance in Asia’. Contributions are diverse in terms of focus and methods. Most of the articles focus on managing transition risk with six of the articles having an energy focus; the dominant themes are the risk of stranded coal assets in China; the role of export finance by China and Japan for fossil fuel-fired power generation assets within Asia; and investment in renewable power generation and the policies to support such investment. The remaining four articles explore various policies in specific country contexts: the effects of green bond policies in China; the greening of monetary policy in China; the governance of sustainable finance in Indonesia; and policies to support investment and finance of off-grid electricity access in Bangladesh. Most of the ten contributions come from researchers in developed countries and principally from non-Asian countries, suggesting there is a need to develop green finance research capability and capacity across Asia. Despite being withing scope of the special issue, this collection does not contain papers on physical risk or adaptation finance. We highlight these as important gaps and priorities for future research.

Financing climate change mitigation and adaptation in Asia is critical for its population and economies but also for those of the world. This editorial provides a commentary and overview of ten articles within this special issue of Climate Policy on ‘Green Finance in Asia’. Contributions are diverse in terms of focus and methods. Most of the articles focus on managing transition risk with six of the articles having an energy focus; the dominant themes are the risk of stranded coal assets in China; the role of export finance by China and Japan for fossil fuel-fired power generation assets within Asia; and investment in renewable power generation and the policies to support such investment. The remaining four articles explore various policies in specific country contexts: the effects of green bond policies in China; the greening of monetary policy in China; the governance of sustainable finance in Indonesia; and policies to support investment and finance of off-grid electricity access in Bangladesh. Most of the ten contributions come from researchers in developed countries and principally from non-Asian countries, suggesting there is a need to develop green finance research capability and capacity across Asia. Despite being withing scope of the special issue, this collection does not contain papers on physical risk or adaptation finance. We highlight these as important gaps and priorities for future research.

Financing climate change mitigation and adaptation in Asia is critical for its population and economies but also for those of the world. This editorial provides a commentary and overview of ten articles within this special issue of Climate Policy on ‘Green Finance in Asia’. Contributions are diverse in terms of focus and methods. Most of the articles focus on managing transition risk with six of the articles having an energy focus; the dominant themes are the risk of stranded coal assets in China; the role of export finance by China and Japan for fossil fuel-fired power generation assets within Asia; and investment in renewable power generation and the policies to support such investment. The remaining four articles explore various policies in specific country contexts: the effects of green bond policies in China; the greening of monetary policy in China; the governance of sustainable finance in Indonesia; and policies to support investment and finance of off-grid electricity access in Bangladesh. Most of the ten contributions come from researchers in developed countries and principally from non-Asian countries, suggesting there is a need to develop green finance research capability and capacity across Asia. Despite being withing scope of the special issue, this collection does not contain papers on physical risk or adaptation finance. We highlight these as important gaps and priorities for future research.

Aujourd’hui dans L’Expresso : ticket de transport unique en Allemagne, rebondissement dans l'affaire du Qatargate et nucléaire dans la réforme du marché européen de l'électricité.