by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Helsinki : Businessmen from Kazakhstan and Finland signed contracts worth more than $600 million, as part of the official visit of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to the northern European country.
“This is my second visit to the Republic of Finland over the period of our independence and our fourth high-level meeting with the President of the country,” said Nazarbayev following the talks.
“Our talks today focused on international policy, namely on our region and the situation in Europe where the Europe-Asia forum will be held tomorrow. We share a common view on this issue. Indeed, there are neither political nor economic problems between our countries,” he said.
“I have arrived here to give a new impulse to the economic relations between our counties. Yesterday, I met with captains of Finnish business and saw their interest in working with us. Tens of contracts worth over $600mn have been signed by our businessmen. We may cooperate in ore-mining industry, chemistry, engineering, agriculture and high technologies sectors,” he added.
—AB/UNA-OIC
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Tarun Basu,
Title: India and EU: An Insider’s View; Author: Bhaswati Mukherjee; Publisher: ICWA/Vij Books; Pages: 358; Price: Rs 746
About a decade ago, the European Commission, troubled perhaps by the not-so-positive perception it has in India, decided to set up what it called a “Indo-EU news agency” to produce and disseminate real-time, accurate and informative news from the EU to India and perhaps vice versa.
After a lot of endless discussions within the notorious EU bureaucracy, they chose an Indian journalistic trade union body with little experience of dealing in international news, over the claims of some professional news agencies, for its partnership.
The enterprise, predictably, did not last too long and the perceptions remained, according to Bhaswati Mukherjee — resulting in a “continuing challenge” with general “lack of visibility in the Indian media regarding the EU” and a general “negative tone” which some experts have said bordered on “disapproval and general indifference”.
Mukherjee, who retired as Indian Ambassador to the Netherlands and also served in Paris as Ambassador to the Unesco, has spent the best part of her career trying to bring content and meaning to India-EU ties, which she thinks works much below its potential. In fact, she calls it “a faltering strategic partnership” in her seminal offering, “India and EU: An Insider’s View”.
Although Mukherjee says that the book is about “Europe meeting India”, it is actually an expansive and insightful tour d’horizon of India’s long engagement with Europe, such that has not been attempted to date, at least from the Indian perspective.
She gives the history, the different dimensions of the relationship, Europe’s intra-state dynamics, the trade block, the perception factor and, finally, the way to go.
As Hardeep Puri, former Indian diplomat and now minister in the Modi government, said, it was a must-read for anyone dealing with India-EU dynamics.
Speaking at the book launch, Puri said, tongue in cheek, that EU’s perception about India — and the way it dealt with it — would perhaps change if India becomes a $5 trillion economy. Despite common values of democracy, language, liberal institutions, etc., EU never resisted the urge to be “prescriptive” towards India, especially on human rights issues, particularly regarding Kashmir and India’s penal system.
One of the other strategic areas of difference, as Mukherjee points out, is the way the two sides viewed their partnership. India was slow to respond to EU overtures of a strategic partnership, mainly because New Delhi was reluctant “to become a pole in a new multipolar world”.
But slowly Indian thinking has evolved, especially under a nationalist administration, and Prime Minister “Modi has taken important measures to reinvent, redirect and reinvigorate India’s foreign policy imperatives”. The relationship has appeared to have gathered new momentum and will continue to blossom post-Brexit, especially with coincidental positions on climate change and global warming and founding of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) by Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Mukherjee says ISA will “consolidate the India-EU strategic partnership”. The only irritant remains the proposed free trade agreement, or the Broadbased Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) as it is officially known.
Despite 16 rounds of negotiations, the deal is stuck because, in India’s view, EU — being India’s largest investor and trading partner — is not ready for any “give and take” in the negotiation and refuses to relent on access to services, of which UK till now was the biggest blocker.
Whether Brexit in 2019 will remove this “impediment” — the British prism — finally remains to be seen. There are clearly two ways of looking at the India-EU partnership, of which no one denies there is huge untapped potential: While the EU remains optimistic largely, despite being tough negotiators in the board room, the Indian side remains sceptical and even cynical, with one former Indian ambassador to France publicly averring that the ties “had run its course” and it was high time “new ideas” were injected into the discourse to catch the imagination of the youth in both countries and bridge the “perceptional gap” that is obviating what should be a win-win relationship by all accounts.
But, as Mukherjee asks in her profound assessment, can the structural asymmetries and gaps be bridged by visionary leadership on both sides?
(Tarun Basu can be contacted at tarun.basu@spsindia.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
The Spanish Foreign Ministry, Madrid.
Madrid : Following the US decision to end financing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Spain urged the European Union and its member states for “supplementary” efforts to bridge the ensuing void.
In a press statement issued here on Sunday, the Spanish Foreign Ministry asked Washington to reconsider the decision, taking into account that it had slashed its aid from $365 million in 2017 to $60 million at the start of 2018.
The “critical financial situation of the UNRWA caused by the decision taken by the (US President Donald) Trump administration seriously threatens the continuity of special programs in health, education and food, which directly benefit Palestinian refugees in the Middle East,” it said.
“The suppression of basic services to 3 million Palestinian refugees could have serious consequences for the stability of the region, especially in the Gaza Strip.”
The ministry said Madrid is “fully committed” to “finding joint solutions,” which will allow UNRWA to continue its work in a sustainable manner.
“Spain considers that the EU and its member states should make a supplementary effort to compensate the possible consequences of the serious decision taken by the U.S,” the statement added.
—AB/UNA-OIC
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Emerging Businesses, World
Beijing : China on Sunday welcomed the European Union’s (EU) decision to not extend anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures on imports of Chinese solar panels after they expire on September 3.
The Trade Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that the decision to remove the measures that had been in place for almost five years would restore the trade of solar panels between China and the EU in line with normal market conditions and create a more stable and predictable business environment, reports Efe news.
China has viewed the measure as a successful resolution of trade disputes through discussions, and added that Beijing wants to continue cooperating with Europe to boost global free trade and a multilateral rules-based trading system.
The EU had imposed the measures in December 2013 after months-long investigations which confirmed that Chinese companies were selling solar panels in Europe for prices far lower than normal for the market and were receiving “illegal” market subsidies from Chinese authorities.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Yusuf Hatip,
Brussels: The EU will respond immediately if the U.S. decides to go ahead with new tariffs on EU-origin products, European Commission spokesman Daniel Rosario said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a daily briefing in Brussels, Rosario said: “The EU is ready to respond immediately if the U.S. decides to go ahead with the new tariffs on EU-origin products.”
In March, American President Donald Trump imposed a 25-percent tariff on imported iron and steel, and a 10-percent tariff on aluminum — since then the issue has been discussed heatedly among the U.S. and its major trade partners.
After that, the EU placed a 25-percent tariff on American products and Trump threatened to impose more tariffs on all European cars.
Last month, Trump hosted European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Washington.
—IANS
