Coronavirus: 'Viruses don't carry passports:' Why travel bans won't work to stop spread of COVID-19

U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to restrict travel from most European countries to try to contain what he called a "foreign virus" isn't grounded in science and breaks international law, experts say. 

 Read more at 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid19-travel-bans-1.5495919

Global Politics: U.S. Risks Losing World Power to China and Russia by Splitting with Allies on Iran, Experts Say - by Tom O'Connor

The U.S. could risk forfeiting its central role on the international stage both politically and economically by splitting with its allies and other major powers that oppose upcoming sanctions against Iran, according to two former State Department officials who helped craft the 2015 nuclear deal.

In line with President Donald Trump's withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear agreement in May, the U.S. was set to impose Monday the first batch of sanctions that would affect Iran, as well as European and other international companies. The decision would be only the latest of a series of schisms between the Trump administration and the EU, which has continued to endorse the Iran deal.

When asked by Newsweek if top U.S. rivals China and Russia could stand to benefit from the split, former State Department Deputy Lead Coordinator and Coordinator for Iran Nuclear Implementation Jarrett Blanc said "yes."

"This is not strategic behavior, we're all over the map, we don't have a list of priorities, we're not relating issue A to issue B and so then of course that puts in a stronger position anyone who can set their priorities and tie these issues together,"  Blanc said Wednesday during a conference call hosted by progressive think tank Diplomacy Works, based in Washington, D.C.

Read more: U.S. Risks Losing World Power to China and Russia by Splitting with Allies on Iran, Experts Say

G7-Trump creates Chaos at G7 - as he calls for total barrier-free trade within the G7 and a return of Russia to the group

G7 Chaos: Merkel and Trump staring each other down

Despite imposing tariffs on major US allies, the anti-globalist president has called for free trade within the G7. He also insisted US allies would be forced to concede to US trade terms because the US "can't lose."

Trump, who railed against globalization in his election campaign, said he wanted all G7 nations to remove any tariffs, subsidies and other trade barriers.\

"You go tariff-free, you go barrier-free, you go subsidy-free," Trump opined, calling it "the ultimate thing." He said other world leaders reacted positively to the idea.

His economic adviser Larry Kudlow backed up the call, saying, "We’re going to clean up the international trade system."

But Trump's claims that he is in favor of global free trade would appear contradictory to his recent imposition of tariffs on US allies, much to their collective discontent.

Trump insisted US allies would yield to his demands of a trade rebalance, warning that the US would crush any opposition in a potential trade war.

"If they retaliate they're making a mistake …We win that war 1,000 times out of 1,000."

"They do so much more business with us than we do with them that we can't lose … When you’re down $375 billion you can't lose," he said, likely referring to the trade imbalance with China.

He said he could tell from the smiles of European leaders at the G7 that they knew that "the gig is up" and that they would negotiate terms with Washington.

Trump repeated his call for Russia to be allowed back into the alliance of world powers. It was kicked out of the G8 in 2014 for annexing Crimea from Ukraine.

"We're looking for peace in the world. We're not looking to play games."

"I think it would be good for Russia, I think it would be good for the US, I think it would be good for all of the countries of the current G7."

But when asked about returning to the G7 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that Moscow "never asked anyone to return" to the G7 and that Russia was happy working with the G20.
 
EU-Digest

The Netherlands: Britons in Netherlands take fight for their EU rights to Dutch court - by Daniel Boffey and Lisa O'Carroll

A group of UK nationals living in the Netherlands are going to court to challenge the right of the British government and the European commission to negotiate away their rights as EU citizens in the Brexit talks.

The claimants will argue that the rights of UK citizens are independent of the country’s EU membership, according to legal documents seen by the Guardian.

The case will be heard in Amsterdam on Wednesday, where a referral to the European court of justice will be sought, in what could be a major test of the treatment of UK nationals by the EU and UK in the Brexit talks, with potentially huge ramifications.

While the ECJ could find that only citizens who have exploited their right to free movement to live in the EU are being unlawfully treated, everyone in the UK could potentially benefit.

Five UK nationals along with the Commercial Anglo Dutch Society (Cads) and the lobby group Brexpats – Hear Our Voice are the named claimants. They are being assisted by Jolyon Maugham, the QC behind a series of recent Brexit legal challenges.

The group argue in their action against the Dutch government that after Brexit on 29 March 2019, anyone who had UK citizenship before that date should legally retain EU rights including freedom of movement and the right of residence.

They say the EU’s treaties are silent on what happens to citizens of a member state that leaves the union. But they claim the Lisbon treaty gives “real weight” to the rights of EU nationals, and that these are not coupled to the political fate of their home country.

The group’s lawyer, Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, said he expected the court to take six weeks at most to decide whether to refer the case to the ECJ. “We are in a rush,” he said. “I’m convinced that the ECJ should assess these questions. Theresa May famously said ‘Brexit means Brexit’ but no one knows what that means.”

One of the claimants, Stephen Huyton, a director of a US firm headquartered in the Netherlands who has lived in the country for 23 years, said he was concerned about the right of his children, who have British passports and are studying in the UK, to return to the Netherlands to live and work.

“There are a number of points to this and one is emotional,” he said. “We have lived outside the UK for more than 15 years and so we were not allowed to vote in the referendum. That is the rule. So a lot of us really feel disenfranchised by the whole process. It was a raw nerve, and it remains a raw nerve.

“I did not make a lifestyle choice by moving here, I moved here for work. And when I came out I came out on a set of terms and conditions. The whole issue of the UK being able to leave the EU [through article 50 of the Lisbon treaty] wasn’t in the treaties at that point.

“In UK common law, we generally have a rule that we don’t apply law retrospectively, and in some ways that is what they are doing.”

Maugham, who is financially backing the legal action, said he was hopeful the case could have profound implications for UK citizens who want to retain their rights.

“Article 20 gives EU citizenship rights to nationals of member states but it is silent on the issue of what happens to those rights if a member state ceases to be a member state,” he said. “Previous ECJ cases have suggested that EU citizenship rights have an independent reality, not just as an adjunct to national citizenship rights.

“The question is: would anyone who is a citizen of the UK on 29 March 2019 benefit from EU citizenship rights after that date? Of course, we cannot know what the [ECJ] might say. But I can see it taking the opportunity to give meaning and resonance to those rights.”

Maugham conceded that a favourable ruling by the ECJ could throw up an “awkward asymmetry” between the way UK and EU citizens are treated on either side of the Channel.

“The question whether UK citizens can assert EU citizenship rights in the EU after Brexit is a question of EU law,” he said. “But the question whether non-UK EU citizens can assert EU citizenship rights in the UK after Brexit is a question of UK law.

“It may turn out that there is an awkward asymmetry: UK citizens enjoying generous EU rights but EU citizens suffering meagre UK rights.”

Debra Williams, 55, founder of Brexpats, one of the claimants, who has spent a decade moving between Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium for her husband’s work, said: “EU citizenship means the world to me.

“It’s not that I’m not proud to be Welsh and British; I am, but I’m also proud to be European. I’m doing this for the kids, and the grandkids, they should have what we have, to be able to travel and work freely in Europe. Otherwise it’s going to be work permits and visa, that will be a tragedy for them.”

Read more Britons in Netherlands take fight for their EU rights to Dutch court | Politics | The Guardian

EU - Tribalism: Back to the past? 98 European Union Member States? - by Jordi Angusto

Scotland, Veneto, Lombardy, Catalonia… these are all EU regions demanding greater self-government, in some cases including independence from their home states but never from the EU. An apparent paradox given that their demands have increased along with the EU’s own growth in power. But there is no contradiction.

The EU has super-imposed a new order that sits uneasily with the previous settlements between regions and nation states, both in political and economic terms. An incompatibility requiring an adjustment at EU level rather than at states’ level if we still want “an ever closer union”. Both in Italy and Spain, North to South fiscal transfers were designed as a stabilising mechanism to recycle trade imbalances. It meant the North’s trade surplus financing the South’s trade deficit fiscally: a closed mechanism that made sense while trade and fiscal flows were symmetrical, as was the case before the EU single market and the euro; but hard to justify once the flows are asymmetrical. As a case in point: before the euro, Catalonia used to have a trade deficit with the rest of the world and a huge trade surplus with the rest of Spain; nowadays, it enjoys a 6% GDP trade surplus with the rest of the world while that with the rest of Spain has been halved. But fiscal transfers to the rest of Spain remain untouched, at 8% of GDP.

Both in Italy and Spain, North to South fiscal transfers were designed as a stabilising mechanism to recycle trade imbalances. It meant the North’s trade surplus financing the South’s trade deficit fiscally: a closed mechanism that made sense while trade and fiscal flows were symmetrical, as was the case before the EU single market and the euro; but hard to justify once the flows are asymmetrical. As a case in point: before the euro, Catalonia used to have a trade deficit with the rest of the world and a huge trade surplus with the rest of Spain; nowadays, it enjoys a 6% GDP trade surplus with the rest of the world while that with the rest of Spain has been halved. But fiscal transfers to the rest of Spain remain untouched, at 8% of GDP.

As the Catalonia/North Italy demands for lower fiscal transfers have given the impression that they are selfish and opposed to the solidarity required in any society, it’s worth analysing those fiscal transfers both under moral and efficiency principles.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker expressed recently his fears around an unmanageable EU of 98 states. However, with 28 members holding veto rights for main questions, the EU is already unmanageable. The question is not the number of states but the institutional architecture. For policy reasons, the EC is used to working with the 272 existing regions in the EU and only few of those are ready to assume full self-government. Finding a satisfactory solution for those regions that are ready and willing to do so and reforming the EU’s architecture to make it more social, democratic and manageable is a daunting challenge that must be tackled. Anybody willing to take it up?

 Read more: 98 European Union Member States?