EU Migration Problems: Former PM Mikuláš Dzurinda of Slovakia "EU must seek solution for migration outside its borders" – by Lucia Yar

The solution to the migration crisis is beyond the European Union borders and the EU must be prepared to talk to all relevant players in troubled countries and provide financial and logistical help, the former prime minister of Slovakia told EURACTIV.

It is necessary to act. When I say that agreements with relevant players are needed, these agreements should be directed in such a way that they don’t create modern concentration camps where people are raped and abused. The conditions in centres in which people spend the time needed for an asylum procedure must be dignified.

I do not feel nervous that some accents are now different in Warsaw or Budapest. Rather the opposite, the accents should be understood. Sometimes even the Slovaks could be interpreting them in Brussels or Paris.

Not everything that Orbán or Kaczynski say is foolish. Yet, the degree of centralisation worries me. I often feel that the European administration in Brussels interferes with the member states’ competence and that they are barely consulted.

All of these processes need to be seen very soberly, and the Visegrad Four needs to be cultivated. It does not need to be pushed to the position of a breaker. It should become a unifier.

Read more: Dzurinda: EU must seek solution for migration outside its borders – EURACTIV.com

EU-US Relations: The new Trump Isolationist Doctrine and Strategy requires a reevaluation of the EU foreign policy objectives

A wall around America, instead 
of one between Mexico and US

President Donald Trump declared a new national security strategy on Monday,December 18, stressing the "America first" message of his 2016 campaign and faulting previous U.S. leaders for failing to measure up to it and look out for the nation's citizens. Isolation

"Our leaders engaged in nation building abroad while they failed to build up and replenish our nation at home," he said, pointing to the economy's strong performance and predicting even better under his policies.

His security strategy envisions nations in constant competition, reverses Obama-era warnings on climate change and affirms that the United States will unilaterally defend its sovereignty, even if that means risking existing the agreements with other countries that have dominated the United States' foreign policy since the Cold War.

The strategy from the Republican president could sharply alter U.S. international relationships if fully implemented. It focuses on four main themes: protecting the homeland, promoting American prosperity, demonstrating peace through strength and advancing American influence in an ever-competitive world.

Trump's doctrine holds that nation-states are in perpetual competition and that the U.S. must fight on all fronts to protect and defend its sovereignty from friend and foe alike. While the administration often says that "America First" does not mean "America Alone," the national security strategy makes clear that the United States will stand up for itself even if that means acting unilaterally or alienating others on issues such as trade, climate change and immigration.

Despite the risk of potential isolation presented by Trump's strategy, its fundamentals are not a surprise. The strategy emphasizes that U.S. economic security is national security. And it stresses that the U.S. is interested only in relationships with other countries, including in alliances such as NATO, that are fair and reciprocal.

The strategy also details the threats of "rogue regimes," like North Korea. It says that China and Russia "challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity."

Despite international challenges, the document cites emerging opportunities to advance American interests in the Middle East. "Some of our partners are working together to reject radical ideologies and key leaders are calling for a rejection of Islamist extremism and violence," it says. "Encouraging political stability and sustainable prosperity would contribute to dampening the conditions that fuel sectarian grievances."

Note EU-Digest: Obviously the President of the USA can and must do what in his eyes he believes is good for America. As to the EU, what is good for America, necessarily does not have to be good for the EU. Consequently, as has been written many times, the EU must stop being the "lapdog" of America, given its importance as a world class economy, with a population of close to half a billion people, and establish its own independent foreign policy based on EU principles and  priorities, and include a review of its military objectives within this context.

As to the leaders of European Populists and Nationalist parties, like Geert Wilders, Jean Marie Lr Pen, Nigel Farage, and others, who apparently admire Trump's "America First Isolationist Doctrine",  we  recommend they pack their bags and request asylum in the US  from their idol Danald Trump.   

Read more: Trump unveils details of 'America First' security strategy

Ocean Pollution and Fishing Industry: Are seafood lovers really eating 11,000 bits of plastic per year?

Fishing Industry Under Pollution warning

The claim: Seafood lovers could be eating up to 11,000 microscopic pieces of plastic a year.

Reality Check verdict: There is evidence of plastic microparticles being found in the particular mussels and oysters examined, but the research suggests that in order to consume that much plastic you'd have to be eating an average of more than four oysters or between 17 and 18 mussels a day.

The figure of 11,000 bits of plastic a year, which has been reported by the Daily Mail and others recently, comes from a piece of Ghent University research dating back to June 2014.

The researchers were investigating how much plastic is consumed by humans via water molluscs such as mussels and oysters.

The researchers looked at mussels which lived on farms in the North Sea and were bought in Germany, and at oysters from Brittany in France which were farmed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Farming in this context means the mussels and oysters lived on "rope" that hangs in seawater while they were growing.

First they examined the combined tissue of three mussels and two oysters which was about 15-20 grams of meat and found that there was an average of 0.42 plastic particles per gram.

While reports of this figure featured photographs of plastic bottles and other waste washed up on beaches, these particular particles are very small - if you put 11,000 of them in a line it would cover about 4in (11cm).

To get an idea of how many particles people were likely to be eating, the authors accessed data from the European Food Safety Authority's food consumption database.

Read more: Are seafood lovers really eating 11,000 bits of plastic per year? - BBC News

The American Illusion: US becoming 'world champion of extreme inequality' under Donald Trump, says UN poverty envoy - by Philip Alston

The United States under Donald Trump is fast becoming “the champion of inequality”, according to a scathing report by the United Nation’s expert on poverty.
 
While the US is one of the richest nations, entrenched poverty already experienced by many will be made worse by policies promoted by Mr Trump and the Republicans, in particular a planned tax overhaul that critics say gives huge cuts to the wealthy, it added.

“The American dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion, as the United States now has the lowest rate of social mobility of any of the rich countries,” said Philip Alston the UN Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

For the complete report on Mr. Alston's investigative visit go to http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533&LangID=E 

Note EU-Digest: the obvious question the EU Commission and EU member states should ask themselves -"Isn't it important to urgently develop and maintain an independent economic and political course for Europe which benefits all its citizens? 

Read more: US becoming 'world champion of extreme inequality' under Donald Trump, says UN poverty envoy | The Independent

The Netherlands tops the Good Country Index - by Mina Solanki

Amsterdam downtown

This year, the Netherlands has climbed to the top of the Good Country Index. Based on several indicators, this index ranks countries according to what they contribute to the greater good of humanity.

A Good Country is a country that helps its people and does not harm, but preferably furthers the interests of people in other countries as well. No moral judgements are made about the country being assessed.

This year, the Good Country Index published its third edition, with previous editions assessing countries in 2016 and 2014. In this edition, the index focussed on 163 countries and ranked them according to seven categories.

The seven categories were: global contribution to science and technology, culture, international peace and security, world order, planet and climate, prosperity and equality and health and wellbeing.

For each category, five indicators were used, which were given fractional rankings. The category ranking resulted from calculating the mean of the five indicators, and the overall ranking from the average of the categories. The data used to determine the ranking was from 2014, unless otherwise purported in the results.

The Netherlands took overall first place, in the 2017 edition, scoring particularly well on global contributions to culture, world order and prosperity and equality. In these categories, the Netherlands scored second, third and fourth place respectively. Notably, the Netherlands did not score first place in any one category.

Taking second and third place were Switzerland and Denmark. Switzerland obtained its highest score, second place, in the global contribution to planet and climate, and Denmark also landed second place in the global contribution to prosperity and equality.

Following on from Switzerland and Denmark, Finland and Germany placed fourth and fifth in the Good Country Index. Neither scored first place on any one category. In sixth place is the first of the countries assessed to score first place on a category, namely Sweden, with first place for the global contribution to health and wellbeing.

Finishing at the bottom of the ranking are Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan in respective 161st, 162nd and 163rd place. Libya takes last place in the global contribution to culture.

Read more: he Netherlands tops the Good Country Index

Global Warming: World Bank won't back oil and gas projects after 2019

The World Bank has confirmed that it will stop financing upstream oil and gas projects after 2019 except under exceptional circumstances in the world's poorest countries.

The global financial institution made the announcement at climate summit in Paris on Tuesday, which took place roughly two years after the historic COP21 climate conference in the same city.

At Tuesday's summit, French insurance giant AXA announced that it will cease insuring the oilsands sector and new coal projects, and will divest more than US$3.5 billion from oilsands and coal companies. This includes divestment from energy giants TransCanada, Kinder Morgan and Enbridge, all of which have Canadian offices and are constructing major pipelines: Keystone XL, the Trans Mountain expansion and Line 3, respectively.

The announcements were among highlights of a one-day "One Planet Summit" attended by about 50 world leaders and 2,000 participants, including Canada and Quebec environment ministers, environmental organizations, business officials and public figures such as actor Sean Penn.

The goal was to find financial solutions to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and allocate more money to help developing countries that will help their transition to low-carbon economies in the fight against climate change.

“We’re determined to work with all of you to put the right policies in place, get market forces moving in the right direction, put the money on the table, and accelerate action,” World Bank president Jim Young Kim told the closing plenary.

Conference co-organizers, including the Government of France, the World Bank and the United Nations, called in advance of the summit for “concrete action” to reignite momentum as the United States remains absent from the historic Paris Agreement on climate change. Reached in December 2015, the accord aims to keep global warming below 2°C this century.

“We are losing the battle,” French President Emmanuel Macron told participants. “The agreement has become fragile and we’re not going fast enough.”

Several financially stable countries and multilateral institutions made important pledges to help developing countries meet their commitments under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord on climate action.

That roadmap calls for the world to raise US$100-billion every year to help such countries meet their emissions goals by 2020. Last year however, the OECD estimated that only US$43 billion had been pledged, including $2.65 billion in funding from the Government of Canada by 2021

The absence of the United States remained bittersweet and disappointing for most participants, including California Governor Jerry Brown and former United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who talked about U.S. President Donald Trump’s “irresponsible” decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

But former New York mayor and businessman Michael Bloomberg said he thought it had increased momentum.

“There isn't anything Washington can do to stop us, quite the contrary, I think that President Trump has helped rally people who understand the problem to join forces and to actually do something rather than waiting for the federal government to do something,” Bloomberg said at a press conference.

Bloomberg and several other major economic leaders, including Bank of England governor Mark Carney, announced 237 companies worth more than $6.3 trillion had committed to participate in a wide-reaching Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures.

The task force aims to gather reliable data about the environmental metrics of its members, such as the carbon footprint of their operations.

According to the task force, only 20 per cent of major companies are currently reporting this kind of data. Bloomberg and his partners want to change that so CEOS, board members and shareholders can make informed decisions about their management practices and investment.

“Nobody would survive a board meeting where they said, 'I don't know that this risk is going to happen so let's just sit around and do nothing,'" said Bloomberg.

One of the task force members is AXA, the world’s third largest insurance company.

Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna was among the world leaders who said private sector involvement in climate financing is urgent in the race against environmental catastrophe.

“We need to be smarter about this. We have to stop the old school way of thinking where governments are going to take actions,” she said at a panel. “We're missing a lot if we don't leverage the private sector.”

Responding to McKenna's comments however, Environmental Defense national program manager Dale Marshall emphasized that public financing will always be necessary.

“It's really hard to leverage private sector dollars to do adaptation work and that's really where governments need to step in with public money,” Marshall told National Observer.

Pembina Institute federal policy director Erin Flanagan made similar comments. National transitions to a low-carbon economy should be led by governments, she explained, and public policy must create a clear and assertive framework for the private sector, so it understands how it can support the green transition.

“If industry knows that the government is serious about achieving emissions neutrality by 2050, they will be less likely to build gas plants, they will be less likely to build new oil sands operations,” she told National Observer at the summit. “I think we still have a way to go at home to make sure that that consensus on the deadline is well developed.”

Meantime, McKenna unveiled a partnership with the World Bank to support developing countries’ transition away from traditional coal-fired electricity and toward clean energy. A press release said the parties would share best practices "on how to ensure a just transition for displaced workers and their communities."

The partnership announcement came just as a Canadian and German environmental organizations released a report listing six Canadian financial companies among the world's top 100 investors in new coal plants. Friends of the Earth and Urgenwald looked at the top 100 private investors putting money down to expand coal-fired electricity — sometimes in places where there isn't any coal-generated power at the moment.

Together, Sun Life, Power Corporation, Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, Royal Bank of Canada, Manulife Financial and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board have pledged $2.9 billion towards building new coal plants overseas, the report said.

Urgewald tracks coal plants around the world and reports there are 1,600 new plants in development in 62 nations, more than a dozen of which don't have any coal-fired plants now.

Read more: World Bank won't back oil and gas projects after 2019 | National Observer

EU: Lebanon crisis overshadows EU aid for Syrian refugees - by Nikolaj Nielsen

Perched on the side of a mountain some 50km from the Syrian border, St John's monastery in Lebanon is home to around a dozen hermits and priests.

A printing press that published books in Arabic, the world's first, can still be found within its halls.

Today, the monastery has become an educational refuge for Syrian children hoping for a future that was removed from them when the regime under Bashar al-Assad indiscriminately dropped barrel bombs on his own people.

In one class of around a dozen children, a 10-year old girl calls out the letters of the alphabet in French. Some have never attended school before.

Learning French is among many obstacles they face in an effort to insert them into a wider Lebanese public school system where they'll be segregated and most likely bullied.

"One of the main reasons why [Syrian refugee] children are out of school in Lebanon is language," said Poppy Alice Hardee, an area manager for the NGO, Terre des Hommes Italia.

Public schools in Lebanon are taught in English and in French, depending on the area, which puts Syrians at an immediate disadvantage.