Almere-Digest

February 11, 2019

The Netherlands and Brexit: Netherlands wins Brexit spoils amid corporate relocation talks

Brexit is driving companies out of the UK, and the Netherlands is raking in the corporate refugees.

About 250 companies are in talks with the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency to potentially relocate activities to the country, according to a statement published on Saturday. The candidates would join 42 companies that made the move last year, and the 18 early birds in 2017.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the largest Brexit wave is yet to come,” Jeroen Nijland, who heads NFIA, said in a telephone interview. “It normally takes about six months to two years from the first conversation we have with a company before it makes a decision, and our pipeline is now bigger than in earlier years.”

The Netherlands has emerged as one of the winners in securing businesses that seek to leave the UK because of Brexit, vying with countries like Germany, France and Ireland. The country, which bagged the European Medicines Agency — an EU agency moving from London to Amsterdam — is initially luring corporate entities in the financial and media sectors, both of which require permits to operate in the bloc, Nijland said.

The growth of Amsterdam as a trading hub will boost the Dutch share of European equity trading to around a third from five% currently, the financial markets regulator AFM estimates. The watchdog also expects the country to capture nearly 90% of European bond trading.

The media industry is another area where the Netherlands has picked up wins. Discovery Inc said in January it’s applying for broadcast licenses in the Netherlands to ensure its pay-TV channels will continue to show across the European Union in the event of a no-deal Brexit when the UK leaves the bloc on March 29.

Read more: Netherlands wins Brexit spoils amid corporate relocation talks

February 10, 2019

The Netherlands and Global Agriculture Exports: Where Is the World's Next Meal Coming From? by Ingeborg van Lieshout

While the Netherlands has been a major food exporter for many years, its production continues to rise — it increased 7 percent between 2016 and 2017, and 25 percent between 2010 and 2017, according to the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, though it rose just 0.2 percent between 2017 and 2018. The U.S., meanwhile, increased its agricultural exports 4 percent year on year in the first 10 months of 2018 … though its agricultural exports in October 2018 alone were the lowest for any October since 2011, according to USDA data. The Netherlands saw $104.6 billion in agricultural exports in 2017, compared to the U.S.’s $140.5 billion.

The Netherlands put an emphasis on agricultural production in the post-World War II era, following the Hongerwinter of 1944, when famine killed an estimated 22,000 people. Now the country comes first on Oxfam’s Global Food Index, indicating that its citizens, who are now the world’s tallest on average, get enough to eat and have access to healthy food. But with an increased emphasis on sustainability — and skepticism of efficiency above all else — Dutch farming has seen major strides in problem areas like antibiotic use in livestock, which saw its use in veterinary medicine decrease by a third between 1999 and 2015.

More than that, the Netherlands is making great strides when it comes to the food of the future — technology that isn’t likely to stay in the Netherlands but could instead help the world feed itself. “The Dutch have the most productive, efficient and innovative food production system in the world, forced by lack of space,” explains His Royal Highness Constantijn Van Oranje, brother of Dutch King Willem-Alexander and a special envoy for Dutch business accelerator StartupDelta. “Our next challenge is to make this sector a global agritech exporter and leader in building fully circular sustainable food supply chains.”

And they’re doing just that. For example: Raising livestock takes an enormous amount of arable land and clean water, but Dutch startup Mosa Meat raised $8.5 million last year to develop a process that grows meat in a lab using animal cells rather than butchering in a traditional way. Five years ago, they created a hamburger — one that they estimate cost $330,000 to produce. Now they say the individual patties, which are expected to be on the market in 2021, should cost less than $10 each. “The taste of in-vitro meat … ” explains founder Mark Post, a Professor of Vascular Physiology at Maastricht University, “ … is exactly the same as ordinary meat.” If it catches on, it could drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 15 percent of which are produced by animal agriculture.

And from meat to potatoes: Last month, Dutch potato breeding company Solynta announced that it has instituted a hybrid breeding program for the crop that will allow it to swiftly select for favorable traits. Solynta’s aim is to make potato growing seed-based — potatoes are currently grown from seed tubers — which they say will allow a 25-gram bag of seeds to do the work now being done by 2,500-kilo shipments of tubers. The Netherlands is the world’s biggest exporter of potatoes, but Solynta’s seeds, which they say are resistant to blight, could make potato production scalable in times of famine, as well as reducing the amount of time it takes to breed new varieties by 60 percent.

Read more: Where Is the World's Next Meal Coming From? The Netherlands | Acumen | OZY

February 9, 2019

EU: European experience with migration shows that border walls don't stop migration

Aging Europe needs immigration, but in order to achieve this in an organized and orderly way it needs unity of purpose, better planning, and certainly no border walls

February 7, 2019

Global Warming - The Netherlands and Belgium: Thousands of students join climate protests in the Netherlands - by Michael Staines

At least 10,000 students have skipped class in the Netherlands to join a major protest demanding greater action on climate change.

It comes as thousands of teenagers in Belgium skipped school for the fourth Thursday in a row to join the protests.

Similar marches have been held in Sweden, Germany and Switzerland.

It comes as scientists yesterday confirmed that the last five years have been the warmest on record.

Organisers of this afternoon's protest in The Hague in the Netherlands said they were aiming to send a wake-up call to politicians.

It comes after the Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency said the national target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by next year - when compared to 1990 levels - was out of reach.

Feeling proud: an estimated 10,000 students marching through The Hague to protest climate change. #klimaatspijbelaars #KlimaatSpijbelen pic.twitter.com/kH6lcyxtdX

Organizers say the movement is gathering momentum with a global protest scheduled for March

Read more: Thousands of students join climate protests in the

The Netherlands and US Big Pharma Clash: US "Big Pharma" lashes out at Dutch Government for wanting to control pricing

Note Almere-Digest: It looks like the US Pharmaceutical Industry is also trying to use the same heavy handed political tactics and arguments in the Netherlands like they are used to doing in America. In the Netherlands they are doing their lobbying through their membership in the local chapter of the American Chamber of Commerce, which even has a specific Pharmaceutical Committee within that organization. US Big Pharma and Chemical Industry Lobbyists are also swarming all over the EU parliament to promote their products and influence the European decision makers.Hopefully the Dutch Government and the EU Commission will continue to resist these devious attempts to influence the government decision makers

Read more at:
https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2019/02/06/netherlands-novartis-vertex-drug-prices/

February 6, 2019

The Netherlands: Food waste - the Netherlands throws away 5 million KG of food every day

February 5, 2019

EU-US Relations: Europeans fear Trump may threaten not just the transatlantic bond, but the state of their union - by Dan Balz and Griff Witte

As President Trump prepares to deliver his second State of the Union address, the leaders of the United States’ closest allies in Europe are filled with anxiety
.

They are unsure of whom to talk to in Washington. They can’t tell whether Trump considers them friends or foes. They dig through his Twitter feed for indications of whether the president intends to wreck the European Union and NATO or merely hobble the continent’s core institutions.

Officials say Trump, by design or indifference, has already badly weakened the foundation of the transatlantic relationship that American presidents have nurtured for seven decades. As Sigmar Gabriel, a former German foreign minister, put it: “He has done damage that the Soviets would have dreamt of.”

European leaders worry that the next two years could bring even more instability, as Trump feels emboldened, and they are filled with fear at the prospect that Trump could be reelected. The situation has left the continent facing a strategic paradox no one has managed to crack.

“We can’t live with Trump,” Gabriel said. “And we can’t live without the United States.”

In more than two dozen interviews in London, Paris and Berlin — the three European capitals at the heart of the Western alliance — government officials, former officials and independent analysts described a partnership with Washington that, while still working smoothly at some levels, has become deeply dysfunctional at others.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron have tried different strategies, but all have struggled to develop consistent and reliable relationships with Trump. Lacking a better alternative, the dominant European approach has been to wait him out and hope the damage can be contained.

In all three capitals, there is talk about somehow trying to go it alone, if necessary — to chart Europe’s course. Merkel stated it as bluntly as anyone when she said in a Munich beer hall that Europe must “take our destiny into our own hands.”

That was two years ago this spring, and since then, Europe has taken only cautious steps in that direction — proposals for a European army being one example. Despite modest increases in European defense spending, the United States continues to account for over two-thirds of military spending among NATO members. Europe struggles to keep big, multilateral initiatives alive without American support.

European officials continue to work as hard as ever to preserve relationships with the president and the administration, despite fears and frustrations.

“We manage,” said a senior European politician, who like others in government spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss a sensitive relationship. “Governing by tweets is not the same as governing by diplomatic engagement. It’s a different process. But it’s something we accept and adapt to. I don’t think that our surprise on a daily basis is any greater than that of his own administration.”

Others, often those who are no longer in government, express a less sanguine view. They see a president ticking through his campaign promises and notice uncomfortably that Europe is on the wrong end of many of them.

Littered among the wreckage, as seen by the Europeans: an all-but-ruined Iran nuclear deal, tit-for-tat tariffs, a global climate accord that is missing the world’s largest economy, a possible arms race triggered by the cancellation of a key nuclear treaty, and a unilateral retreat from Syria without even a courtesy call to allies that work alongside U.S. forces.

More than any one issue, however, there is the sense that Trump and Europe are fundamentally at odds.

Note EU-Digest: Hopefully the EU will be able to defend itself over the coming two years or less against this loud-mouth, uncouth ego-maniac, spoiled bully, before he is either locked-up, or impeached.