Nigel Farage has declared that Sir Keir Starmer‘s new migrant deal with France is a “humiliation for Brexit Britain”. The Prime Minister unveiled the “groundbreaking” agreement aimed at getting a grip on the Channel crisis at a joint press conference with French president Emmanuel Macron.

Under the pilot scheme, people arriving on small boats can be sent back, with an asylum seeker from France in exchange. But in a post on X, the Reform UK leader said Sir Keir had “bowed down” to “arrogant” Mr Macron.

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Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2080287/nigel-farage-migrant-deal-france

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Northern Ireland’s largest British unionist party has agreed to end a boycott that left the region’s people without a power-sharing administration for two years, it said Tuesday — a breakthrough that could see the shuttered Belfast government restored within days.

After a late-night meeting, Democratic Unionist Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson said the party’s executive has backed proposals to return to the government. He said agreements reached with the U.K. government in London “provide a basis for our party to nominate members to the Northern Ireland Executive, thus seeing the restoration of the locally elected institutions.”

The breakthrough came after the U.K. government last week gave Northern Ireland politicians until Feb. 8 to restore the collapsed government in Belfast or face new elections.

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Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/northern-ireland-dup-end-boycott-rcna136310

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The so-called Mansion House Reforms come as part of plans launched last year to take advantage of Britain’s freedom to write its own financial rules after leaving the European Union.

WHY ARE PENSIONS A FOCUS?

The finance ministry believes that some of the billions of pounds at pension funds which are currently invested in safe assets such as government bonds would offer better returns for savers if they were invested in unlisted start-ups.

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Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/boosting-city-part-two-uks-post-brexit-finance-reforms-2023-07-10/

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In the three years since the UK’s official withdrawal from the EU, the Northern Ireland Protocol has been an ongoing point of contention, which even led to the collapse of the government in Belfast last year.

What’s in the deal?

Under the current arrangements, all products arriving into Northern Ireland from Great Britain are checked, as the province effectively remains in the EU’s single market for goods, while the rest of the UK does not.

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The Chief Minister of Gibraltar has said the territory will have an “uncomfortable” experience if the UK and, EU and Spain cannot finally agree on a post-Brexit arrangement. Fabian Picardo warned Gibraltarians that a transition phase may be necessary, which could mean some difficulties for the Rock.

In his New Year’s speech, he said: “The agreement may be uncomfortable at first in some areas.

“Like joining the European Union, I may have been initially uncomfortable in 1972. But a ‘no deal’ would also be very uncomfortable.”

Mr Picardo added that he and his colleagues are working “day and night” to reach a deal, but warned it will not be an easy dispute to resolve.

He continued: “What we are negotiating is hugely complex… From product labelling to the taxation of goods, the final treaty is likely to be hundreds of pages long.

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Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1720439/brexit-gibraltar-uncomfortable-reality-eu-spain

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The proposed bill seeks to remove customs checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. That will override parts of the trade treaty that Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed with the European Union less than two years ago.

Britain’s government maintained its move is justified under international law because of the “genuinely exceptional situation,” and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss blamed the EU for blocking a negotiated settlement. The European Commission said it could take legal action against the U.K.

Existing trade rules “provide business operators in Northern Ireland with access to the EU single market for goods. The U.K. government’s approach puts this access — and related opportunities — at risk,” said European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic.

In Ireland, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said it was “very regrettable for a country like the U.K. to renege on an international treaty.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed the sentiment, saying there was “no reason” for the U.K. to make such a move.

“It’s a rejection of all the agreements we reached between the European Union and Great Britain,” Scholz said. “The European Union will react to this as one and it has the whole toolbox at its disposal.”

Brushing aside criticism, Johnson told reporters that the proposed change is “relatively simple to do.”

“Frankly, it’s a relatively trivial set of adjustments in the grand scheme of things,” he told LBC Radio.

He argued that his government’s “higher and prior legal commitment” is to the 1998 Good Friday agreement that brought peace and stability to Northern Ireland.

Arrangements for Northern Ireland — the only part of the U.K. that shares a land border with an EU nation — have proved the thorniest issue in Britain’s divorce from the bloc, which became final at the end of 2020. At the center of the dispute is the Northern Ireland Protocol, which now regulates trade ties between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, part of the EU.

Britain and the EU agreed in their Brexit deal that the Irish land border would be kept free of customs posts and other checks because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Instead, to protect the EU’s single market, there are checks on some goods, such as meat and eggs, entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.

But the arrangement has proved politically damaging for Johnson because it treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party has refused to return to the region’s power-sharing government until the protocol is scrapped or substantially changed.

The bill to override that arrangement is expected to face opposition in Parliament, including from members of Johnson’s own Conservative ranks. Critics say unilaterally changing the protocol would be illegal and would damage Britain’s standing with other countries because it’s part of a treaty considered binding under international law.

In Brussels, Sefcovic said the protocol was the “one and only solution we could jointly find to protect the hard-earned gains of the peace process in Northern Ireland.”

He added that the EU remains open to discussions with the British government to find a solution to the dispute.

Associated Press writers Samuel Petrequin in Brussels and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/uk-moves-to-rewrite-brexit-trade-rules-around-northern-ireland-eu-threatens-legal-action

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Northern Ireland’s politicians are being told to “get back to work” by Boris Johnson, keen to resolve the deadlock over post-Brexit trade.

The prime minister is due to travel to Belfast on Monday for crisis talks after the DUP blocked the election of a Speaker at the Stormont Assembly, preventing it from sitting.

Power sharing in Northern Ireland has been suspended since elections earlier this month.

The system was introduced in the 1990s in an effort to end decades of violence and is a requirement of government in the country. The first minister and deputy first minister must be one unionist, one nationalist.

Government sources said Mr. Johnson will use a series of private meetings to deliver a “tough message” that any “fix” to the post-Brexit trade protocol must involve the parties coming together to form an Executive and Assembly.

He is expected to say that while the UK government will “play its part to ensure political stability”, politicians must “get back to work” so they can deliver on “bread and butter issues” for the voters.

Ahead of his visit, however, Sinn Fein – which is now the biggest party in the Assembly following the elections on 5 May – accused the prime minister of being “in cahoots” with DUP and supporting its “blocking tactics”.

‘Dangerous brinkmanship’

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald said: “It is very dangerous, it’s reckless, it’s a game of brinkmanship, very cynically carried out by a Tory government in London that has no care for the island of Ireland, north or south.”

The DUP is bitterly opposed to the protocol as it requires checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, in order to keep the border with Republic open in line with the Good Friday Agreement.

‘Delicate balance’

In his talks to the party leaders, Mr. Johnson is expected to say that while the government “will always keep the door open to genuine dialogue”, there will be “a necessity to act” to protect the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) if there is no change in the EU position.

He will insist the government has never suggested scrapping the protocol and will acknowledge there will always have to be a treaty governing the UK’s relationship with the EU in respect of Northern Ireland in order to prevent the return of a hard border with the Republic.

However he will say the “delicate balance” of the GFA has been upset, eroding the historic economic bonds linking Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, leaving the unionist community feeling its aspirations and identity were under threat.

Ireland is not ‘a pawn’

But speaking on Saturday following a meeting of Sinn Fein’s ruling council in Dublin, Ms. McDonald said the UK government had consistently failed to act in “good faith”.

“Let’s just be clear that the protocol is going nowhere. The protocol is a necessary outworking of Brexit for which the Tory party and the DUP campaigned,” she said.

“The British government cannot use Ireland as a pawn, we won’t be the collateral damage in the Brexit negotiations.

“It is very clear the Tory government in London is in cahoots with the DUP to stall and to hold back progress, to frustrate the will of the people as expressed in the election and that, to anybody who calls themselves a democrat, is clearly unacceptable and clearly shameful.”

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/get-back-to-work-boris-johnson-tells-northern-ireland-politicians-to-form-government-and-sort-out-brexit-trade-deal-12613443

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Oh Brussels! Only in the land of the EU could 49 objectives containing 325 proposed actions be seen as the answer to Europe’s future development. But remarkably, this is exactly what the grandly sounding Conference on the Future of Europe has recently proposed.

Although originally conceived as a great experiment in collaborative, pan-European policymaking, what the EU actually delivered was a two-year vehicle for President Emmanuel Macron to wax lyrical about his centralizing, integrating vision of a French Europe.

Pushed by Paris, the conference was deliberately timed to finish by the summer of 2022. It was neatly sandwiched between the French elections and the French presidency of the European Council, and Paris is now reveling in its role as the de facto EU HQ.

And therein lies the danger for Ireland, and many other small EU member states.

Because from the very beginning, the purpose of the conference was not only to guide the EU’s future evolution, but also to demonstrate that Brussels was capable of “moving past Brexit” in a united and coherent fashion.

However, what the conference’s draft recommendations show is less a measured consideration of why Europe’s second-largest economy would voluntarily choose to leave the EU, and more a bland vindication of all the EU’s existing policy dreams.

Its draft actions read like a wish list of every stressed-out Brussels Eurocrat. Increased harmonization, abolition of national vetoes, greater military co-ordination and more common borrowing at EU level are just some of the highlights.

And while nobody doubts that more EU-level action is required in key areas – combating climate change, fighting terrorism, helping Ukraine, finalizing the structure of the euro zone – this vision of a universally deepening Europe hardly reflects majority thinking in any member state.

Policy failures
It is also a potential political nightmare for referendum- and neutrality-happy Ireland.

In using Brexit (and the pandemic) as “fertile soil for another attempt at deepening integration”, the EU is ignoring how, in countries like Britain, decades of rising insecurity played an important role in allowing economic grievance become political dissent.

The illiberal sentiments and hyper-nationalism witnessed during the Brexit process are not unique to Britain. The recent French presidential election – 52 per cent of first-round voters chose hard-right or extreme-left candidates – shows that the perception of being “left behind” eventually begins to hollow out the centre of the political spectrum.

In Ireland, decades-long housing (and banking) policy failures are fueling voter discontent regardless of underlying economic growth or employment figures. And in refusing to confront (or even acknowledge) these underlying problems, the EU is worsening its ability to form part of the solution.

Because more integration in Brussels will do nothing to sate increased voter dissatisfaction at national level. Indeed, as Britain has already shown, it may have exactly the opposite effect.

Looser vision
Unfortunately, the EU still remains unable to acknowledge how its choices impacted upon Britain’s drift to the periphery and beyond of EU decision-making.

For it was Britain’s loss in attempting to put intergovernmentalism at the heart of the EU that precipitated its European demise. This was a plan to use the single market, Atlanticism and global trade as the drivers of growth. Since the 1980s, this was an alternative model of European integration which favoured concentrating power at the centre of a “European conglomerate”.

Britain was collateral damage to a European integration process which chose a more integrated development path
Ultimately, wider geopolitical events – the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, Franco-German agreement on monetary union – ensured the failure of Britain’s looser vision for Europe.

In a sense, Britain was collateral damage to a European integration process which chose a deeper, more integrated development path.

For Ireland, the explicit acknowledgment – through the conference – of the EU’s continued commitment to a deeper Europe should give pause for thought.

A more nuanced and deliberative approach to maximizing EU membership is now required given the realities of an Anglo-American Irish economy bound up in a centralizing, harmonizing EU. But to do this requires a fundamental repurposing of official Ireland’s simplistic views of Brussels.

The conceit behind Ireland’s view of the EU (as highlighted by Prof Katy Hayward and others) is that EU membership is of benefit not just to Ireland, but also to Europe. In essence, it’s the old Jack Lynch view from the 1970s that “We can, by becoming better Europeans, become better Irishmen.”

But it’s really time to drop these shenanigans.

What Ireland needs now is the confidence to put forward a vision of Europe that moves beyond the jaded stereotypes of Dublin as the best of Europeans. Picking up Britain’s focus on the single market and Atlanticism would be a good place to start.

Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/brexit-lessons-forgotten-in-eu-drive-to-deeper-integration-1.4869443

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2. World economy shows signs of recovery
2021 global economic growth is estimated to be 5-6%, compared with a contraction of 4.4% in 2020. Rapid vaccination and huge economic stimulus packages in “economic locomotives” like the US, Europe and China, provided the driving force for the global recovery. But after sustaining damages of 3.3 trillion USD, tens of millions of jobs lost, and global supply chains disrupted, what the world economy will look like in 2022 still depends heavily on COVID-19 pandemic developments.

3. COP26 (United Nations Conference on Climate Change)
On November 13, 197 countries attending the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP26) ratified the Glasgow Climate Pact. 100 countries also pledged to end deforestation and cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030. The world’s two largest emitters, the US and China, issued a joint statement, pledging to cooperate in building a long-term strategy to combat climate change. The results of the Conference offered hope that the world can still prevent the worst effects of climate change.

4. US withdraws troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, Taliban returns to power
On August 30, the last US troops left Afghanistan, ending the longest war in US history. During 20 years of war, 3,500 American and allied troops and tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers and civilians were killed in Afghanistan. On August 15, the Taliban took control of the capital Kabul after having taken control of most of the rest of Afghanistan, making the country’s future uncertain and worrisome. The risk of Afghanistan exporting terrorism, conflict, and violence could jeopardize the security of the entire world.

5. US-China strategic competition grows fiercer, but not yet out of control
Since taking office as the 46th President of the United States on January 20, Joe Biden has worked hard to build a new coalition to deal with China, as the US-China strategic competition has become an all-out confrontation. The US has demanded that China make concessions on Chinese Taipei, the East Sea, the East China Sea, democracy, human rights, and other issues. Rather than making any concessions, China has redoubled its effort to overtake the US as the world’s strongest economy. Although they reached no compromise, both the US and China have signaled a readiness for dialogue to keep their confrontations from spiraling out of control.

6. AUKUS profoundly changes Indo-Pacific landscape
The Tripartite Security Agreement reached by Australia, the UK and the US (AUKUS) on September 15 marked a new step in the US’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific, and created a major change in the region’s strategic balance. The AUKUS mechanism tightened the relationship between the US, UK and Australia, while worsening the US-China relations, and causing rifts between the US and its European allies. With the EU and the US later announcing their separate Indo-Pacific strategies, the birth of AUKUS Alliance marks a gathering of forces and the Indo-Pacific’s growing geopolitical importance.

7. End of Merkel’s rule – a void and future expectations for Germany and Europe
Angela Merkel’s rule came to an end when Olaf Schozl was confirmed as Chancellor by the German Bundestag on December 8. During her 16 years in office, Chancellor Merkel led Germany and the EU through major crises, including the 2008 financial crisis, the 2015 migration crisis, the 2010 public debt crisis, and Brexit, made Germany a “European locomotive” and accelerated the unification of Europe. Merkel’s departure from politics raises concerns about a power vacuum in Germany and the EU, but also rekindles hopes for winds of change in the near future.

8. Political upheaval in Myanmar, Sudan, Guinea
On February 1, the National Alliance for Democracy underpinning the civilian government of Myanmar, was stripped of its power and power was transferred to the military. In Africa, Sudan was plunged into a political crisis after the military dissolved the Sudanese power-sharing government and declared a state of emergency on October 25. In 2021, Africa also witnessed coups in Mali and Guinea. These worrisome political developments reflected a trend of political and social instability in many countries.

9. Russian-Western relations on the brink of breakdown
Russia-Ukraine relations suddenly worsened with the two sides increasing military buildups near the border between Russia and Ukraine. Between problems in the Baltic Sea and Black Sea area and a migration crisis on the Poland-Belarus border, the risk of conflict between the West and Russia reached its highest level since the Cold War. On December 17, Russia published the draft of the eight-point treaty with the West aimed at easing tensions in Europe and defusing the Ukraine crisis. If a new agreement is not reached soon, Russia-Western relations could reach a dangerous tipping point.

10. First commercial space flight ushers in new era of space travel
On the evening of September 15, the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) successfully launched the world’s first private spacecraft into Earth orbit. The event marked the ambitious start of a new space tourism industry. Following SpaceX, companies Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin also launched private flights carrying passengers into space.

Source: https://vovworld.vn/en-US/current-affairs/top-10-world-events-of-2021-1061358.vov

The post Top 10 world events of 2021 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

This is according to professional services firm EY.

Data from its latest Financial Services Brexit Tracker points to a rather muted response from firms since the end of the Brexit transition period.

While the number of financial firms that have publicly stated they have moved, or that they intend to move operations, has increased marginally in the last two years, big banks have revised downwards the number of jobs that they anticipate will move out of the UK.

Between January 2020 and December 2021, the number of financial services firms that publicly stated they have moved or plan to move some UK operations or staff, or both, to Europe rose just three percentage points from 41% to 44% (from 92 to 97 out of 222 companies).

Following the declaration of the referendum result in mid-2016, announcements rose steadily from 18% of financial services firms in December 2016 to 41% in January 2020 (39 to 92 companies out of 222).

And some of the largest UK investment banks have revised down the number of roles they will relocate to the continent to serve the needs of clients.

The total number of Brexit-related job relocations from the UK to Europe has fallen from 7,600 in December 2020 to under 7,400 now.

Dublin remains the top choice for operational moves, but Paris has been the biggest beneficiary from staff relocations.

36 financial services firms have announced their intention to relocate UK operations to Dublin, with Luxembourg attracting 29 companies and Frankfurt on 23.

Although Paris was fourth on the list with 21 companies moving operations, 2,800 staff moved from the UK to the French capital. That was followed by Frankfurt with 1,800 jobs relocated and Dublin with 1,200.

“While the majority of operational moves were made well ahead of the 2020 Brexit deadline – and before the pandemic – travel restrictions over the last two years have challenged the practicalities of relocation,” Fidelma Clarke, EY Ireland Financial Services Brexit Lead, pointed out.

“Depending on the trajectory of the Omicron variant and its impact on international travel in the short term, moves that were delayed should pick up over the coming year not least due to regulatory requirements to have senior financial services employees in situ in the firms they lead,” she added.

Simon MacAllister, Partner and Brexit Lead at EY Ireland, said the competing pull of the UK trying to retain its position as a leading global financial hub versus several EU centres trying to build their domestic capital markets would be a feature of the financial services landscape for the foreseeable future.

“This competitive dynamic between markets will play out for many years to come and will ultimately drive better outcomes and a more transparent European financial services market,” he predicted.

“For the EU and the UK to maintain their individual competitive standings on the global financial stage, they must continue to work together, while acknowledging evolving regulatory divergence. As we look to 2022, both markets will continue to navigate the challenges of the pandemic, but their long-term strategic priorities will increasingly differ,” he added.

Source: https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2021/1220/1267670-no-major-moves-by-uk-financial-firms-since-brexit-ey/

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