Until recently, the world’s response to our greatest challenges relied on the leadership of a few, the concord of the rest, a lot of public money and a heavy dose of compromise. With multilateralism eroding, world leaders may need to look for support outside of their cordoned-off, heavily guarded tents.
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Don’t fret about a fragmented parliament. Centrist politicians will be forced to work together, and national governments will still have the real power in the EU anyway.
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For the European Commission, there was a silver lining to the recent Dieselgate and Ryanair controversies: they served as a perfect opportunity to table a legislative proposal on collective consumer redress. But not everyone was thrilled.
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Lafleur to lead the strategic communications agency’s first office in the Americas
NYC, USA, January 23, 2019 – Move over, Empire State Building: there’s a new landmark in town! Landmark Public Affairs, a strategic communications agency, is opening its first American branch in NYC. It will be led by Landmark’s longtime senior staffer Julien Lafleur.
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The election of Donald Trump as President of the USA has dramatically reignited the recurring debate on protectionism vs. free trade. Commercial self-interest has been a natural and essential driver of US trade policy. But the current US administration’s narrative on trade, in sharp contrast to the US approach since World War II, seems to have abandoned any reference to – or acknowledgement of – the positive strategic contribution of free trade to international stability and prosperity.
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Prologue: March 4th 2018: the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement (M5S) is the winner of the national elections, with 32% of the vote. The populist Lega comes second, in a Centre-right coalition with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the far-right Fratelli d’Italia, who together win 37% of the vote. Because of an electoral law which requires any party or coalition to achieve 40% of the vote to command a majority in Parliament, negotiations to form a government are tricky.
Read MoreYesterday, the European Commission published its “New Deal for Consumers” which aims to empower consumers through new EU-wide standards for collective redress if consumer rights have been violated.
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Last week the European Commission published its much-anticipated Plastics Strategy, as part of the Circular Economy Package. It is being hailed as major news. Is it really? Yes and no. No, because it actually does not come with any new legislative initiatives. It announces some, but several were already in the pipeline, others remain to be assessed and others still will be very tough to see through, e.g. Commissioner Oettinger’s plan for an EU plastics tax. At the same time, it is real news, for one main reason: it exposes a fundamental dichotomy in current thinking and promises to shift the debate in a direction that will be challenging for industry.
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The regional grouping of ten South East Asian countries which comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam celebrates 50 years of successfully binding diverse trade, economic, political, social, cultural and geo-political interests.
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