Europe

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/42670458

https://archive.is/paova

The funds will come from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of a joint operation launched with Frontex.

Archived link

Here is the study (pdf).

Summer has increased by an average of 36 days across Spain over the last 50 years.

Spain is slipping into a desert climate, according to a new study into the relationship between global heating and drought.

The Mediterranean country is clearly on the frontlines of climate change in Europe. Now researchers at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona have delved deeper into its climate vitals.

By 2050, they predict that rainfall will decrease by up to 20 per cent compared to current levels. This would tip Spain from a temperate Mediterranean climate into a steppe- or even desert-like one, as per the Köppen system which divides the world into five different climate zones based on plant growth.

“The warming process resulting from climate change has been very pronounced in mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands, representing a true hotspot,” the researchers write.

Presented at the International Meteorology Congress of the European Meteorological Society (EMS) in Barcelona earlier this month, their findings reveal a climate in serious flux.

• Between 1971 and 2022, temperatures in mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands (including popular holiday destination Mallorca) have increased by 3.27°C, well above the world average of 1.19°C and Mediterranean average of 1.58°C.

• Summer days - where the maximum daily temperature is 25°C or above - rose from 82.4 in 1971 to 117.9 in 2022: a 43 per cent increase. Over half a century, summer has stretched out for an average of 36 days across Spain.

• Meanwhile tropical nights - where the mercury doesn’t drop below 25°C - increased from 1.73 to 14.12. The increase in tropical nights is concentrated in the Southern Plateau, the valleys of the Guadalquivir and Ebro rivers, as well as the Mediterranean coast, the researchers note.

• In terms of heatwaves, the frequency of these hot spells has increased from less than one per year on average between 1971-1980, to almost two in the decade from 2013-2022. Heatwaves have also become longer, from three to nine days on average.

“We seem to have lost our belief in a market economy somewhat and our trust that letting go can lead to something great,” he said. “The government does not have to subsidise and compensate for everything. People flourish in freedom, as does innovation. And that is what we need to drive up productivity.”

Separate article with more details on the proposed budget.

European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen revealed her top team Tuesday, appointing French candidate Stéphane Séjourné to the powerful post of executive vice president overseeing industrial strategy. Von der Leyen also raised eyebrows with her decision to name Italy's Raffaele Fitto, a member of Giorgia Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy party, as one of the commission's six vice-presidents.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/42598572

FRIEDRICH MERZ is doing it, and I’m fine with that.” This brief statement by Markus Söder, the head of Bavaria’s governing Christian Social Union (CSU), was enough to confirm what had long been clear in German political circles: that Mr Merz, leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the CSU’s larger sibling, would be the parties’ joint candidate at next year’s federal election. Mr Merz will thus lead the opposition conservatives’ bid to unseat Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic (SPD) chancellor.

A few weeks ago the European Commission made the decision to stop funding the Next Generation Internet initiative (NGI) in its then current draft for the Horizon Europe 2025 Work Programme. This decision results in a loss of €27 million for software freedom.

Now you can ask for these funds and criticise the Commission's decision, by taking part in the ongoing consultation on the Digital Europe Programme.

By participating in this consultation, which closes on 20 September (midnight Brussels time) you can help to advocate for a digital future that puts users in control of technology. Your input makes a difference.

The consultation on the linked website is available in all EU languages. It also provides hints how to take action.

Addition: You may also be interested in signing the petition about 'public code', claiming that code paid by the people should be available to the people.

The future of the European economy will be characterised by labour shortages and an ageing population. More effective integration of migrants into the economies of host countries could be the answer. In Spain, a major platform calling for the regularisation of thousands of undocumented people could set an important precedent for European integration policy.

Living without papers is like living inside an invisible prison”, utters Lamine Sarr with a voice clipped and filled with impotence. The 40-year-old, who crossed the sea from Senegal to reach Spain eighteen years ago is one of the spokesperson of Regularización Ya, a popular platform calling for the Spanish state to regularise the legal situation of thousands of undocumented migrants and to change the current immigration law to put an end to this situation.

Thousands of people live without legal documents in Europe, around 700,000 in Spain. However, Sarr’s platform, which was created after the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighted the vulnerability of undocumented people. It could achieve the extraordinary regularisation of 500,000 of them following parliamentary discussions in September 2024.

Backed by 700,000 signatures and a coalition of 900 civil society groups, Regularización Ya managed to get this popular legislative initiative into the Spanish Congress and the text is now going through the regular legislative process.

“The regularisation initiative is of vital importance”, Caritas Spain tells Voxeurop, one of the organisations calling on parties to finally make this bill a reality. “We consider it necessary in order to alleviate the enormous amount of migrants in an irregular situation in Spain”, whose irregular status, they claim, keeps them “living under continuous stress and anxiety”, and “prevents them from fully engaging in the life of the community.”

The undocumented’s invisible prison

The current migration law in Spain requires people in an irregular situation to prove that they have lived on Spanish territory for three years in order to obtain a work and residence permit, among other things. However, Lamine Sarr claims that the reality is much more complex than it seems.

After arriving in Spain via dinghy in 2006, he was only able to acquire legal papers until 2019, thirteen years later. “When you have been here for three years, it means that you can begin to process your application, but it does not mean that you are able to finish the process”, he tells Voxeurop. Some of his colleagues, he says, have been waiting for 20 years for their residence permits to be issued.

Licensed under Creative Commons.

The Article is licensed under Creative Commons as per the website terms of service, which allow me to republish it here under the same license.

In Denmark we usually have coalition governments, and when they are constituted you can see who's important and who's not from the ministries they are given.

Some ministries are more important - Finance, Justice, Foreign Affairs - and some are less important.

But which commission posts are the most important and powerful? I want to take a more active interest in EU politics, but that requires me to know what to look for :D

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US firms warned against possible negative implications of the high-level report published last week by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on Monday (16 September) – arguing that certain recommendations would unfairly discriminate against non-European companies.

Despite praising Draghi’s “important contribution” to the discussion surrounding Europe’s flagging competitiveness, the American Chamber of Commerce to the EU (AmCham EU) cautioned that an overarching strive to prioritise European firms would endanger the bloc’s ability to leverage bilateral investments and trade flows.

“Making Europe more competitive does not require the region to turn its back on its long-standing commitment to openness,” the association warned.

“[US] companies are woven into the fabric of the EU economy, committed to building on their legacy of strengthening the region’s Single Market and industrial base,” it went on to say, highlighting the “€3.5 trillion of US foreign direct investment” (FDI) that goes to the 27 member states.

Meanwhile, total EU-US trade in goods surpassed over €850 billion last year – making for the world’s largest trade and investment relationship by far, well above the €520 billion US-China trade in goods and the €738 billion in total EU-China goods trade.

[...]

Draghi’s warnings against both blocs [China, U.S.] “actively pursuing policies to enhance their competitive positions” largely echoed widespread European industry worries around, in the case of the US, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed by President Joe Biden in 2022 – a massive green subsidy programme that has been seen to create market distortions and unduly favour US-based growth. Draghi has sharply criticised both Chinese and US protectionist policies in recent months, accusing both of “no longer playing by the rules” on international trade, through their increasing use of tariffs, subsidies, and other non-market policies.

[...]

Draghi, however, suggested in his report that EU defence-related public tenders should ensure that “a minimum share” of the increasing global demand for weaponry “is concentrated on European companies rather than flowing overseas” – something that echoes the EDIP text and that AmCham warned “would not address European security needs in the near term”.

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The President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev urged visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday (16 September) to give up on the idea that Russia can be defeated on the battlefield and to support China’s peace plan for Ukraine, a suggestion Scholz rejected.

Scholz is on his first official tour of Central Asia as Berlin looks for new sources of energy and minerals in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Kazakhstan remains a close ally of its former Soviet overlord Russia, though the Astana government has not taken sides in the conflict or supported Moscow’s claims to some Ukrainian territories.

“It is a fact that Russia cannot be defeated in the military sense,” Tokayev told Scholz in Astana.

“A further escalation of war will lead to irreparable consequences for the whole of humanity and above all for the countries involved in the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” he added.

Scholz diplomatically disagreed, saying Germany was supporting Ukraine because Russia had invaded it.