Atlantic Sentinel

Category: Analysis

  • EU Proposals for Nature Restoration Spook Businesses, Farmers

    Veluwe Netherlands deer
    Grey deer in the Veluwe National Park of the Netherlands, November 30, 2020 (Unsplash/Dylan Leagh)

    EU proposals to protect wildlife and reduce the use of pesticides in agriculture have run into opposition from businesses, farmers and their allies in the European Parliament.

    Embarrassingly for European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, those allies are in her own conservative European People’s Party (EPP). They fear a repetition of the Dutch farm crisis, where strict enforcement of environmental regulations has brought a halt to many construction projects and could drive one in three livestock farmers out of business.

    The far right are also against the Commission’s plans. The liberals, led by French president Emmanuel Macron’s party, are divided. Even the Greens are unhappy. Their commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, is responsible for wildlife protection, but they don’t believe his proposals go far enough. (more…)

  • The Repeal of Title 42 in Context

    Joe Biden
    American president Joe Biden makes a speech in the East Room of the White House in Washington DC, February 15, 2022 (White House/Cameron Smith)

    American president Joe Biden has stopped sending migrants back to Mexico under Title 42. His Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, invoked this public-health statute during COVID-19 to close the southern border for immigration.

    The repeal has triggered an increase in border crossings, prompting Biden to send troops.

    But it isn’t the only reason immigration has increased since Biden took over from Trump in 2021. The Democrat relaxed more policies, and toughened others. (more…)

  • Italy’s Labor Reforms, Explained

    Venice Italy restaurant
    Restaurant in Venice, Italy, October 5, 2019 (Unsplash/Clay Banks)

    Giorgia Meloni is cutting benefits for out-of-work Italians, reducing taxes for employers and making it easier to hire workers on a short-term contract.

    Many of the reforms were in the prime minister’s election manifesto, but the reintroduction of job vouchers — a way to hire workers without a contract — is a surprise.

    I’ll explain what’s changing, what isn’t — and why Italy’s labor market is such a mess. (more…)

  • Catalan Socialists Learn from Their Mistakes

    Salvador Illa
    Catalan Socialist Party leader Salvador Illa listens to his Basque counterpart, Eneko Andueza, making a speech, January 16 (Socialistas Vascos)

    Catalonia’s Socialists missed an opportunity after the last election to split up the region’s left- and right-wing independence parties. The moderate Republican Left, which supports a Socialist government nationally, had tired of the hardliners in Together for Catalonia (Junts), but local Socialist Party leader Salvador Illa wouldn’t accept anything short of the presidency for himself.

    “Why should I invest a person that I defeated at the polls?” he remarked of the Republican party leader, Pere Aragonès.

    Illa won 50,000 more votes than the Republicans, but both parties got 33 out of 135 seats. Aragonès claimed the presidency too, but he had two paths to a majority, not one. Illa’s intransigence drove the Republicans into the arms of Junts.

    But the coalition proved short-lived and Illa has recently set his ego aside. (more…)

  • Germany Scales Back Cannabis Legalization

    Cannabis plant
    Cannabis plant (Unsplash/Roberto Valdivia)

    German health minister Karl Lauterbach has had to scale back his plan for cannabis legalization.

    Rather than allow Germans to buy up to 30 grams of weed in specialized stores, they could buy a maximum of 25 grams in “clubs” of 500 members.

    There would also be a limit on the level of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, a psychoactive substance) in weed sold to users aged 18 to 21.

    Anyone could still grow up to three cannabis plants at home. Criminal records for possession and self-cultivation would be expunged if the bill is accepted by the Bundestag. (more…)

  • Dutch Government’s Budget and Climate Deal, Explained

    Thierry Breton Mark Rutte
    European commissioner Thierry Breton is welcomed by Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte in his office in The Hague, September 9, 2022 (European Commission)

    Mark Rutte’s coalition government in the Netherlands has agreed various spending reforms and additional climate policies to keep its budget deficit under 3 percent and achieve a 55-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

    The four ruling parties — two liberal, two Christian democrat — were in a rush to do a deal before parliament goes on summer recess.

    Negotiations resulted in a delay in child-care reform, an expansion of hydrogen and solar power, and higher subsidies for home insulation and secondhand electric cars, paid for in part by raising taxes on coal use and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

    Rutte’s VVD (of which I am a member) and the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) blocked higher taxes on petrol and meat. (more…)

  • Italy Narrows Right to Asylum After Boat Arrivals Quadruple

    Mediterranean Sea migrant boat
    Migrants are rescued by Red Cross in the Mediterranean Sea, August 18, 2016 (Italian Red Cross/Yara Nardi)

    The Italian Senate has voted to raise penalties for human traffickers and narrow the eligibility criteria for asylum.

    The reforms are part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s policy to bring down immigration. They have yet to be approved by the lower house, but her government has a majority there as well.

    Meloni’s next step will be convincing other European leaders of migration reform. There is not much more Italy can do on its own to stop arrivals by sea, which quadrupled in the first three months of this year. (more…)

  • Spain’s Rental Reforms, Explained

    Barcelona Spain
    Skyline of Barcelona, Spain (Unsplash/Anastasiia Tarasova)

    Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has agreed to cap rent increases through 2025 and subsidize the construction of more low-rent housing in a deal with Basque and Catalan left-wing parties in Congress.

    Sánchez hopes to get the reforms through Congress before the municipal elections in May, but his government does not yet have a majority and his Socialist Workers’ Party is down in the polls.

    I’ll explain what the reforms are, why the government believes they are needed and whether they are likely to pass. (more…)

  • Overregulation Drives Up Rental Prices in Dutch Cities

    Amsterdam Netherlands
    Rokin in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, November 19, 2019 (Unsplash/Kian Lem)

    Regulation is driving up rents in the major cities of the Netherlands — and exacerbating the nation’s record housing shortage.

    According to Pararius, a real-estate listings website, average rents have gone up 4 percent in Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam this year.

    Rents rose 11 percent in Amsterdam last year.

    Pararius’ Jasper de Groot blames the Dutch housing minister, Hugo de Jonge, who is bringing some 330,000 rental apartments into regulation. (more…)

  • Belgium, Netherlands Break Cocaine Records

    Antwerp Belgium port
    Port of Antwerp, Belgium (Port of Antwerp-Bruges)

    Belgian and Dutch police have got more money to interdict drug smuggling in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. Record amounts of cocaine were seized in 2022.

    Yet the black-market price of cocaine is unchanged. Factoring in inflation, the drug has arguably become cheaper.

    An analysis of European wastewater suggests that cocaine use in major cities, including those of the Low Countries, has increased.

    “We are in a tunnel, where more and more resources are being allocated with no discernible result,” argues Bob Hoogenboom, a professor in police studies at the University of Amsterdam. Hoogenboom is also a co-founder of the Dutch branch of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a nonprofit of former police officers and prosecutors who want to end the drug war.

    So far, their appeals have fallen on deaf ears. (more…)

  • EU Plans for Hydrogen, Clean Tech and Mining, Explained

    Mölsheim Germany wind turbines
    Wind turbines near Mölsheim, Germany (Unsplash/Karsten Würth)

    EU countries have agreed to increase their share of renewable energy. The European Commission has proposed to fund green hydrogen and set goals for clean tech as well as the mining of rare earth materials needed to make electric cars and solar panels.

    The proposals fall under the European Green Deal, which aims to cut the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions 55 percent by 2030 and to net-zero by 2050.

    Critics worry the sustainability push will come at the expense of competition, nature conservation and free trade.

    Here is an overview of what has been agreed, what has been proposed, the costs and the tradeoffs. (more…)

  • Italy’s Synthetic Food Ban Is Victory for Meat Lobbyists

    Giorgia Meloni
    Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni arrives to a meeting of European leaders in Brussels, December 15, 2022 (European Council)

    Europe’s refusal to allow the sale of cultivated meat is bad enough, but Italy is taking it one step further. Its right-wing government on Tuesday decided to ban the production and sale of all “synthetic foods”.

    No wonder food innovators are fleeing to America, Israel and Singapore. (more…)

  • Victory for Farmers’ Party Is Challenge to Dutch Government

    Sigrid Kaag Mark Rutte
    Finance Minister Sigrid Kaag and Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands listen to a debate in parliament in The Hague, September 21, 2022 (ANP/Sem van der Wal)

    The outcome of provincial elections in the Netherlands threatens to divide Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s ruling coalition.

    The Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), the third party in Rutte’s four-party government, lost a third of its voters to the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), which placed first. Many told exit pollsters they switched because of the CDA’s support for reductions in farming.

    Pieter Heerma, the CDA group leader in parliament, told reporters the election had created a “new political reality.” Party leader, and foreign minister, Wopke Hoekstra added that the government’s farm policy would need to be reassessed.

    But the left-liberal D66, which also lost seats but to more left-wing parties, insists that cuts in ammonia pollution must be made by 2030. “We don’t suddenly believe something different a week after the election than we did a week before the election,” group leader Jan Paternotte explained.

    Rutte’s own party (of which I am a member) is split. Its youth wing shares the view of D66. So do pro-business liberals, egged on by the Dutch employers’ association, which has advised against delay. Conservatives are wary of expropriating farmers for the sake of environmental protection.

    BBB leader Caroline van der Plas expects the government — Rutte’s fourth since 2010 — will collapse, which would trigger early elections that her party could win. (more…)

  • Meloni’s Asylum Plan Gains Support

    Mark Rutte Giorgia Meloni
    Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands is received by Giorgia Meloni of Italy in Rome, March 8 (Palazzo Chigi)

    Giorgia Meloni may get her wish.

    When the Italian conservative party leader, since elected prime minister, proposed to fund asylum centers in North Africa, she was called a xenophobe by the left in her own country and abroad.

    Now it is part of a tentative EU agreement to manage asylum applications, which are approximating the records of 2015 and 2016.

    European migration ministers have agreed that transit countries like Tunisia could be paid to shelter asylum seekers. The same countries would need to take back illegal migrants who crossed the Mediterranean Sea by boat.

    Such boats regularly capsize, killing an estimated 1,200 migrants last year.

    Ministers also discussed trade sanctions for countries that do little to stop irregular migration. (more…)

  • Dutch Midterm Elections Guide

    Nijmegen Netherlands
    Aerial view of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, April 28, 2020 (Unsplash/Richard Brunsveld)

    Dutch voters elect provincial deputies on Wednesday, who will elect the new Senate in May.

    Elections for island councils in the Caribbean Netherlands and water boards in the European Netherlands are held on the same day, making this a midterm election for Prime Minister Mark Rutte in everything but name.

    In this election guide, I will get you up to speed. With the disclaimer that I am a candidate for Rutte’s liberal party in North Holland, but I’ll do my best to be fair! (more…)