Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigerian economist and former finance minister, has been appointed to head the World Trade Organization, becoming the first African and woman to helm the global trade body.
Okonjo-Iweala takes over as the global trade body struggles to remain relevant amid growing protectionism and trade tensions and an economic crisis unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic.
From reviving WTO's dispute settlement process to policing China, the new director-general has her task cut out as she looks to restore global faith in the trade body.
Reas more at:
Daunting challenges await WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala | Business| Economy and finance news from a German perspective | DW | 16.02.2021
Showing posts with label Challenges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Challenges. Show all posts
10/17/20
Beyond geopolitics: what are challenges in making our world more sustainable?
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the challenges we face in
building a better, more inclusive world for everyone. “Conflict,
insecurity, weak institutions and limited access to justice remain
threats to sustainable development,” among many others, says the UN SDG Progress Report 2020.
These challenges have crystallized in recent months. As several World Economic Forum experts and partners explained,
“the rise in populism and ‘country first’ politics have threatened the
spirit of international co-operation and the workings of the
multilateral institutions,” which are sorely needed right now to work
together to overcome the crises. “This left the international community
at a significant disadvantage as it faced the COVID-19 pandemic,” they
continued. Around the world, journalists are persecuted
and even killed trying to get to the truth. Even the wealthiest nations
aren’t immune: systemic racism is embedded in police departments,
medicine, even housing and financial policy in the United States, says the IMF, a sign of decades of injustice towards Black and African American communities across the country.
As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on all economies, societies
and people, we’re physically separated, with people staying in their
homes, meetings and travel all but halted – and the world’s most
vulnerable are falling through the cracks.
Read more at:
Beyond geopolitics: what are challenges in making our world more sustainable? | World Economic Forum
10/9/19
EU - how to take on a more independent role: Habsburg lessons for Europe's foreign policy - by Caroline de Gruyter
This week, again, EU heads of state and government must decide to start accession talks with Northern Macedonia and Albania - or not.
Leaders of the EU's main institutions emphasised that the two countries "have done what we asked them to do".
Last June a decision was postponed because of internal divisions. Some 14 central and eastern European countries pushed for the start of accession talks.
But France and the Netherlands refused, citing a lack of popular support. Will these two concede this time? Will others, who silently supported them in June?
Eastern EU member states are worried about Russia and Turkey destabilising the Balkans. This happened many times before in history. It rarely ended well.
If the EU fails to offer the Balkans political perspective, these member states argue, the whole region would become unstable. This would weaken the EU.
For western EU countries, however, the Balkans are far away. They prefer to focus on the trade war with the US, Brexit, cyber attacks, Russian and Chinese military activities in the Arctic, or other challenges.
Note EU-Digest: the number one threat facing the EU, which has to be dealt with urgenly, before it falls apart, is the lack of unity among member states to realize that the EU needs to become far more united if it wants to establish itself as a world power in the world of Nations. Taking on new impoverished nations like Albania and Macedonia into the Union, while the EU is unraveling at the seams, precisely because of the lack of unity, is not only unwise, it is pure stupidity.
Read more at: Habsburg lessons for Europe's foreign policy
Leaders of the EU's main institutions emphasised that the two countries "have done what we asked them to do".
Last June a decision was postponed because of internal divisions. Some 14 central and eastern European countries pushed for the start of accession talks.
But France and the Netherlands refused, citing a lack of popular support. Will these two concede this time? Will others, who silently supported them in June?
Eastern EU member states are worried about Russia and Turkey destabilising the Balkans. This happened many times before in history. It rarely ended well.
If the EU fails to offer the Balkans political perspective, these member states argue, the whole region would become unstable. This would weaken the EU.
For western EU countries, however, the Balkans are far away. They prefer to focus on the trade war with the US, Brexit, cyber attacks, Russian and Chinese military activities in the Arctic, or other challenges.
Note EU-Digest: the number one threat facing the EU, which has to be dealt with urgenly, before it falls apart, is the lack of unity among member states to realize that the EU needs to become far more united if it wants to establish itself as a world power in the world of Nations. Taking on new impoverished nations like Albania and Macedonia into the Union, while the EU is unraveling at the seams, precisely because of the lack of unity, is not only unwise, it is pure stupidity.
Read more at: Habsburg lessons for Europe's foreign policy
1/30/19
Britain-Brexit: The Messier Brexit Gets, the Better Europe Looks - by Steven Erlanger
After
Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, its leaders
were in a panic. It was mired in a migration crisis and anti-Europe,
populist forces were gaining. Britain’s decision seemed to herald the
start of a great unraveling.
The very prospect of losing a country like Britain, considered so pragmatic and important in the world, is deeply wounding for the EU.
Read more at :The Messier Brexit Gets, the Better Europe Looks - The New York Times: Steven Erlanger
Two years later, as Britain’s exit from the bloc, or Brexit, looks increasingly messy
and self-destructive, there is a growing sense, even in the populist
corners of the continent, that if this is what leaving looks like, no,
thank you.
Nothing has brought the European Union together quite as much as Britain’s chaotic breakdown. “A
country is leaving and has gotten itself into a right old mess, making
itself ridiculous to its European partners,” said Rosa Balfour, a senior
fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels.
The
challenges facing Europe — low growth, eurozone governance, migration,
debt, border security and populism — have by no means gone away. Nor has
Europe found consensus on how to deal with them.
The very prospect of losing a country like Britain, considered so pragmatic and important in the world, is deeply wounding for the EU.
But
on the whole, while all parties will suffer with Brexit, particularly
in the event of a so-called “no deal” departure, analysts tend to agree
that the European Union, which will remain the world’s largest market,
is likely to fare far better than Britain.
Read more at :The Messier Brexit Gets, the Better Europe Looks - The New York Times: Steven Erlanger
6/15/16
European Economy: OECD: European Economy Is Slowly Recovering But New Challenges Are Emerging
The European economy is gradually recovering but further policy
action will be required to address unresolved legacies of the global
economic crisis that are weighing on growth and major new concerns that
have emerged, according to two new OECD reports.
The latest OECD Economic Surveys of the European Union and of the Euro Area, presented today in Paris by OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, underline the challenges facing European policymakers. Although growth has gradually strengthened, unemployment in many countries is still high, investment remains below pre-crisis levels in most European countries, and credit growth is still sluggish.
The Surveys project EU GDP will grow by 1.8% this year and 1.9% in 2017, while GDP in the euro area will grow by 1.6% this year and 1.7% in 2017.
‘Europe has put the worst of the crisis behind it, but there is still much more to do to support a full robust recovery that benefits all Europeans,’ Mr Gurría said. ‘Most of the recommendations in these two Economic Surveys have one thing in common: they call for collective action by European countries. Cooperative solutions have enabled Europe to leave the worst of the crisis behind it. But continued cooperation is still needed to implement effective solutions to common problems.
The alternative to collective action is not the status quo, but something worse: the risk that Europe will move backwards. This would jeopardise what has been achieved to date by the Single Market and the rest of the EU acquis, decreasing growth and destroying jobs across Europe.’
The Surveys say that countries with fiscal space should use budgetary spending to boost growth. Given the deep cuts in public investment since the global financial crisis, the reports recommend increasing public support for key investment projects. Enacting broad reforms to tax structures and public spending would also favour growth.
Easing financial constraints would bring benefits across the economy, notably to private sector firms considering future investment plans. This will require addressing one of the legacies of the crisis – the resolution of non-performing loans in many countries, which threaten financial stability and act as a drag on bank credit.
Waivers could be applied to the new Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive rules to help put in place government-supported schemes when non-performing loans are a serious economic disturbance, the Surveys said.
The Surveys discuss the need for additional steps to deepen the single European market, notably with regard to labour mobility, which can be a key tool to reduce unemployment and boost productivity.
Reducing administrative and regulatory barriers in the services sector and speeding up the recognition of professional qualifications from one country to another would encourage internal mobility, the Surveys said.
Read moreL OECD: European Economy Is Slowly Recovering But Legacies Of The Crisis Remain And New Challenges Are Emerging | Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
The latest OECD Economic Surveys of the European Union and of the Euro Area, presented today in Paris by OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, underline the challenges facing European policymakers. Although growth has gradually strengthened, unemployment in many countries is still high, investment remains below pre-crisis levels in most European countries, and credit growth is still sluggish.
The Surveys project EU GDP will grow by 1.8% this year and 1.9% in 2017, while GDP in the euro area will grow by 1.6% this year and 1.7% in 2017.
‘Europe has put the worst of the crisis behind it, but there is still much more to do to support a full robust recovery that benefits all Europeans,’ Mr Gurría said. ‘Most of the recommendations in these two Economic Surveys have one thing in common: they call for collective action by European countries. Cooperative solutions have enabled Europe to leave the worst of the crisis behind it. But continued cooperation is still needed to implement effective solutions to common problems.
The alternative to collective action is not the status quo, but something worse: the risk that Europe will move backwards. This would jeopardise what has been achieved to date by the Single Market and the rest of the EU acquis, decreasing growth and destroying jobs across Europe.’
The Surveys say that countries with fiscal space should use budgetary spending to boost growth. Given the deep cuts in public investment since the global financial crisis, the reports recommend increasing public support for key investment projects. Enacting broad reforms to tax structures and public spending would also favour growth.
Easing financial constraints would bring benefits across the economy, notably to private sector firms considering future investment plans. This will require addressing one of the legacies of the crisis – the resolution of non-performing loans in many countries, which threaten financial stability and act as a drag on bank credit.
Waivers could be applied to the new Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive rules to help put in place government-supported schemes when non-performing loans are a serious economic disturbance, the Surveys said.
The Surveys discuss the need for additional steps to deepen the single European market, notably with regard to labour mobility, which can be a key tool to reduce unemployment and boost productivity.
Reducing administrative and regulatory barriers in the services sector and speeding up the recognition of professional qualifications from one country to another would encourage internal mobility, the Surveys said.
Read moreL OECD: European Economy Is Slowly Recovering But Legacies Of The Crisis Remain And New Challenges Are Emerging | Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
11/5/14
EU - The Eerie Silence Before the EU Reform Storm - by : Jan Techau
Perhaps never in the history of the European
Union has there been a greater mismatch between the need for reform and
the political capital available to enact that reform. So what will
bring the EU member states to the point where they embrace meaningful
change in that union of theirs?
This is the question that has been lingering in the air in Brussels as the new EU leaders have begun to take office. Everybody knows that it can’t go on like this, few trust that anything major will change, and many have an inkling that something big is about to occur. The atmosphere resembles a political drôle de guerre—that unnerving phase of silence and tension that everybody knows must end soon so the real battle can finally be fought.
The current combination of challenges facing the EU is extreme, even by the union’s crisis-ridden standards. That calls for an equally momentous reform effort.
First, the EU needs to address the possibility of the departure from its ranks of one of its leading members: the United Kingdom. The UK is a country with a positive long-term demographic outlook, firm liberal economic leanings, a strategic view on the world, and a rock-solid transatlantic orientation. There aren’t too many member states like that, and the EU certainly doesn’t want to lose them.
Second, the EU faces a Europe-wide sclerosis that has created structural unemployment, enormous debt, low growth rates, and lackluster innovation across the continent. Europeans have lived beyond their means and at future generations’ expense to such an extent that harder times with longer work and diminished privilege are unavoidable.
Europe’s lack of preparedness to deal with this sclerosis can be seen in the prolonged economic failure of France, another of the EU’s indispensable members and the second pillar, after Germany, of the single currency. The utter ossification of France’s political elite and the rusty mechanics of the country’s centralized republic have led to systemic paralysis and a huge populist backlash against modernity, openness, and economic and political liberalism.
To be sure, reforming France is ultimately a French task. But so much depends on it for the EU that some hard thinking needs to be done—at least in Berlin, London, and Brussels.
Third, the populist backlash visible in France is a harbinger of what might follow in the EU as a whole if the bloc does not decisively reform its governance structures soon. This will mean creating some sort of democratic participation in the EU that makes Europeans true citizens of the EU, not just token ones.
The European Parliament, in its current form, cannot address the EU’s democratic deficit.
Nor can subsidiarity or stronger national parliaments improve the union’s democratic credentials. If the current level of EU integration is to be maintained—or even increased, as necessity seems to dictate—the union will have to establish real Europe-wide participation in EU decisionmaking in the not-so-distant future.
This is highly unlikely. And yet, if it does not happen, the EU will start to come apart.
Democratic participation and its logical consequence, political union, are more likely within the eurozone than across the EU. Just as the currency’s founders envisioned, the euro will require a political union of some sort that creates legitimate governance of the EU’s already deeply developed economic integration.
READ MORE: The Eerie Silence Before the EU Reform Storm - Carnegie Europe
This is the question that has been lingering in the air in Brussels as the new EU leaders have begun to take office. Everybody knows that it can’t go on like this, few trust that anything major will change, and many have an inkling that something big is about to occur. The atmosphere resembles a political drôle de guerre—that unnerving phase of silence and tension that everybody knows must end soon so the real battle can finally be fought.
The current combination of challenges facing the EU is extreme, even by the union’s crisis-ridden standards. That calls for an equally momentous reform effort.
First, the EU needs to address the possibility of the departure from its ranks of one of its leading members: the United Kingdom. The UK is a country with a positive long-term demographic outlook, firm liberal economic leanings, a strategic view on the world, and a rock-solid transatlantic orientation. There aren’t too many member states like that, and the EU certainly doesn’t want to lose them.
Second, the EU faces a Europe-wide sclerosis that has created structural unemployment, enormous debt, low growth rates, and lackluster innovation across the continent. Europeans have lived beyond their means and at future generations’ expense to such an extent that harder times with longer work and diminished privilege are unavoidable.
Europe’s lack of preparedness to deal with this sclerosis can be seen in the prolonged economic failure of France, another of the EU’s indispensable members and the second pillar, after Germany, of the single currency. The utter ossification of France’s political elite and the rusty mechanics of the country’s centralized republic have led to systemic paralysis and a huge populist backlash against modernity, openness, and economic and political liberalism.
To be sure, reforming France is ultimately a French task. But so much depends on it for the EU that some hard thinking needs to be done—at least in Berlin, London, and Brussels.
Third, the populist backlash visible in France is a harbinger of what might follow in the EU as a whole if the bloc does not decisively reform its governance structures soon. This will mean creating some sort of democratic participation in the EU that makes Europeans true citizens of the EU, not just token ones.
The European Parliament, in its current form, cannot address the EU’s democratic deficit.
Nor can subsidiarity or stronger national parliaments improve the union’s democratic credentials. If the current level of EU integration is to be maintained—or even increased, as necessity seems to dictate—the union will have to establish real Europe-wide participation in EU decisionmaking in the not-so-distant future.
This is highly unlikely. And yet, if it does not happen, the EU will start to come apart.
Democratic participation and its logical consequence, political union, are more likely within the eurozone than across the EU. Just as the currency’s founders envisioned, the euro will require a political union of some sort that creates legitimate governance of the EU’s already deeply developed economic integration.
READ MORE: The Eerie Silence Before the EU Reform Storm - Carnegie Europe
2/14/14
Switzerland's Fate After it Shot Itself in the Foot:- Switzerland’s Crossbow Misfires - Charlemagne
The Swiss have had a reputation for doughty independence since the days of
William Tell. He was made to shoot an apple off his son’s head with his
crossbow; in revenge, he killed the tyrannical overlord and ignited a
successful revolt against the Habsburgs.
This week the bolt struck at the European Union, when the Swiss voted for restrictions on Europe’s much-cherished free movement of people. To surging anti-EU and anti-immigrant parties, the referendum on February 9th was a victory for Switzerland’s “braggart spirit of freedom”, as Friedrich Schiller called it in his play about Tell. The Swiss government and business elite have been transfixed by a decision both opposed. The European establishment is scrambling to respond.
Switzerland is a member neither of the EU nor of the looser European Economic Area (EEA) that includes Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Nevertheless a web of more than 100 bilateral treaties binds the Swiss tightly into the “four freedoms” of movement underpinning the EU’s single market: of goods, services, people and capital. The repudiation of any one of these puts in question Switzerland’s ability to benefit from the others. And the vote has an impact well beyond the Alps.
read more: Charlemagne: Switzerland’s crossbow | The Economist
This week the bolt struck at the European Union, when the Swiss voted for restrictions on Europe’s much-cherished free movement of people. To surging anti-EU and anti-immigrant parties, the referendum on February 9th was a victory for Switzerland’s “braggart spirit of freedom”, as Friedrich Schiller called it in his play about Tell. The Swiss government and business elite have been transfixed by a decision both opposed. The European establishment is scrambling to respond.
Switzerland is a member neither of the EU nor of the looser European Economic Area (EEA) that includes Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Nevertheless a web of more than 100 bilateral treaties binds the Swiss tightly into the “four freedoms” of movement underpinning the EU’s single market: of goods, services, people and capital. The repudiation of any one of these puts in question Switzerland’s ability to benefit from the others. And the vote has an impact well beyond the Alps.
read more: Charlemagne: Switzerland’s crossbow | The Economist
1/13/14
Life expectancy USA: Century-long lifespans present challenges - by Barbara Peters Smith
The expectation that most American children younger than 14 today will live to see their 100th birthdays is beginning to seem a lot less far-fetched to many researchers who study worldwide longevity trends.
Read more: Century-long lifespans present challenges | HeraldTribune.com
Even now, one prominent scientist says the “life expectancy revolution” is giving us “roughly a 10-year postponement” of death.
“Mortality is being shifted outward,” said James Vaupel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. “All you have to do is look at the historical change in the start of old age, the point when your chance of death rises above 1 percent. For Swedish women in 1950 this happened at age 57; in 1960 it was age 63, and in 1970 it was 68.”
The prospect of living to 100 stirs up lots of emotions, but it is especially daunting for actuaries — the folks who juggle sophisticated math equations to set the prices and payouts for pensions, annuities, life insurance and long-term care policies.
If they bet wrong on when baby boomers will die, the insurance and financial services industries could be in turmoil.
Lately, their normally quiet and careful profession has experienced a dramatic upheaval: In the last 10 years, according to best estimates, the number of people over the age of 110 appears to have doubled.
Read more: Century-long lifespans present challenges | HeraldTribune.com
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