World
Only 9 EU countries will meet green goals under fiscal rules: report
![Only 9 EU countries will meet green goals under fiscal rules: report Only 9 EU countries will meet green goals under fiscal rules: report](https://static.euronews.com/articles/stories/07/56/71/30/1000x563_cmsv2_d9e02506-c870-57e0-93c9-d948b39fc133-7567130.jpg)
A report by the New Economics Basis appears to be like into the problem of reconciling the European Inexperienced Cope with the bloc’s fiscal guidelines.
Solely 9 out of the 27 member states of the European Union will be capable of have sufficient leeway to accommodate the investments wanted to realize the bloc’s local weather objectives after the introduction of the reformed fiscal guidelines, a brand new report has warned.
The findings, launched on Friday by the New Economics Basis, a British assume tank, illustrate a long-standing conundrum of the European Inexperienced Deal: how one can unleash the billions required to decarbonise the whole economic system whereas concurrently complying with legally-binding caps on the funds deficit and authorities debt.
The trail to discovering that stability appears to be a privilege reserved for only a few, the examine exhibits.
Denmark, Eire, Latvia and Sweden would be the solely EU nations with the fiscal house vital to succeed in the bloc’s overarching local weather goal and absolutely respect the phrases of the Paris Settlement, whereas Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Slovenia will handle to realize the previous however not the latter.
This can depart a few of the largest European economies, akin to France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, woefully under-resourced to fulfill the local weather agenda in time.
Underneath the Inexperienced Deal, the EU has set a obligatory goal of slashing greenhouse gasoline emissions by 55% earlier than the tip of the last decade, an ambition estimated to demand an eye-popping €520 billion in further investments on an annual foundation.
The New Economics Basis makes use of the €520-billion determine because the baseline for its estimations but in addition considers additional investments for social infrastructure and the digital transition, which mixed would symbolize 2.3% of the EU’s gross home product (GDP).
The report then takes a better have a look at the EU’s fiscal guidelines, which mandate all member states maintain their funds deficit beneath 3% and their authorities debt beneath 60% in relation to GDP.
These thresholds, which date again to the late Nineteen Nineties, are at the moment exceeded by numerous nations after years of heavy spending to cushion the worst results of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hovering inflation and record-breaking vitality costs.
The European Fee offered this week its long-awaited proposal to reform the principles, based mostly on mid-term structural plans that every capital will negotiate with Brussels to progressively sanitise their public funds. The overview is supposed to supply governments with higher possession and adaptability, however the newest proposal introduces a collection of necessary benchmarks to make sure debt ranges are visibly decrease on the finish of the four-year plan, no matter a rustic’s particular circumstances.
In line with the New Economics Basis evaluation, neither the current guidelines nor the proposed reform will likely be sufficient to inject adequate oxygen for local weather investments, leaving a majority of member states in a bind to reconcile the Inexperienced Cope with fiscal surveillance.
In actual fact, 5 nations – Austria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Malta and, crucially, Germany – will likely be at pains to muster the naked minimal ranges of inexperienced funding and keep beneath the deficit restrict.
In the meantime, the remaining 13 member states, representing 50% of the bloc’s GDP, will merely fail to strike a stability between the local weather and financial duties. Even states like Poland, Romania and Slovakia, whose debt ranges are already beneath the 60% mark, will fall quick as a result of their carbon-intensive financial fashions require even higher monetary help to remodel.
“These governments must select between slicing public spending, growing taxation or having inadequate inexperienced funding,” Sebastian Mang, co-author of the report, informed Euronews.
Mang spoke of a “contradiction” between the “real-life economics” of local weather change, which compels governments to reinvent their total societies, and the EU’s “overly restricted” fiscal guidelines, which in his view set “arbitrary caps” on deficit and debt.
Reacting to the report, a spokesperson for the European Fee rejected the existence of such contradiction and refused to additional touch upon “any simulations” in regards to the proposed reform.
“The very raison d’être of our proposal to reform the financial governance framework is to place two goals on par: on the one hand, to successfully scale back debt by means of a gradual, lifelike fiscal consolidation and, however, to spice up sustainable and inclusive reforms and funding that promote our widespread EU priorities, such because the European Inexperienced Deal,” a spokesperson mentioned on Friday.
Brussels had beforehand mentioned {that a} “great amount” of the €520 billion wanted to slash emissions by 55% would come from the personal sector, one thing that, in precept, would exempt governments from footing the hefty fill on their very own.
“Public funding is basically central to scale up,” Mang mentioned.
“We should not be terrified of acknowledging the necessary function that public funding performs in creating and shaping the market in direction of a fairer and extra sustainable economic system.”
Whereas Mang admitted the Fee’s reform based mostly on country-specific was going within the “proper path,” he urged two key modifications to the draft textual content.
First, the so-called “golden rule,” a authorized exemption to spare spending on local weather tasks from the debt and deficit calculations. And second, a everlasting facility funded by means of widespread EU debt to make sure all nations, particularly extremely indebted ones, have a line of credit score to pay for the inexperienced transition.
The Fee has already rejected the primary proposal, arguing it was “too controversial,” whereas the second, which might suggest contemporary borrowing, has been categorically – and repeatedly – shut down by frugal nations like Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland.
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World
The Year in Pictures 2024: Far From Ordinary
![The Year in Pictures 2024: Far From Ordinary The Year in Pictures 2024: Far From Ordinary](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/12/20/multimedia/2024-yip-topper-02-hmjv/2024-yip-topper-02-hmjv-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg)
When shots were fired at a campaign rally for former President Donald J. Trump on a July evening in Butler, Pa., the veteran New York Times photographer Doug Mills was just a few feet from him. As the Secret Service rushed toward Mr. Trump, Mr. Mills’s heart pounded when he realized what was happening.
Then instinct took over. Mr. Mills kept taking pictures, at an extremely fast shutter speed of one eight-thousandth of a second, capturing an image that illustrates the magnitude of that moment: Mr. Trump, his face streaked with blood, his fist raised in defiance.
This year was made up of such extraordinary moments. And Times photographers captured them in extraordinary images. The Year in Pictures brings you the most powerful, evocative and history-making of those images — and allows you to see the biggest stories of 2024 through our photographers’ eyes.
The presidential campaign — full of twists and turns — provided some of our most memorable photos. Kenny Holston captured a shaky President Biden struggling to find his footing in what turned out to be his only debate of the 2024 election. Erin Schaff conveyed the exhilaration surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris in the short sprint of her campaign. And Todd Heisler brought home the excitement of an 8-year-old girl in pigtails, Ms. Harris’s great-niece, who watched with pride as Ms. Harris accepted her party’s nomination for president.
Yet even as the American political campaign intensified, wars ground on overseas, creating new dangers and obstacles for our photojournalists determined to document the fighting. The war between Hamas and Israel escalated into a regional conflict, and our photographers depicted the Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon, the families forced to flee their homes and the neighborhoods reduced to rubble.
When Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six hostages in Gaza, our photographers revealed the pain of the captives’ families as they cried out at their loved ones’ funerals after 11 months of anguished waiting. And last month, Samar Abu Elouf, a Palestinian photographer for The Times, delivered some of the most indelible images of the year: a series of portraits of Gazans horribly injured in the war, including children who had lost arms, legs or eyes.
Children were also central to the work of Lynsey Addario, a veteran photographer who has been chronicling the war in Ukraine since Russia first invaded in 2022. Ms. Addario’s images tell the stories of young Ukrainians with cancer whose treatment was disrupted by the war, often with devastating results. One, a 5-year-old girl whose chemotherapy was upended by the Russian invasion, ultimately lost her life.
Our photographers embrace their calling of bearing witness to history, showing readers the atrocities and the suffering that might otherwise be overlooked. But they also see their mission more broadly, and aim to depict the richness and color of life by regularly bringing us pictures that delight and surprise.
Take the photo by Hiroko Masuike from the ticker-tape parade in October for the New York Liberty women’s basketball team. The young fans pictured radiate a kind of awe-struck joy, screaming to the players by name. Or the photographs that show the sense of wonder on the faces of people at Niagara Falls as they bask in the magic of a solar eclipse in April.
We hope you can spend some time with these pictures, and take in our photographers’ reflections on them. This collection of images is a way to remember the year, but it is also, we hope, an opportunity to better understand their craft and their devotion to producing the world’s best photojournalism.
Curation
Tanner Curtis, Jeffrey Henson Scales
Interviews
Dionne Searcey
Editing
Natasha King
Digital Design
Matt Ruby
Print Design
Mary Jane Callister, Felicia Vasquez
Production
Peter Blair, Eric Dyer, Wendy Lu, Nancy Ramsey, Jessica Schnall, Hannah Wulkan
Additional Production
Anna Diamond
New York Times Director of Photography
Meaghan Looram
World
French high court upholds ex-president's corruption conviction
![French high court upholds ex-president's corruption conviction French high court upholds ex-president's corruption conviction](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/12/ap24353492322281.jpg)
France’s highest court has upheld an appeal court decision which had found former President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling while he was the country’s head of state.
Sarkozy, 69, faces a year in prison, but is expected to ask to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet — as is the case for any sentence of two years or less.
He was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling by both a Paris court in 2021 and an appeals court in 2023 for trying to bribe a magistrate in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated.
“The convictions and sentences are therefore final,” a Court of Cassation statement on Wednesday said.
FRANCE’S MACRON NAMES CENTRIST ALLY BAYROU AS NEXT PRIME MINISTER
Sarkozy, who was France’s president from 2007 to 2012, retired from public life in 2017 though still plays an influential role in French conservative politics. He was among the guests who attended the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral earlier this month.
Sarkozy, in a statement posted on X, said “I will assume my responsibilities and face all the consequences.”
He added: “I have no intention of complaining. But I am not prepared to accept the profound injustice done to me.”
Sarkozy said he will seek to bring the case to the European Court of Human Rights, and hopes those proceedings will result in “France being condemned.”
He reiterated his “full innocence.”
“My determination is total in this case as in all others,” he concluded.
FILE – Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy leaves the Elysee Palace after a lunch with heads of states and officials, Monday, Sept. 30, 2019 in Paris. (AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu, File)
Sarkozy’s lawyer, Patrice Spinosi, said his client “will comply” with the ruling. This means the former president will have to wear an electronic bracelet, Spinosi said.
It is the first time in France’s modern history that a former president has been convicted and sentenced to a prison term for actions during his term.
Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was found guilty in 2011 of misuse of public money during his time as Paris mayor and was given a two-year suspended prison sentence.
Sarkozy has been involved in several other legal cases. He has denied any wrongdoing.
He faces another trial next month in Paris over accusations he took millions of dollars from then-Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to illegally finance his successful 2007 campaign.
The corruption case that led to Wednesday’s ruling focused on phone conversations that took place in February 2014.
At the time, investigative judges had launched an inquiry into the financing of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign. During the inquiry, they discovered that Sarkozy and his lawyer, Thierry Herzog, were communicating via secret mobile phones registered to the alias “Paul Bismuth.”
Wiretapped conversations on those phones led prosecutors to suspect Sarkozy and Herzog of promising magistrate Gilbert Azibert a job in Monaco in exchange for leaking information about another legal case involving Sarkozy. Azibert never got the post and legal proceedings against Sarkozy have been dropped in the case he was seeking information about.
Prosecutors had concluded, however, that the proposal still constitutes corruption under French law, even if the promise wasn’t fulfilled. Sarkozy vigorously denied any malicious intention in his offer to help Azibert.
Azibert and Herzog have also been found guilty in the case.
World
EU ministers water down proposal on child sexual abuse
![EU ministers water down proposal on child sexual abuse EU ministers water down proposal on child sexual abuse](https://static.euronews.com/articles/stories/08/91/67/00/1200x675_cmsv2_a0a850f1-ad6e-540d-a75b-729a2bd411b0-8916700.jpg)
A proposal on combatting child sexual abuse has been watered down by some EU justice ministers, with others expressing their regret at certain elements of the proposal being removed entirely.
With the development of new technologies, sexual abuse of children has seen a rise in Europe.
The EU is therefore looking to update its directive on combatting the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children, which dates back to 2011.
However, the EU Commission’s initial proposal has been watered down by the justice ministers of several EU countries. Seven Member States, which include Belgium, Finland and Ireland, expressed their regret at the removal of certain parts of the proposal.
“We deeply regret that the majority of Member States were unable to support a more ambitious approach aimed at ensuring that children who have reached the age of sexual consent receive the strongest and most comprehensive legal protection possible against unwanted sexual acts,” they wrote in a press release.
Key issues remained unaddressed
Isaline Wittorski, EU regional coordinator at child rights organisation ECPAT International, is particularly concerned regarding Member States’ opposition to the extension of the limitation period for pursuing child sexual abuse cases.
She also regrets that “grooming” – the process by which an adult intentionally approaches minors and manipulates them for sexual purposes – for children who have reached the age of sexual consent was not addressed by the Council.
“The Member States expressly refused to recognise in the text that a child in a state of shock or intoxication cannot be considered to have consented to sexual abuse”, she adds.
Harmonisation of penalties
The Commission’s proposal aims to harmonise the definition of sexual violence against minors and penalties within the EU.
It will also update criminal law in order to criminalise the rape of children broadcast live on the internet, as well as the possession and exchange of paedophile manuals and child abuse deepfakes.
MEPs, for their part, should support a more ambitious directive. Birgit Sippel, a German MEP (S&D), is calling for longer limitation periods.
“Many children who have been abused take years or even decades before they dare to go to court or to a police station. So this is a very important step that is missing from the current directive,” the MEP told Euronews.
“Unfortunately, what I see is that the Council is watering down almost everything that could improve the current directive. It will therefore be very important for the EU Parliament to maintain a very strong position and force the Council to go further and not limit itself to the current directive,” she added.
The proposal’s text can still be amended. After a vote by MEPs, negotiations will take place between the EU Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament.
It is estimated that one in five children in Europe is a victim of some form of sexual violence.
In 2022 alone, there were 1.5 million reports of child sexual abuse in the EU.
Ministers also failed to reach agreement on another regulatory text aimed at combatting the sexual abuse of children online, which aims to force platforms to detect and remove content depicting sexual violence against minors. This proposal caused a clash between children’s rights defenders and privacy protection lobbies.
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