The EU and UK have behaved like an “absentee landlord” in relation to Northern Ireland, an expert on Brexit in the region has said, as a new report by the Institute for Government has warned of more conflict across all issues “if the UK fails to manage the relationship” with Brussels.
Under the Brexit trade deal more than 20 committees and bodies are supposed to be set up to cement a working post-Brexit relationship on everything from fishing to energy supplies and aviation deals.
A further dozen or so were due to be created following the signing of the Northern Ireland protocol a year ago, and it is the failure to set up these management structures that is being seen as the cause of rising tensions in the region that led to the withdrawal of Brexit staff at ports last week.
“The protocol is not an easy thing to start up with a click of the fingers. But there has been this sense of an absentee landlord with all these rules coming into play and with no means of direct engagement to help manage the consequences of it,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of sociology at Queen’s University in Belfast and a former adviser to the government’s now defunct Brexit department.
“The main concern of the European commission has been to demonstrate and prove to other member states that the single market is being protected,” she said, adding that such a one-dimensional approach had been a misfit for Northern Ireland, a region still going through a post-conflict peace process that the EU itself had put to the fore of negotiations.
The report by the Institute for Government on managing the UK’s relationship with the EU makes a similar point on the wider Brexit relationship and says the structures for management need to be put in place urgently.
Bronwen Maddox, the thinktank’s director, described it in a podcast on Saturday as like “the hidden wiring was missing”.
The institute says the committees will serve as platforms for expert and on-the-ground reporting which will act, in Northern Ireland’s case, as an early warning system to head off problems before they arise.
Its report says “the government appears inclined at every turn to downplay the significance of the UK’s relationship with the EU – and to have a preference for dealing bilaterally with individual member states rather than with the EU institutions.
“It may also fear that creating an overelaborate bureaucracy to manage the EU relationship would produce a mindset where the EU looms larger in internal thinking than it needs to.
“The government wanted a Canada-style agreement with the EU but … Brussels will never regard the UK as simply Toronto on Thames – and if the UK fails to manage the relationship well it may find it ends up with more conflicts with the EU than if it had spent more time thinking in advance about the issue.”
Under the Northern Ireland protocol a working consultative group was supposed to have been set up to feed into the UK-EU joint committee overseeing the implementation of Brexit.
But although the protocol was signed off more than a year ago it was never set up, leading to the rigorous application of it that has led to restrictions on food, pets and plants, all of which has been seized upon by loyalist communities and others as evidence of separation from Great Britain.
But Hayward says there are solutions for Michael Gove and the European commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, who will meet next week, with part of the protocol explicitly allowing for an easing of controls at ports.
Article 6.2 of the protocol states the committee shall regard Northern Ireland’s “integral place in the United Kingdom’s internal market” and make “best endeavours to facilitate trade between Northern Ireland and the other parts of the UK”.
It adds that the ease of trade between Northern Ireland and the UK shall be kept under constant review and the committee can at any time make “appropriate recommendations with a view to avoiding controls at the ports and the airports of Northern Ireland to the extent possible”.
Hayward said: “The hope would be that those EU observers could recognise the nature of the situation and would be able to see where there could be flexibility and pragmatism.”
• The headline and text of this article were amended on 7 February 2021 to better reflect Prof Hayward’s comments.
The UK wants the European Union to know that it isn’t one to be “pushed around” over the Northern Ireland issue, according to Attorney General for England and Wales Suella Braverman.
The AG, who also holds the position of advocate general for Northern Ireland, told The Sunday Telegraph that the UK “will do whatever it takes to ensure we get a good settlement for the Union”.
“Boris stood up to the EU last year and we got a good deal. I am really confident we are not going to let the EU push Northern Ireland around”, Braverman added firmly.
Suella Braverman the Attorney General for England and Wales, walks from Downing Street to attend a cabinet meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2020
The official also cited remarks made by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who during a Q&A session in the Parliament this week said that the UK “will do everything” it needs to do “to ensure that there is no barrier down the Irish Sea” – even if it means triggering Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The clause is specifically designed to allow the EU or the UK to override the agreement in relation to the Irish issue if the protocol starts causing “economic, societal or environmental difficulties”.
Johnson’s comments came as a response to Brussels’ call at the end of January to introduce export controls – and effectively checks – along the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland amid attempts to prevent COVID vaccines from being shipped to the UK from the EU over disagreements regarding AstraZeneca supplies. The decision was not made in consultation with either London, Dublin, or Belfast, and unsurprisingly caused outrage among British and Irish officials, who pointed out that Brussels had been the one that repeatedly told the UK about the impossibility of having a hard border between the countries due to their troubled history. The proposal was quickly reversed.
A woman walks her dog past past graffiti with the words ‘No Irish Sea Border’ in Belfast city centre, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021
But the UK is still not happy about some parts of the agreement, namely new paperwork and checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain under the protocol – an issue that left Belfast with empty supermarket shelves in January, shortly after the Brexit deal came into force.
Johnson said that if no resolution is found to the issue, Britain could respond in the same manner the EU did when making its call to trigger Article 16.
The leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party Arlene Foster said this week that the Irish clause “has not worked, cannot work”, and called on the prime minister to replace it.
According to a report by the Daily Mail, “physical inspections” of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland “have been suspended at ports amid intimidation of staff” as the row over the Northern Ireland Protocol continues.
Amanda S. C. Gorman (born 1998) is an American poet and activist. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015. In 2021, she delivered her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden. Her inauguration poem generated international acclaim, stimulated her two books to reach best-seller status, and earned her a professional management contract.
Early life and education
Gorman was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1998. She was raised by her single mother, Joan Wicks, a 6th-grade English teacher in Watts, with her two siblings. She has a twin sister, Gabrielle, who is an activist and filmmaker. Gorman has said she grew up in an environment with limited television access. She has described her young self as a “weird child” who enjoyed reading and writing and was encouraged by her mother.
Gorman has an auditory processing disorder and is hypersensitive to sound. She also had a speech impediment during childhood. Gorman participated in speech therapy during her childhood and Elida Kocharian of The Harvard Crimson wrote in 2018, “Gorman doesn’t view her speech impediment as a crutch—rather, she sees it as a gift and a strength.” Gorman told The Harvard Gazette in 2018, “I always saw it as a strength because since I was experiencing these obstacles in terms of my auditory and vocal skills, I became really good at reading and writing. I realized that at a young age when I was reciting the Marianne Deborah Williamson quote that ’Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure’ to my mom.” In 2021, Gorman told CBS This Morning co-host Anthony Mason that she used songs as a form of speech therapy, and explained “My favorite thing to practice was the song Aaron Burr, Sir, from “Hamilton” because it is jam-packed with R’s. And I said, ’if I can keep up with Leslie in this track, then I am on my way to being able to say this R in a poem.”
Gorman attended New Roads, a private school in Santa Monica, for grades K–12. As a senior, she received a Milken Family Foundation college scholarship. She studied sociology at Harvard College, graduating cum laude in 2020, as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Career
2014-15
Gorman’s art and activism focus on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. She has said she was inspired to become a youth delegate for the United Nations in 2013 after watching a speech by Pakistani Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai. Gorman was chosen as the youth poet laureate of Los Angeles in 2014. In 2014 it was reported that Gorman was “editing the first draft of a novel the 16‑year‑old has been writing over the last two years.” She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015.
In 2016, Gorman founded the nonprofit organization One Pen One Page, a youth writing and leadership program. In 2017, she became the first author to be featured on XQ Institute’s Book of the Month, a monthly giveaway to share inspiring Gen Z’s favorite books. She wrote a tribute for black athletes for Nike and has a book deal with Viking Children’s Books to write two children’s picture books.
In 2017, Gorman became the first youth poet to open the literary season for the Library of Congress, and she has read her poetry on MTV. She wrote “In This Place: An American Lyric” for her September 2017 performance at the Library of Congress, which commemorated the inauguration of Tracy K. Smith as Poet Laureate of the United States. The Morgan Library and Museum acquired her poem “In This Place (An American Lyric)” and displayed it in 2018 near works by Elizabeth Bishop.
While at Harvard, Gorman became the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate in April 2017. She was chosen from five finalists. In 2017, Gorman won a $10,000 grant from media company OZY in the annual OZY Genius Awards through which 10 college students are given “the opportunity to pursue their outstanding ideas and envisioned innovations”.
In 2017, Gorman said she intends to run for president in 2036 and she has subsequently often repeated this hope. On being selected as one of Glamour magazine’s 2018 “College Women of the Year”, she said: “Seeing the ways that I as a young black woman can inspire people is something I want to continue in politics. I don’t want to just speak works; I want to turn them into realities and actions.” After she read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for Gorman’s 2036 aspiration.
In 2019, Gorman was chosen as one of The Root magazine’s “Young Futurists”, an annual list of “the 25 best and brightest young African-Americans who excel in the fields of social justice and activism, arts and culture, enterprise and corporate innovation, science and technology, and green innovation”.
In May 2020, Gorman appeared in an episode of the web series Some Good News hosted by John Krasinski, where she had the opportunity to virtually meet Oprah Winfrey and issued a virtual commencement speech to those who could not attend commencements due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.
In 2020, Gorman presented “Earthrise”, a poem focused on the climate crisis.
Gorman read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021, and is the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration in United States history.[ Jill Biden recommended her for the inauguration. After January 6, 2021, Gorman amended her poem’s wording to address the storming of the United States Capitol. During the week before the inauguration, she told Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, “My hope is that my poem will represent a moment of unity for our country” and “with my words, I’ll be able to speak to a new chapter and era for our nation.”
Before her performance, Gorman told “CBS This Morning” co-host Anthony Mason, “One of the preparations that I do always whenever I perform is I say a mantra to myself, which is ’I’m the daughter of black writers. We’re descended from freedom fighters who broke through chains and changed the world. They call me.’ And that is the way in which I prepare myself for the duty that needs to get done.”
Soon after Gorman’s performance at the inauguration, her two upcoming books, the poetry collection The Hill We Climb and a project for youth, Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem, were at the top of Amazon’s bestseller list. Both are scheduled to be released in September 2021. A book version of the poem “The Hill We Climb” is scheduled to be released on March 16, 2021, with a foreword by Oprah Winfrey, and each of Gorman’s three upcoming books will have first printings of one million copies.
IMG Models and its parent company WME signed Gorman for representation in fashion, beauty, and talent endorsements. She is represented in the publishing industry by Writers House and by the Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown and Passman law firm.
Gorman was commissioned to compose an original poem to be recited at Super Bowl LV’s pregame ceremony, to be held on February 7, 2021, as an introduction to the three honorary captains who would preside over the coin-toss.
Personal life
Gorman is a black Catholic, a member of St. Brigid Catholic Church in her hometown of Los Angeles. On the day after the Biden inaugural, she appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden, where she said that Corden was “[her] favorite human being ever created.”Michael Cirelli, executive director of Urban Word NYC, described her as a “powerhouse” and has joked that “[Gorman’s] bio goes out of date every two weeks.”In 2014 it was reported that she “aspires to be a human rights advocate.”
Honors and recognition
2014: Chosen as youth poet laureate of Los Angeles
2017: Chosen as National Youth Poet Laureate
2017: OZY Genius Award
2018: Named one of Glamour magazine’s College Women of the Year
2019: Named on The Root’s “Young Futurists” list
2021: Selected to read at the inauguration of Joe Biden, becoming the youngest poet ever to read at a US presidential inauguration
Bibliography
Books
The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough. Urban Word LA. 2015. ISBN 978-0-9900122-9-0.
Taylor, Keren, ed. (2013). “Candy Cane”; “Poetry Is”. You are here : the WriteGirl journey. Los Angeles: WriteGirl Publications. pp. 210, 281. ISBN 978-0-98370812-4. OCLC 868918187.
The Hill We Climb: Poems. Viking Books for Young Readers. 2021. ISBN 978-0-593-46506-6. OCLC 1232185776.
The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country. Viking Books for Young Readers. 2021. ISBN 978-0-593-46527-1. OCLC 1232234825.
Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem. Viking Books for Young Readers. 2021. ISBN 978-0-593-20322-4. OCLC 1232149089.
Plymouth fishing boat trawlerman and captain of the stern trawler ‘Nicola Anne’ Kyle Bishop Meades controls the winch as the net is released for the first trawl of the day, at sea off the south-west coast of England. – AFP
LONDON: Brexit and coronavirus have slashed the volume of surface freight leaving Britain for the European Union by 68 percent from last January, according to figures published in The Observer yesterday. The stark drop in goods carried on ferries and through the Channel tunnel was registered by lobby group the Road Haulage Association (RHA) after a survey of its international members, said the weekly.
RHA chief executive Richard Burnett has sent a letter to minister Michael Gove warning that the new checks required since Britain fully left the EU’s single market on January 1 were deterring exporters from shipping to the continent. He said the government had only hired around 20 percent of the extra border staff needed to process the extra paperwork.
“Michael Gove is the master of extracting information from you and giving nothing back,” Burnett told the newspaper. “Pretty much every time we have written over the last six months he has not responded in writing.” Britain sent around £294 billion ($403 billion, 335 billion euros) of goods to the EU in 2019, accounting for around 43 percent of its total exports, according to official figures.
The situation threatens to get worse in July, when Britain implements its full range of physical border checks. Trade experts told the paper that the sharp fall in exports was the “coincidence of Brexit and the pandemic”. Britain and Europe have imposed tight travel restrictions during the latest wave of the pandemic, with France temporarily imposing a total ban on vehicles entering from Britain shortly before Christmas.
Truckers heading over the Channel to France now require a negative COVID test before making the crossing. A government spokesperson told The Observer that “we do not recognize the figure provided on exports”. “Thanks to the hard work of hauliers and traders to prepare for change, disruption at the border has so far been minimal and freight movements are now close to normal levels, despite the COVID-19 pandemic,” they added. – AFP
Distinguished Policy Veterans Examine Implications of Iran Diplomat’s Terrorism Conviction, Urge a Firm Iran Policy – Book Publishing Industry Today – EIN Presswire
Rising unemployment, corruption scandals and the scourge of Covid 19, which has infected more than quarter of a million and killed more than ten thousand Ecuadorians, is the bleak challenge, scenario and landscape, which faces the next President of the country.
According to pollsters, no one will gain the necessary forty percent of the vote and ten percent lead in round one, so it`s on to the second round on April 11th, involving alliances, defections and political deals.
The big two slugging it out, are thirty five year old Andres Arauz of the Democratic Center Party, and sixty five year old Guillermo Lasso, the Candidate of the Creating Opportunities Party, which he himself created in 2013.
Andres is the former Knowledge and Human Talent Minister, ex Central Bank Director and wizz kid protogee of former President Rafael Correra, who`s in exile in Belgium, after being convicted of campaign finance law offenses, during his era. Something which he denies. Andres aims to increase taxes on trans national companies, reinstate generous public spending, boost the Central Bank and provide one thousand dollars to one million families to stave off dire economic hardship wrought by Covid.
It`s Guillermo`s third try for the biggest job. A former banker successful businessman and Minister of Economy, he vows an anti corruption commission, tax cuts and one million new jobs created by international investment, particularly concerning petroleum and mining.
Thirteen million people are registered to vote, and it`s mandatory. But with the pandemic, appreciably less will make it to the polling booths. The winner will be mindful to heed the drastically altering opinion polls of outgoing one term President Lenin Moreno, who started on the crest of a wave and ended up down deep… in the wild blue yonder.
A survey of worldwide hauliers has discovered the quantity of exports travelling from British ports to the EU fell 68 per cent final month in contrast to the identical interval final 12 months.
The analysis by the Road Haulage Association (RHA) prompted it to write to Cabinet Minister Michael Gove to name for help, notably with growing the variety of customs brokers from 10,000 to 50,0000 to assist companies with additional post-Brexit paperwork.
Chief govt Richard Burnett instructed The Observer that the RHA had additionally discovered 65-75 per cent of autos arriving from the EU have been returning to the bloc empty due to an absence of products, hold-ups within the UK and since British firms had halted exports to the continent.
Mr Burnett stated he discovered it “deeply frustrating and annoying that ministers have chosen not to listen to the industry and experts”, who’ve constantly referred to as for higher session by Government.
He stated Mr Gove had not responded in writing “pretty much every time we have written over the last six months”.
“He tends to get officials to start working on things. But the responses are a complete waste of time because they don’t listen to what the issues were that we raised in the first place,” Mr Burnett stated.
The Government supplied a six-month grace interval following Brexit, permitting the suspension of the complete vary of bodily checks on imports till July.
On Thursday, former Tory chancellor Lord Lamont warned pink tape linked to the Brexit deal had rendered most enterprise between Britain and Northern Ireland uneconomic.
Two weeks earlier, the RHA stated a 12-month grace interval and pressing monetary assist have been wanted to iron out issues with the post-Brexit Irish Sea commerce border.
The UK Government insisted “goods are flowing effectively” between Britain and Northern Ireland.
Read extra:
But Mr Burnett stated on January 20: “This is a monetary precipice haemorrhaging cash.
“There needs to be financial intervention immediately.”
Total wheat production in the EU and the UK over the marketing year 2021-22 (July-June) is likely to reach 147 million mt, up 8% on the year, amid higher acreage and better expected yields, S&P Global Platts Analytics said in a report Feb. 1.
Total harvested area for wheat in the EU and the UK is likely to grow 6% year on year to 26 million hectares in 2021-22, the report said.
“National-level average total wheat yield is set slightly above the five-year average at 5.66 mt per hectare, assuming near normal weather during the growing season,” the report said.
The EU, along with the UK, is likely to produce 135.8 million mt wheat in 2020-21, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
In the largest wheat producing-exporting country in the EU, France, wheat acreage is expected to increase 18% from 2020-21 to 5.3 million hectares, and with trend yields set at 7.05 mt/hectare — total wheat production is estimated at 37.4 million mt — which can move up to 40 million mt if supported by favorable weather, Platts Analytics said.
“In Platts Analytics best-case scenario, with a mild winter, favorable conditions in spring and a potential to slightly increase spring wheat area, the EU-27+UK could produce over 154 million mt of wheat, while in contrast, in a low-case scenario, with possible lower crop survival rate after winter and poor weather in spring and early summer, production may drop to below 135 million mt,” the report added.
Source: Platts
Britain’s financial services industry should focus on winning business in the United States and Asia rather than the European Union in the aftermath of Brexit, Barclays CEO Jes Staley said.
While still the only global financial centre to rival New York, the City of London has seen some business and job losses since Britain’s shock 2016 Brexit vote and has been largely cut off from the EU, its biggest single customer, by the divorce. However, some see the distancing of London from Europe as an opportunity for it to carve out a more dynamic global role.
“Brexit is more than likely on the positive side than on the negative side,” Barclays CEO Staley told the BBC.
“What London needs to be focused on is not Frankfurt or Paris, needs to be focused on New York and Singapore,” Staley, an American banker who spent 30 years in senior roles at U.S. financial services giant JPMorgan, added.
New York retained the top spot in a survey of global financial centres published in September by Global Financial Centres Index, with London strengthening its position in second.
While trading in euro shares and some derivatives has left for other European centres, including some to New York, since Brexit, no one European competitor has emerged as a dominant force in the EU and so London views New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore as its true rivals.
London dominates the world’s $6.6 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, is the biggest centre for international banking and the second largest fintech hub after the United States.
“What the UK needs and London needs, is to make sure that the City is one of the best places, whether [it is in terms of] regulation or law or language, or talent,” Staley said.
Echoing other leading City of London figures, he cautioned, however, against a bonfire of regulation.
“I wouldn’t burn one piece of regulation,” added the boss of Barclays, which he said employs some 50,000 people in the United Kingdom, roughly 20,000 outside of the UK and 10,000 in the U.S.
“Some amount of capital has moved but London is still obviously the main centre for Barclays….there are some jobs that are going to Europe, that otherwise would have been in the UK, but it’s in the hundreds,” Staley added.
Interview with Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, conducted by Marie-Pierre Gröndahl and Hervé Gattegno
7 February 2021
There’s been a glut of bad news throughout Europe recently. How can we hold to the economic projections?
Uncertainties are indeed multiplying. As far as the economists at the ECB can remember, there have never been as many. Our projections are published every three months. One way of preserving a degree of optimism despite the current circumstances is simply to think back to the ECB’s projections released in September 2020 and the multiple uncertainties they took into account. What were the salient facts back then? The terms of the final Brexit deal were not yet known. The risks of a no-deal exit were still present, as much for the European Union as for the United Kingdom. On the pandemic front, no vaccines had been found and it was impossible to predict when they might become available. The US elections, of crucial importance for the whole world, had not yet been held. All of these major uncertainties have now been resolved, notably the most important one of all – the availability of reliable vaccines – because several have since been authorised by the competent international health authorities. That’s a new situation and it’s certainly a reason to be optimistic. But is it enough to hope that 2021 will be a better year than the one before?
At the ECB we remain convinced that 2021 will be a recovery year. The economic recovery has been delayed, but not derailed. People are obviously waiting impatiently for it. We expect the upswing to gather pace around the middle of the year, even if the uncertainties persist. We are not immune to unknown risks surfacing. Let’s be clear: we will not see a return to pre-pandemic levels of economic activity before mid-2022. What rate of growth do you expect for the euro area this year?
Around 4%. Maybe a little lower. This would already be a sharp increase relative to the contraction of 6.8% registered in the euro area in 2020. Everything will depend on the vaccination policies and the rollout of the campaigns. And on the economic measures taken by governments in response to health requirements. On 21 July 2020, the European Heads of State and Government agreed on an exceptional recovery plan worth €750 billion. Are you concerned about the plan’s implementation?
There is no doubt that the current crisis has strengthened the European Union. The decision taken by the Member States to borrow jointly for the first time marks a moment of exceptional cohesion in the history of the European project. But the momentum must absolutely be kept up. The pandemic has an accelerating impact on everything: so we, too, need to speed up. You fight fire with fire. It’s better to act quickly, even if you might then have to backtrack to correct things that may have gone wrong.
The plan needs to be ratified in time for the European Commission to borrow as planned next June, and to then distribute the funds among the Member States of the European Union. In order for it to do so, all of the national recovery plans, comprising measures to promote green and digital transitions, will have to be submitted to the Commission very soon. How will the ECB continue to act?
For its part, the ECB has been supporting households, firms and the Member States’ economies since the outset of the crisis. It acted extremely quickly, unveiling an initial €750 billion programme on 18 March 2020, followed by two other expansions amounting today to a total envelope of €1.85 trillion. Faced with the spread of the virus, it was important to prevent a fragmentation of financing conditions across euro area countries. We committed ourselves to remaining active in the markets until at least March 2022 in order to support and preserve financing conditions in Europe. Our preferred tool is the pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP), which differs from the ECB’s other asset purchase programmes, for two reasons: it is an emergency programme targeted to this crisis, and it gives us the option of deviating from the usual limits if they stand in the way of the support we need to provide to euro area economies. It’s an exceptional and temporary tool. As I have been saying since March 2020, our commitment to the euro has no limits. We will act for as long as the pandemic is causing a crisis situation in the euro area. We think that the time horizon of March 2022 is reasonable and that the PEPP envelope is appropriate. But if the ECB’s Governing Council thinks there is a need to do more, over a longer period, we will do more. However, if the whole envelope does not need to be used, we will not use it in full. That’s the principle of flexibility. Doesn’t this accommodative monetary policy stance create risks?
We don’t see anything that gives us cause for concern. We do not yet see property bubbles at the euro area level, but we see signs of overvaluations in some of the euro area’s major cities in France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium, for example.
That said, it is vital that we continue to support lending across the entire economic system. Banks provide assets as collateral to the ECB and in return they receive funds at very low rates. They then use these funds to lend to firms. The priority is to ensure businesses have access to the funding they need. There is no alternative: when the economy is protected in this way, the ECB’s role is not to give one business priority over another. Collectively, we must give priority to growth, competition and innovation. At that point, the natural selection of companies will set in. How should we react once the crisis is over?
Once the pandemic is over and the immediate economic crisis is behind us, we will have a tricky situation on our hands. We will have to be well organised. And not repeat past mistakes, like closing all the taps at once, cutting off both fiscal and monetary stimulus. Instead, we need to offer flexible support to our economies, and then reduce this support gradually as and when the pandemic subsides, and the recovery takes hold. Economies will then have to learn how to function again without the help of any of the exceptional measures that had to be introduced as a result of the crisis. I am not worried about this, because the capacity for recovery is strong. Our economies are resilient. To convince ourselves of this, we only have to look at the remarkable improvement recorded by the French economy in the third quarter of 2020, when quarterly growth rebounded by 18.5%. Don’t the gaps between euro area Member States make it difficult to come up with a common monetary policy?
Above all else, the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis has exacerbated any pre-existing gaps. That is why the Next Generation EU recovery plan is even more crucial, particularly the support it will provide through the grants given to each Member State, tailored precisely to their specific national situations. For example, Italy will receive around €200 billion in grants and loans. It is therefore vital that this exceptional solution is not wasted and that it is rolled out as soon as possible. Concerns are surfacing about the very high debt levels of Member States. Is there any basis for these concerns?
There is no denying that our monetary policy would be more effective if there was a greater convergence of Member States’ economic policies. All euro area countries will emerge from this crisis with high levels of debt. There is no doubt that they will manage to repay this debt. Debt is managed over the long term. Investments made in sectors that are vital for the future will bring stronger growth. The recovery will create jobs and will therefore have a unifying effect. We are transitioning to a different economy, one that is more digital, greener, more committed to combatting climate change and to protecting biodiversity. It will also be driven by new values – which young people are already expressing through their job and career demands – which will meet a new set of parameters. Healthcare in particular is one of their main areas of focus. A letter signed by 100 economists is calling for cancellation of the public debt owned by the ECB. How would you respond to them?
Cancelling this debt is inconceivable. It would be in violation of the EU Treaty which strictly prohibits monetary financing. This rule is a fundamental pillar of the common framework underpinning the euro. The EU Treaty has been agreed and ratified freely and voluntarily by EU Member States. Rather than expending so much energy asking for debt to be cancelled, it would be much more worthwhile to focus instead on how this debt should be used, on how public funds will be allocated, on which sectors we should invest in for the future. Those are the things we should currently be talking about. Your predecessor Mario Draghi has been asked to form a new government in Italy. What is your view of his nomination?
Italy and Europe are fortunate that Mario Draghi has accepted the challenge of helping to end Italy’s economic and social crisis at a time when it is the euro area country hardest hit by the pandemic.
I have full confidence in Mario Draghi’s ability to rise to this challenge. He has all the requisite qualities: he has the knowledge, courage and humility needed to complete his new task, i.e. to restart the Italian economy with help from Europe. Janet Yellen, the former chair of the US Federal Reserve, has become US treasury secretary. Is it good news?
Having a woman hold this position for the first time is wonderful news! What’s more, Janet Yellen has the ideal profile given the circumstances: she is an economist and a labour market specialist. Employment will play a crucial role in restarting the economy. She is also very warm and pleasant. She is as humble as she is brilliant. Her appointment will also help promote smooth economic relations between Europe and the United States. We will once again see a cooperative approach being taken in key areas, such as international trade and how to deal with the challenges of climate change. You have called for the “greening” of monetary policy. Is this really part of a central bank’s mandate?
Absolutely. We all have a role to play in combatting climate change. The ECB is acting in accordance with its price stability mandate; climate change poses a risk to price stability, since it has an impact on growth, price levels and the economy in general. There is a legitimate legal basis for our stance. Public opinion is in favour of taking environmental, social and good governance criteria into account.
