EU leaders will talk to Chinese President Xi Jinping seeking trade and investment Monday, despite tensions over Hong Kong’s freedoms and Beijing’s treatment of its Uighur minority.

Chinese officials, EU chiefs Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold a video-conference to replace a full summit with all 27 EU leaders cancelled because of coronavirus.

China says an investment deal — already seven years in the making — can be agreed this year, but EU officials warn obstacles remain and insist they will not swallow unfavourable terms simply to cut a deal.

“Even if there is a political objective to accelerate negotiations and conclude them by the end of the year, we will have this only if it is something worth having,” an EU official said.

Brussels says “significant progress” has been made in talks since a similar video summit in June, and officials hope to agree a roadmap to a deal by the end of the year — they also want Beijing to improve market access for European companies.

“The EU must define its own interests, and must be strong and independent of both China and the United States,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told the German weekly Welt am Sonntag.

Brussels wants to reinforce respect for intellectual property, to end obligations to transfer technology and to reduce subsidies for Chinese public enterprises.

• China-US tensions –

No major breakthrough is expected on Monday but the EU side hopes to persuade Xi to give fresh political impetus to the talks — and to allow his negotiators more room to compromise.

The meeting comes as ties between China and the US deteriorate, with both sides locked in fierce recriminations over trade disputes, human rights and the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

Washington and Beijing have imposed curbs on each other’s diplomats, after another tit-for-tat move in July when the two governments ordered the closure of consulates in Houston and Chengdu.

Both sides have sought to enlist the EU in their spat and, during a visit to Brussels by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in June, EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell mooted talks to forge a common transatlantic front against China.

But little progress has been made on this initiative and broadly Brussels has preferred a middle path, treating Beijing as both a potential partner and a “systemic rival”.

“The EU stands firm on its interests and values but also wants to cooperate with China,” a senior EU official said.

• Hong Kong –

The EU will press Xi on Hong Kong, where Beijing has imposed a controversial new security law — a move denounced by the West as an assault on the city’s freedoms.

After the June summit, von der Leyen warned China would face “very negative consequences” if it pressed ahead with the law and the EU would limit exports to Hong Kong of equipment that could be used for surveillance and repression.

European concerns about Beijing’s rights record are growing. During a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Berlin earlier this month, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called China out over Hong Kong and its treatment of minority Uighurs.

But the European Union is far from united on how to deal with China, with some member states urging a tougher stance on rights and the environment, and others wanting to boost trade.

But China as its own concerns.

China announced Saturday it was banning imports of pork products from Germany after the European country confirmed its first case of African swine fever.

Germany is Europe‘s biggest pork producer and recently saw a surge in demand from China after it suffered an outbreak of the same disease.

Meanwhile, Beijing has used its mammoth “Belt and Road” infrastructure scheme to effectively pick off investment-hungry EU member states such as Greece, Portugal and Italy.

LONDON. — Former prime ministers Tony Blair and John Major said yesterday Britain must drop a “shocking” plan to pass legislation that breaks its divorce treaty with the European Union, in a breach of international law.

The British government said explicitly last week that it plans to break international law by breaching parts of the Withdrawal Agreement treaty that it signed in January, when it formally left the EU.

“What is being proposed now is shocking,” Major and Blair, who were adversaries in the 1990s as Conservative and Labour leaders, wrote in a joint letter published by The Sunday Times.

“How can it be compatible with the codes of conduct that bind ministers, law officers and civil servants deliberately to break treaty obligations?”

Theresa May, the predecessor of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has also questioned whether international partners would be able to trust Britain in future.

Johnson’s Internal Market Bill is aimed at ensuring Britain’s four constituent nations can trade freely with one another after leaving the EU, but the government says that requires overriding part of the withdrawal treaty it signed with Brussels.

British ministers say the bill is a “safety net” in the event there is no trade deal reached with the bloc, but top EU officials say it undermines both the withdrawal treaty and trust in future talks.

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said yesterday that the Withdrawal Agreement on Northern Ireland “is not a threat to the integrity of the UK”, and had been agreed by the two sides to protect peace on the island of Ireland.

“We could not have been clearer about the consequences of Brexit,” Barnier said on Twitter.

His British counterpart David Frost responded by saying London had to reserve powers in the new bill in order to keep the peace in Ireland.

Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, described the legislation as wrong yesterday.

“We have broken the trust of our international partners,” Starmer wrote in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, adding that his party would oppose the bill in parliament unless changes were made.

European lawmakers have warned they would not approve any new trade deal unless the withdrawal agreement was fully implemented, while there is also talk of possible legal action.

“The reputation of the UK . . . as a trusted negotiating partner on important issues like this is being damaged in a very serious way,” Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney told the BBC yesterday.

Greece’s Prime Minister is demanding the European Union take greater responsibility for managing migration, as authorities scramble to find new accommodation for 12,000 people left homeless after fire gutted an overcrowded camp.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis blamed some residents at the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos for trying to blackmail his Government by deliberately setting the fires that destroyed the camp last week.

But he said this could be an opportunity to improve how the EU handles a key challenge.

“It [the burning of Moria] was a tragedy. These images were bad,” Mr Mitsotakis said.

“It was a warning bell to all to become sensitised. Europe cannot afford a second failure on the migration issue.”

Human rights activists have criticised the squalor at the Moria refugee camp, which was built to house 2,750 but became overcrowded with around 12,500 refugees and asylum-seekers who fled across the sea from Turkey.

Since the fires, which came after the camp faced a coronavirus lockdown, thousands of people have camped outside and on highways near Moria, under police guard.

Voluntary relocation to new camp in coming days

Many have protested the Greek Government for refusing to allow the homeless migrants to leave Lesbos for the mainland.

Residents are also unhappy their island is being used as a dumping ground for migrants.

Mr Mitsotakis said he has spoken to French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the reallocation of at least some migrants from Moria, but he said there will be a new, permanent refugee camp on Lesbos.

The Greek army has been setting up tents at a former artillery range, about four kilometres from the old camp.

Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis said an estimated 1,000 Moria residents would be relocated to the new tent city.

“At the moment, it’s happening on a voluntary basis,” Mr Mitarakis said.

Mr Mitarakis said those entering the new camp would undergo rapid testing for coronavirus, and that five new cases have been found so far.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis expressed solidarity with the migrants on Lesbos and called for a dignified welcome for them.

The Pope visited the Moria camp in 2016, and took 12 Syrian refugees with him when he returned to Rome.

ABC/AP

BEIRUT, Sept 13 — The European Union’s commissioner for crisis management yesterday called for the urgent formation of a “credible” government in Lebanon before a second phase of financial support for the crisis-hit country can be released.

Janez Lenarcic said the EU had mobilised €64 million (RM314.9 million) for the emergency response to a devastating port blast that killed more than 190 people and wounded thousands in Beirut on August 4.

The next round of funding would be for reconstruction, he said, but warned it would have to go hand in hand with reforms because the international community was not willing to support practices “that led to financial collapse and economic crisis”.

The tragedy occurred when hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser that had been left unattended in a port warehouse exploded.

It came as the Lebanese people were already reeling from the country’s worst economic crisis in decades and rekindled smouldering rage over official neglect and a political class accused of corruption.

The government resigned in the wake of the disaster, but Lebanon has rejected an international investigation, saying it would carry out its own probe aided by foreign experts.

“We need a credible government that enjoys the confidence of the Lebanese people and is determined to take the country in the right direction,” Lenarcic told AFP after arriving in Lebanon on board a humanitarian aid flight.

“Lebanon’s political class has to provide what people demand and this is also what the international community expects. I’m talking about governance, not only economic reforms. There has to be a change in the way this place is governed,” he said.

Lebanon’s worst economic crunch since the 1975-1990 war has seen the local currency plummet against the US dollar and poverty double to more than half of the population. The government has blamed central bank governor Riad Salameh for the crisis, though he has rejected all charges.

Lenarcic said reaching an agreement with the IMF should also be an early priority for the next government.
The IMF said on Thursday it was ready to “redouble its efforts” to help Lebanon “overcome the social and economic crisis” once a new government was in place.

“The EU commission supports reaching an agreement with the IMF because that would unlock substantial resources that Lebanon desperately needs to revive its economy,” Lenarcic said.

Referring to the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, he said it was a “reality in Lebanon”, adding that “we would like to see the entire Lebanese political class unite behind the task”.

Hezbollah has long been targeted by US sanctions and blacklisted as a “terrorist” organisation, but the Shiite group is also a powerful political player with seats in Lebanon’s parliament

“We believe it should play its part in this effort,” he said. — AFP

There was a consistent message from business leaders to international trade secretary Liz Truss’s claims that she had signed a “historic” deal with Japan to lower tariffs and gain access to previously restricted markets.

Thank you, they said, but could you please sign a deal with the EU because that is our most important export market.

Truss is not a minister to be moved by such demands. The former chief secretary to the Treasury has a mission to bolt together as many trade deals with non-EU countries as she can while No 10 takes on the task of signing a comprehensive agreement with Brussels. Officials at the signing ceremony with Japan confirmed that the deal was expected to boost UK trade with the world’s third-largest economy by an estimated £15.2bn, though there was no date by which this figure would be achieved.

It would also add only 0.07% to UK gross domestic product, which compares with forecasts by government economists of a 5% loss of GDP from leaving the EU customs union and single market.

No wonder Mike Hawes, the boss of car lobby group the SMMT, and Adam Marshall, head of the British Chambers of Commerce, were quick to point out that a deal with the EU was far more important.

Truss was undaunted, though her attempts so far to sign other significant deals, and especially with the US, have proved fruitless.

Under normal circumstances, a deal with the US is not a priority. It might be the largest economy in the world and the single largest destination for UK goods and services exports outside the EU, but it is an open market characterised by low import tariffs. That was the situation until Donald Trump began his bruising battle with China over what he claimed were trade barriers damaging to US companies. In the last couple of years this trade war has expanded to take in the EU.

Importantly for Truss, the UK has been one of the biggest losers. In particular, single malt Scotch whisky has suffered from a 25% import tariff, pricing it out of the US market.

Truss needs to win over the US to push trade tariffs back down to more normal levels, or better still to zero. However, there is a high price to be paid for favours in Washington. Farmers are an especially powerful lobby group in the US and want full access to foreign markets as the price of any trade deal. They expect Congress to abide by this maxim, and it usually does.

Before the US pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal that included Australia, Vietnam and Japan, Washington had extracted concessions for US beef and other farm produce that were effectively banned in many TPP countries up to that point.

The former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, who last week officially joined Truss’s advisory board, has long wrestled with criticism that his determination to sign trade deals meant that many domestic industries were thrown overboard, including agriculture and manufacturing.

Truss is under pressure to protect UK agriculture from being steamrollered by cheap US produce. If she is to uphold farming standards – ones that would allow the continued export of livestock and food to the EU – Truss must not lower UK rules in order to give access to industrial-scale farmers in the US who use growth hormones on their beef and chlorine washes on their chicken.

Whether to comply with the US or the EU rules is not a question that troubles business leaders. It is the EU every time.

This makes sense when you consider the numbers. If you include services industries, imports and exports between Britain and the EU were worth a total of £672.5bn last year, more than 20 times the value of UK-Japan trade and three times the £200bn sent back and forth to the US. A deal with the EU will be the historic prize.

A woman has got to the top of Wall St. But others still face a climb

The appointment this week of the first female leader of a Wall Street bank was greeted with a roar of approval. Jane Fraser, the Scottish-American banker from St Andrews who will lead Citi, is “a pioneer”, declared David Solomon over at Goldman Sachs.

It is indeed a landmark moment. But, now that a breakthrough has finally happened on Wall Street, a bastion of corporate maleness, should we expect a rush of female appointments? Don’t bet a cent on it. That hasn’t been the wider experience in the US or the UK.

The first woman to become chief executive of a FTSE 100 company was Dame Marjorie Scardino in 1997, and her appointment at Pearson was similarly hailed as groundbreaking. Almost a quarter of a century later, one can say the predicted rush of female FTSE bosses was a trickle. The highest number within the 100-strong club at any one time has been seven. Within banking, the first female chief executive of a UK top-four firm was Alison Rose at NatWest Group, appointed as recently as last year.

It’s true that the UK’s top boardrooms overall have become less male over the years. A third of board positions at FTSE 100 companies are held by women, the Hampton-Alexander Review found this year.

Yet the review also highlighted a “concerning lack of female representation in senior leadership and key executive roles” in FTSE 350 companies: only 15 female finance directors among FTSE 100 firms, for example.

In the US, the picture is similar: progress, but painfully slow. Only 31 women lead S&P 500 firms. On Wall Street, there are two men for every woman on banks’ operating committees, according to Bloomberg. Fraser’s success is a personal triumph, but the corporate world has not undergone a revolution.

Rio resignations signal the end for profit without accountability

When Rio Tinto announced last week that its chief executive, Jean-Sébastien Jacques, would be stepping down, it marked a new low for the mining giant – but potentially also an inflection point in corporate accountability.

Jacques resigned, alongside two other senior bosses, after investors lined up to condemn the company’s leadership for overseeing the destruction of an Australian heritage site of importance to Indigenous communities.

The world’s biggest iron ore miner destroyed two ancient caves in Pilbara, Western Australia, after blowing up the Juukan Gorge rock shelters, which held irreplaceable artefacts.

The executive clearout was by “mutual agreement”, according to a statement, but it should send a clear signal to others culpable for environmental destruction in the pursuit of corporate profit.

Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) may once have been regarded as a box-ticking exercise for company executives, but growing public intolerance of shoddy ESG standards can no longer be ignored. Investors, too, are unwilling to turn a blind eye to poor practice.

If the 2015 Samarco dam disaster, which resulted from a joint venture between miners BHP Billiton and Vale, had happened today it is difficult to imagine that executives would be let off as lightly as they were at the time.

The dam’s collapse left 19 dead, hundreds homeless and is considered the single worst environmental disaster in Brazil’s history. For Andrew Mackenzie, BHP’s then boss, it meant sacrificing a short-term bonus, even though hundreds living near the dam are still without homes.

The past loss of life and natural heritage at the hands of mining companies can never be replaced. But the swift condemnation of reckless corporate greed today could help safeguard the future.

Scenes of devastation and desperation at the burnt-out refugee camp at Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos, are powerful reminders that Europe’s migrant crisis never really ended. The response of EU member states and close neighbours such as Britain has, with some exceptions, once again been shamefully inadequate. The fact that these failures are familiar does not lessen the immediate, dreadful human impact of this latest tragedy, nor does it obviate the urgent need to find lasting solutions.

If fire had not destroyed most of the Moria camp last week, leaving up to 13,000 people without food, water and shelter, it’s a safe bet most of Europe would have continued to turn a blind eye to what was already a scandal on its doorstep. Repeated pleas by local people and the Greek government for more EU support and solidarity would have continued to be ignored. Pictures of small children and bereft families, deprived of all they own, squatting by the roadside or in filthy doorways, have pricked consciences – at least for now.

Charities hope the disaster will prove a permanent turning point. “The Moria camp was already unfit for humans before the fire, with four times as many people than it was built for,” said Francesco Rocca, head of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. “Enough is enough. Now is the time to show some humanity and move these people to a healthy, safe and humane place. There are 4,000 children in Moria and no child should have to endure this.”

Germany has again taken the lead in offering help, as it did during the 2015 refugee crisis. Plans have been made to transfer 400 unaccompanied minors to 10 European countries, with about 150 going to Germany. The EU commission said about 1,600 people would be given temporary shelter aboard a ferry. After visiting the area, commission vice-president Margaritis Schinas promised a larger, more modern facility would be built at the same location.

These are mere stop-gap measures and many locals and migrants oppose replacing the destroyed camp at all. But, as in the past, political obstacles at the national level are preventing a more comprehensive response. Several German regions and cities have offered to take in refugees. In Berlin, about 3,000 people took to the streets last week to demand a more generous attitude. “We have room!” they shouted. Moria was a “camp of shame”.

Yet Germany’s interior minister, Horst Seehofer, a critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s now-revoked 2015 open-door policy, said the focus should be on providing “help on the ground”. Such caution reflects continuing Europe-wide concern about a resurgence of the anti-immigrant sentiment that has boosted far-right populist and ultra-nationalist groups. It also reflects a divided EU’s repeated failure to agree a common migration and asylum policy based on shared responsibility, though it says new proposals are imminent.

Britain’s reaction to Moria is even more deeply unsatisfactory. Priti Patel, the home secretary, has yet to respond to a letter from the Labour peer Lord Dubs urging admission of unaccompanied children. “The government cannot keep dodging the issue,” he wrote. But it seems determined to try. When the Médecins Sans Frontières charity asked Patel in March to accept more children from Moria and other overcrowded Greek camps threatened by Covid-19, she did not deign to reply.

Quite how Boris Johnson hopes to establish a leading role for “global Britain” when it ducks its share of responsibility for tackling international migration, one of the great global problems of the day, is hard to fathom. Patel pretends to care about the safety of relatively small numbers of migrants crossing the Channel, over which rightwing bigots and xenophobes have kicked up an enormous fuss. Yet she and other ministers have nothing to say about the catastrophe in Moria and no help to offer. How small minded. How demeaning. How very un-British.