Search Results for: emmanuel martin

The Russian war on Ukraine is sparking Nordic-Baltic-B9 ties that strengthen security, arms cooperation and regional industrial renewal.

U.S. impatience with NATO burden-sharing and its pivot to the Indo-Pacific is driving NATO 3.0.

Oil and gas have long powered Algeria’s stability and influence. President Tebboune’s “New Algeria” seeks bold diversification, but success may remain elusive.

France’s latest legislative elections have shown that a majority of voters have lost faith in mainstream politics.

French reforms aimed at reindustrialization may be too modest to succeed, unless economic crisis provokes a more dramatic shakeup.

Until the golden age of renewables arrives, France and Germany have taken conflicting stances on energy sources needed for the transition period.

The EU political system is increasingly hard to sell to societies. Stranded in a no-man’s-land between a federal state and a confederation, today’s EU features neither sound democracy, nor prudent governance, nor a vibrant economy.

The desire to reduce inequality led to an erosion of academic standards. Yet entrenched defenders of the status quo are unlikely to accept meaningful changes.

The French far-right party National Rally has evolved from ostracization to become a significant political force.

Germany is a model of the vocational education system, with youth unemployment of just over 6 percent. France, where 22 percent of young people don’t have jobs, has long known its vocational training system needs fixing. A comparison of how these countries prepare pupils to become employees might be a practical guide for others.

France’s escalating budget crisis is causing alarm as the new government must confront soaring deficits and urgent reforms to stabilize the economy.

Like his predecessors, President of France Emmanuel Macron has ended up raising taxes instead of reforming the economy. The “national dialogue” to come following the Yellow Vest protests could bring better democratic representation – and more economically responsible governance.

The street revolts targeted authority and promised liberation from the traditional social order. In today’s infantilized societies, perhaps the only way to avoid a dystopian version of “bread and games” is for the social pendulum to swing back toward personal responsibility – assuming anyone is still interested in such old-fashioned values.

Energy needs and historical ties have pulled France toward Algeria. Meanwhile, relations with Morocco have grown strained, but this might change.

In France’s ideal republican model, the enlightened elite lead the public toward a unified, egalitarian system. The model is corrupted, however, with some “more equal” than others. The resulting lack of accountability creates a dysfunctional French governance system.

The EU strategy towards Covid-19 recovery involves gigantic stimulus response programs. While financial support makes sense, these initiatives often lead to fraud and corruption. Recent reforms may not be enough to prevent a repeat of these negative consequences.

decentralized ledger of transactions that uses computer technology to link, secure and encrypt records – has the potential to become a hugely disruptive technology, rendering financial intermediaries unnecessary and making money transfers nearly instantaneous.

For politicians, who desperately want to appear green to attract voters, much is at stake in the transition to renewable energy. But imposing a top-down agenda on the scientific community and industry comes with serious risks, chief among them the adoption of biased applied science to satisfy political aims.

As U.S.-China tensions deepen, the CPTPP is emerging as a potential third pillar for global trade and stability.

The list of potential contributors to Western economies’ failure to sustain productivity gains over the past generation is long.

The CAP, EU’s common agricultural policy, which once gave rural communities a solid stake in the European project, has evolved in ways that many farmers find intolerable.

Deepening fiscal stress, rigid centralization and political fragmentation undermine France’s capacity for effective reform of governance.

Their structural problems differ, but both result in the same outcome: subpar productivity, declining competitiveness and sluggish growth.

Freedom of speech could suffer from the ability of lobbies to impose their “truths” by regulation capture and social groups playing the victimization game

The start of the African Continental Free Trade Area has come with high hopes. But free trade agreements in themselves are no silver bullet for backward economies. Infrastructure investments and institutional reforms will be key for the development to accelerate.

United States President Donald Trump insists that trade wars are “good” and “easy to win,” but history tells otherwise. His plan to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will hurt U.S. producers and will likely cost far more jobs than they protect.

Overfishing is a global environmental and economic problem that resists administrative solutions. Giving control to local stakeholders would help.

European efforts to police global supply chains are likely to be limited in their effectiveness while jeopardizing economic development.

The philosophy of stakeholder capitalism has gained traction in recent years as people try to determine whether companies should help solve big social problems. Demanding that companies take a holistic view about how they serve the community has some merit.

Since the collapse of communism, the West has kept urging countries in Africa to establish democracy, which is a complex institution that does not always adapt well to multiethnic and impoverished societies. Additionally, it has often been used to legitimize “elected autocrats,” yet there are signs the import will take if grafted onto native roots.

Regulatory capture warps rules to favor powerful interests, creating trade-offs between expertise and democratic accountability.

French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to abolish France’s left/right political divide and shake up the country’s bloated bureaucracy. Yet his promised spending and tax cuts have been underwhelming, while his timid attempts to downsize the “layer-cake” administration have only stirred up fierce opposition.

Europe’s drive for a war economy to deter Russia faces funding, industrial, political and alliance challenges.

In democracies, citizens increasingly seek greater welfare benefits, creating challenges in balancing political majorities with fiscal responsibility.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has become a popular philosophy among advocates of government spending. Traditional economics holds that MMT would lead to inflation, yet its proponents argue that the orthodoxy no longer applies.

The notion that Europe needs a separate security strategy and a military force aside from NATO animates mostly the officials in Paris, but the idea stubbornly returns.

The 2008 U.S. housing crash and the European debt crisis led many politicians to question the importance of independent central banks. This approach is not without consequences. There are now several patterns of influence on central banks.

Many have hailed the EU’s July decision to partially mutualize its newly issued debt as a “historic step.” Massive as it is, the stimulus package is unlikely to fix Europe’s fragile and crisis-stricken economies, even if the Union’s show of unity has firmed it politically.

After a rise in popularity in the 19th century, the concept of self-regulation fell out of favor in the aftermath of the two World Wars. Albeit behaviors like delaying gratification have been declining since then, the Covid crisis could teach us accountability and discipline again.

Should policies centered on more broadly defined money supply replace traditional preoccupation with interest and inflation rates? Is there a way to tame overregulation in the financial sector while making it more stable and more squarely based on entrepreneurial responsibility?

Algerians realize they have a historic opportunity to remove the country’s ruling coterie. Yet, as the protests movement grows and the momentum for regime change in Algeria builds, there is a reason to worry about the people’s expectations.

Like other areas of public policy, development aid has had its recurrent fads. The pendulum has swung from socialist-style big-push schemes to pro-market reforms and their latest iteration, results-based aid. This micro-oriented approach has come under attack for neglecting the wider “macro” environment of states and institutions.

Algeria seems headed down a road already taken by other resource-rich authoritarian countries like Venezuela. Low oil and gas prices have made it harder to buy off the public with subsidies and benefits. Their latest expedient is to use the central bank to fund a government stimulus program, but that only delays the day of reckoning.

While designed to provide the poorest workers with a decent standard of living, the European Union approach is flawed and may lead to greater unemployment and higher costs.

The European Union has placed huge bets on an investment program in Africa. Yet inherent flaws in its technocratic approach and a lingering paternalism toward Africa threaten the whole scheme.

Despite facing immense political backlash, Emmanuel Macron’s plans for pension reform may not go far enough to avert fiscal chaos.

In early 2020, France began considering government reforms meant to boost efficiency and reduce centralization. Delayed by the pandemic, the plan could face backlash from the left – and could easily be derailed in the event of unexpected developments related to Covid-19.

France has finally fractured between its metropolitan areas and a low-wage periphery. What started as a tax revolt has become a diffuse and unstructured uprising. Many of the movement’s demands would only perpetuate France’s centralism, yet its appearance shows that this political model may no longer be sustainable.

Around the world, governments are finding ways to hide how much they are taxing their citizens. Though the practice of fiscal illusion creates a huge drag on economies, current political trends favor increased government spending.

Genuine accountability, a critical ingredient for liberal democracies, has been eroded in Western governance through bureaucracy and fiscal illusion.