While government support and European programs have traditionally been primary sources of funding for universities, there is room for improvement, especially in terms of engaging the business sector. European universities have set exemplary practices in this regard compared to their counterparts in the Western Balkans, including Albania. Albanian universities having more than 30 years functioning under democratic principles, still face the challenge of strengthening their financial capabilities by tapping into the business sector.

The business sector and academia often seem isolated from each other in terms of funding and collaboration, which is likely a reflection of their historical separation: To bridge this gap, universities, especially in Albania, must develop their strategies to proactively engage the business sector. While there may not be a legal mandate enforcing this approach, it should be a smart institutional strategy to secure long-term results in research and innovation.

European practice demonstrates that some companies provide consultations on EU law and regulations, and they can be valuable partners in connecting universities with the business sector. Albanian universities should seek to

understand these structures’ mission and vision, which can help them prepare their own strategies. Additionally, universities can encourage the Ministry of Education t

o strengthen business ties, rather than solely relying on governmental support. This might involve involving the Ministry in the process of establishing and developing relationships between universities and businesses by also involving the scheme into the national strategies or relevant documents in this regard.

Universities can play a pivotal role in attracting business investments by fostering collaboration and involvement of the business sector in research and development projects. In the past decade, Albanian universities have been primarily focused

on accessing EU funding schemes for research and innovation, neglecting potential opportunities with the business sector. Many EU grant programs promote collaboration between academia, communities, and government, and while these programs may offer limited opportunities for business sector involvement, universities may need to take calculated risks during the application process.

Adding business sector participation as an eligible component in grant programs like Horizon Europe, EU for Europe and Marie Skodowska Curie would encourage closer collaboration. To enhance collaboration, universities can explore models like SPARK and Dr2Consultants, companies that offer consultancy services related to EU law implementation for business stakeholders. Albanian universities can establish collaboration agreements with these entities to gain updated insights in this area. The Albanian National Institution for Research and Innovation (AKKSHII) can provide a list of EU programs that promote business involvement in academia and university development, particularly those focused on entrepreneurship. The potential benefits of such collaboration are numerous, including offering new forms of support, advancing technology and innovation, facilitating recruitment of graduates into businesses, and bridging the gap between theory and evidence, thereby creating a steady pipeline of talent and mentoring future data storytellers.

As Albania moves closer to EU integration, the imperative to engage more effectively with the business sector is evident, aligning with the EU’s strategic goals. The concept of University Business Cooperation (UBC) is gaining attention at the European Commission, and although it remains a relatively underdeveloped area, there are promising practices emerging. European universities have already demonstrated the value of forging collaborations, and there is no need to wait for a formal EU policy document to drive such initiatives.[1] The absence of such an EU policy document, should not be viewed as a void hindering universities and the business sector from independently cultivating collaborative relationships. On the contrary, the absence of a dedicated EU-level policy on UBC has not deterred these entities from forging their own collaborations. Yet, considering the potential impact and recognition such a policy could bring, it becomes apparent that having a specific document addressing UBC at the EU level would significantly elevate its importance. This could catalyze increased attention and commitment from both universities and the business sector towards fostering sustained collaboration.

The current ambiguity in the position of UBC within European policymaking diverges from the successful initiatives undertaken by numerous European universities, which have proactively established diverse levels of collaboration. A brief exploration of websites belonging to well-known European universities reveals an abundance of exemplary practices in this arena. This wealth of examples negates the necessity of awaiting national, regional, or European documents explicitly addressing university-business collaboration. Instead, universities can take the lead as initiators in bridging the gap with the business sector, contributing to the enhancement of capacity building, research, and innovation.

Turning our focus to Albania, still on the path of EU integration, there are valuable hints and tips that warrant promotion and spotlighting:

1. Annual Progress Reports on Integration highlight the potential to align business development with research and innovation, presenting an opportunity for academia and business sector collaboration.
2. INSTAT (Institute of Statistics) should provide data correlating business development with academia, shedding light on how many graduates are employed in the business sector and the extent of collaboration between businesses and universities.
3. The National Strategy of Education emphasizes the need for cooperation between business associations and universities, with the aim of aligning curricula and qualifications with market needs.
4. The National Plan of EU Integration (2022-2024) can potentially incorporate indicators that encourage the implementation of University Business Cooperation (UBC), even though it may not be a formal requirement.
5. The National Agency of Research and Innovation has already taken steps to support UBC projects, with a focus on community development, SMEs, environmental issues, and technology research.
6. Regional collaboration as seen in the Stars EU Alliance, offers opportunities for universities to engage with international partners and explore best practices for UBC.

In conclusion, the collaboration between universities and the business sector is not solely dependent on national policies but also on the proactive efforts of universities themselves. Albanian universities should work toward pushing the government to diversify and enhance instruments for promoting UBC. They must also craft their strategies to leverage national resources and engage with EU and regional structures. While the European Commission’s attention to UBC is increasing and certainly more is needed regarding specific EU programmes, waiting for formal EU policies is not necessary. Albanian universities can take the initiative in building stronger ties with the business sector, which will benefit academia, business, and the broader community in the long run.

We would like to thank the author, Olta Quejvani, for her contribution and participation at the United Europe Mentoring Program (Class 2022/23).

Moreover, urban areas, often overlooked in

discussions about climate change, are not immune to its effects. The rise in temperatures has transformed some cities with little vegetation into heat islands. By storing and amplifying heat from the sun and other sources, these so called “heat islands” are endangering public health and increasing mortality rates (during 2022, heatwaves in Europe were responsible for at least 20,000 deaths). Periods of heat and drought are often followed by heavy rain, and the improper absorption of heavy rainfall due to impermeable surfaces (roads, parking spaces, etc.) prevent the correct reabsorption of said water. 

All this takes place in a context in which green space is increasingly commodified and associated with status, as “leafy suburbs” are considered a marker of prosperity, whereas poverty is frequently characterised by urban spaces dominated by impermeable surfaces with very little greenery.

In this context, a separate issue is the problem of food deserts within urban areas (i.e. areas within cities with limited or no access to nutritious food options). As such, the frequent lack of alternatives to a poor supply chain condemns certain neighbourhoods and citizens to unhealthy food.

A positive development could be the use of flora for carbon sequestration. Improving the livability of cities within the context of a changing climate has garnered greater attention as a potential solution, with a particular emphasis on the pivotal role of urban parks.

These elements are often approached separately, resulting in ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration being seen as most relevant to rural areas. Reinforcing natural ecosystems in urban areas in the way to generate them is rarely discussed.

This is hampered by the prevailing tendency in urban design, using construction of infrastructure that involves “soil sealing” under impermeable surfaces such as tarmac or concrete.

This process eliminates biodiversity by reducing plant cover and preventing soil from carrying out its ecosystem services, such as sequestering carbon and retaining water.

Policy Objectives: 

The main goal of this policy proposal is to reestablish a harmonious relationship between natural and urban environments, moving away from their current isolation. 

Several specific objectives contribute to this overarching aim:

1. Increase carbon sequestration within urban areas.
2. Reduce impermeable surfaces and combat the heat island effect.
3. Prepare urban areas for extreme weather events.
4. Promote citizen involvement in the management of urban green spaces.
5. Combine carbon sequestration with increased local food production inside urban areas.

The policy proposal aims to obtain a greater combination of carbon sequestration, microclimate stabilization, and food production in urban areas. By reducing impermeable surfaces and addressing the heat island effect, the initiative seeks to pave the way for a more resilient urban landscape.  

Furthermore, this proposal acknowledges the importance of democratizing access to green spaces, ensuring that all citizens can participate in their creation, utilization and maintenance. By implementing this proposal, cities and their residents can actively contribute to addressing climate-related challenges rather than being passive victims of them. 

While the proposal seeks to enhance the integration of urban agriculture with green space, it is not intended to compete with large-scale conventional agriculture. Instead, the policy proposal will prioritize poly- and permaculture, both of which align with reinforcing ecosystems and improving biodiversity in urban areas. Simultaneously, it aims to foster better access to healthy food for underprivileged areas and citizens.

Democratizing the accessibility and oversight of green space is key to ensure they are not confined to affluent areas. Citizens who are concerned about these changes should have a direct voice in the development of these green spaces, and actively engage in their use and maintenance. 

As a result, citizens can not only enjoy the benefits of these green spaces, but also embrace the responsibilities that come with them, thereby having the opportunity to take ownership of their environment.

Moreover, this policy proposal presents an opportunity to implement the concept of ecosystem services while also advancing the democratization of green spaces in cities. By doing so, cities and citizens can actively contribute to tackling climate-related challenges, rather than merely exacerbating, and succumbing to them.

This shouldn’t be looked at as merely a means of increasing the number of gardens in cities, it should be regarded as an invitation for modern cities to embrace their identity as integral parts of nature.”

Over the course of 10-20 years, the policy proposal aims to achieve a meaningful reintegration of human spaces with nature. Throughout history, as humanity transitioned into a sedentary species, and especially during the industrial revolution, there has been a growing tendency to exclude nature from human spaces. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a gradual detachment of humans from the natural world, rather than fostering a harmonious integration of human structures within the broader natural environment.

Examples of existing policies that aim to provide a framework for addressing related issues, such as soil degradation and the increasing imbalances in land use to the detriment of natural spaces can be found in the endnotes of this paper.

Challenges:

The proposal must overcome several challenges that are inherent to urban environments. One major challenge involves determining costs, as different cities have diverse climates and terrains, making it difficult to provide generic pricing for the proposal’s implementation. Additionally, different plants also require different levels of maintenance, which entails considerable investment in expertise and materials. Varying soil conditions and the presence of industrial pollution may require extensive and time-consuming decontamination entailing high costs.

Furthermore, navigating relationships with local communities and authorities is crucial. Public engagement and support are essential for the success of the proposal, but existing conflicts or distrust between certain segments of society and authorities may hinder progress. 

The proposal’s potential impact on commercial food producers due to the urban agriculture element may also raise concerns, necessitating clear communication about the initiative’s objectives, which are not meant to compete with large-scale agriculture but rather to provide nutritious food to underserved communities. The structure of land ownership in urban areas must also be carefully reviewed to avoid proposals being blocked since in cities with a large proportion of private land ownership resistance could be greater resulting in a smaller workable area.

Another concern could be mobility within cities and the need to guarantee both individual mobility and supply chains. As such an initiative would mean a considerable reduction in impermeable surfaces in and around urban areas, this could result in initial difficulties for traffic flows. It is therefore necessary to evaluate what transport options are available and how supplies reach businesses in these cities to avoid disruption that could generate opposition to the proposal.

Solutions on the horizon

To address the challenges, the policy proposal outlines several stages, building on successful restoration projects.

Identifying suitable sites (I.e., strategic areas such as riverbanks, obsolete infrastructure, etc.), involving verified experts in each city and engaging citizens and local authorities will pave the way for successful implementation: Biologists or botanists must be consulted to determine the appropriate flora to survive in the area in question. That would help to understand which plants are more likely to thrive during the initial phase of their life and seamlessly integrate into the ecosystem shaped by the area’s unique climate and topography.

Once feasible areas have been identified, it is imperative to engage in consultations with citizens, local authorities and experts to establish a consensus for this proposal. Subsequently, the focus shifts to determining the viability of providing essential guidance to interested citizens, enabling them to actively participate in the maintenance of these green spaces.

If the above criteria is fulfilled, local authorities, experts and citizens can deliberate on the nature and timing of works to implement these environmental changes. Lastly, the stakeholders can then develop the necessary bodies charged with managing the ecosystem and training citizens to take care of it.

Learning from past restauration projects, like the Cheonggyecheon river restoration in Seoul, South Korea, as well as the renaturation (process of restoring an ecosystem to its original state) projects concerning the section of the Manzanares river that passes through Madrid, can offer valuable insights into best practices: 

The Cheonggyecheon river restoration has certain flaws that should not be repeated, such as a concrete riverbed which stops natural purification of the water. Nevertheless, it has succeeded in encouraging the return of biodiversity to the area and lowering the surrounding temperature by as much as 5ºC. The renaturation of the Manzanares river has not only allowed the river to resume natural flows and sedimentation processes (and therefore a partial restoration of the native ecosystem), but also allowed for better management of extreme temperatures as well as rare but violent flood events.

In practice: the Brussels Capital Region

As an illustrative example, the Brussels Capital Region showcases potential applications of the policy proposal. With an unequal distribution of green space and high percentages of impermeable surface in certain areas, this region can benefit from targeted efforts to address environmental disparities:

The Western flank of the Brussels Capital Region exhibits dense population concentrations, accompanied by higher levels of economic hardship and a significant proportion of impermeable surfaces.

Given this context, directing attention towards plants that occupy minimal space but actively contribute to reducing impermeable surfaces can serve as a starting point to address the inequality in coverage. This approach would enable these areas to benefit from the advantages offered by essential ecosystem services.

Despite the challenges posed by high building and population density, the presence of abandoned structures further compounds the issues in Brussels. These structures frequently remain vacant for extended periods, posing risks to both people and the environment.

Abandoned buildings that do not receive the necessary repairs and reconversion could be dismantled to create more green spaces and/or communal gardens for local food production. 

This would allow the terrain to resume a productive purpose while contributing to supporting biodiversity, reducing the area’s impermeable surfaces, and delivering ecosystem services.

Moreover, reviving the Senne river and the Brussels-Charleroi canal presents opportunities to restore natural flows and interactions with living ecosystems in the city center, thereby increasing resilience to climate change: As the canal within Brussels is no longer necessary for large-scale economic activity, an attempt can be made to identify sections of the Senne river that can be restored above ground, and sections of the canal that can be renatured to improve the area’s adaptability to a changing climate.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the proposed policy seeks to achieve a transformative paradigm shift in how we approach urban planning and climate change mitigation. By integrating urban areas with nature, fostering community involvement, and promoting sustainable agriculture, cities can become more resilient and livable in the face of climate change. 

humanity’s ongoing concentration in cities is set to continue hence urban spaces urgently need to be made more resilient to climate change to remain livable otherwise more people could suffer severe harm. It is crucial to remember that the cost of inaction will be far greater than the investment required for implementing resilience measures.

As urbanization continues, the urgency to reconnect cities with nature grows stronger. The proposed policy aims to create cities that understand themselves as part of nature, not apart from it. 

Addressing the climate crisis entails addressing the inequitable access to green space and their ecosystem services within cities, while also striving to reintegrate citizens with nature and empowering them as stakeholders in its well-being and maintenance.

Implementing such measures can also foster contemplation on food production and consumption, presenting an opportunity for a fraction of city residents’ fruit or vegetable intake to originate within the urban areas, consequently bridging the gap for populations excluded by high retail prices and providing them with access to fresh produce.

These measures should build upon prior expansions of urban green space and nature restoration, acting as a catalyst for a transformative paradigm shift. They must signal the end of piecemeal approaches aimed at reducing human artificialization of ecosystems, while incepting a unified movement to seamlessly integrate urban spaces with nature and reintroduce humanity to the natural world.

As with all other measures associated to climate change, though the cost of action may seem high, the cost of inaction will be catastrophic.

We would like to thank the author, Luca Contrino, for his contribution and participation at the United Europe Mentoring Program (Class 2022/23).

Recently, the introduction of the digital euro, has been the focus of much discussion and analysis within the European Union. The digital euro represents an advance in the field of currency and finance. Unlike physical bills and coins, the digital euro would exist solely in digital form and be stored in electronic wallets and accounts. By integrating cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain or distributed ledger technology, the digital euro promises to ensure secure and transparent transactions. It opens a new frontier in the development of modern currencies and could even be equipped with programmable functions that enable smart contracts and automated payments.

Given the increasing digitalization of the economy and the financial sector, the move to the digital euro is seen as necessary to ensure that this development is managed efficiently and securely. The digital euro aims to leverage the advantages of the euro as a stable currency while providing consumers and businesses with a fast, secure, and cost-effective payment method.

Particular attention is being paid to payment security in the introduction of the digital euro. The European Central Bank (ECB) aims to ensure that the digital currency is at least as secure as the physical euro. To this end, the digital euro will be built on a secure infrastructure and equipped with advanced security measures to prevent manipulation and fraud. Blockchain technology or distributed ledger technology offer revolutionary security systems that can help increase payment security within the European Union. This could also reduce the use of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, which are often associated with fraudulent activities.

However, there are also some challenges and potential difficulties with the introduction of the digital euro. One potential consequence could be an increasing reliance on digital payments and related infrastructure. In this case, a targeted but also untargeted disruption of electronic payments, through e.g. cyberattacks, operational disruptions or natural disasters, could have a severe impact on the economy and consumers. This would pose a risk to financial stability and undermine confidence in digital currency. In addition, the traceability of transactions and the resulting limited privacy is often criticized, as some consumers have concerns about governments monitoring their transactions. In addition, the Russia-Ukraine war has changed the view of intense economic interdependence, as Burkhard Balz, a member of the Deutsche Bundesbank’s Executive Board, noted in a presentation delivered at Andrássy University in Budapest. Trade, he said, is no longer a guarantee of peace, and too much dependency, including and especially with regard to critical infrastructure, could pose significant problems.

Despite these potential challenges, the digital euro is expected to bring numerous benefits, including above all the reduction of transaction costs and the facilitation of cross-border payments. Much has already happened since the launch of the “Investigation Phase” in October 2021, and the goal and standards of a digital euro have been further elaborated. This year’s goals for 2023 include the development of compensation models, access to the digital euro ecosystem, prototype results, completion of user requirements, and preparations for the project implementation phase. In addition, a decision document will be prepared with advice on the possible issuance, design, and implementation of the digital euro. In October 2023, the next milestone is due, namely a decision by the Governing Council on the possible launch of the next phase. In the next phase, the ECB would further develop and test the technical solutions and business arrangements. A possible Governing Council decision on the issuance of a digital euro would be taken only after the adoption of the legal act.

Overall, the digital euro is expected to be an important step toward a digitized economy and a secure payment environment. It will usher in a new era of digital transformation and offer a wide range of benefits and opportunities.  The efficiency of the digital euro would revolutionize the way we conduct financial transactions, making our daily interactions smoother and more accessible by leveraging modern technologies. This offers the potential for more programmable features and smart contracts, providing a multitude of opportunities for financial innovation and automation. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected and digitized, the digital euro is a forward-looking and indispensable step toward a more inclusive, efficient, and resilient financial future. However, the ECB must ensure that the digital euro is secure, reliable, and beneficial to all stakeholders.

Ultimately, the introduction of the digital euro should take place in at least two phases in order to do justice to its dual focus. In the first phase, the immediate impact on capital markets, banking systems and their business models must be carefully assessed and managed. The introduction of the digital euro could lead to changes in financial behavior and alter the dynamics of money management and investment strategies. Banks and financial institutions may need to adapt their services and infrastructure to accommodate the new digital currency. At the same time, the second phase must focus on understanding the broader implications for financial transactions involving non-financial firms, governments, and households. The introduction of digital currency will change the way transactions occur across sectors and introduce new payment methods and business models. The non-financial industry will need to integrate the digital euro into their operations, while governments will need to address the regulatory and legal implications.

We would like to thank the author, Fabio De Santis Gomez, for participating at the United Europe Mentoring Program (Class 2022/23).

Transnational Giving Europe Network, established in 1995, aims to address some of the complexities surrounding cross-border philanthropy by simplifying the donations process across Europe while mitigating legal and tax risks [3]. However, the service comes at a cost, as a percentage of the donation is retained by the Transnational Giving Europe Network, thus reducing the actual amount of the donation intended NGO.

To explore potential solutions for simplifying cross-border corporate donations in the EU and maximizing their impact, it is crucial to identify the barriers that companies face when attempting to donate to NGOs based in another Member State. This article focuses primarily on Germany, which boasts the largest economy in the EU and exhibits a strong corporate culture with a considerable involvement in philanthropic activities.  Additionally, Germany’s thriving “donation market” and commitment to ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) goals make it a pertinent case study.

In Germany, for a donation to be tax-exempt, a company based in Germany must demonstrate to the German tax service that the foreign NGO meets the exact same conditions as the equivalent German entity [4]. This requirement proves challenging, given the variations in national laws across Member State regarding NGOs. Although the European Court of Justice “has ruled that donations by a taxpayer to charitable entities resident in another EU member state must generally be tax deductible under the law of the donor’s jurisdiction” [4], the absence of harmonization regarding the criteria for NGOs eligible to receive tax-exempt donations complicates matters. [2]. While there is a clear desire on the European-level to facilitate cross-border donations and promote philanthropy, practical obstacles remain significant and numerous. It is possible that some of these barriers are in place to prevent potential tax evasion loopholes, particularly when the receiving NGO is in a Member State with a tax-friendly environment, limited oversight and law enforcement. [2].

In conclusion, the importance of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility among Member States cannot be overstated. However, despite the shared will in the European Union to encourage cross-border donations, complex legal, tax, and regulatory hurdles persist, discouraging companies from contributing to NGOs in other Member States. To truly facilitate cross-border philanthropy, harmonization of national laws and regulations across the EU is necessary. Such measures would encourage companies to support NGOs aligned with their values and further promote social and environmental causes on a pan-European scale.

We would like to thank the author, Stelios Kavvadias, for participating at the United Europe Mentoring Program (Class 2022/23).

Nine mentors supervised nine mentees, actively involved in shaping policy for a United Europe in form of webinars, opinions and articles published on United Europe’s website.  After Katharina Hug’s Brexit analysis and Rafael Stein’s “Five lessons for an EU career”, we continue the series with the last article “Why the answer to global challenges with Megatrends on the verge should be a European one” by Michael Suckow, Senior Consultant at Zum Goldenen Hirschen, Germany. Michael was coached by Paul van Son, active for more than 40 years on supervisory boards, executive boards and in operations management positions in the international energy business.

In 2022, there will certainly be no shortage of forward-looking technologies and ideas that have now developed into megatrends to address fundamental societal challenges – such as climate change or digitisation – and to solve problems even more easily in the future and to improve processes based on the findings. Artificial intelligence (AI) will undoubtedly be one of the key technologies of the coming years. The EU Commission Vice-President Andrus Ansip, responsible for digital, has predicted that AI will change the world as fundamentally as the steam engine or electricity did. Self-driving cars and robots will most likely be the norm in the future, and countless smartphone apps already contain self-learning algorithms that constantly improve the products we use every day.

In my day-to-day work as a senior consultant in a creative agency, I very often meet employees of federal ministries and top federal authorities in Berlin. I get an insight into administrative processes – a practical teaching example of Max Weber’s ideal type of bureaucratic organisation. And yet I firmly believe that this rigid apparatus can modernise itself and question and leave behind the established behavioural patterns of the past century.

Modern technologies – especially artificial intelligence – can play a decisive role in this process. The challenge for governments and leaders is to redesign how people and machines work together in process chains and mixed teams. At the same time, the application of AI is an occasion – or rather an opportunity – for employees to reflect on their own strengths and develop them further.

With this article, I want to set a positive example. I want to show that despite all the challenges and concerns that arise from the use of modern technologies such as artificial intelligence, these technologies do indeed have enormous potential to sustainably improve both our everyday and our working lives, and that we should approach them positively. All in the knowledge that we will find our own – a common – European answer.

AI is here to stay
Do you remember the time when we used to try and find our way on a map during long car trips? Countless maps for different countries and areas in Germany and Europe. AI has drastically changed the way we travel. We use Waze, Google or Apple Maps on our smartphones as a matter, of course, to get to our destination. So how does the application know where to go? And what’s more, find the optimal route and avoid road barriers and traffic congestion. Not too long ago, only satellite-based GPS was available, but now, artificial intelligence is being incorporated to give users a much more enhanced experience. Using machine learning, the algorithms remember the edges of the buildings that it has learned, which allows for better visuals on the map, and recognition and understanding of house and building numbers. The application has also been taught to understand and identify changes in traffic flow so that it can recommend a route that avoids roadblocks and congestion. It’s almost unthinkable that we would have to do without it in the future.

We use social media for more than two hours a day without giving much thought to the fact that our user experience is influenced and optimised by AI. Social media applications use AI support to monitor content, suggest connections and serve advertisements to targeted users, among many other tasks, to ensure that you stay invested and “plugged in”. AI algorithms can spot and swiftly take down problematic posts that violate terms and conditions through keyword identification and visual image recognition. The neural network architecture of deep learning is an important component of this process, but it doesn’t stop there. Social media companies know that their users are their products, so they use AI to connect those users to the advertisers and marketers that have identified their profiles as key targets. Social media AI also can understand the sort of content a user resonates with and suggests similar content to them.

These examples of artificial intelligence show why AI is talked about everywhere – why it’s used everywhere. Nearly every part of our day is touched by AI. Instagram might show you a new video while you’re on your lunch break. Whereas Google Maps directed you to the new restaurant where you’re having your lunch break. The list could go on forever, but these few examples of AI show what it is and how we are using it.

The dilemma – and the European answer
Artificial intelligence has become a foundation of the digital transformation and plays an essential role in a large number of business models in the digital economy. However, the solution to the challenges cannot be solved by politics alone and requires the close and trusting cooperation of civil society, science and the media landscape. Artificial intelligence reveals one of the key global challenges when it comes to generating added value for society when taking a united stand against fundamentally threatening scenarios such as global climate change and in preventing and – where this is no longer possible – at least reducing the negative consequences in the future.

Countries around the world are harnessing the transformative impact of AI on their economies and societies. Competition and rivalry between countries with advanced AI research and development (R&D) capabilities are taking centre stage, with talk of an “AI race” between the United States and China. However, the ethical and security risks that will arise if AI is not properly deployed are as great as its potential benefits.

From facial recognition and hiring algorithms that are fraught with a bias to self-driving cars that endanger human lives, the challenges associated with AI governance failures are enormous and require collaborative solutions. So far, Europe is carving a middle path that protects fundamental rights while reaping the benefits of AI deployment. Policymakers recognise the need to foster technological, economic and social innovation. But they also recognise that the use of AI must respect fundamental rights and freedoms, including privacy, data protection and non-discrimination.

The success of AI and new technologies requires acceptance and trust
With all these challenges, it can be said without exaggeration that the broad acceptance of AI and new technologies are not yet deeply enough anchored in society. This would be necessary – at least from a German, if not also a European, perspective – to compensate for the information and technology led by countries such as the United States and China. It is therefore of the utmost importance to explain to society that digital transformation is much more than the introduction of a purely technological stack. The essential momentum lies in the mindset and culture of a society.

It depends on the acceptance of the members – the citizens. And even if there is only a partial rejection, this will have a direct effect on the success of the implementation. The acceptance and trust to be established in automation and digitalisation do not only refer to the design of technology, which is not only oriented to human factors and ergonomics, but also to human information processing and the ethical evaluation of humans. It is important that the highest demands are made on a human-centred design approach and on a continuous assessment of the violation of basic human rights, such as the right to privacy and non-discrimination, to maintain trust and control in the socio-technical system.

Sustainable use of technologies
As digitisation is making its way into almost all areas of life, the world is becoming shapable through modern technology solutions and providing a strong basis for influencing (European) coexistence in a positive and sustainable way. A high innovation dynamic – for example, in the areas of networking, data collection and analysis – leads to hardware components being networked with and controlled by intelligent software. What is important here is the seemingly self-evident integration into social processes. Not only are organisational processes optimised, but political actions, work processes and even human behaviour changes. In other words, in order to develop sustainable digital solutions that put environmental and climate protection into practice, a technological transformation is required along with a simultaneous societal transformation (see figure).

The sustainable use of digital technologies is necessary and can make a significant contribution to achieving the climate targets by 2030, as shown by a study by the digital association Bitkom, which concludes that CO2 emissions can be reduced by 120 megatons in ten years through the targeted and accelerated use of digital solutions. This corresponds to almost every second ton of what Germany still must save to achieve the climate targets it has set itself.

The link between AI and (emission-free) energy
While the topic of AI correlates with almost all areas of life, the sustainable use of digital technologies offers a wonderful gateway to take a brief excursion into the world of zero-emission energy and demonstrate the significant contribution AI to the value chain can make in achieving globally set climate goals. Of course, the topic is not new, however, the level of sophistication is increasing rapidly, giving a glimpse into what could be expected in the future.

The importance of renewable energy to our future is becoming increasingly clear as governments around the world set new targets and regulations to limit carbon emissions. The Global Wind Energy Council’s (GWEC) annual Global Wind Report highlights that the global wind energy industry continues to grow as companies seek to make their networks and processes more efficient – with the help of artificial intelligence. Renewable energy is a growing part of the global energy sector, and the use of new technologies such as AI is key to building a lower-carbon future. Indeed, AI offers the renewable energy industry many opportunities to build stronger, more sustainable and more stable systems.

As renewable energy sources make up an ever-increasing share of our energy mix, predicting capacity levels will become increasingly important to ensure efficient and stable grids. As a growing share of our energy comes from renewable sources, baseload generation from energy sources such as coal, which are responsible for grid inertia due to the presence of heavy rotating equipment such as gas and steam turbines, is decreasing. With little or no grid inertia, power grids could become less stable and more prone to blackouts.

However, AI and automation can help mitigate these risks. Real-time data collected by sensor technologies from wind and solar plants, as well as data sets of historical weather information derived from celestial cameras and satellite imagery, can be interpreted by AI, which can then predict capacity levels and outage times and act accordingly. This, in turn, helps maintain stable power grids. Using AI to analyse data can also enable grid operators to optimise the use of power grids by adjusting operations to weather conditions at any given time. Accurate short-term forecasts can lead to greater dispatching efficiency and better block use, which improves reliability and reduces required operating reserves.
AI is also able to predict when energy is most needed by consumers, which means it can also play a big role in battery storage and providing demand flexibility. Storage batteries can be activated very quickly to handle periods of high energy demand. Artificial intelligence can make energy management and storage decisions easier based on its predictions of when energy is most in demand and the data it gathers from renewable energy sources and grid conditions in real-time.

Artificial intelligence also plays a role when it comes to maintenance. It can detect system faults and malfunctions almost immediately. It can recognise what kind of problems are occurring and predict what kind of problems might occur in the future, making grid repair and maintenance much easier and more efficient.

What the European answer could look like – an example
How much carbon dioxide is produced during the manufacture of a car? And how can all production steps be optimised to save resources? The key to more sustainable production is data: on the one hand, machine data that the equipment in the factories continuously generates; on the other hand, mobility data that is generated when suppliers deliver engine blocks, car bodies or components to the manufacturers. The overarching use of this data brings several advantages. Not only does it make entire value chains transparent, but it also reveals which production step can be sustainably optimised.

The automotive industry is focusing on the GAIA-X interface. A project for the development of an efficient and competitive, secure, and trustworthy data infrastructure for Europe, which is supported by representatives from industry, science and administration from Germany and France, together with other, predominantly European, partners. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) launched the GAIA-X initiative in 2019. The aim is to reduce dependence on American and Chinese IT providers and data-driven, market-dominating platforms. In the meantime, the project has gotten off to such a successful start that it is supported by several European countries and companies worldwide.

GAIA-X can help establish digital sovereignty, open architectures, European standards, and common values. And it is through the cross-sector, self-determined, secure and sovereign sharing of data that the GAIA-X platform comes to life. It enables collaborative and shared work and is one of the pillars of digital business models.

However, there is still a long way to go before the potential of the European data economy is fully exploited and there is a digital (domestic) market. So far, the economic and ecological potential has hardly been exploited. It is not only ownership, manufacturer and competitive interests that are bringing the flow of information to a standstill, but also concerns about the protection of personal data, such as in the healthcare sector. Let’s look at hospitals, for example, that no longer share sensitive medical data. GAIA-X, by providing digital infrastructure, helps ensure that instead of data, AI models are exchanged by doctors.

The goal must be to put Europe at the forefront of digitisation. This includes, for example, the exchange of data in the industry to produce cars more sustainably or the digital scalability of medical advances to improve the chances of healing.

To be more specific, the local economy must become more independent of individual cloud providers. And secondly, political framework conditions must be created that regulate the economic exploitation of data on an industrial scale.

What homework remains?

(1) Competition for talent

Germany has long contributed to academic research in artificial intelligence. But in such a dynamic field, the country must do more to distinguish itself globally. For one, to become attractive to international AI talent, Germany needs to improve its reputation in technology and innovation. Too many of the open AI positions in Germany could either not be filled, could be filled later than desired, or could be filled only with less desirable candidates. Germany is already struggling with a shortage of skilled workers. Especially in the field of AI, it will be even more difficult to find skilled workers.

(2) Upgrading the SMEs

The German government wants to promote the use of AI technology in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are so important for Germany. Despite the government’s efforts, the so-called Mittelstand, which according to the Federation of German Industries (BDI) accounts for about one-third of the total sales of German companies, has been slow to embrace the use of AI. A recent study by the German Ministry of Economics found that only about 6 per cent of companies surveyed reported using AI technology.

Positive developments in this area in the future will depend on whether Germany succeeds in making greater progress in digitisation. An area in which it has notoriously lagged behind countries such as China and the United States.

(3) Broad societal dialogue and AI for the common good

As with SMEs, it is critical to support civil society in developing AI capabilities and competencies to harness the potential of AI for the common good. In addition, civil society involvement can foster widespread acceptance and trust in the technology among the population. There should be an institutionalisation of evaluation processes so that best practices can be identified and broad acceptance for the use of AI can be established.

The international race is about quality and speed, but Europe must not succumb to the temptation to emulate or copy. As Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, says, we must go our own, European way. Then our joint efforts will become an innovative endeavour. Digital technologies have the enormous potential to make our lives safer, better, and more comfortable. But it can also make life more sustainable.

An article by Michael Suckow, Senior Consultant at Zum Goldenen Hirschen, Germany.

Nine mentors supervised nine mentees, actively involved in shaping policy for a United Europe in form of webinars, opinions and articles published on United Europe’s website.  After Katharina Hug’s Brexit analysis, we continue the series with the article “Five lessons for an EU career” by Rafael Stein, Project Officer at the European Commission. Rafael was coached by Steven Price, a retired Head of Unit of the European Commission.

5 lessons for an EU career

You might be thinking about doing a blue book traineeship, taking a contract agent exam, working as an interim or temporary agent or becoming a permanent official. Let’s assume you identified an opportunity, studied for the tests, prepared for the interview and succeeded in landing a job inside the European Commission, the biggest of the EU institutions. What now? How do you advance your career, figure out which job profile is best for you and understand if you are in the right place?

Many people come to the Commission to promote the European project, advance the EU’s role as a global actor and help make the EU an attractive and secure place to live, study and work in. After the initial novelty wears off, a large bureaucratic organisation might seem discouraging, if not intimidating when trying to make a difference. Genuine idealism and enthusiasm are swiftly paired with the reality in the job. However, this dose of realism is also a great source of learning and compass to identify what really matters to you.

The following 5 lessons are based on my own experience and exchanges with colleagues, who have known the Commission for decades. I hope they will offer you some perspective and guidance should you plan or be about to embark on an EU career.

1. Being kind is an underrated quality.
The Commission is a competitive, high-paced environment with many engaged and brilliant colleagues. Many compete for visibility and having their work seen. Finding a colleague, who is kind and offers help in difficult situations can make all the difference. In fact, it might be what sets you apart as the most effective colleagues build productive relationships across units and DGs that help the institution as a whole to find solutions to problems of European scale. Your relationships can really make a difference for people, who might benefit from EU funding, participate in a consultation or enjoy more rights as a result of a Commission legislative proposal.

2. Your network is what will keep you moving.
Go for coffee, to that lunchtime conference or attend a training course to see the Commission from different angles and create ties for potential future jobs. The Commission is one big institution, but every DG, directorate and sometimes even unit has its own culture. This diversity is not always easy to manoeuvre and will challenge you to find the right place for you. As you learn about the ins and outs of your job, you will get a feeling if your current position is one you would like to stay in. Establishing a network across different units and DGs can help you figure out which job profile is best for you, as job and professional development opportunities are vast and accessible without changing your employer, try out different profiles. Test yourself as a legal, policy or programme officer in different domains. This will not only help you gain a better perspective on EU policies, but also guide you towards a career trajectory that is right for you.

3. Mobility helps you move forward.
A great thing about the Commission is that it offers you quasi unlimited job mobility. At one point in your career you may be negotiating trade deals for the EU, at another managing the Commission’s real estate and at yet another working on a Commission proposal to improve measures on promoting consumer rights. This by itself fosters your life-long learning and encourages diving into new fields. Exploring new fields is also supported by plenty of courses the Commission offers to its staff on all fields of EU policy making. Although mobility between DGs and units is an asset to hiring managers and will advance your career, finding the right timing and position to move into can be tricky. As a rule of thumb it is common to stay in one position for 2-3 years. Managers tend to stay longer in their positions. In some instances, moving might be the only way forward as management positions are scarce and highly desired. Therefore, being a generalist increases your mobility inside the institution. Don’t wait it out and hope that a management position might open soon where you currently are, keep moving.

4. Find and be a mentor.
Finding a mentor, who helps you reflect on which opportunities and responsibilities to take on and which better not, can be priceless. There is a lot of competition for the best people among hiring managers and having a mentor who acts as a sounding board can help you weigh arguments for and against a change. Mentors can be difficult to find as opportunities to build meaningful relationships can be scarce, especially with an increasingly virtual work environment. However, building meaningful relationships is the best way to find an experienced colleague, who takes you under her or his wing. Be authentic, admit that you do not know it all and are ok where you currently stand, and potential mentors are very likely to recognise your potential and be willing to build a closer relationship with you. By contrast, offering mentorship to somebody else is not only helping them, but also self-rewarding as it enables you to share your experience, the good and the bad, learn from your mistakes and empower others to make the right decisions. In other words, it trains you to become a good manager.

5. Ensuring equal treatment.
Saying no can be difficult in every job, but when it comes to working in the Commission, this might mean that you are obliged by the principle of equal treatment to turn down people with whom you highly sympathise and who are in dire need for help. Adhering to the rules and by extension ensuring equal treatment is imperative, especially when it comes to interacting with Member States, including your own. For example, the rotating presidency in the Council provides the incumbent presidency various opportunities to arrange meetings to further its priorities. Be ready to find diplomatic ways to leave doors half-open, say no to requests from influential groups when necessary and make sure you stay within the limits of your sphere of responsibility.

An article by Rafael Stein, Project Officer at the European Commission.

And yet, we failed.

There is war in Europe, and it is not going anywhere. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The invasion was not provoked. In two months, Russians killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians, carried out massacres which fit into the definition of genocide, and made more than 10 millions Ukrainians flee their homes. But the war did not start on February 24. It started in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and occupied Donbas, the Eastern part of Ukraine. The Russians claimed that they held a transparent referendum in the annexed peninsula and that their soldiers did not participate in the war. Now, ironically, Putin is giving awards to the same soldiers for the war that the Kremlin so ardently denied for eight years.

Therefore, February 24 is a continuation of the largest European war we had since WW2. This war has a genocidal nature, and it will not have a win-win scenario for anyone. Russia cannot conquer Ukraine without a huge loss for itself. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia without a tremendous human sacrifice. And the rest of Europe cannot pretend like it is life as usual.
Numbers show it. After 24 February, the EU provided Ukraine with around 1 billion Euros. That money goes for humanitarian and military aid.

In the same period, Russia has received nearly 40 billion Euros from the EU. That’s the payment for Russian oil, gas, and coal. This is European money funding the war on its soil.

The EU has been in a difficult position ever since Russia launched a full-scale invasion. On one hand, it pledged its full support for Ukraine. It announced sanctions, and it also condemned Russia.

On the other hand, the EU keeps on buying Russian energy supplying the Kremlin with money for war. The energy embargo is not happening. Some of the major Russian banks are not included in the sanctions. And there is a constant debate about whether to send Ukraine more arms or not. here is a giant European split.

For starters, there are European countries which are pushing for a full energy embargo. Mostly, Eastern Europeans support Ukraine, and are ringing the alarm about the continuation of Russian aggression. Baltics and Poland are leading in both publicly shaming their Western neighbours for not doing enough, and showing by example that when there is a will, there is a way.

Then, we have got a bunch of Western European countries whose responses differ. Some are varied of banning Russian energy because of the economic costs. Some would like to do it sooner than later but are waiting for a pan-European decision. And some are very much against “provoking Putin more”. Apparently, a massacre of Ukrainian civilians is not a strong enough argument against stopping funding the Kremlin.

Germany’s position here is especially interesting. On one hand, it is a country whose leadership has supported Ukraine rhetorically, and that aligns itself as Ukraine’s ally in its fight for freedom.

On the other hand, German energy policy tells otherwise. Germany is against nuclear energy, is phasing out its coal usage, and increases its renewable energy supply. However, most energy – over 70% – still comes from oil, gas, and coal. Russia is the main source of the three.
The German government has supported Nord Stream 2 even after Russia has annexed Crimea and occupied parts of Donbas in 2014. In the eight years since Russia has first started its military aggression against Ukraine, Germany – as well as the rest of the EU – had plenty of time to access the threat of their dependency on Russian energy. Now, we have a situation where the EU countries are debating an energy embargo on Russia – a move, that could have been done swiftly have Europeans listened to the many warnings from Ukraine and other Eastern European countries directly affected by Russian aggression in the past.

The energy embargo is painful. It is much more painful because of the German stance. The German government has repeatedly refused heavy weapons Ukraine has asked them to provide, supported Nord Stream 2, and appeased Russia for years. It also rejected the energy embargo as one of the most crucial sanctions against Russia. Germany is very important as the powerhouse of Europe. If its government has the political will for an energy embargo, the debates will be very different in Europe.

Europeans may stop buying Russian oil (not gas!) by the end of 2022. But we need to understand that the money Europe is paying now – and will keep on paying until December at least – will go to sustain Russia’s war. And the faster Germany and the others refuse to fund the genocide of the Ukrainian people, the better it would be for Europe as a whole.

It is crucial to understand that Putin and his cronies will fight as long as they can. They will be able to wage the war if the European money keeps financing it.

There are alternatives for Russian energy. Studies show that it might take 6 to 9 months to switch from Russian oil completely. Gas may be trickier, but it is also a realistic and a doable change – with countries installing LNG terminals and adapting to the new reality of buying gas elsewhere. In addition, there is a potential for renewables which has been in the talks in Europe for years, and which is yet to be realized. The transition takes time, but it has to happen sooner than later.

It is clear that a decision to stop buying Russian energy is a political one. For example, we are talking about billions of Euros that the German companies won’t make because of the death of Nord Stream 2. We are talking about the need to adapt, potentially rise prices, and annoy the voters in countries where this is already a very sensitive issue. We are also talking about a strong business lobby that cannot wait to return to normal trade with Russia.

And, we are also talking about the continuous funding of the Russian war. We are talking about a genocide that is happening live, about burned cities, tortured civilians, and thousands if not tens of thousands killed. We are talking about a divided Europe where democracies have no problem funding a dictator.

Europe has had years to free itself from Russian energy addiction. It didn’t. But it can – and needs to act now – if it does stand by the values it promotes.

It has been two months since Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine. We saw what Russians did in Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin, Borodyanka, and more. We see the pictures of destroyed Mariupol. Ukrainians keep on fighting on the ground. They keep defending their land and Europe as a whole. We only ask that the rest of Europe not fund the killing of Ukrainians.

Anna Romandash, Ukraine, Advocate of United Europe

More than 60,000 people transfer daily at Paris’ busy Charles de Gaulle Airport, one of the largest airline hubs in the world. But not every traveler is making the usual dash from flight to flight: A small but growing number connect to or from a train for one leg of their journeys.

These air-rail connections — or “Train + Air” itineraries as Air France calls them — involve a flight and an intercity train on a single booking, as opposed to buying two separate tickets for the same trip. The benefit of booking them together includes protections if one leg is late and a traveler misses their connection, as well as additional credits in airline loyalty programs, something that is highly valued by frequent travelers.

These multimodal trips have been around for decades, but as the industry doubles down on promises to cut carbon emissions, they are receiving renewed interest from both airlines and European authorities. The challenge, however, is rail infrastructure, or the lack of, which limits where these connections are possible — even in rail-friendly Europe. On top of that, travelers need some basic and easier ways to navigate these rail transfers.

Air France’s Train + Air partnership with French rail operator SNCF connects the airline’s Paris hub with at least 18 destinations across France, as well as to Brussels. Elsewhere in Europe, KLM sells joint tickets with Thalys to Belgium, Lufthansa with Deutsche Bahn in Germany, and Iberia unveiled a similar partnership with Renfe in Spain in March. Air France and Lufthansa together sold at least 735,000 joint air-rail tickets annually before the pandemic, according to the airlines.

“For short travels, when you have a train, more and more, we will work with the train and SNCF … as a feeding of our hub,” Air France CEO Anne Rigail said in response to questions on the airline’s emissions reduction initiatives at the Skift Europe Forum in March.

Last year, Air France revealed plans to streamline and expand its partnership with SNCF. The airline added eight more train routes, and tried a digital solution where travelers could check in and receive a boarding pass for the rail portion of their trip in the Air France app on the Lille and Strasbourg routes. The aim was to boost the number of people who use the offering, and help meet its target of slashing domestic emissions in half by 2024.

Air France Vice President of Sustainability and New Mobilities Vincent Etchebehere said the airline sees a “growing appetite of many of our customers to favor train even when a plane solution exists.” This comes amid an increased interest among travelers for “low carbon” modes of transport, he added in an interview.

“There is a conviction within Air France that we should no longer be in opposition between train and air,” said Etchebehere. Roughly 160,000 Train + Air itineraries were booked in 2019, he said. Etchebehere declined to provide more recent data, saying the pandemic made it “difficult to monitor those numbers.” He reiterated that both Air France and SNCF want to boost the number that, in 2019, made up a fraction of a percent of the 52.2 million travelers the airline carried globally.

Old Idea, New Goals
Multimodal travel is an old idea receiving new attention. In 1982, Lufthansa partnered with German rail operator Deutsche Bahn to introduce what may have been the first official air-rail connection: the Lufthansa Airport Express, an express train that replaced flights between Düsseldorf with the airline’s Frankfurt hub.

Later developments included Swissair partnering with Swiss rail operator SBB to offer check-in and luggage tagging services at train stations from 1989 until the airline’s demise in 2002. And Air France began offering its own dual flight-train tickets with SNCF, initial known as “TGV Air,” in the mid-1990s.

What’s changed are the arguments for these tie-ups. Early on, airlines saw rail partnerships as a way to reduce the number of flights to nearby destinations at their hub airports and thus free up valuable slots for more lucrative routes. The rationale today is to cut emissions by operating fewer carbon-intensive short-haul flights and shift travelers to greener trains.

“Intermodality is … key when we’re discussing how to reach the climate targets,” Deutsche Bahn Head of Transport Policy Europe Christoph Lerche said at an United Europe event in March. “We believe that close cooperation with airlines is very important.”

While there is universal agreement that replacing planes with trains reduces carbon emissions, there is disagreement on how much. A study published in March by Oxera on behalf of four aviation industry trade groups — organizations that want to protect, if not outright promote, aviation — found that eliminating all flights in Europe under 500 kilometers, or 311 miles, would reduce aviation emissions on the continent by only 3-5 percent.

Alternatively, a 2021 study by Stefan Baumeister of University of Jyväskylä in Finland, and Abraham Leung of Griffith University in Australia found that replacing all domestic flights in Finland with trains could cut the country’s transportation emissions by a whopping 95 percent.
“Even existing (non-high-speed) rail can provide as fast connections as aircraft on distances up to 400 kilometers, and in case of [high-speed rail] even on distances up to 800 kilometers. Here aviation does not provide a real benefit but comes at significantly higher environmental costs,” Baumeister said when asked about their findings. However, he acknowledged that outright bans on flights, particularly to smaller regional airports, in the name of climate targets are politically challenging.

France is the only European country to date to ban flights on short routes. Germany, Italy, and Spain are considering similar legislation but have yet to finalize anything. France barred flights on routes where trains can make the journey in no more than two-and-a-half hours as part of a sweeping climate law in 2021. Air France has only cancelled three routes — Paris to Bordeaux, Lyon and Nantes, though some connecting flights are still allowed — as a result, and on all three the high-speed TGV trains already had significant market share.

And in most cases it is easier to get someone to take the train when they are only traveling from Paris to Lyon, than someone traveling from, say, New York to Lyon via Paris. Door-to-door travel time for a Parisian is likely shorter if they take then train rather than fly. However, someone who is already flying will likely book the quickest routing with little extra thought, and may need to be nudged or encouraged during the booking process to opt for the train.

“If there’s an attractive alternative, people will take the train anyway,” said Kathrin Obst, the deputy head of unit in the European Commission’s Directorate General of Mobility and Transport, at the United Europe event. The commission does not “believe” in an outright flight ban, she added.

“The way to do this is to improve the [rail] offering,” said Obst.

Analog Connections
For all of Air France’s promotion of Train + Air, one gets the picture of that they are as easy as transiting from one plane to another. That was not the case connecting from a French domestic flight to a TGV train at Charles de Gaulle earlier in April.

After disembarking, there is no signage directing a flyer to the train station nor was the connecting “flight” listed on departures boards. A traveler must know they need to proceed through arrivals and exit baggage claim for their connection. The first signage — and even then it was simply to “Trains” — is after baggage claim in the lower level of the domestic Terminal 2F. The first Air France Train + Air sign was at the airline’s office in the station where travelers still must pick up their train ticket. The digital in-app solution trialed by Air France last year has yet to be fully implemented.

“In order for Train + Air product to work, and be favored by customers, you have to put customer experience at the core,” said Etchebehere. He acknowledged that some of the aspects of the experience are “not on par” with Air France’s customer standards, for example travelers’ inability to check in for their entire trip online or on the airline’s app.

Air France intends to roll out a fully digitalized Train + Air offering, which is internally dubbed “Train + Air 2.0,” this summer, he said. An airline spokesperson said Air France is working with the airport and SNCF to improve the signage at the Charles de Gaulle airport.

Next Up
Airlines and rail operators are aligned in improving the air-rail connection experience. Executives from both Deutsche Bahn and SNCF cited this in comments on replacing planes with trains at the United Europe Event.

Rail works in lieu of flights “where there is a good offer of quality with high frequency and a short duration of the trip,” SNCF Director of European Affairs Jérémie Pélerin said. But therein lies the rub: replacing flights with trains really only work where the rail infrastructure already exists.

“You can’t run a good train network without the infrastructure,” said Obst of the European Commission. Expanding rail infrastructure costs billions of dollars and takes years, if not decades, to complete limiting the ability of a broad expansion of air-rail connections.

Iberia will test the willingness of travelers to book air-rail connections with its new Ticket&Fly offering. While Madrid’s Barajas airport is served by the city’s metro and regional trains, travelers will need to take either of those transit options to the Chamartín or Atocha Renfe stations — a 17 or 32 minute journey from the airport, respectively, per Google Maps — to catch their rail connection. Iberia forecasts that, despite the infrastructural inconvenience, as many as 100,000 passengers could use Ticket&Fly annually.

And in Finland and the U.S., where rail networks are less developed, airlines are tapping buses to provide low-carbon ground connections. Finnair will replace most flights on two short routes from its Helsinki hub with buses in May, and Sun Country Airlines, United Airlines, and soon American Airlines are using buses to add new connections and restart old ones in the U.S.

“It will cost an enormous amount of money,” KLM CEO Pieter Elbers said last year when asked about the potential of air-rail connections to meaningfully cut emissions. “Infrastructure that has to be built by governments. That [money] could probably be used more effectively in terms of investing in synthetic fuels, [and] in single European airspace. There are certain parts that could be dealt with by train, not everything.”

Edward Russell is Skift’s Washington, D.C.-based airlines reporter. He’s covered the industry from the American-US Airways combo to the depths of the coronavirus pandemic. He enjoys bikes, trains and runs with his dog, Heathrow. This article was published on April, 11th in Skift.

In Northeastern Europe, people find it hard to explain to themselves why they should they care about climate change – a Mediterranean climate at the Baltic Sea… What’s the harm?

Well, there is harm. Also, in the north. While people near the Pacific Ocean or the Caribbean Sea might not need convincing that the climate crisis is a bad thing, people in the north – often the ones who emit the most – are more stubborn. To convince them, if anything, one formula works.

It is not to say only that the temperature will get x degrees warmer. Because any x degrees more is good.
It is the comparison to a homeostasis of a human body. 36 degrees is fairly cool. 38 is far more disturbing, you’ll want to get the temperature down fast. But imagine 40 degrees! 41?

In the not too distant future, people will think of us as we do of Louis XVI’s court: – they had Versailles but Versailles didn’t have bathrooms, so they didn’t wash themselves and did their business on the stairs and into fireplaces. All the fancy wigs with lice under them and special instruments to scratch. This is the same thing we’re doing now. Today’s “real world” is incredibly ugly, dull and dirty – with a fancy wrapping of new and newer. It’s doing our dirty stuff into an elaborate fireplace, pretending to be the kings of the world.

What else are highways full of traffic into the offices in the morning from the “green” suburbia? What else is production, dwellings, streets and parking lots built with minimal considerations on sustainability and sense of surroundings, the human beings and other creatures living there? When did we forget that streets are for people not cars? What else is insourcing from countries where also European capital only cares about the lowest price, no matter the true cost? What else was travelling by plane for a meeting and back home the same evening? What else is buying “coffee to go”? Yesterday’s solutions are the problems of today.

A deeper issue is that we might have made a false connection in the last four decades: democracy and peace = the mirage of comfort and of purity. No need to clean your shoes: buy new ones! No need to wash dishes: throw them away!

The mass produced idea of more, bigger and newer was of questionable taste from scratch – yet it does have a primordial appeal… Our brains are wired to provide and secure – more, bigger and newer for less money targets exactly this providing and securing part of the brain. The selling economy sends us to a constant loop of securing, ending up in the complete opposite. In a lot – a lot – of trash and emissions, as well as mountains of unquantifiable waste.

In the consumerist context, bashing wasteful lifestyles was considered radical – a green issue that brushed real life only from the sides and distracted from economic growth. It ruined everybody’s party…

In the last few years, we’ve grown to understand that it is consumerism that is extremist. The consumerist normality has been aggressively marketed toward us, twisting the secretal reward mechanisms in the body – it is not inevitable normality of economic growth but a particular stage of mass production in a mass society. But the reflexes of consumerism are hard to lose – both economically or cognitively. In many ways, we are completely defenseless towards aggressive marketing. We weren’t cut out for this kind of danger.

Yet we have to learn to refuse – the most effective way to get the emissions and waste down – and to embrace a far more valuable “consumption”: cleaner air, water, space is more useful than any perceived convenience or status symbols. We might use our technical advancement to avoid dangerous uncleanliness or dangerously hard labor. But, apart from those, convenience and consumption seem to have too high a price to continue pursuing.

Many people start to struggle here. Yes, refusing is fine but what about the European companies’ competitiveness? Isn’t refusing going back and damning us to poverty?

And what is poverty, anyway, today? In the past, it might have been lack of basic healthcare and educational possibilities. Now, it definitely includes a community’s climate and other human generated risks – such as inaccessibility to clean water, risk of draught or flooding, extreme weather, the various risks that arise from dangerous pollution; but also the pollution of aggressive advertising and malicious data usage. How do we, without eco-totalitarianism, arrive to a society that gives [us] a chance to be part of functioning ecosystems to all communities, not only the rich?

In our time, we do need to go ahead. But we need to go small and slow. There is a lifestyle to reinvent in Europe. And it is the idea of good quality, taking care and consuming consciously. It is the idea of small but thought through. I am far from protestant frugality – and also from protestant frivolity – but I do propose that there is certopean Union, EU;y more desirable than planned obsolescence – the practice where consumer products are designed to be replaced in short while.

I remember my father who had his jacket or shoes from “1972” or “81” – numbers [like] that seemed incomprehensible to a child as they designated a time before me. He only had one bike. He was incredibly austere in his personal matters but it was not only a personal posture. It was a cultural one.

Born after the war, in 1947 in Estonia occupied by Stalin’s Soviet Union, resources were hard to come by. A village tailor turned his mother’s coat around after 10 years of use, so that the good part of the fabric would show. After another 10, his mother’s coat was made into his, the child’s coat. Pieces of the coat where souled with pig leather and made, admittedly primitive, shoes. It might be this context that always made my dad bewilder over how people use something once and then just throw it away!
But then again, so should we. We should be bewildered.

I also remember a newspaper piece on Prince Charles. The journalist was exclaiming – look, the prince has a mended suit! Indeed, it was visible from a photo that the prince’s jacket had been mended, probably with a piece of cloth from the inside of the jacket. For the prince who has admitted to maintaining his stuff for decades, mending it was a natural choice. For the consumerist, it is scandalous. This rich man can’t get a new suit?

There is something strikingly similar between poor village life in Estonia after the war and the future king of Great Britain. It means that this kind of model is not “only for the poor” or only for man who has his personal Savile Row – or Neapolitan – tailor. It’s for everybody.
This lifestyle of taking care has to be reinvented for the future citizen. As an economic social innovation, it will get Europe’s services and products buyers from the outside. Slow consumption that, instead of frenetic growth, concentrates on long run sustainability.

Here we get to the core of the present cultural transition. Because it’s important to admit: the Green Transition is not first and foremost an environmental policy, it is much more a cultural and economic revolution. It is our cultural consuming patterns that will influence the economy and our economic behavior will influence the environment.

We have to forget the excesses of consumerism and instead, price things according to their environmental and social impact and share the experience of taking care of things. This means that side by side with the environmental experts, anthropologists and psychologists should work on services, strategies, policy bundles or single measures. The good thing is that while consumerism creates anonymity, mending stuff actually creates a community feeling. Borrowing stuff and asking for help create new ties.

Should private people and companies engage in harmful activities? It is a philosophical question to which we will be giving different answers as the climate crisis deepens. But my guess is that we will limit a number of harmful activities just as we have put limits on smoking, plastic or discarding dangerous waste directly to nature. It would be better, though, to look at this question holistically and proactively. We have a regulated edge – a tradition of evidence-based policymaking that makes Europe a legal lighthouse for the rest of the world. This edge should be reinforced to meet the needs of tomorrow. It will be an integral part of Europe’s soft power.

The Green Transition also gives Europe more independence. Not having to import oil and gas from often quite backward countries saves us from trade deficit and the independence from foreign energy providers allows us to make value-based political decisions. (It will also liberate the Middle East from abandoned Ferraris…) We’ll liberate quite a lot of financial resources we’ve been, without any alternative, sending to oil and gas exporting countries – that creates an investment buffer for further green innovation. But producing locally more also gives us a new take on social inclusion – we’ll need people working for either big employers or NGOs or be entrepreneurs themselves working on green economy projects.

Going local as a part of the Green Transition will make our ecological footprint smaller but it will also revive local communities. It will create new and closer economic ties instead of old, anonymous ones. It will make us all consume a little less – because consuming will be more expensive even without green regulation – and instead better products that are locally sourced. Also, we’ll benefit from being the frontrunner in innovation – through solid and innovative growth of especially the single market. That then expands through green export everywhere in the world.

We don’t have to try to be as big as China and the US are. We can build a model of sustainable wellbeing that people from all around the world will follow. Europe’s power in the age of Green Transition will never be hard power – it will be more impactful soft power, thus providing a lead for others to follow. A lifestyle that is attractive and resilient, and one which stands the test of time – while other, more short-sighted ones, will rise and fall fast.

Last of three articles by Mihkel Kaevats, Estonia, Young Professional Advisor at United Europe and Advisor at the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs.

Our time faces such fundamental challenges that pointing out the “Like” button as the biggest single threat to the existence of developed human societies might sound absurd. Really?

Really. We’ve seen the rise of companies that simultaneously wipe out entire markets and monopolize their own. These companies manage to bypass basic transparency requirements, such as making explicit the use of user data in the functioning of their algorithms. Adjust to and aid authoritarian regimes (Myanmar, Philippines). Gather more information on more people than even the most efficient secret police in history. Make unregulated human trials in real-time. Successfully tilt elections. Classify any person by their personal traits, analyzing up to walking patterns in order to understand their character type.

These companies predict and influence what people are going to do next. Gather information on and create life-changing trends for very many people at the same time. Change the network of human synapses via creating “dopamine highways”. Promote extremism. Sell when the person is weak and easily influenced. Create a mental health disorder and learning problems epidemic, especially amongst children. Multiply previous prejudices exponentially using supercomputing leverage and, through state tenders, amplify these prejudices also into public policing.

These companies put their profits made into shelf entities in tax havens because “this is where they are based”. Use “dark patterns” to lure people to services they actually didn’t want and can’t find a way out of. Spy on people without their consent, turning on cameras and microphones. Interpret the role of “harmless”, comfortable and anonymous counsel to be entrusted people’s most intimate problems and desires – and then selling that information. That is, these companies have created the most potent machines in the human history that these companies themselves cannot understand. But that deliver with mechanical precision.
And so on.

Imagine just one of these offences in the “real”, i.e. the physical world. You’d end up locked up for a long time for most of them. Somehow not many people I’ve met think in this way consistently: that the rules and values we have among us in the “real” world also apply in the “digital” world – especially when the two are colliding fast.

Even so, it’s truly surprising to see that a CEO’s grey T-shirt can clean all that up in institutionally and intellectually very developed countries. The most puzzling thing in this game is that not only have these companies escaped with hardly any meaningful scrutiny and regulation, they are also considered inevitable and cool. They have used the free market hegemony as a shield to their utterly anti-market and anti-social activities.

They have weaponized the word “disruption” to their own benefit, creating an illusion that digital advancement was always going to go this way. The digital world was always going to create unprecedented monopolies. There was no other way.

They have also used a cultural revolution of meritocracy and youth cult – phenomena they very well can analyze – to create a clean image. This is what the grey T-shirt stands for – it’s not the suits and ties of yesteryear’s corrupt powers. It’s somebody simple this time! And you know, he’s not even in power… He looks strange but then again everybody does, so he’s neutral!

Every communication revolution brings about excesses – the invention of the printing press brought about the persecution of women; the invention of mass media gave birth to totalitarianism and propaganda/PR. Both brought war. But these developments came with a much longer delay. This one is more immediate and exponential. The Trump nightmare and the rise of the radical right in Europe, just to name a few trends these companies have maybe even unwittingly created, are only the first fruit of a communication revolution that we are yet to fully comprehend. The charlatans use algorithmically boosted channels to their means for a very simple reason: because they can.

And there is one fundamental aspect more to it. Whilst communication revolutions up to this one have mostly been about distribution of information, then in this one, its monopolist companies collecting and controlling unimaginable swathes of information. So, if you have pressed the “Like” button for more than 70 times, you now have a machine that knows you better than you do yourself. It not only remembers what you don’t – you can’t –, it can also rationalize what you’ll do next. Even the GDPR won’t root this out because this is now considered normal.

The “Like” button itself, invented in 2011, is a puzzling apogee of 8000 years of civilizational history. It is a deus ex machina, but follows the same simplistic, maybe even a vulgarized narrative of always up and useful services to “share with friends”. The dopamine rushes of getting hooked up on “likes” creates dangerous, not thoroughly studied pathways in the human brain. It is based on a very basic mechanism of herd mentality – called sociability – in which a specimen seeks group approval. But constant approval seems to mess up the human mind.
But then again – it’s not unseen in “real life”, either.

In this equation, the platform is omnipresent in people’s minds: think of a crowded scene or a dinner with friends or even a poetry evening and count the minutes until somebody says the word, “Facebook”. At the same time, it’s completely neutral. Only mythical beings such as gods have pulled out this kind of authority with a straight face.

It is the “friends” who are “sharing” and “liking”, also downright outrageous stuff. The company remains only a tool and a space for exchange and is not responsible for the content. These companies have weaponized words with a positive tone. The terms, “friends”, “like” and “share” support this idea, because they are a front to a non-transparent mega-power.

Also, is it a coincidence that it is a creation of the brightest male minds and specialists in their respective fields who have created these childly beasts? Or is it the old male order writing itself into algorithms and data? Let’s face it, the IT world is overwhelmingly male and results in a lop-sided bias feeding itself into all the algorithms and processes that govern these platforms. This lack of diversity is the greatest impediment to the healthy deployment of technology in our societies.

Now compare this to the narrative of the European Union. The same people who don’t blink giving their anything to these surveillance monopolies, might rant about the bureaucracy and absurd rules of the institution that has the most conscious consumer rights and data laws in place. It’s a discursive issue: the social beasts talk legal only where they have to and have a very professional public relations army in place that makes them seem so soft and dry. The same pleasant, soft words used in their interface create an image of friendly and neutral. The European Union, on the other hand, goes into details in a language that seems faraway and difficult to understand – even if they influence our lives to a great extent.
But then again. Would I really like that we talk politics in a psychologically studied but utterly infantile and deceptive manner?
No, I wouldn’t.

The EU should be bold. Just as it seized the data rights with GDPR, regulating a previously not a widely acknowledged international issue with great success, it can rule further on “new” issues. Exactly because they are not “traditional” topics but also because they are problems of international concern. The social beasts should be in the deep focus of it.

It should also not shy away from the evaluations it is intellectually and institutionally capable of offering. The social media giants are not normal or neutral, in fact, they are anything but. They do not play by the rules and have very distinctive ways to harm their users’ and society’s interests. Such instants should be made public and prosecuted, if necessary, as any “real world” cheat would be. Social media products, for their harmful neural effects, should have warning signs on them such as on cigarettes.

These companies should, also, stand accountable for the all data they own in front of the European Union and the Member States. These companies should present their data holdings, in a user-friendly manner, to every single European. These companies should pay fair tax not only on their corporate profits but also on 1) their data turnover and 2) attention time of every user as a health damaging product levy. These companies should not be able to buy up competition – a magnitude and anti-trust levy on corporate takeover that increases with the billions in worth. These companies should pay news outlets for the news they refer to. These companies should give all users a full and transparent flow of their private data, visible with live queries and the use of data by any party, to all, with the same ease of use as their main business. These companies should control and be held responsible for the use of data by third parties. These companies should answer for, transparently, for all the controlled group tests they make. These companies should make their algorithm development public and transparent in a technically exact manner. If these companies cannot provide transparency, obscure algorithms should be taken down.

These companies and others. It’s not a question of an entity. It is a question of unprotected rights in a completely new era.

The beast is the message. It is time to tame and domesticate the social beasts so that they work for the benefit of society, democracy and the rule of law and not for the benefit of their bank account in the Caymans. It is a question of survival.

Second of three articles by Mihkel Kaevats, Estonia, Young Professional Advisor at United Europe and Advisor at the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs. The last article “The Green Transition and the European lifestyle” will be published on Friday, August 6 2021.

There seems to be a problem with growth as it has been
defined since 1979.

Not only has it raised capital’s advantages to income by labor, it has put more CO2 and more plastic waste in the planet’s ecosystem than in all previous human history combined. We are painfully realizing that we’re a threat to the subtle natural balances that make our existence possible.

Might it be that, in the midst of a global health crisis, we are starting to collectively understand that both man’s superiority to nature and the Chicago school of economics are both dangerous untruths?

In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street protests signaled the need for change. No doubt there are still many people out there who still think the movement was naïve or that their demands were something unrealistic. Yet, Occupy Wall Street now seems a prophecy whose time had not come.

The market hegemony did not break down. Humankind lacked the imagination to change a system where hundreds of millions of people labor every day and a few thousand people make capital decisions that drive or starve companies or entire continents. If it wouldn’t be like that – how would capital move? And so on. We didn’t figure it out.

It is true that companies and financial institutions are making serious effort to divert their activities towards more sustainability. No serious company is without a sustainability manager. But does it create market advantages? I don’t think so. The whole system needs to be flipped in order to make sustainability the core of business – the ecological bottom line.

By now, the accumulating emissions and waste are becoming such a problem that neither nature nor we can handle it. It is intimately connected with the notion of growth: capital markets demand growth and growth comes, until this day, emitting more of CO2 and generating more waste. It is the imperative of more – more stuff, more turnover, more profits – that’s, among other things, becoming too heavy a burden. The more has been devilishly cheap, externalities have not been included in the cost.

The moment a large company does not grow anymore, it starts slowly disintegrating. If the growth numbers were not so good, the capital market figures: ok, let’s pull the money out. This drives boards to making more or less radical decisions. No ecological, human or social cost is too high when the bottom line is on the line.

Money is responsible only to money, nothing else. If money can buy itself out of problems – and it can, with a bit of money – then why bother? The motivations are so sweetly in place.
Thus, we have swelling super-companies, fit for only money’s purpose and no more. The real success of the neoliberal model has not been in proclaiming the superiority of the markets. Its most fundamental success has been killing any seed of imagination as to what could also count in this world besides money.

There are 20 companies who account for a third of the global emissions. Sure, they account for our consumption and energy needs. Yet, they have also been the lobbyists for more fossil fuels, normalizing a highly wasteful economical model. They have not tolerated dissent; they have hindered ecological innovation in energy by obstructing information and buying up innovative competitors. For money’s sake.

The big polluters have now had their Black Wednesday . About 40 years too late. But better late than never, I guess.

Any effective change towards a more ecologically balanced economy will tackle the problem through the motivation. Through the flow of money.

This is what Occupy Wall Street said – then, it seemed too good to be true even to supporters. What has changed? What has changed is that we are now in an explosive situation – a moment where possible futures are too many to count or play out and we’re in a moment, like it or not, in which the future narrative of the world takes shape.

It is these kinds of explosive moments when we see the contradictions of the old system falling under their own weight that new ideas are forged. The problem is that, historically, this level on inequality combined with a technological revolution has had a boldly negative outcome. The persecution of minorities. A bloody revolution. A big war.

It is also true that war has been an economic equalizer. It has brought incredible devastation and death but its aftermath has also brought progressive policies that offer improved education, healthcare and social care for the many.

To avoid a cataclysm, if follows, is a question of imagination. Can we imagine a system that not only takes into account the market but also all ecological and social costs? A fair and competitive marketplace for all?

Just maybe, this time we might become progressive before the big war – although the effects of the climate crisis might amount to the devastation of one. The world needs a new organizational principle, a new balance. Whereas the market hegemony plays on the balance of supply and demand, this new post-capitalist system needs to take into account other balances: in the digital economy on the verge of environmental catastrophe, traditional supply and demand balance becomes distorted through the possession of data and a growing understanding that maybe we shouldn’t take all the resources nature has got… It will have to be more rule based – to balance out the algorithmic and exponential superpowers with the social and ecological costs.

The first pieces of this are being put in place. The European Green Deal is one example of a chance at it. Biden’s green investment and corporate taxing are another. They should work in unison to solve these two global problems at once: the devastation of the planet and the devastation of the people.

Central to this cooperation should be the concept of the true cost – the social and ecological cost of doing business. Some things have become incredibly cheap lately. A producer of waste has not had to think about what happens to it, just as the international corporation has evaded taxes to its incomes in a way that a small national firm cannot. It creates motivations in which the most shameless win.

These things should have signaled long ago that the marketplace is not fair. That it does not bring about prosperity for all but an unnatural advantage to the big players. But I get it: the heaviest stone in the universe is the human heart. If it doesn’t want it, nobody cannot lift it. To hell with the climate crisis – what does this have to do with the “real life” of board rooms?

The crisis of our time is happening slow enough and without big dramatic events – so far – that we are like the proverbial boiling frog.

Biden’s Federal Reserve has made a bold proposition: a corporate tax obligation on all corporate profits anywhere. Somehow, this time, it does not seem at all that this “will limit competitiveness” and so on. Should some of the profits be declared in discount tax havens, they’d have to compensate for that in the US. I think the EU should follow up on this. No corporate tax breaks inside the union. Even under the subsidiarity principle, almost all member states should be interested in this.

In the skills polarization job market, further taxing of capital can be necessary. Should the job markets play out in the extreme scenario – that there is a small class of highly skilled winners and a large masses of very low pay jobs – a capital growth versus wage growth capital tax could be introduced. If companies don’t pay their workers decently (yes, also Uber workers, not “partners”) then they’ll pay it to the state who then compensates for this. It should incentivize companies to treat their people right. It also restores competitiveness to those who already do.

In the same spirit, international emissions and waste taxes should be introduced and ruthlessly enforced. This means going to the sources and destinations of emissions and pollution. You are “carbon neutral” but your suppliers are anything but? Wham! You’re sending your plastic to a country where waste goes unregulated? Wham! All along the supply chain, proven harmful activities should be disincentivized. This needs a new kind of regulatory oversight and a new understanding of international business laws – a new legal definition of dominant entities in supply chains and job relations.

The start has been made with the extraordinarily swift G7 international capital tax system. Though it seems to have dangerous loopholes (e.g over the 10% profit margin to be taxed) that leave out some of today’s biggest companies, it’s an excellent start. But it is exactly this: a start. We need to figure out the changing world in so many new ways. We need to do that because the stakes are the highest, wherever you look.

First of three articles by Mihkel Kaevats, Estonia, Young Professional Advisor at United Europe and Advisor at the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs. The other articles, “The Attention Economy: a threat to European values” and “The Green Transition and the European lifestyle” will be published in the next two weeks.

I was intrigued by the event because it reminded me that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, these high-profile summits would take place on regular basis, but over the past year they have been forced to move online. As a Ukrainian living in Brussels, I was curious to hear what would be said about the current situation in Ukraine, even though I did not expect any dramatic policy changes to emerge from this summit.

President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in May 2019 but his tenure he has been marred by several scandals. He has faced accusations of incompetency, corruption and populism. Under his leadership, it seems the Ukraine has lost its appetite to demand greater sanctions on Russia whilst also shying away from proclaiming itself as pro-EU or pro-NATO. After many failed attempts to tackle both corruption and the pandemic, Ukraine has made little progress in reaffirming its Western objectives to its NATO and EU partners.

What the NATO Summit did make clear is that, even though the Ukraine is not progressing at the pace that was originally hoped, it is still more than capable of co-operating with NATO. This absolutely leaves the door open for Ukraine to join NATO in the future, on the basis that they meet the necessary requirements for membership. This sentiment was strengthened by US President, Joe Biden. In his statement, he made clear that Ukraine could become a member of NATO, but only if it managed its domestic affairs first, such as implementing the necessary reforms and overcoming the corruption accusations.

Post-Summit NATO communique highlighted that both Ukraine and Georgia, two countries strongly affected by Russian aggression, can strive for full NATO membership even with an unresolved conflict on their land. This situation is causing huge tension between the nations. Ending the war with Russia may be the only way of thawing these relations. Unfortunately, this task appears impossible without Russian compliance. However, easing this tension is not a requirement to join NATO, not officially at least. What is more important is the ability to reform domestically and follow up on what NATO requires essential for membership. Georgia has been doing a better job than Ukraine, so far, but the fact that NATO mentioned both countries highlights that there is an equal hope for these two.

Now, in Ukraine’s case, what could be considered a success from the NATO Summit? Well, primarily, the fact that it was mentioned alongside Georgia, and the faraway promises, made in 2008, were reaffirmed, even though the environment has changed completely. Furthermore, it is important to note is that this has happened despite the ongoing conflict and confrontation with Russia. The communique was published before the meeting between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, and it could be perceived as a warning signal to the latter.

After the summit, a Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitriy Peskob, released a statement saying that Ukraine’s NATO membership was a red line issue for Russia, and that the Kremlin was concerned about the communique released by NATO leadership. This is another warning signal, however, this time it is from Russia to NATO.

At the time of writing, Ukraine has no guarantees of accession to NATO. While a lot depends on its domestic performance, there remains a continuous fluctuation between the country and its Western allies, especially when it comes to security. NATO leadership has given different messages to the Ukrainian government throughout these years. Often because of the challenging situation in Ukraine, but also, because of divisions within NATO itself.

It will be interesting to see whether anyone has a clear vision for Ukraine’s future. Whether it is NATO, the EU, or Ukrainians themselves. With its fluctuating relationship with its Western allies, Ukraine has managed to step on a lot of domestic red flags fueled by Russian propaganda. Yet, the support for joining NATO is strong, and has reached most of the country’s population.

If Ukraine fails in its reforms, its membership toward NATO will be postponed for the foreseeable future. Now, would that be a red flag for the country? Yes, but not only that, unreformed and regressive Ukraine is bad news not only for its citizens, but also for NATO members and all of their Western neighbours whose security and development are affected by Ukraine’s own security and development. Therefore, a red flag for Ukraine is the red flag for the West.

Ukraine’s potential for joining NATO is certainly a red flag for Russia. However, from the West’s perspective, anything that upsets the Kremlin, is a major victory for Ukraine. If the country can demonstrate significant progress with its reforms, Ukraine’s victories with NATO could be bigger. So far, it remains a rather passive observer of the big decisions made by the Alliance’s leadership.

In the light of the past summit, it was important to note the gains Ukraine made from the event, even without being directly responsible for them. Now, will the Alliance extend its support to encourage Ukraine further? And what will the ambivalent Ukrainian leadership do?

An article by Anna Romandash, Ukraine, Young Professionals Advisor

Montenegro, one of the presumed front-runners of the EU accession process, is facing a financial predicament. The Western Balkan country is struggling to pay off a 1 billion US dollar Chinese loan for a controversial highway project, which has put the country in a dire financial situation.
The expected debt repayment will begin in July of this year.

This has put the newly elected government of Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapić in a difficult situation. Krivokapić, who expressed his opposition to the highway project in 2014, has turned to the EU for financial assistance.

The EU, however, has voiced their concerns for accepting such large loans in the past and at the time advised Montenegro not to proceed with the Chinese-financed project.

This is more than just a bilateral issue between Montenegro and China. For years, China has been using easy money to gain influence rapidly, taking advantage of the poor investment climate in the Balkans by providing loans and consequently ensuring long-term political dependency. One of China’s key investment areas is support for infrastructure projects in the region.

Under President Xi Jinping, China has emerged as an important leader in the Balkans. Consequently, the issue has become a wider geopolitical contest between China and the EU, and Montenegro finds itself sandwiched between major power politics and its present financial problems over the loan.

A prime example of China’s debt-trap diplomacy

In 2014, Montenegro successfully concluded negotiations with Chinese partners to finance a highway project which would connect the Montenegrin coastal city of Bar with Serbia’s capital, Belgrade.

The agreement included a 944 million US dollar loan from the Exim Bank with an annual interest rate of 2 per cent and a six-year grace period, making the project the biggest in Montenegro since its independence in 2006.

Despite the fact that the project was deemed economically unviable by two feasibility studies, Montenegro decided to move forward with it, causing the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio to peak at 105 per cent of GDP in 2020, compared to 79 percent in 2019.

The size of the loan was incredibly disproportionate to the size of the economy.

As expected, the highway has proved to be very challenging for Montenegro to repay, a country of roughly 620,000 people with an economy largely dependent on tourism.

The country was hit hard by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. The number of tourists entering Montenegro decreased significantly, further saddling the country with overwhelming debt and economic hardships.

China currently holds around one-quarter of Montenegro’s total debt. If Montenegro defaults on its loan, the contract for the road project gives China the right to access and control land and assets as collateral.

Facing an increasingly difficult financial situation, Montenegro has requested assistance from the EU to help pay off the loan, but the EU has refused to bail out the country.

The EU refuses to help

The EU ultimately had two choices. The first was to provide financial assistance to Montenegro and validate Chinese foreign direct investments in the region. The second was to reject Montenegro’s request for help and send a message to the rest of the Western Balkans that the EU will not help countries that ignore their advice and proceed with unviable economic projects.

Unsurprisingly, the EU chose the latter option.

European Commission spokesman Peter Stano said that the EU won’t help Montenegro repay its loan, whereas EU spokeswoman Ana Pisonero stated that the EU does not repay loans taken from third parties.

The stakes are now high for both the EU and Montenegro. The EU’s response to the financial situation in Montenegro risks increased Chinese influence, providing space for China’s control over Montenegrin public assets.

The Western Balkans region has been witnessing a massive increase in Chinese investments and other authoritarian influences over the past few years.

China already enjoys great political and economic ties with Serbia, which has allowed it to expand out to neighbouring countries.

Montenegro is particularly attractive to China because of its geographic position and its access to the Adriatic coast.

China could use Montenegro as its pivot to Europe. More presence in the country could mean greater opportunities for involvement in Europe. Therefore, China’s growing presence in the region should not be taken for granted by the EU.

In the coming weeks, Montenegro must find an urgent alternative for its financial future. The EU should step in to help Montenegro find a solution while there is still time. Turning a blind eye to this geopolitical struggle could have major consequences for Montenegro and the greater European region. Each investment that China makes is planting a seed for greater presence and control in the region.

Visar Xhambazi is a policy researcher at Democracy for Development (D4D) Institute in Kosovo and a young professional advisor at United Europe in Germany. He holds a master’s degree in International Studies from Old Dominion University in Virginia, specialising in US foreign policy and international relations.

This article was first published in New Eastern Europe.

The 9th of May has often been an occasion for the European Union to dwell on past achievements. Year after year, the institutions remind us on Europe Day about the determination of a group of European personalities set on avoiding a repeat of a continental war. As if for a moment Europeans borrowed from Americans their love for inspirational founding fathers’ narratives, EU institutions tell us about Schuman’s speech and about how the Union eventually brought about economic development, peace and stability.

This year, however, institutions did not hark back so much to the past. By launching the Conference on the Future of Europe, the EU made the 9th of May of 2021 about looking ahead. The Conference  — a participatory process in the form of a digital platform and citizens debates that will last until 2022 — aims to discuss future policies and reforms for the bloc.

For an institution obsessed with reaching across layers of government and connecting with its citizens, the Conference is yet another attempt to involve Europeans in European affairs. Its launch in the symbolic city of Strasburg last Sunday was no short of grandiosity. “With this citizens’ platform, we are giving everyone the opportunity to contribute to shaping the future of Europe and engage with other people from across Europe”, said the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, who spoke at the launch.

Credit when credit is due: The EU has always been putting a lot of effort into reaching out to its citizens. This time it’s just bigger, better and packed with more expectations. And it’s precisely here, in the management of expectations, where the biggest risks lie.

To begin with, Member States have already rendered the Conference quite toothless. “The Union framework offers potential to allow challenges to be addressed in an effective manner”, says the Council of the European Union’s position. It also states that the Conference outcome does not fall within the scope of Article 48 of the treaties, closing the door to treaty reform.

“Can these treaties be changed? This is the fundamental question that will accompany for a year the Conference on the Future of Europe that started yesterday in Strasbourg. It is a question that is a matter of life or death for the European project”, states Italian newspaper La Repubblica in an article to encourage the EU to get rid of voting so many decisions unanimously.

But the idea of changing the treaties brings back ghosts of Europe’s recent past. Involving citizens in EU integration already backfired in 2005. After years of negotiation, French and Dutch citizens rejected a European Constitutional Treaty in referendums. Only after cutting, copying and pasting the original Constitutional Treaty could the EU pass the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, a less ambitious text and the last great leap forward in the integration process.

In the year 2021, states do not want to drain their energy in negotiations that might last for years and lead to nothing much. But what if citizens express a will for further integration in the framework of the Conference? If Member States don’t follow up, the whole process might create further frustration, even more so among those citizens keen on integrating Europe.

Then, of course, there is Covid. The Conference comes in a moment of impeccable bad timing. After Von der Leyen announced in mid-2019 her proposal to hold the Conference, the institutional machinery began moving its wheels at the end of 2019, right before the world knew about COVID-19’s outbreak in Wuhan. The virus threw the EU in crisis management mode and both the Council and the Commission postponed the Conference. Restrictions of face-to-face meetings will also probably water down Europe’s latest plan to connect with its citizens.

With Covid still causing trouble and a recovery process in the works, is it really time for the EU to gaze at its navel? “The very last thing Europe needs at this point is an orgy of introspection”, writes Timothy Garton Ash, Oxford professor and Guardian columnist, who thinks European leaders should rather focus “on what the EU can actually do for its citizens”.

According to Garton Ash, polls support the notion that citizens don’t pay that much attention to EU decision-making processes, and that the institution’s legitimacy comes largely from what it delivers. This means that the EU wins when it delivers a recovery package from COVID-19 and suffers when there are flops like a slow vaccine rollout. Indeed, the EU should be bolder. It should make important, meaningful policies and break institutional taboos, as happened with debt mutualization in the COVID-19 recovery package —all of it without treaty reform.

Do European leaders really need a year-long participatory process to figure out the priorities of its citizens? Here, we can look at a recent example. To commemorate its 75th Anniversary, the United Nations launched a global survey to ask “peoples from all countries and walks of life about their priorities for the future and ideas for action”. But the “world’s biggest conversation”, as the UN hailed it, produced rather uninspiring results. If we look at the declaration that the states voted after considering the survey’s input, we will not find any revealing priority. Nothing the UN could not have figured out on its own.

While the Conference on the Future of Europe can give an extra layer of legitimacy to reformists or result in a push for new policies, it is hard to think that the EU needs a ‘listening exercise’ to figure out its citizens’ priorities. It might help it reconnect with citizens, yes, but it is hard to see that the Conference’s outcome will contain any surprising plot twist.

Of course, it will be interesting to follow Europe’s latest attempt to be more democratic and reach out to its citizens. And we can only hope that it brings fresh ideas and inspires some institutional change. But, meanwhile, institutions should also focus on delivering good results in policies such as vaccine rollout, recovery and the green deal, to name a few. These are some of the most transformative policies in years and have much potential to make or break the UE’s reputation.

Albert Guasch, Communications Officer at Club de Madrid, belongs to United Europe’s Young Professional Advisors.