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MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION
to wind up the debate on the statements by the Council and the Commission
pursuant to Rule 123(2) of the Rules of Procedure
on the 2014 Commission Progress Report on Turkey
(2014/2953(RSP))
Kati Piri
on behalf of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

The timing of Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s first visit to Pakistan may have come as a surprise to many South Asia analysts, as she was the first senior foreign dignitary to visit Pakistan after the much-discussed Chinese president’s visit last month which saw $46 billion in agreements between China and Pakistan. Upon her arrival, Bishop indicated that Australia wanted to follow a similar path, saying: “My visit and meeting with Pakistani leaders is aimed at discussing the growing strength of our bilateral partnership and important regional and international issues.”

This has not been the only high level visit by an Australian dignitary. Just a few months back, Air Marshal Mark Binskin, the chief of defense forces of Australia, also visited Pakistan to enhance and deepen security and defense ties between the two countries.

Given how foreign state visits and bilateral talks work, it is interesting to observe Australia’s two well-timed, high-powered visits to Pakistan — a country that is, otherwise, not on Australia’s priority list. If anything, Australia’s overwhelming focus on Southeast Asia and India has precluded it from being an active presence in Pakistan.

Is that changing? The window of opportunity is now open; the United States is reducing its role in Afghanistan, China is expanding its presence in the region, and stability in Pakistan is re-emerging. The two back-to-back visits by senior Australian officials to Pakistan are evidence of Australia’s new tilt in Asia, a strategy that makes sense for numerous reasons.

For one, looking at geopolitical and economic dynamics, Australia and Pakistan share a similar environment. Australia, like Pakistan, maintains a very balanced relationship between China and the United States. Both Pakistan and Australia are economically integrated with China, but in terms of security and defense, share close ties with the United States.

In what many are suggesting as the rise of a bipolar world, countries like Pakistan and Australia may hold the key to international peace and stability in a divided yet interdependent world — a third wheel between the two superpowers. Pakistan already played a similar role in 1970 when it facilitated Kissinger’s secret visit to China, changing the dynamics of the Cold War.

Second, with China investing over $46 billion in Pakistan’s economy and international investors following suit, Australia with its edge in the mining industry has the opportunity to bandwagon on the Chinese investment and develop strong links with Pakistan — one of the most mineral-rich countries in the world — to make the most out of the economic opportunity in the region.

Third, given Australia’s aging population issues, investing in relations with Pakistan at the moment can allow Australia to recruit top professionals from Pakistan to become a driver of economic growth in Australia. Pakistan has a massive and impressively-educated youth bulge that is fluent in English and possesses technical skills that can energize Australia’s work force and inject needed money into its economy.

Finally, and most importantly, is the India pivot. While Australia has excellent ties with India, especially with the 2014 nuclear deal between the two countries, the fact remains that India’s foreign policy is based on traditional power players, looking more towards Russia or the United States to contain China.

At this point, Pakistan, who is also close to both China and the United States, can be a good regional partner for Australia. The two countries share an extensive history of security partnerships and cooperation in agriculture, education, and health. This history was renewed with Bishop’s meetings with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Chief of Army Staff Gen. Raheel Sharif, and several ministers including the Minister of Planning, Development & Reforms.

The bilateral talks covered all major areas including trade and investment, security and defense, education, agriculture, and energy. In fact, Bishop also announced a $24 million aid package for rehabilitation in conflict-affected areas — a token to demonstrate Australia’s growing interest and seriousness in Pakistan.

The content of the meeting with Ahsan Iqbal, the minister of Planning, Development & Reforms, is most crucial because of the significance of the issues discussed that included education and research, civil services reform and governance, and energy sectors — areas that are top on the priority list of Pakistan as it struggles to recover its economic stability.

But more than just words, it is important that the two countries take practical steps to develop people-to-people links — something pointed out by Bishop in a meeting with her Pakistani counterpart, Sartaj Aziz.

At a time when Pakistan appears to be on the verge of transformation, it’s pragmatic for Australia to invest and build a partnership in a long-term strategic relation that can go beyond security and defense. As it’s famously said: “Follow the money.” Perhaps Australia should simply follow the Chinese as they venture into Pakistan. With two senior level Australian visits to Pakistan, the understanding, it appears, may already be prevalent in the foreign policy circles of Australia.

AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images

Sometime in the early 1980s, my husband’s uncle Nick began to dream. His language school in Corfu was bustling with students eager to learn English or French or German before Greece joined the European Union. So Nick expanded the school. Then, buoyed by his success and the ready availability of drachma-based loans, he borrowed money to build a sleek grocery store; a motorbike rental agency followed. In 1992, on the eve of the EU’s creation, Nick was a wealthy man basking, like most Greeks, in the presumed prosperity of an economically united Europe.

Today, both Nick and Greece are bankrupt. Between 2008 and 2013, Greeks saw median incomes plummet 22 percent. More than 25 percent of the labor force is now unemployed, including Nick, his ex-wife, and their only son. Between October 2014 and March 2015, Greece experienced capital outflows of almost 28 billion euros, and its newly elected leadership has had little luck in gaining any debt relief from European creditors.

It is easy, in retrospect, to blame Nick and his compatriots for borrowing and spending too much (which they did) and for skirting their fiscal responsibilities and believing too glibly in the glories of union. But the source of Greece’s demise goes far beyond its own bad behavior and the harsh austerity that other Europeans have thrust upon the country. To put it bluntly, Greece never should have joined the EU in the first place—and it shouldn’t be trapped there now.

In the early 1990s, Greece fell far afield of the economic criteria laid out by the Maastricht Treaty, the EU’s founding document. Greece’s 1991 inflation rate, for instance, was 20 percent against a Maastricht target of 3.9 percent, while its government deficit was 11.4 percent compared with a target of 3 percent. In 1999, when the European monetary union was launched, Greece failed to meet the criteria again, but managed to squeeze into the body two years later. A decade on, when the financial crisis hit, Greece was running double-digit fiscal deficits and had accumulated debts worth nearly 130 percent of the country’s GDP. It had not addressed underlying structural problems, including spotty tax collection, business-choking regulations, and a vast, inefficient state bureaucracy. Since then, the country still has not summoned the political will to redress these issues.

To understand why Greece’s entry into the EU was so problematic and yet so preordained, one must go back to the political dream, hatched in the immediate post-World War II period, of a continent free, at last, of war. Originally, the EU was seen not as a seamless financial market or even a free trade zone, but as a space for political and social cooperation. As Jean Monnet, the EU’s original architect, expressed it: “What we must seek is a fusion of interests among the European peoples.” Greece, with strategic links to the United States and NATO and with an iconic status as the birthplace of democracy, was an integral slice of this political vision.

Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, however, a new generation of European leaders moved away from their predecessors’ political pronouncements, focusing instead on economic and financial motives that might bring nations together. This tack worked: Corporations based in smaller countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands jumped on the European bandwagon, lured by the prospect of larger markets and lower continental costs. Financiers embraced the idea of cross-border mergers and simpler tax regimes. And ordinary citizens like Nick broke from their customary nationalism to embrace a vision of free-flowing trade and widespread wealth. (Of course, the Greek government—along with administrations in Portugal, Spain, and Italy—was also eager to receive funds from wealthier European partners.)

On its surface, the EU thus looked like a great success. But once the financial tide turned, the monetary union’s rocky foundations became perilously evident. As Greece, among other countries, has stumbled since 2009 under a burgeoning debt load, growth has slowed across Europe and anxiety has spread.

Economically, Greece is of little import to Europe. Even if the country were to default entirely on its debt, the total sum would be minimal (320 billion euros, or around $350 billion), and the creditors would be primarily EU funding entities, which would not be affected severely by the loss. Politically, though, the country remains key to the EU—not only because the rise of its deeply socialist Syriza party threatens the continent’s prevailing neoliberal consensus, but also, and more importantly, because its lack of exit options is Europe’s as well. Or to put it more bluntly, if there’s no way out for Greece, then there’s no way out for anyone.

In what could be called an act of political genius, the EU’s creators compelled nations to cede chunks of their sovereignty—printing money, patrolling borders, regulating economic exchange—to a supranational body. If the terms of that great bargain were constantly up for renegotiation, the EU never would have worked. So the founders explicitly concocted a no-way-out scheme. It’s not that the rules for retreating from the EU are complicated, harsh, or expensive. There simply aren’t any. To even begin contemplating leaving the eurozone, at a bare minimum Greece would have to start printing drachmas again, recalculate all prices and assets denominated in euros, and hope to raise funds through bonds that could only be issued at astronomically high rates. Undertaking these tasks during a period of prosperity would be exceedingly difficult; doing them under duress would likely prove catastrophic.

Therefore, the fight between Syriza and the European troika, and between Germany’s Angela Merkel and Greece’s Alexis Tsipras, isn’t really about these entities and leaders at all. It is about a political decision made decades ago to execute a vision of a unified Europe that would never be subject to the vagaries of member states—and about the long-term consequences of trying to pretend that Greece was ever something it is not.

Illustration by Matthew Hollister

Une des peniches de débarquement du HMS Bulwark à la rescousse de migrants en mer, ce mercredi (crédit : MOD Uk)

(BRUXELLES2) La question d’avoir une présence au sol en Libye renait à la faveur de l’opération maritime déclenchée par l’Union européenne (EUNAVFOR Med).

Le quotidien The Guardian vient de publier son analyse dans lequel il accrédite l’idée d’utilisation de forces terrestres par les Européens en le tirant de sa lecture du Concept de gestion de crises (CMC). Un point de vue que je ne partage pas. C’est vraiment tirer le bouchon un peu loin !

Tout d’abord, c’est oublier le contexte d’un tel document. Un CMC est là pour poser toute la problématique d’une opération, donner les concepts et les options possibles face à un objectif politique. Ceci est bien défini clairement. Il ne s’agit pas en tant que tel de préciser l’action militaire qui va être menée mais de définir quelles options de la PDSC répondent le mieux à l’objectif stratégique défini.

The CMC is the conceptual framework describing CSDP activity to address a particular crisis within the EU comprehensive approach. (…) The CMC defines the political strategic objectives for CSDP engagement, and provides CSDP option(s) to meet EU objectives.

Ensuite, l’objectif stratégique défini est clairement de perturber l’action des trafiquants. Face à cette nécessité, on envisage différentes actions possibles y compris au bout frapper un bateau ancré au rivage. Cela ne signifie pas automatiquement que cette action sera utilisée. Elle dépendra du mandat donné par les responsables européens (mandat qui sera inscrit dans une décision). Et l’action (militaire) stricto sensu sera enfin précisée dans le concept d’opération (Conops) ou le plan d’opération (OpPlan), avec éventuellement des conditions posées d’utilisation.

Si on se place dans un autre domaine, il ne faut pas confondre le plan d’architecte soumis au permis de construire, du permis lui-même et du plan de l’entreprise ensuite pour assurer la construction (le permis de construire ne détaille pas automatiquement toutes les couches de vernis qu’on passera sur le parquet du salon ;-).

Une action sur le rivage ne signifie pas forces terrestres

Selon notre éminent confrère britannique, le document parle de possibles opérations pour détruire les biens des trafiquants sur le rivage (to destroy smugglers’ assets “ashore). Et cela pourrait « inclure une action le long des côtes, dans les ports ou à l’ancre (contre) les moyens des trafiquants et des navires avant leur utilisation » (This could include “action along the coast, in harbour or at anchor of smugglers assets and vessels before their use”). Pour cela, nul besoin de forces terrestres. Un bon hélicoptère doté de l’armement adéquat peut faire le travail (*). C’est comme cela qu’on avait procédé en Libye en 2011. Et c’est comme cela que l’Union européenne a procédé, lors de l’opération anti-piraterie Atalanta (lire : Lutte contre les trafics d’immigration clandestine : l’inspiration « Atalanta »).

Une autorisation nécessaire

Une telle action serait d’ailleurs soumise à l’autorisation à la fois des Nations-Unies ou des autorités de Libye (voire des deux). Cette autorisation est une condition obligatoire au niveau européen. L’opération conduite par les Européens n’est pas un acte de guerre, elle s’inscrit davantage dans la légalité internationale, comme une opération de police internationale. Autrement dit, sans cette autorisation pas d’intervention. Il s’agit d’une « option possible ».

Une présence à terre ?

Enfin, de façon assez évidente, pour mener ces engagements, il faut avoir une « présence » à terre, une présence qui ne signifie pas automatiquement un engagement de forces terrestres. Cela peut être des officiers de liaison chargés de faire, des agents des forces spéciales (sans nécessairement être des plongeurs chargés de dynamiter un bateau…) ou du renseignement afin d’éviter tout simplement des dommages collatéraux. Mais là encore il faut avoir l’autorisation libyenne, tacite ou expresse. Durant l’opération de l’OTAN en Libye en 2011, il y avait une présence à terre, ne serait-ce que pour guider les avions. Mais tout le monde indiquait bien qu’il n’y avait pas de « boots on the ground », au sens d’intervention terrestre. Il ne faut pas aussi se leurrer sur le terme de « forces spéciales ». Ces forces sont aussi nécessaires à bord de navires pour constituer des équipes d’abordage spécialisées. Ce peut être des fusiliers marins, les fameux « maros » en Italie

Essai de distraction

En tirant quelques phrases, d’un tel document comme un CMC, on peut tout inventer. Si on reprend ainsi le CMC sur l’Ukraine, on pourrait indiquer que la mission civile EUAM Ukraine pourrait comprendre des militaires, qu’elle aurait aussi pour rôle de conseiller la Garde nationale, voire de s’impliquer la réforme de la défense. Bien entendu, il n’en est rien, ou du moins, pas dans ces dispositions. En interprétant les règles d’engagement d’Atalanta, on pourrait même dire que l’opération a pour objectif de tuer les pirates puisqu’elle peut prévoir dans certaines circonstances très clairement encadrés (légitime défense, risque d’atteinte à la vie, etc.) un tir sur des suspects. Allez, un peu de sérieux !

Conclusion : Il faut faire attention à ne pas surinterpréter ce document et les possibles pistes qu’il dresse comme des certitudes, confondre le rivage et la terre, des forces terrestres et une action à terre, ou ne lire qu’un paragraphe en oubliant les autres. Il est certain qu’une action à terre permettrait d’avoir une action plus complète. Mais une action en mer permet déjà largement de perturber le trafic des contrebandiers. C’est pour cela que Federica Mogherini a pu être très claire et très ferme lors de sa conférence face à la presse : « Non, non, et non, il n’y aura pas de « boots on the ground ».

(NGV)

(*) Rappelons que selon les armées, et même les types d’engagements, ces hélicoptères peuvent appartenir à la marine ou à l’armée de terre (« land forces »). Tout comme les forces spéciales peuvent appartenir à différentes unités.

Depuis le 7 mai, la force Chammal a poursuivi quotidiennement ses vols de reconnaissance armés et de renseignement, contribuant au recueil d’informations sur le groupe terroriste Daech, en étroite coordination avec nos alliés présents dans la région. Ainsi, cette semaine, la force Chammal a procédé à 18 sorties aériennes vers l’Irak, dont 4 ont abouti à des frappes d’opportunités, neutralisant 8 objectifs.

After weeks of protests against Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza’s controversial bid for a third term in office, a Burundian general announced on Monday that he had overthrown him in a coup. Now, rival claims are being broadcast over both traditional and social media as to who is actually in control of the country’s government.

Nkurunziza, who is currently in Tanzania for meeting with other East African leaders to discuss Burundi’s recent violence, used what appears to be his official Twitter account to claim the claims of a coup were false. Tweeting in French, Nkurunziza said there had been a coup attempt but that it was “under control” and that there “was no coup d’etat in #Burundi.”

La situation est maitrisée, il n'y a pas de coup d'Etat au #Burundi

— Burundi | Présidence (@BdiPresidence) May 13, 2015

He then then said an attempted coup had failed, and tagged the Twitter handles for Radio France Internationale, BBC’s Africa division, one RFI reporter, and a reporter for a Burundian publication.

Tentative de coup d'Etat échouée au #Burundi @soniarolley @bbcafrique @RFI @abakunzi

— Burundi | Présidence (@BdiPresidence) May 13, 2015

His latest tweet called the coup a “fantasy” and linked to a Facebook post on the official Burundian presidential account that once again dismissed allegations of the coup.

Communiqué de Presse : Coup d’Etat fantaisiste C’est avec regret que nous avons appris qu’un groupe de… http://t.co/vvd2uEnDCK

— Burundi | Présidence (@BdiPresidence) May 13, 2015

Meanwhile in Burundi, the military official purportedly behind the coup, Major General Godefroid Niyombareh, reportedly read a statement to reporters at a military base and broadcast an announcement confirming the coup on a private radio station in Burundi. He said he has put in place a “national salvation committee” comprised of police officers and military officials and that “President Pierre Nkurunziza has been relieved of his duties.”

According to the BBC he used the radio broadcast to say that “the masses have decided to take into their own hands the destiny of the nation to remedy this unconstitutional environment into which Burundi has been plunged.”

“The masses vigorously and tenaciously reject President Nkurunziza’s third-term mandate,” he continued. “The government is overthrown.”

Peaceful demonstrations Wednesday quickly erupted into cheerful celebrations, according to reports from those on the ground in Bujumbura, Burundi’s capital.

According to Burundi’s constitution, a president can only be elected to office twice, and protests erupted on April 26 after Nkurunziza, who has completed two terms, announced that he would run for reelection. First appointed to the presidency by an act of parliament in 2005, Nkurunziza argues he has only run for election once and therefore qualifies for a third term.

Many Burundians disagree and see his attempt to secure a third term in office as a violation of the constitution. Within 24 hours of his April announcement, five had died in the subsequent violence, with dozens injured. Amid the turmoil, the government shut down or restricted the use of radio stations.

The protests continued amid increasing international pressure on Nkurunziza to renounce his bid for a third term. Protesters opposed to Nkurunziza’s reelection effort have in some instances become violent: A grenade attack on May 1 killed two police officers and wounded 17 people. Police officers have reportedly also opened fire on peaceful protestors. Thousands of Burundians have fled to neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, raising fears of a looming humanitarian crisis in poorly resourced refugee camps there.

Presidential elections are scheduled for June 26, and the European Union and the United States have urged Burundi to consider postponing them. But Nkurunziza has stood his ground, and maintains that even amid a coup attempt, he is still in control of the country.

“It is with regret that we learned a group of soldiers rebelled this morning and made a fantastical declaration about a coup d’etat,” his Facebook post read. “The Burundian president asks the Burundian population and outsiders living in Burundi to keep calm and peace.”

LANDRY NSHIMIYE/AFP/Getty Images

Plenary session, Strasbourg

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Allgemeines : Am Donnerstag (14.5.) wird dem Präsidenten des Europäischen Parlaments Martin Schulz der Internationale Karlspreis zu Aachen überreicht. Der Preis wird für einen besonderen Beitrag für Europa vergeben. Acht Staatschefs und viele ehemalige Preisträger wie der Kommissionspräsident Jean-Claude Juncker nehmen an der Zeremonie in Aachen teil. Frankreichs Präsident François Hollande und der jordanische König Abdullah II. werden Schulz für seine Verdienste in einer Rede würdigen.

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2015 - EP

Du 5 au 7 mai, le centre interarmées de la défense nucléaire, radiologique, biologique et chimique (CIA NRBC) de Saumur a organisé le premier forum baptisé « 100 ans de défense NRBC ».

Le 519e groupe de transit maritime (519e GTM) a chargé un navire civil affrété (un bateau civil chargé de matériel militaire) dans le port de Toulon en mars dernier. Ce navire avait pour objectif de faire plusieurs escales dans l'Océan Indien, en passant par la mer Méditerranée et le canal de Suez.

Du 16 mai au 20 septembre 2015, dans le cadre du centenaire de la Grande Guerre, le musée de l’artillerie de Draguignan organise une exposition consacrée à la représentation de la guerre par les artistes, au cours de siècles.

The single largest owner of wealth in nearly every country is not a private company; nor is it an individual like Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, or Warren Buffet. The largest owner of wealth is all of us collectively, otherwise known as “taxpayers.” And we all have our own personal wealth manager — whom we usually call “the government.” According to data from the International Monetary Fund and other sources collected in our new book, The Public Wealth of Nations, governments own a larger stock of assets than all very wealthy individuals put together, and even more than all pension funds, or all private equity funds.

What’s more, most governments — including the many nations caught in the grip of debt crises — have more wealth than they are aware of. Many of these troubled countries own thousands of firms, land titles, and other assets that they have not bothered to value, let alone manage for the common good. Public wealth is like an iceberg, with only the tip visible above the surface.

For decades, a phony war has raged between those in favor of public ownership and those who see privatization as the only solution. We argue that this polarized debate is partly to blame for neglect of a more important issue: the quality of public asset governance. Only through proper management can public wealth yield proper value to its owners, the citizens. Even public assets that are privatized can achieve widely differing outcomes depending on the quality of government regulation, the privatization process, and the competence of private owners. The costs of the phony war between privatizers and statists have been enormous: lack of transparency, financial waste, and underperformance in the public sector. The only winners are vested interests on both sides of the debate.

The most visible public assets are government-owned corporations, often called state-owned enterprises (SOEs). According to one study, over 10 percent of the world’s top firms are SOEs — and their combined sales are equivalent to 6 percent of the world’s GDP.

Beyond the corporations owned by governments at different levels lie vast stretches of productive real estate — by far the largest component in public wealth portfolios. More than two-thirds of all public wealth ownership remains opaque. Many assets are owned by local and regional governments or quasi-governmental organizations that, while formally independent, actually work at the behest of the politicians who sit on their boards.

We argue that the professional management of public commercial wealth among central governments around the world could easily raise returns by as much as 3.5 percent, to generate an extra $2.7 trillion worldwide. This is more than the total current global spending on national infrastructure — the combined amount we spend on transport, power, water, and communications, according to a study by McKinsey Global Institute.

Many cities and states in rich countries have similarly mismanaged land holdings that could be an integral part of public finance and used to lower taxes or pay for vital infrastructure. In many cities managing public commercial assets more professionally could help close the housing gap.

Mismanagement of public assets often has severe consequences. For example, many regions in India suffer from both droughts and monsoons, but most of all poor management of state-owned water utilities. India is estimated to lose the equivalent of two-thirds of new dams and other water storage it builds to siltation. The main culprits are India’s corrupt, underfunded, and overmanned state irrigation departments that often carry out no maintenance at all. Just one of them, in Utter Pradesh, has over 100,000 employees. Inter-state rivalries and bad planning add to the malaise.

Better management is not just about financial returns, but other important social gains as well. An Italian economist, Vittorio Tanzi, and his co-author, Tej Prakash, illustrated the misuse of public assets with two examples of schools located in prime locations — one in Rio de Janeiro, squeezed in between large hotels on a splendid avenue next to the famous Copacabana beach, and another in the heart of Bethesda, Maryland, established in 1789 when the area was agricultural and the land inexpensive. A relocation of the schools only a few blocks away would bless students with a quieter, healthier, and more peaceful environment. The sale of the more expensive property could be used to hire more teachers. On top of that, new real estate investment on the current school site would raise national income and tax revenue.

The location of a school might seem to be a minor issue. But it becomes a major one when such mismanagement of public real estate is the rule rather than the exception. In Brazil, pervasive abuse of public wealth is illustrated by the never-ending scandals in the huge state-owned oil conglomerate, Petrobras. Dozens of politicians are under investigation for receiving kickbacks on inflated contracts that Petrobras signed with 23 other large firms, many of them also state-owned.

As things stand, the vast bulk of public wealth in many countries is in the hands of civil servants inside the government bureaucracy. They manage state-owned firms, real estate, and other holdings with minimal public oversight. This is, at best, a bureaucratic system designed for handling the allocation of tax money. At worst it is an arena for political meddling and, occasionally, downright profiteering. Public commercial assets could also constitute a significant fiscal risk, as well as an outright cost for the government. The cost could sometimes be in the double digits of GDP, as is probably the case in many former Soviet states.

These examples help illustrate how public wealth within easy reach of governments creates incentives for abuse, such as buying political support from unions and interest groups. In a clientelist state, governments have little interest in making the management of state assets more transparent. It is hardly an accident that Greece had no consolidated accounts of its considerable state assets — not even a well-functioning land registry. As long as state ownership stays murky, it is easier for government institutions to distribute favors without scrutiny.

Those who profit from shady accounting will always argue that revealing the monetary value of public assets places economic agendas over social aims. We show the opposite to be true. When the value of public assets is revealed and managers are told to focus on value creation, a government can make informed, transparent choices about how much to pay SOEs for achieving social aims. Without such transparency, interest groups with selfish agendas will all too often succeed in interfering with sound management by exaggerating the social benefits of their demands.

As long as politicians are directly responsible for governing SOEs, they will be hesitant to demand better performance on behalf of consumers, because such demands would call their own management into question. Freeing governments from having to run public firms changes politicians’ mission and focus. This goes to the heart of a well-functioning democracy: accountability, transparency, and disclosure.

In our view, the best way to foster good management and democracy is to consolidate public assets under a single institution, removed from direct government influence. This requires setting up an independent body at arm’s length from daily political influence and enabling transparent, commercial governance. Examples include Austria’s state holding company ÖIAG (now undergoing reforms), Singapore’s Temasek, and Finland’s Solidium.

A similar international trend has been to outsource monetary and financial stability to independent central banks. This was initially very controversial in many countries. Over time, however, experience with independent central banks has been positive and has been widely copied.

Similarly, independent governance of public wealth can bestow significant economic and democratic benefits. We use the term National Wealth Fund (NWF) for these institutions, which independently govern public commercial assets. As with independent central banks, such organizations do not offer a watertight guarantee of better governance in countries with kleptocratic leadership. Vietnam set up its NWF, the SCIC, in 2005 as a holding company for some 400 SOEs — but it still has some way to go to reach private sector levels of returns. Nevertheless, setting up NWFs would help most countries that are trying to make their democratic institutions more robust.

Despite the successful examples, only a small percentage of global public commercial assets are managed in these independent and more transparent NWFs – that is, at arm’s length from daily politics. In particular, the vast real estate portfolios held by governments around the world would benefit from a more professional approach removed from short term political influence. Just as large corporations separated their real estate from their operations starting in the 70s and 80s to improve transparency and the value of their shares, governments are now discovering the importance of managing their assets for value. After the financial crisis of the 90s, Sweden created several real estate holding companies under corresponding ministries, such as Vaskronan, Vasallen and Akademiska Hus, while Finland established Senate Properties and Austria established BIG as consolidated real estate holding companies.

Our proposals extend beyond the governance of just commercial assets. An NWF with sufficient independence from government control could be allowed to rebalance its portfolio and not only help finance infrastructure investments, but also act as the professional steward and anchor investor in newly formed infrastructure consortia. Managed in this way, NWFs can encourage investment in much-needed infrastructure.

When a financial crisis hit parts of the world in the early 90s, many governments had limited knowledge of the scale and value of the debts they had incurred. Today, it is self-evident for countries to have a centralized debt management administration. Capital markets and policymakers thoroughly analyze sovereign debt, and the general public keeps a careful eye on the level of public indebtedness. In the wake of the more recent financial crisis of 2008, many countries remain heavily indebted and fettered by fiscal austerity, attempting to restore budgetary balance and thereby economic growth.

At the same time countries own huge portfolios of commercial assets. Even heavily indebted countries like Greece and Ukraine are often asset-rich. This is why we should start looking at the other side of the public sector balance sheet and ask: “What can public wealth do for our economy and for democracy?”

In the photo, workers from a company under contract for the Brazilian state-owned oil company Petrobras demand payment of three months of wages in arrears in February 2015.
Photo Credit: VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images

Dimanche 10 mai 2015, une patrouille d’aviateurs opérant dans le cadre de l’opération Sentinelle à Aix-en-Provence porte secours à une victime d’un accident de la voie publique.

The Russian ambassador to Germany, Vladimir Grinin, proposed the establishment of a common economic space between the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union. Moscow has no interest in the establishment of a "Russian Empire," but wants to strengthen relations with the EU, he said.

Nach den blutigen Auseinandersetzungen in Mazedonien scheint Ruhe eingekehrt zu sein. Die schweren Kampfhandlungen vom vergangenen Wochenende werfen indessen viele Fragen auf.

A Moscow court turned down Wednesday a request to replace Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny’s suspended sentence for stealing timber from state-run company KirovLes with a real prison term, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported from the courtroom.

The post-2015 development agenda will constitute a different mission for UN Development than the current one driven by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Unlike the MDGs agenda, the new sustainable development goals (SDGs) aim to integrate the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainable development while emphasising global challenges to a greater extent. The growing interconnection between local and global development challenges will be a key feature of the SDGs.
Current governance arrangements of UN Development, however, impose a constraint on the organisation’s ability to meet the integration requirements of the SDGs.
To deliver on the post-2015 development agenda in an integrated and coordinated manner, UN Development will require governance capacity that can foster policy coherence and interoperability in programming and operations. This means that governing boards will have to be able to coordinate their work more effectively than in the past, with a view to balancing agency and system-wide interests, as well as the local and global perspective in their decision-making. Such changes required in the capability of governing bodies also offer Member States the opportunity to rethink what constitutes legitimacy in governance.
Three options are particularly proposed to address the governance demands of the post-2015 development agenda:

1. ECOSOC as a system-wide governing body: On the basis of a system-wide strategy, the UN Development Group (UNDG) becomes formally accountable to ECOSOC and the General Assembly for the implemen-tation of system-wide objectives. This would strengthen horizontal governance of development operations;
2. Fulltime Joint Executive Board: Merging the four executive boards of the funds and programmes with major development operations; and
3. Fulltime Development Board: A single board for the governance of operational activities of the 19 funds and programmes reporting to the central bodies of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

In making the governance of UN Development “fit-for-purpose”, Member States would fundamentally recharge multilateral cooperation, whose appeal is withering, despite the reality of growing interconnectedness, complexity and uncertainty in today’s globalising world.

En souvenir des soldats de montagne qui se sont affrontés durant l’hiver 1944-1945, lors des combats les « plus hauts d’Europe » (sur le glacier du Géant à 3 500 m), l’Ecole militaire de haute montagne (EMHM) a organisé une cérémonie commémorative, le jeudi 7mai, au refuge des Cosmiques (Chamonix).