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Italy has the third largest economy in the European Union. Italy has been a part of the European unity movement since its very start. Yet, Italy itself may represent the very contradiction that might ultimately bring the EU to its knees.

And, this is something we, in the United States, should be very interested in and be watching closely.

A breaking apart of the European Union would have very serious consequences for the health of the US economy. It is definitely in the best interests of the United States to have a well-working, well-functioning European Union. The United States stands to lose a lot if the EU fails, even partially.

The European Union is a federation of many separate, independent nations. This has always been one of the major concerns about the future of the community. Experts, right from the start, argued that for the EU to have a common currency, it also needed a common government. Yet, a common government was never formed and, in its current state, it would appear that the European Union forming a common government is even more of a dream than ever before.

One of the biggest political movements in the EU today is that of nationalization, the idea that the focus of a nation should be on its own issues and worries and that country's need to return its efforts to resolving internal problems. And, with all the elections taking place in the EU this year, the idea of national focus has grown in attention and popularity.

The major proponent of this is the Netherlands did not win the election, but the person who did take up the strategy of taking over some of the "populist" strains of the Mr. Wilders, the right-wing candidate, in order to hold off voter surge in this direction.

Now, there is an election going on in France, and the right-wing leader Marine Le Pen is causing a lot of people to lose sleep over the possibility that France could possibly move in this direction.

Then, there is a German election in the early fall of this year and the candidate focusing upon national sovereignty has been getting a lot of attention although it appears as if his chances of winning are quite low. The point is, however, that even Germany is not immune to this move.

Then, there is Italy. Italy must have an election before February 2018. And, right now, the person leading all the candidates is Beppe Grillo, the comedian leading the Five Star Movement, an organization that wants to leave the Euro and the European Union.

But, Italy, internally, is a representation of what the European Union faces. It is a very regionalized country with a very decentralized national government. A lot of its political strength lies in regional or local governing bodies. People in Italy get phrenic when there is a discussion about a strong central government.

The Italians had their strong central government under Mussolini in the 1930s and 1940s, and built their post-World War II governmental structure on the basis of making the central government as weak as they could. This regionalization has dominated Italian politics ever since.

And, this fear of centralized government is still permeating the country and dominating what is going on there.

This fear of a strong central government resulted in the resignation of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and, among other things, is causing divisions within his own party that is blocking the way to his return to power.

It would not be unusual for Mr. Renzi to return to power. Italy is notorious for having many governments, with many of the same leaders going in and out of power. For example, just since November 2011, there have been four prime ministers, not because of popular elections, but because of financial emergencies, factional squabbles, party coups, and failed constitutional reform.

This is not unusual despite having one of the most vibrant economies in Europe in the late 1950s and 1960s, from June 1945 through December 1970, there were 28 governments formed in Italy with an average life of 11 months. The general reason for changes was that party factions were discontented, disappointed that they did not get what they wanted, and so pulled out of the coalition.

Italy is in the midst of troubles right now with problems that are being attributed to the fact that Italy cannot respond to its own needs because of having to adhere to the strictures of the European Union. Tony Barber writes in the Financial Times that "Italy is Falling Out of Love with Europe."

The most disturbing thing that Italians are facing right now is that its economy is the slowest growing economy in the eurozone. "Public debt is more than 132 percent of gross domestic product, unemployment is almost 12 percent, and the youth jobless rate is over 37 percent."

The banking system is in dire straits as are many local governing bodies throughout Italy.

Many Italians associate this dilemma along with an even longer-term stagnation with its membership in the EU. Mr. Barber writes "many Italians see the Euro as a straitjacket."

"As a consequence, even more Italian politicians question the merits of eurozone membership. So do Italian voters. In a Eurobarometer poll published in December, 47 percent called the Euro 'a bad thing' for their country and only 41 percent 'a good thing.'"

This is why Mr. Grillo and the Five Star Movement seem to be doing so well these days. They are tapping into the basic Italian discontent with centralized government. Historically, the Italians seem to like smaller, more independent governmental bodies that can reflect and deal with local problems. This is why they constantly seem to vote against reform.

But, Italy is a part of the European Union and what it decides to do can have major repercussions not only on the eurozone itself but on the rest of the world, especially on the United States that is closely integrated with the EU.

Also, Italy is a prime example of what can happen when regional and local issues can override national, or larger, governing bodies. The United States has shown how regional and local issues can be incorporated within a larger, federal body of states, and still produce exceptional outcomes. Regional and local issues still can be problematic, but, ultimately, the benefits from union can overcome the loss of independent control.

Europe is not there, yet. It does not have a central, federal government and hence has problems in achieving the scale of operations that are necessary to be competitive in today's world. And, it seems as if it is a long way from getting there.

That is a long-run issue for now. The current problem is keeping the European Union together and avoiding an Italian withdrawal. In spite of everything else going on in the United States, businesses and investors need to keep watching what is going on in Europe because if some state, like Italy, leaves the community, global markets will suffer.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Link:
Italy's Future And The Future Of The European Union: Is The U.S. ... - Seeking Alpha

Polands Jarosaw Kaczyski has said: We cannot accept any announcements of a two-speed Europe.

The role of leader of Europes awkward squad, played with aplomb by the UK for the past 45 years, will be handed to Poland and Hungary at the weekend when European Union leaders meet in Rome to celebrate 60 years of the EUs existence and map out a new future after Brexit.

With Theresa May absent, leaders from Warsaw and Budapest will puncture any mood of self-congratulation. They are also expected to bridle at any plans to empower groups of member states to choose to integrate more deeply, in effect creating a two-speed Europe.

But Polands assertiveness, says Gavin Rae, an associate professor at the Kozminski University in Warsaw, reflects a fear about a wider potential change in the balance of power in the wake of the Brexit referendum as it loses one of its closest allies and finds itself more isolated than ever.

It fears a two-speed Europe might institutionalise this process of marginalisation. We cannot accept any announcements of a two-speed Europe, said Jarosaw Kaczyski, the chair of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, who met May this week. This would mean either pushing us out of the European Union or downgrading us to an inferior category of members.

Viktor Orbn, the Hungarian prime minister, has dismissed a two-speed Europe as an affront to eastern Europe. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary the Visegrd Four joined the EU to be at the core of Europe, not its periphery.

The Polish prime minister, Beata Szydo, on Thursday threatened not to sign the Rome declaration if it did not include issues that were priorities for Poland, including EU unity, the priority of Nato, strengthening national parliaments and a unified single market. A form of words may be found to paper over the cracks, but according to Piotr Buras, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Warsaw, the trajectory is one of divergence.

Poland and Hungary regard their role as telling home truths to the old European elite in the interests of the EUs own survival. From the perspective of Szydo and Orbn, it is they who been proved right about what the Hungarian prime minister called the terrorist Trojan horse of mass migration, the impracticality of compulsory migrant quotas and the necessity of asylum camps, hard borders and national self-determination.

Far from being isolated nationalist mavericks, they believe themselves to have been leading a necessary counter-revolution. In a recent interview in the Hungarian weekly Heti Vlasz, Kaczyski said that cooperation among the countries of central and eastern Europe could serve as a counterweight to the current leadership in Brussels.

Yet at first glance, the revived idea of a flexible or multi-speed Europe, promoted by France and Germany, with different circles for cooperation might be an idea Poland could welcome. No country is being ordered to cooperate. Countries might choose to pool greater sovereignty on issues such as defence, Euro governance or migration.

This live and let live approach appears to have been rejected by Poland and Hungary. Buras describes the Polish position as completely inconsistent. They favour flexibility in theory, but fear that if the core group cooperates more, they will lose out.

The Polish foreign minister, Witold Waszczykowski, said this week: The risk is that the eurozone will create its own structures, its own budget and will dominate over the rest of Europe.

Desperate for the EU to be seen to deliver, Germany and France want to remove roadblocks to effectiveness, and are losing patience with the east. The French president, Franois Hollande, warned the Poles at the last EU summit: You may have your principles, but we have the structural funds. The fact that Angela Merkel is willing to countenance a two-speed Europe, something she seemed reluctant to back previously, is an indication of her frustration with Poland.

Some commissioners are calling for the EU to withdraw Polands EU funding unless it drops judicial reforms seen as flouting democratic norms and, for good measure, accepts the 6,200 migrants it was allocated by Brussels. Such threats are not trivial. Poland is by far the EUs largest net recipient of funds. It receives almost a quarter of all EU funding, accounting for 2.3% of its gross domestic product.

The leading liberal MEP Guy Verhofstadt said this week: The EU is a community of the rule of law. We must not stand aside and watch this any longer.

But Poland so far does not look like a country preparing to back down in the face of what it regards as blackmail. Its attempt to block the reappointment of fellow Pole Donald Tusk as EU council president bordered on fiasco, with no country, not even the Visegrd Group coming to its support.

The Poles responded to the rebuff by refusing to sign the summit conclusions, an unprecedented step. It promised in future to bare its sharp teeth while the nationalist paper Gazeta Polska ran a cover story with Tusk wearing the uniform of the Wehrmarcht.

The best hope for Brussels may be that there is an internal political reaction after years in which both governments have consolidated power around growing economies, conservative social reform and nationalism.

Faint stirrings of internal dissent are visible in both countries. In Poland, one poll published on Monday showed support for PiS had fallen five points to 29%, while Tusks Civic Platform was up 10 points to 27%. The possibility of Tusk returning to contest the presidency in 2020 is not far-fetched.

In Hungary, due to go to the polls next year, a new party vowing to be neither right nor left has been formed called the Momentum Movement, led by 28-year-old Andrs Fekete-Gyr. Momentum stopped Budapests bid for the Olympic Games in 2024, attracting 260,000 signatures, and already has the whiff of a party capable of usurping a tired political establishment.

But Rae argues that for the conservative forces to lose popularity requires the EU to adopt an economic strategy to help those in Poland and Hungary that want to cooperate with it.

A crude version of a two-speed Europe, in which only the euro countries prosper, might just encourage the sense of grievance on which populism thrives.

Read more from the original source:
Isolated Poland threatens to spoil party at EU summit over two-speed Europe - The Guardian

Top officials from three influential defence think-tanks told MEPs in Brussels that the new US president was serious with his comments about the continents underwhelming military spending and that a seismic shift has taken place in terms of American foreign policy.

They predicted that the Kremlin could look to test flimsy European defences in the Balkans region by encouraging insurgencies amongst the ethnic Russian populations there, as they have done previously in Ukraine and the Crimea.

EU leaders have been alarmed by the decision of US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to skip a crucial NATO summit next month to travel to Russia instead, something one official described as an awful message from the White House.

GETTY

But one US expert said that despite initial warm rhetoric he did not think that Mr Trump and Vladimir Putin would get on when they finally meet in person, saying they will have little to agree upon other than a wish to eradicate the threat of Islamist terrorism.

The three experts gave evidence to a session of the EU Parliaments subcommittee on defence and security, sitting in Brussels this morning, which is exploring the consequences of the Republicans shock election victory for Europe.

They painted a gloomy message about the continents long-term defence prospects under the billionaires presidency, saying that whilst in the short-term things would remain the same looking forward Americas commitment to the continent and the euro project were less clear.

EbS

GETTY

US expert Ian Lesser, the vice-president for foreign policy at German Marshall Fund, told the hearing there were very substantial questions about where American policy is going in relation to European security.

He said: Id say that historic American commitment to European security and defence is less automatic than it wouldve been in the past, less automatic and more friction-prone.

"There is an uncertainty about how the US feels about the European project. Although there have been voices over the decades questioning whether a stronger Europe was somehow competitive with NATO, at base there was always this idea that a more integrated more cohesive Europe was in American interests.

A lot of Europeans worry about American isolationism, I dont think this should be the concern. The risk looked at from a Brussels perspective is not that, its of a very vigorous American unilateralism in areas where Europe will be concerned.

His final comment, concerning President Trumps preference to deal with individual countries and leaders directly rather than going through international organisations like the EU, could apply equally to close relations with a newly independent UK as well as the issue of Russia and China.

Mr Lesser added that the Republicans demands that Europe up its defence spending were nothing new but said the his brash and no-nonsense business-style approach meant they had taken on a whole new dynamic.

American commitment to European security and defence is less automatic than it wouldve been in the past

Ian Lesser, German Marshall Fund

He said: What is new is the sense that this is somehow part of an active bargain, that its not just a question of are you doing your share.

"There is now in some of the rhetoric, this is literally a bargain that Europe should be paying for American defence and if you dont pay you wont get the defence.

Addressing the hearing next Steven Blockmans, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, said Mr Putin would likely try to exploit this new frostiness between Brussels and Washington to test the continents outer defences.

He said: Theres now news that Tillerson might skip his very first NATO ministerial in April which sends an awful message to Europe because it also entails that he would first go to Russia rather than to Europe.

There may be some further testing on the side of the Russians, perhaps not in the Baltics after the pre-positioning of NATO troops with US backing, but what about the Balkans where theres very little pre-positioning?

I dont think in the Balkans the European Union is ready especially in Macedonia but even in Bosnia and Herzegovina where it has a military mission, to counter any support the Slavs in those countries might receive.

Getty Images

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Members of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade fire blanks from a machine gun during a simulated attack

Finally Jan Joel Andersson, a senior analyst at the Paris-based European Union Institute for Security Studies (ISS), said that the eurosceptic tone which dominated last years US presidential debate had damaged the reputation of the bloc around the world.

He added that the contrast between Mr Trumps open EU bashing and the noises from Vice-President Mike Pence, who visited Brussels last month, had caused puzzlement and concern over Americas intentions.

Mr Trump has made a series of scathing comments about both the EU project and European countries contributions to NATO, with Germany and Angela Merkel frequently being singled out as the objects of his ire.

But he has confirmed he will attend a summit of the military alliance in Brussels - a city he once famously described as a hell-hole - in May and has recently softened his rhetoric to insist that the US is still committed to European security and defence.

See the original post:
European era of freeloading on American-funded NATO is over under Trump, say experts - Express.co.uk

Prime Minister, Dear Shinz,

It is the pleasure of Donald and myself to have you come here to Europe in what promises to be a historic year in relations between Japan and the European Union.

We are already like-minded partners, long-standing allies and close friends, both institutionally and personally. We work together closely on fighting climate change, sustainable development, global migration and security. We saw Japan's leadership in those areas during your remarkable Presidency of the G7.

Our partnership works so well thanks to our common belief that the big issues of the day can only be tackled together, at international level.

I reiterated that commitment to Prime Minister Abe, notably following North Korea's violation of UN Security Council Resolutions. Its pursuit of Weapons of Mass Destruction is a major concern for the European Union and Japan. We will continue to fully implement the latest UN resolutions and consider any further restrictive measures needed to keep up the pressure.

That is further proof of how committed both the European Union and Japan are to working within a rules-based global system. And we both know that openness will continue to drive our economies and societies forward.

[Free Trade Agreement]

That is why I am so heartened by the progress we are making on a trade agreement and Strategic Partnership Agreement with our Japanese friends.

When it comes to trade, the agreement will of course provide a significant boost for both sides: Japan is already the European Union's second biggest trading partner in Asia and together our economies account for more than a third of the world's GDP.

We believe this agreement is necessary, it is necessary because we believe in free, fair and rules-based trade. And so we will continue to look out towards the world, rather than return to isolationism. The European Union is open for business for fair business.

Our negotiations with Japan are now in a decisive and hopefully final stage. Prime Minister Abe's visit will allow us to reiterate our political commitment to a highly comprehensive, ambitious and balanced deal, so that our capable negotiators make the necessary progress in the outstanding areas.

This agreement will give Japan and the European Union the best of both worlds: it opens up a major new market to each other while creating a level playing field and protecting our industries and workforces from unfair trading practices.

As often in a negotiation, the few remaining issues are the most difficult to solve. Following our discussions today, I am very confident this will pave the way for a swift agreement this year.

We will take our time to ensure any deal works for both sides and fits with our values and principles.

As we approach the final stages of the negotiating process, on the European Union side we will continue to ensure a high level of transparency and engage directly with stakeholders and civil society on issues related to the negotiations.

I look forward together with Donald to continuing this close partnership with Prime Minister Abe at the upcoming G7 meeting in Taormina, and hopefully at the next EU-Japan Summit where we can successfully conclude our negotiations. This was not and will not be the last meeting of this year.

Thank you.

Go here to see the original:
Statement by President Juncker at the EU-Japan Leaders Meeting - EU News

New York Times

Strategic District in Southern Afghanistan, Sangin, Falls to Taliban New York Times KANDAHAR, Afghanistan The Taliban captured the strategic district of Sangin in the southern province of Helmand on Thursday, the culmination of a yearslong offensive that took the lives of more combatants than any other fight for territory in ... Is it safe for Britain to send refugees back to Afghanistan?The Guardian Taliban Retake Key District in AfghanistanVoice of America Taliban overtakes Sangin district in Helmand province, AfghanistanUPI.com NEWS.com.au -Anadolu Agency -The Peninsula Qatar all 25 news articles »

See the article here:
Strategic District in Southern Afghanistan, Sangin, Falls to Taliban - New York Times