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(CBS LOCAL) The European Union is preparing a plan to reopen to vaccinated Americans and many seniors are ready to go. Travel advisors say the older travelers are among those leading bookings.

Gale and Bob Grossman are frequent travelers. They vacation in places like Italy, Brazil, and Ireland. But international trips were no longer possible when the pandemic hit.

A year later, the senior couple is now vaccinated and eager to start flying abroad again.

As soon as Europe opens up, were gone, says Gale.

We go to Ireland every year also and Ireland cant give us an answer when we can get there and we keep postponing that trip as well, says Bob.

Its what travel advisor Hillel Spinner keeps seeing among his older clients.

Between February and March, Ive noticed an increase of about 110%. And the reason for that is theyve been vaccinated, they feel safe to travel again, the world is their oyster, theyre like where can I go now? he says.

A recent survey by the American Society of Travel Advisors finds 44% of those polled say being able to travel is the main reason why theyre getting vaccinated. And two-thirds of those surveyed feel the vaccine will enable them to do so.

Jim Moses is the President and CEO of Road Scholar which provides educational travel tours for older adults.

He says, Its been unbelievable. Weve seen about a 50% increase in the numbers of people who are enrolling in programs. Theyre so excited.

Alisa Kauffman is in her early 60s and planning a 60th birthday trip for her husband to Greece. Its a much-needed getaway after losing her mother to COVID in August.

Travel is the only thing that you can buy that makes you richer, and thats the one thing that my mother taught me, she says.

A lesson she can put to good use now that shes vaccinated.

The travel agency Embark Beyond is seeing strong bookings in Turkey and Greece this summer.

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European Union Preparing Plan That Will Allow Vaccinated Americans To Travel Once Again - CBS Pittsburgh

Vaccines against Covid are still sorely missed, due to insufficient production, and the international Covax system is far from the number of doses it thinks can be distributed.

The G7 countries and members of the European Union will be able to donate more than 150 million doses of anti-virus vaccines for the disadvantaged countries, in an attempt to bridge the inequality gap in vaccines in the face of the epidemic, according to UNICEF, on Monday 17 May 2021.

That number could be reached if the Group of Seven of the worlds wealthiest nations whose leaders met in June 2021 at the England summit and European Union members only shared 20% of the shares at their disposal. June, July and August, according to a study by Irfinity, a company that specializes in analyzing scientific data and is funded by the British branch of UNICEF. They can do this while still fulfilling their obligations in terms of vaccinating their own population, said Henrietta Fore, Director-General of the United Nations agency.

Shortage of moneyVaccines against Covid are still in dire shortages, due to insufficient production and the international Covax system, which has been created to try to prevent rich countries from getting most of the precious doses, far from counting the doses that he thought could be dispensed with. In June, nearly 190 million doses of the Covax system created by the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), the World Health Organization and also CEPI (Alliance for Innovations in Pandemic Preparedness) will be lost compared to the volumes initially planned.

UNICEF unmatched in the field of immunization is responsible for the distribution. Therefore, by the end of May 2021, 140 million doses of Covax will be missed and another 50 million in June. The shortage of vaccines and the shortage of funds add to the difficulties.

The press release said that while awaiting more permanent measures to significantly increase production, the immediate participation of overdoses is a minimum, which is a necessary and urgent measure, which we need immediately. A gap that the WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, considers so unfair that he asked states on Friday to forgo immunizing children and adolescents the least inclined yet to develop dangerous forms of Covid to have their Kovacs available.

For the proponents of participation, this is not just a moral imperative for poor countries to be able to immunize their health workers and their most vulnerable populations. The vigorous spread of the virus anywhere, due to lack of immunization, can lead to the emergence of variants that are more infectious, more lethal and possibly resistant to existing vaccines, nullifying efforts already made.

Thus the Director-General of the World Health Organization warned on Friday May 14, 2021: The Covid-19 virus has already claimed the lives of more than 3.3 million people, and at the rate of ongoing matters, the second year of the epidemic will be much more deadly than the first.

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Covid-19 vaccines: The G7 group and the European Union can donate more than 150 million doses to Covax - Prudent Press Agency

Euro currency

Brussels does not see inflation potential.

(Photo: Vario-Images)

Brussels The European Commission wants to intensify the fight against tax evasion. To this end, it is forcing the European Union to publish accurate information on the tax burden of large companies. We want to ensure more transparency, EU currency commissioner Paulo Gentiloni told Handelsblatt and the French business daily Les Ecos. This will help us to fight against aggressive tax planning. Brussels also wants to take action against letterbox companies.

At the same time, Europeans are trying to reach an international tax consensus. We have the opportunity to reach a political agreement between the G20 countries in Venice in July, Gentiloni ressed. The U.S. proposal to raise the global minimum tax rate to 21 percent has sparked discussions.

The EU is aiming for a similar level. I do not think we can go beyond the US proposal, he said. The Italian was confident that he would be able to convince European Union countries such as Luxembourg and Ireland, which have so far attracted investors to lower taxes, about tax reform.

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Inflation in Europe: That's what the European Union's currency commissioner says - SwordsToday.ie

PARIS (AP) More than 20 African heads of state and top officials from European governments, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund agreed Tuesday to seek an additional $100 billion for reviving Africas economies crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

French President Emmanuel Macron hosted the Paris summit aimed at finding ways to help Africa face the crisis and return to growth, with the support of international organizations, including the IMF, the World Bank and the African Union.

Macron called on the international community to set a new deal for Africa nations. He said the financing needs of the continent are estimated at about $300 billion by 2025.

This moment may be an opportunity to finally respond to huge challenges Africa is facing, he said at a news conference. Economies in sub-Saharan Africa together shrank 1.9% last year in an unprecedented recession.

Participants also agreed Africa should be able to massively produce vaccines on the continent for its own population, notably via technology transfers and lifting barriers to intellectual property, Macron said.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva confirmed the organization will issue this year $650 billion worldwide in special drawing rights, a foreign exchange tool used to help finance imports. That would include $33 billion for the African continent.

Participants agreed Tuesday to seek to triple the amount and reach $100 billion via the reallocation to African nations of some of the money initially meant to go to advanced economies.

France and other European countries are ready to contribute and a discussion is starting, especially with the United States, to reach a deal by this autumn, Macron said.

Lets be very clear: No, it is not enough, Georgieva said. We have to bring financing from developing organizations. ... We have to make the private sector attractive.

Georgieva warned against a dangerous divergence between advanced economies and developing countries, especially Africa.

The European Union last year adopted a 750 billion euro ($910 billion) pandemic recovery plan. The U.S. Congress approved a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill in March.

This is a great opportunity for Africa, said Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi, the current head of the African Union. The pandemic left our economies impoverished because we had to use all the means we had, the few means we had, to fight against the disease.

Leaders also discussed ways to relieve the debt of African nations and how to reduce interest rates for Africas private sector to boost investment and growth.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a new initiative to mobilize substantial financing and technical expertise to address key bottlenecks that hold back young entrepreneurs and small business owners across Africa.

Senegalese economist Khadim Bamba Diagne said that the big problem that we have is that we have a very young population that is not working because all the markets have been taken over by foreign companies, especially because the debts are conditioned: I lend to you and in return it is my companies that are going to dominate the markets.

___

Associated Press writer Cheikh Sy in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

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Leaders agree in Paris on helping African economies revive - Associated Press

On May 10, 2021, the EU adopted its new, revised version of Regulation (EC) No 428/2009 (the Regulation). It is widely acknowledged to be the first major reform to the structure of the EUs export control regime since 2009.

The text of the Regulation was approved by the European Parliament on March 26, 2021. In November 2020, the Council and European Parliament representatives reached a provisional political agreement on the Regulation. The reform of EU export controls had initially been proposed by the European Commission in September 2016.

The Regulation introduces, inter alia:

We comment below on a number of these highlights.

The main feature of the Regulation concerns the area of human rights, dealing with such things as surveillance and facial recognition software.

The Regulation does not add specific cyber-surveillance items to the Dual-Use Control List in Annex I. Rather, it sets out new Articles 5(1) and 5(2) creating a catch-all prohibition of any unlicensed export of cyber-surveillance items (whether or not listed) if:

or

In the latter case, the exporter is required to notify its competent authority (understood to be its Member State export licensing authority), which will then decide whether or not to make the export subject to an authorisation requirement. Article 26(1) provides that the European Commission and the Council of the European Union, as well as Member States, will publish guidelines for exporters to apply in doing their due diligence.

Article 5(3) allows individual Member States to impose their own additional export license requirements for cyber-surveillance items not on the Dual-Use Control List.

Articles 5(4) and 5(6) create an EU-level coordination mechanism providing for notification of other Member States when one Member State decides to impose a licensing requirement under Article 5(1), 5(2) or 5(3).

Article 26(2) requires the European Commission to prepare and release to the public an annual report detailing for each Member State information about the applications received for each cyber-surveillance item, the destinations involved, and the granting or denial of the applications. Civil society groups have called this new transparency rule a landmark development which will allow the public, civil society, journalists, and parliamentarians to scrutinize licensing decisions to ensure they are in accordance with law and provide an invaluable insight into the EU trade in surveillance technology.[1]

Under Article 9, a Member State is authorised to prohibit or impose an authorisation requirement on exports of items not on the Dual-Use Control List for reasons of public security, including the prevention of acts of terrorism, or for human rights considerations. These Member State measures are to be notified to and published by the European Commission. Pursuant to a new Article 10, exporters in other Member States are then prohibited from making unlicensed exports of the items from the EU if they have been informed by their respective competent authorities (understood to be their own Member State export licensing authorities) that the items in question are or may be intended for uses of concern with respect to public security or to human rights considerations.

The end result of Article 10 is that when one Member State prohibits or imposes a licensing requirement for an item not already on the Dual-Use Control List, the export licensing authorities of other Member States will have the legal authority by virtue of the Regulation to impose the same prohibition or licensing requirement. This provision is consistent, at least to some degree, with the aim of harmonisation intended by the Regulation. In Member States whose legislation does not empower their licensing authorities unilaterally to impose export licensing requirements on new items, the Regulation effectively transfers legislative authority from one organ of Member State government (the legislature) to another (the export licensing authority). When enforcement cases arise under new Article 10, we may see exporters in some Member States raise constitutional questions about the validity of this transfer of law-making power from the legislature to the export licensing agency. By exercising their power under Article 10(1), however, the export licensing agency would presumably be acting under the Regulation pursuant to the authority conferred by Article 207(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which confers exclusive jurisdiction on the EU to legislate on matters affecting the Unions common commercial policy. Such constitutional questions under Member State law may, therefore, be quickly overcome by Article 207(2) and resolved on the basis of the primacy of EU law over national law.

Article 8 of the revised Regulation sets out notification and authorisation requirements for a provider of technical assistance related to items on the Dual-Use Control List, if the provider is aware that the assistance is intended for use in connection with weapons of mass destruction or other specified military uses. Member States may also extend the application of this article to items not on the Dual-Use Control List.

The definition of provider of technical assistance is found in Article 2(10) and is very broad. It includes:

(1) natural or legal persons that provide technical assistance from the EU to the territory of a third country;

(2) natural or legal persons resident or established in the EU that provide technical assistance within the territory of a third country; and

(3) natural or legal persons resident or established in the EU that provide technical assistance to a resident of a third country temporarily present in the EU.

The coverage in item (3) above of technical assistance to a resident of a third country temporarily present in the customs territory of the Union is revolutionary for the EU, because it effectively creates a new deemed export control (the term used in the U.S. export control system for disclosures of technical data within the United States to non-U.S. persons). Is one temporarily present in the EU for purposes of this new rule whenever one does not have permanent residence status in an EU Member State? If so, this new EU rule will operate very much like its U.S. counterpart.

Once the European Parliament and the Council sign the adopted regulation, it will be published in the Official Journal of the European Union and will enter into force 90 days later. We expect the revised Regulation to be published this month or next and enter into force as soon as September 2021.

We will closely monitor activity around the revised Regulation and provide ongoing updates at our blog here.

[1] New EU Dual Use Regulation agreement a missed opportunity to stop exports of surveillance tools to repressive regimes, published on March 25, 2021 and available here.

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A New Era of Export Controls Begins in the EU: The Revised EU Dual-Use Export Controls to Promote Human Rights - JD Supra