The EU, agriculture: Farm to pitchfork
Also: Hungary, Britain, Ireland, Pakistan, and Malaysia.
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EUROPE. AGRICULTURE. Farm to pitchfork
More tractors appear on more streets.
Farmer protests spread to Belgium and Spain on Wednesday ahead of an EU leaders’ summit. Access to the Zeebrugge container port was blocked. Demands were made over Ukrainian imports and the EU's free trade deal with Mercosur.
INTELLIGENCE. Farmer protests are nothing new, and the EU, when pushed, tends to respond to their demands. Yet the involvement of broader right-wing groups and the pressure from urban voters to do more on climate, has made centrist politicians – particularly in Paris and Berlin – less sympathetic than usual. Emmanuel Macron’s new prime minister has promised "fair competition" and an easing of green tape, but this may be as far as he can go for now.
FOR BUSINESS. Like any industrial strike, the farmers are playing a game of chicken. Anger is aimed at environmental policies, but these are core to other voters so unless more right-wing parties come to power, the best the farmers can expect is a hold on further trade deals. The Mercosur pact looks unlikely to be ratified. Talks with Australia fell apart. India and Indonesia seem doubtful. And it’s no different for post-Brexit Britain. Its deal with Canada is on hold.
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EUROPE. HUNGARY. Hunger games
A dispute with Brussels is exactly what Orban wants.
Talks between the EU and Hungary over aid to Ukraine remained "difficult" on Wednesday, officials said. NATO urged Hungary to approve Sweden's membership following Turkey's agreement last week. The forint hit a four-month low.
INTELLIGENCE. Leaked threats to suspend Hungary’s EU funding, bypass it on decision-making, or otherwise punish Budapest seem like posturing. There’s plenty Brussels can do (and has done), but the principle of EU consensus will be too important for many members to trash over what is, in any case, an increasingly unpopular war in Ukraine. And other EU members, from Slovakia to Austria, are happy to have Hungary represent the stances they privately support.
FOR BUSINESS. The EU is good at creating fudges (as it did with Ukraine’s accession) and Hungary is good at playing a weak hand. The brinksmanship is thus to be expected, but the danger is it’s now incentivising other populists and damaging the EU’s brand of technocratic policymaking. For Kyiv, the dispute is also giving undeserved space to extreme ideas like the seizure of ethnically Hungarian and Romanian bits of Ukraine, which is the last thing it needs.
BRITAIN. IRELAND. Troubles shared
Amid progress in Belfast, problems in Dublin.
Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party agreed to end a two-year legislative hiatus, subject to Westminster’s assurances. Rishi Sunak slammed his Irish counterpart Wednesday over opposition to a new Troubles-era legacy act.
INTELLIGENCE. Dublin has vowed to take Britain to Strasbourg over the legislation, passed in September, which allows immunity for Troubles-era crimes. Sunak is right this threatens to derail delicate Stormont talks in Belfast, but Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is facing a politically bigger threat from the historically IRA-linked Sinn Féin, which is leading Varadkar's Fine Gael by 10 points. For most Britons, the Troubles are a memory. For many Irish, they’re an identity.
FOR BUSINESS. Irish identity politics were once associated with the North’s Catholic-Protestant divide. Today, they feature in debates from migration (e.g. Ukrainian) to foreign policy (e.g. Gaza). This is an irritation for Varadkar, a part-Indian agnostic focussed on growing Ireland’s high-tech economy, but represents global trends. Sinn Féin has been marginal in the South since the 1920s. Should its polls keep rising, Dublin’s politics could resemble Belfast’s.
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PAKISTAN. Khan get enough
The military strikes another blow against a former prime minister.
Imran Khan was sentenced to 14 years' prison for corruption, a day after being sentenced for another 10-year term over the leaking of state secrets. Two were killed in a bomb blast at a rally for Khan's party in Balochistan on Tuesday.
INTELLIGENCE. Khan, already in jail, isn’t the first Pakistani ex-prime minister to be literally barred from office by the military-led establishment. Yet Khan's enduring popularity poses an additional security threat for authorities already struggling with multiple terrorist attacks and a ravaged economy (much of it thanks to Khan's incompetence, but also the army’s). Tensions remain high ahead of elections next week another ex-leader, Nawaz Sharif, looks set to win.
FOR BUSINESS. As Khan languishes, Sharif looks set to regain power for a fourth time having reconciled with the generals (his brother, Khan’s immediate successor, brokered his return from exile) and had his own criminal charges conveniently quashed. This won’t be necessarily bad for the economy – Sharif, a successful businessman, has a record of reform – but it will exacerbate Pakistan’s febrile polarisation and sense of democratic illegitimacy.
MALAYSIA. Fellowship of the ringgit
Cronyism continues to impede competitiveness.
Former prime minister Najib Razak's jail term has been halved from 12 years to six, officials said Wednesday, in the last act of the outgoing king. Malaysia's new king, billionaire Sultan Ibrahim of Johor, was installed on Wednesday.
INTELLIGENCE. Once among the world’s most dynamic economies, Malaysia now struggles to escape its middle-income trap, plagued by a nexus of corruption, identity politics and gerontocracy. Current Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, a deputy PM from Malaysia’s 1990s heyday, is trying to restore past glory, but his political peers keep getting in the way. It’ll likely be no better with the new king – a partner in China’s Forest City who promises to be “hands-on”.
FOR BUSINESS. Sultan Ibrahim is not unknown to controversy. His business dealings are reportedly as murky as those of Najib, though wanting anti-corruption authorities to now report directly to him we may never know. Najib continues to deny wrongdoing, but his jailing for the theft of billions in sovereign wealth seems irrefutable. Either way, Malaysia’s reputation for money politics will continue to crimp its attractiveness and complicate its foreign policy.