The Netherlands: Hundreds of UK firms turn to Netherlands with Brexit transition wrapping up

Hundreds of British companies are working on opening a branch in the
Netherlands by the end of this year, when the Brexit transition period
ends. The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA) is receiving
Daily requests for information from British companies, AD reports.
open a Dutch branch. "And that number will grow in the near future. The
search in the Netherlands as business location halted in March due to
he coronavirus, which meant that investments were postponed, but now
everyone feels the increasing time pressure," Michiel Bakhuizen of the
NFIA said to the newspaper.


Read more at: hundreds-uk-firms-turn-netherlands-brexit-transition-wrapping">H

The Netherlands (finally) considers nationwide face mask obligation

Following the Netherlands’ announcement of the stricter measures against the coronavirus on Monday, calls for a national facemask obligation in the country are rising. The Dutch government’s current measure– that shopkeepers in the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague should only allow customers wearing a face mask to enter their shops – is perceived as unclear, according to the Dutch Lower House. Read more at: The Netherlands considers nationwide face mask obligation

US Elections: Why stock-market investors are starting to freak out about the 2020 election - by Mark DeCambre

 Less than a month and a half from the 2020 presidential elections and
investors are starting to get panicky about the race for the White House
and what that presidential contest means for already rocky markets in
the coming weeks



Read more: 

Why stock-market investors are starting to freak out about the 2020 election - MarketWatch

Switzerland: Geneva voters approve 'world's highest' minimum wage - The Local

Geneva voters on Sunday came out in support of introducing a minimum
wage, guaranteeing every worker in one of the world's priciest cities at
least $25 an hour. 



Read more at: 

Geneva voters approve 'world's highest' minimum wage - The Local

Brexit negotiations between EU and Britain: EU′s Charles Michel lashes out at UK over withdrawal treaty

European Council President Charles Michel took a thinly veiled swipe at
the United Kingdom on Friday over its threats to renege on parts of the
EU withdrawal treaty it signed in January.


Read more: 
Brexit: EU′s Charles Michel lashes out at UK over withdrawal treaty | News | DW | 25.09.2020

USA: An 'ominous’ report reminds us the U.S. economy is far from OK - by Sam Ro

On the one hand, we should be encouraged by how much the ;economy has improved since the most intense days of the Covid-19 pandemic." On the other hand, the economy is far from fully recovered , but the good news is that this was the fourth consecutive week the number was below 1 million.

Read more at: An 'ominous’ report reminds us the U.S. economy is far from OK: Morning Brief

EU: ECB plots Amazon-style market to prevent Wall Street COVID debt swoop

Europe is working on an Amazon-style website to sell hundreds of
billions of euros of bank loans which have been soured by the
coronavirus crisis, in a bid to shore up the economy and challenge the
dominance of big Wall Street debt investors. Read more at: 

ECB plots Amazon-style market to prevent Wall Street COVID debt swoop | Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

Airlines call for virus tests before all international flights

Global airlines called on Tuesday (22 September) for airport COVID-19tests for all departing international passengers to replace the   quarantines they blame for exacerbating the travel slump

Rapid and affordable antigen tests that can be administered by  non-medical staff are expected to become available in “coming weeks” and hould be rolled out under globally agreed standards, the head of the  International Air Transport Association (IATA) said during an online  media briefing.

Read more at  Airlines call for virus tests before all international flights – EURACTIV.com

Rebooting the EU economy during a world health pandemic

According to the EU Summer forecast, the economy is set to contract by 8.3% in 2020 and grow by 5.8% in 2021.

Read more at:
Rebooting the EU economy during a world health pandemic | Euronews

Coronavirus: Beware: Fall and winter could be a friend to COVID-19, experts say - by Peter Krouse

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 942,000 people worldwide.Over 30 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.The criteria for diagnosis -- through clinical means or a lab test -- has varied from country-to-country. Still, the actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported  cases and suspicions that some national governments are hiding or  downplaying the scope of their outbreaks.

Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the virus has rapidly spread to every continent except Antarctica.

The United States is the worst-affected country, with more than 6.6 million diagnosed cases and at least 197,397 deaths.

Read more at: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/08/beware-fall-and-winter-could-be-a-friend-to-covid-19-experts-say.html

Airbus displaces Boeing as aerospace’s biggest company

Airbus displaces Boeing as aerospace’s biggest company | Analysis | Flight Global: FlightGlobal’s latest Top 100, based on 2019/20 financial year figures, before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, show Boeing’s annual sales at $76 billion, down from $101 billion the previous year.

Airbus’s turnover rose from $75.1 billion in 2018 to $78.9 billion,  allowing the European company to take top spot in the annual ranking for the first time in over a decade.
 

Read more at:ttps://www.flightglobal.com/aerospace/airbus-displaces-boeing-as-aerospaces-biggest-company/140026.article

Germany: Oktober Fest Cancelled

There will be no Oktoberfest this year because of the coronavirus.  Although Munich residents are understanding, it's a heavy financial and  emotional blow for people whose livelihood depends on the festival, like show booth operators. 

Read more: News | DW

China-EU Relations: Remarks by President Charles Michel after the EU-China leaders' meeting via video conference

Remarks  by Charles Michel after the EU-China leaders' meeting via video conference. as a result of the coronavirus.

Read more at: Remarks by President Charles Michel after the EU-China leaders' meeting via video conference - Consilium

Britain: Biden threatens UK trade deal over Brexit shambles

Britain's US trade deal is in jeopardy if the UK endangers Northern  Ireland peace over Brexit, US Democratic presidential candidate Joe  Biden has said.

We can't allow the [1998] Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit," Biden said on  Wednesday (16 September).

 Read more at:   Biden threatens UK trade deal over Brexit shambles

Global Economic Recession: "US, China, India, Europe can't save global economy from recession - by Linette Lopez

The coronavirus depression will be much worse than the last worldwide recession, because this time no country is strong enough to rescue the global economy.

The story of the Great Recession goes like this: the US and Europe were crippled while working to clean up their devastated banking system, the global services sector suffered without its biggest player — the US consumer engine — but global economic growth didn't completely fall off a cliff because other countries kept money moving around the planet.

Over in China policymakers enacted a massive stimulus to skip over the recession entirely. The country's GDP grew 9.4% in 2009. India chugged along as if the crisis barely happened, with its GDP growing 7.9% in 2009.

But this time there is no corner of the globe that has been left untouched by the pandemic or its effects. And so, there's no country that can reasonably chug along and keep things from getting truly disastrous.

Read more at: 
US, China, India, Europe can't save global economy from recession - Business Insider

China-Netherlands Relations:: How China Made the Netherlands Question the Free Market - by Diederik Baazil

When the Dutch government invested in home-grown chipmaker Smart Photonics this summer, it was a departure for a country with a hands-off approach to business.

A small company with big plans, Smart Photonics was struggling to attract financing to scale up production of its next-generation chips, whose applications include self-driving cars and datacenters.

Smart’s chief technology officer, said in an interview at the company’s offices outside Eindhoven, in the southern Netherlands. “The most serious interest came from Asia,” specifically Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and from China, he said.

In late June, just as it looked like Smart Photonics was about to be lured to Asia, the Dutch government stepped in with 20 million euros ($23.7 million). A similar sum came from a consortium including a government-backed agency, PhotonDelta, whose chief executive, Ewit Roos, raised the alarm at the Ministry of Economic Affairs as soon as he learned of the company’s predicament. “The government acted swiftly and decisively,” Roos said by phone.

he Dutch government says that its decision was taken to retain key technology and wasn’t driven by concerns over China. Even so, its investment was just the latest example of a more defensive economic stance that has accompanied a hardening of the country’s attitude to Beijing.

The shift has “been very noticeable, because the Netherlands has always been that kind of small, open, free-market economy that wanted nothing to be touched and everything to be open,” said Agatha Kratz, an associate director at Rhodium Group in Paris.

Beijing still regards the Netherlands as an important trade partner and investment destination, even though the Netherlands is getting “harsher” toward China, said a researcher with the government-affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who asked not to be identified due to rules for speaking with media. One reason for that change is China is becoming more competitive economically with Europe, the researcher said.

On the political front, the Netherlands angered Beijing this year by changing the name of its representation in Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province. That prompted the Chinese embassy in The Hague to request clarification from the government. Taiwan’s president pointedly tweeted her gratitude to the representation’s outgoing head.

Read more at:
How China Made the Netherlands Question the Free Market - Bloomberg

Natural Disasters - Chart: Natural Disasters on the Rise Around the Globe - by Katharina Buchholz

MunichRe registered 820 natural disasters causing insured losses in 2019 - three times as many as thirty years ago. Some – but not all – of that rise can be chalked up to more people carrying insurance.

MunichRe estimates that the share of natural disaster losses which are insured only doubled since 1980.

Read more at:
• Chart: Natural Disasters on the Rise Around the Globe | Statista

EU-US Relations: How Europe can defend itself against US economic sanctions

The idea of US senators threatening a German state-owned port with “devastating legal and economic sanctions” was something that seemed unthinkable – until now. But recent developments around the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline (designed to transport Russian gas directly to Germany) have broken yet another taboo in transatlantic relations.

Since December, Europe’s closest partner has been trying hard to prevent the completion of the pipeline, using coercive measures in an attempt to achieve this. The pressure of sanctions and an initial threatening letter led European companies to stop work on the project at the end of 2019.

Now US senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Ron Johnson have ratcheted matters up yet further by sending another threatening letter to the operator of Sassnitz port, which serves as a key logistical base for building the pipeline. The Protecting European Energy Security Clarification Act (PEESCA), which is currently making its way through Congress and which Cruz introduced, takes the same line. Cruz and his Republican colleagues are threatening to destroy the port of Sassnitz through financial means. Should PEESCA become law, the United States will have significantly expanded its sanctions on European companies and officials.

 Read more at:
How Europe can defend itself against US economic sanctions | European Council on Foreign Relations

EU - Controlling the Tech Giants: EU warns tech giants 'time to go beyond self-reguation': Elena Sánchez Nicolás

Two years after a code of practice to fight online disinformation, the European Commission has concluded the self-regulatory mechanism fails to guarantee enough transparency and accountability from the tech platforms and advertisers that signed up to it.

"The code of practice has shown that online platforms and the advertising sector can do a lot to counter disinformation, but the time has come to go beyond self-regulatory measures," EU commissioner for values and transparency, Věra Jourová, said on Thursday (10 September).

 Read more at:
EU warns tech giants 'time to go beyond self-reguation'

Global Warming: Rise in sea level from ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica match worst-case scenario: study

About a year ago, water and climate expert Bob Sandford flew over Greenland at a moment he says was historic, both scientifically and climatically —  the island recorded the most ice melt, about 11.3 billions tonnes, in a single day since recording began in the 1950s.

"It's an understatement to say that what I saw left me really quite devastated," Sandford said. He's the chair in water and climate security at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

Now, according to a recent study, led by Thomas Slater, a climate researcher at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, those rapidly melting ice sheets in Greenland, along with melting ice sheets in Antarctica are thought to be the main contributor to a rise in sea levels around the world. And the rate of the melt matches the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's worst-case climate warming scenario.

The study was co-authored by Anna Hogg, climate researcher with the University of Leeds in England, and Ruth Mottram, a climate researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute.

The researchers compared the latest results from satellite surveys from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) — an international scientific collaboration of estimates of the ice sheet contribution to sea level rise — with calculations from climate models.

It shows that since the 1990s, melting ice sheets have raised the global sea level by 1.8 centimetres, but the latest measurements show that the world's oceans are now rising by four millimetres each year.

"The implications are profound; the risks posed by future sea level rise may be of a scale we simply are unprepared for. The speed at which ice melt contributions have overtaken thermal expansion contributions to sea level rise should alarm everyone on this planet."

Read more at: 
Rise in sea level from ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica match worst-case scenario: study | CBC News

Global GDP to fall by 4.4%, not 4.6%, in 2020

Global economic growth will fall by 4.4% in 2020, according to international ratings agency Fitch Ratings, a slight upward revision from the 4.6% decline it projected in a previous report in June.

A slight recovery was seen after the peak period of the pandemic in March and April “but we expect the pace of expansion to moderate soon,” the agency said in a statement late on Monday.

Brian Coulton, a chief economist at the agency, said China’s economy has regained its pre-pandemic level and some European countries have exceeded February levels, but there is still doubt over a V-shaped recovery.

“Unemployment shocks lie ahead in Europe, firms are cutting capital expenditures, and social distancing continues to directly constrain private-sector spending,” he said.

The agency revised its GDP expectation target for the US from -5.6% to -4.6% and from 1.2% to 2.7% for China.

Read more at: 
Global GDP to fall by 4.4%, not 4.6%, in 2020: Fitch

European Stock Markets: European stocks rise after Wall Street sell-off

European share markets moved firmly higher on Monday, shrugging off the heavy falls in the US at the end of last week as investors turned to defensive stocks like healthcare, utility and energy companies.

Sterling fell sharply against the euro, shedding 0.8 per cent to €1.1137, as fears mounted that a trade agreement between the UK and the EU will be scuppered if Boris Johnson’s government goes through with plans to override elements of the withdrawal agreement. The pound fell by a similar degree against the dollar to $1.3157.

Read more at: 
European stocks rise after Wall Street sell-off | Financial Times

The Netherlands: Health insurance costs likely to rise by 62 euros next year

The price of the basic required health insurance package is likely to rise by 62 euros per year to about 1,476 euros annually, political sources told newspaper AD. The total increase was significantly lower than the 144 euro increase which had been predicted by analysts.

The announcement was expected to be made later this month when the Cabinet's proposed budget is revealed on September 15. The increase of about 5.17 euros monthly could still shift up or down by a few dozen cents, the newspaper said. The estimate was agreed upon by the coalition parties, and is based on an insurer having a deductible of 385 euros.

From that baseline price, health insurers then set their own fees. Discounts are often offered for bundled add-on coverage, opting out of coverage at some locations, or by making a full annual payment up front instead of dividing it over the course of the year. Raising the deductible is also an option for reducing the price a consumer pays. Consumers have the option of switching their health insurance at the end of the year.

The price increase had been expected to be larger due to the coronavirus crisis, though former Medical Care Minister Martin van Rijn said that was unlikely. This could still impact the cost of insurance in 2022, the newspaper reported.

Note EU-Digest: This is scandalous, and proves once again that healthcare is a common right for every citizen, just like education, and not a commodity for the greedy profit oriented private sector to control. The Netherlands healthcare system is, unfortunately, starting to resemble the US healthcare system.

Read more at: 
Health insurance costs likely to rise by 62 euros next year: Report | NL Times

The Netherlands: More women on Dutch company boards -by Janene Pieters

The number of women on the management boards at Dutch companies listed on a stock exchange increased from 8.5 percent last year to 12.5 percent this year. The proportion of women on supervisory boards increased from 26.8 percent to 29.5 percent, according to the Female Board Index by Mijntje Lückerath, professor of Corporate Governance at the TIAS School for Business and Society.

This is the second year in a row that the number of female executives and supervisory directors increased. "I see this as a break in the trend," Lückerath, who has been tracking these figures for 13
years, said to NOS. "Last year, Eumedion, the advocate for institutional  investors, made the appointment of women a spearhead. I think it had a lot of effect, companies do now want any hassle abou their appointments. The pressure is already there. It's gradually becoming embarrassing when the top of a company consists entirely of men."

Read more at: 
More women on Dutch company boards | NL Times

US Economy: Tech leads Wall Street sell-off, investors eye slow recovery - "and it will get worse say experts."

The technology-centric Nasdaq led the declines as its heavyweight stocks took a hit including Facebook Inc (FB.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Microsoft Inc (MSFT.O) and Google-parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) which were all down between 4% and 7%.

The five stocks, deemed stay-at-home winners during the coronavirus crisis, also account for roughly a quarter of the S&P 500’s market value and have driven the stock market’s narrow technology-led recovery from the pandemic lows hit in March.

The Philadelphia chip index .SOX and the S&P tech sector .SPLRCT also dropped more than 5% each.

The pullback comes a day after the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed at record levels and the Dow came within 1.5% of its February peak, powered by fiscal and monetary support hopes for a swift economic recovery. But some participants said investors had become too optimistic.

Read more at: Tech leads Wall Street sell-off, investors eye slow recovery - Reuters

US Economy - airline industry: United Airlines to cut 16,370 jobs as the pandemic rages

Chicago-based United had over 90,000 employees before the pandemic brought the industry to a near standstill in March and had warned in July that 36,000 jobs were at risk of involuntary furloughs as demand remains weak. 

Read more at: 
United Airlines to cut 16,370 jobs as the pandemic rages - Reuters

Canada:Largest shoreline cleanup on Central B.C. Coast

 The Small Ship Tour Operators Association (SSTOA) will conduct two,marine debris removal expeditions, each up to 21 days, including nine, vessels and more than 100 crew who will inspect and clean up to 1,000 kilometres, weather permitting, of remote shoreline around 100 small islands. The clean-up operations will be performed by various marine-based tourism operators, which may include but is not limited to member companies of the

Read more: 
Largest shoreline cleanup on Central B.C. Coast | CKPGToday.ca