BILZEN-HOESELT, Belgium: Leaders from across the European Union are meeting Thursday in a Belgian castle as the 27-nation bloc faces antagonism from US President Donald Trump, strong-arm economic tactics from China and hybrid threats from Russia — challenges that have prompted a rethink of Europe’s approach to diplomacy and trade.
“We all know we must change course, and we all know the direction,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told a meeting with some European leaders on Wednesday. “Yet it sometimes feels like we’re standing on the bridge of the ship staring at the horizon without being able to touch the helm.”
But there are competing visions of how the EU must change. Thursday’s meeting is to shape proposals for another summit in late March.
As leaders are set to walk across a drawbridge to the 16th-century Alden Biesen castle, the fault lines in the battle for Europe’s future are becoming clear.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni lead a wing of the bloc calling for deregulation, rebooting Europe’s relationship with Washington and forging trade deals like the recent one struck with the Mercosur nations of South America.
“We must deregulate every sector,” Merz said Wednesday.
But they are at odds with France.
One key issue is how much of the EU’s defense spending should be restricted to buying from EU arms companies. French President Emmanuel Macron argues that EU companies should get priority, while Merz and Meloni say purchases should be from both foreign and European firms.
Macron has urged the EU to protect its industries overall via applying “European preference” in key sectors like cleantech, chemicals, steel, the car industry and defense.
“We need to protect our industry. The Chinese do it, the Americans do it too,” Macron said in an interview with several newspapers including Le Monde and The Financial Times published Tuesday.
Without some European preference on strategic sectors, “Europeans will be swept aside. This is defensive, but it is essential, because we are facing unfair competitors who no longer respect the rules of the World Trade Organization,” Macron said.
EU leaders will also debate new financial instruments to protect the bloc in a global trading system rocked by Trump’s blitzkrieg of tariffs and China’s restricting of critical mineral exports.
Macron is renewing his call for the EU to be able to borrow money, which he described as “Eurobonds for the future” that would provide an opportunity “to challenge the hegemony of the dollar.”
Merz and Meloni are avoiding the economic revitalization and modernization strategy called for by Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank: deregulation, diversification of trade ties, deep investment in infrastructure, and regulatory integration and simplification across the bloc.
On Thursday, Germany and Italy will call on leaders to act by cutting EU red tape, strengthening the single market and “ensuring an ambitious trade policy based on shared rules and a level playing field.”
That echoes the economic security focus of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who like Merz is a leading figure in the European People’s Party, which is the largest bloc in the European Parliament and claims 13 heads of EU states as members.
In speeches on Wednesday in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, and at the European Industry Summit in Antwerp, Belgium, von der Leyen said economic strength underlies everything else.
“Our power on the global stage depends greatly on our strength on the economic front,” she said.
Citizens across the bloc are hungry for a stronger EU and a more unified, stronger and ambitious leadership amid military threats, economic pressures and climate instability, according to an official EU poll, Eurobarometer.
“There has never been a better time for European leaders, national political leaders, to actually leverage on these European citizens’ demand for greater European action,” said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU law at the HEC Paris business school.
EU leaders meet to counter pressure from Russia, China and Trump
https://arab.news/nnm5m
EU leaders meet to counter pressure from Russia, China and Trump
- Recent challenges have prompted a rethink of Europe’s approach to diplomacy and trade
- EU leaders will also debate new financial instruments to protect the bloc
Epstein files reveal links to cash, women, power in Africa
- Documents attest to Epstein’sclose ties with Karim Wade, son of former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade
- They also reveal his ties to Nina Keita, niece of Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara
PARIS: Jeffrey Epstein built close ties with powerful figures in Senegal and Ivory Coast, files released by the US government last month show, detailing the late sex offender’s influence network across Africa.
Emails, scheduled meetings, investment projects, and loans reviewed by AFP attest to the disgraced New York financier’s close relationship with Karim Wade, son of former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade.
They also reveal his ties to Nina Keita, niece of Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara.
Wade and Epstein met in 2010 through Emirati businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, who recently resigned as CEO of port giant DP World after mounting pressure over his close friendship with Epstein.
The pair quickly struck up a rapport.
“Thanks for coming. I think there are many things to consider... I feel confident that we will have fun,” Epstein wrote to Wade on November 15, 2010 after their first meeting in Paris.
“Have a safe trip back to your paradise Island,” Wade replied.
While Wade’s exchanges show no link to Epstein-related sex trafficking crimes, they do reveal conversations on potential business ventures in various sectors, such as finance and energy.
Nicknamed the “Minister of Heaven and Earth” for the multiple portfolios he held including international cooperation, energy, and air transport, Wade was a powerful figure in Senegal until April 2012, when his father’s bid for a third term sparked deadly riots.
Epstein saw him as “one of the most important players in africa” and invited him to meet close contacts such as Ehud Barak, then Israel’s defense minister.
He also put him in touch with Chinese businessman Desmond Shum to discuss “offshore banking.”
The US Department of Justice documents show Shum and Wade met in Beijing on May 9, 2011.
That same month, Wade planned an African tour through Senegal, Mali, and Gabon for Epstein.
‘You will not suffer’
Epstein and Wade’s relationship became even more apparent after the latter’s fortunes reversed when his father left office in 2012.
That autumn, Epstein proposed that his “friend” — under the Dakar authorities’ scrutiny over his assets — use his house in Florida.
“You and your family are welcome to use my house in palm beach, staff is there, pool etc. you will not suffer,” Epstein wrote.
“Txs a lot Brother for the advise,” Wade replied a few weeks later to another email, in which Epstein urged him to “stay mentally strong.”
Numerous files suggest Epstein became financially involved on Karim Wade’s behalf after his arrest in 2013 and his 2015 sentencing to six years in prison for corruption.
Karim Wade’s lawyer, Mohamed Seydou Diagne, sent two invoices in May 2014 and July 2015 of $500,000 to one of Epstein’s companies.
Contacted by AFP on Monday, Diagne said he “did not consider it useful to comment.”
Other archives suggest that Epstein covered at least $50,000 in fees for the US lobbying firm Nelson Mullins, hired by Wade’s entourage to secure his release.
Epstein regularly exchanged emails with Robert Crowe, a partner at the firm who kept him informed of their efforts in the US and Senegal.
In a June 16, 2016 email thread where Epstein and Crowe discussed whether then Senegalese president Macky Sall would pardon Wade, Crowe writes: “He has told my friends high up at State that he was going to do it. They have been putting pressure on him!“
Karim Wade was released from prison eight days later, on June 24, and went into exile in Qatar, which he credited for efforts toward his release.
Jeffrey Epstein was told by Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem and Nina Keita.
‘A very interesting person!’
The DOJ documents show Nina Keita was close to both Epstein and Karim Wade and that she acted as a regular intermediary while Wade was in prison.
Keita also helped put Epstein in contact with her uncle, president of Ivory Coast since May 2011, and his team.
“He thought you were a very interesting person! ... they were all very happy to have you here,” she wrote on January 20, 2012, after the financier’s visit to Abidjan.
She had booked him the “ministerial suite” of the luxury Hotel Ivoire for that trip.
Ahead of the visit, Epstein had said he hoped to see “very pretty girls there, as well as interesting places.”
“You will!” Keita replied.
Emails show Keita, a former model, at least once sent photos and the phone number of a young woman to Epstein.
He then met this woman at the Ritz hotel in Paris on August 31, 2011.
“ask sadia to send pictures of her sister. i prefer under 25,” Epstein wrote to Keita after the meeting.
Now the deputy general director of Ivorian petroleum stocks company GESTOCI, Keita also appears in a February 2019 will in which Epstein requested that debts owed to him by a number of people be canceled upon his death.
AFP received no response to its requests for comment from both Keita and the Ivorian presidency, or from Karim Wade, who was contacted through his entourage.
The mere mention of a person’s name in the Epstein files does not in itself imply wrongdoing.
