1. Black Swan

There is that metaphor (based on an ancient saying that presumed black swans do not exist) describing a high profile, hard-to-predict, and rare event that is beyond the realm of normal expectations and comes to most as a total surprise. The Covid-19 pandemic is certainly such an unexpected event of large magnitude and consequence and with even a dominant role in history. My first wish is therefore obvious and even simple – let us open our minds and understand that similar other “black swans” (not only in the form of pandemics) are in our footsteps, waiting to emerge and reveal their existence.

2. Pandemics

The generally accepted theory for a pandemic is linked to the relationship between humans and the environment. A pathogen (bacterium, parasite or virus) living in cohabitation with an animal in a remote place (mostly forest) will only be confronted with humans in case we are intervening intensively in that living space of that animal (or even if we destroy it). Jumping from that animal (usually a vertebrate) to a human, an infectious disease might be the consequence – with the option to spread further and to become a pandemic. We have been confronted with such a zoonosis in the case of for example Ebola, Spanish flu, and swine flu. To overcome the danger, we were essentially focussing to find an answer to that SPECIFIC pandemic, but not to address the general issue. As long as the conversion of forests (about 30% of the land surface of our globe) continues – that means the annual destruction of an area the size of Belgium (about 2,500 trees cut down each minute), we have to accept that pandemics will become our permanent companion. My second wish is, therefore: to let us stop (“severely reduce” would be a first promising step) global deforestation.

3. Normality

My third wish is circulating around the word “normal”. Every time someone is asking in my presence “When will the normal times come back after this Covid-19 pandemic”, I am flabbergasted about that naive indirect wish. We all should know that our perception is framed heavily by major events. Someone, who witnessed a major military confrontation, revolution or societal uproar knows that the time “after” was different. In post-Covid-19 times, our behaviour, expectations, ideas, mindset, relations, values and wishes will have changed a little bit (or possibly, even a lot). Take as an example WW2 and Europe – approval of cooperation, multilateralism and solidarity rose while antisemitism, fascism, nationalism and racism went down. Or look at 1968, this year of civil disobedience: not only civil rights, family, hierarchy, obedience, sexuality, but social justice were also seen in post-1968 in a different way. My third wish is therefore: please accept that the post-Covid-19 times will be different from pre-Covid – possibly even with more empathy and (international) solidarity, possibly with a higher acceptance of general hygiene standards, less random body contacts and new national, regional and global pandemic cooperation structures.

L’article Three wishes for a post-Covid world est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

1. Climate Change

If we cannot stop it considerably, we all know that it will change our surrounding landscape as well as biodiversity and the conditions of human life. In Greenland that will mean a change of a white landscape with kilometre-thick ice sheets to a sort of Rocky Mountains area with sediments, grey-coloured basalt and other very brownish rocky formations with lakes and flown through by some rivers. That is a much more intensive change, compared to the one we are (possibly too positively) predicting for our landscape: replace some tree species by others and malaria flies migrating to our regions as well.

2. Covid-19

The Greenland population is still haunted by the trauma that in medieval times suddenly nearly the entire population had been wiped off by the black death, the pest. The development around Covid-19 is therefore bringing up subliminal existential fears that not only one’s individual life is threatened, but the existence of the whole community is at stake.

3. Economic future 

The global depletion of some key raw materials and – much more important – the shift to replace hydrocarbons by renewables is confronting a territory like Greenland with an increasing pressure to open-up for mining in order to export some special components of their territorial crust – especially rare earths. The decision of the Greenland Parliament in 2013 to lift a ban on the extraction of mineral resources opened a Pandora’s box with the consequence that a myriad of international corporations expressed their interest in exploiting those metal resources (including aluminium, copper, iron, nickel, platinum, titanium. tungsten, uranium and zinc) and gemstones (including amazonite, diamond, kornerupine, lapis lazuli, peridot, quartz, ruby, sapphire, topaz, tourmaline and tugtupite and spinel). The experience in other Northern territories and countries (Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia etc.) has shown us that especially opencast mining under extreme conditions is a threat to livelihood. It will treat the landscape in a way that a recovery will need hundreds of years. Therefore a public debate about general values arose in Greenland: should we destroy our ”raft”, anchored in the middle of the Northern Atlantic for short term profits for some or should we look for more long-term values, which have future benefits for all? 

4. Political consequences 

That debate contributed to a shift in parliamentary voting. The elections this April for the Inatsisartut, the unicameral Parliament of Greenland, resulted with 37.42% (+11.64%) in a landslide victory of Inuit Ataqatigiit, a left-green party, which will now govern the country in a coalition with Naleraq (centrist-populists) and supported by Atassut (liberal-conservatives). The coming four years will therefore see a new policy, taking into account the environment and health aspects in mining, a rejection of uranium mining, stronger focus on soft tourism, an inclusive social policy and the admission of refugees. As the public sector, including publicly owned enterprises and the municipalities, plays a dominant role in Greenland’s economy, the implementation of that shift towards a greener and more social future will happen quite quickly.

5. And we in the EU? 

With climate change at our doorsteps as well, a pandemic which destabilises as well public life and an increasing debate about values (responsibility, solidarity, sustainability) there will certainly be a modification of the composition of our political landscape as well. The tendency is already there: a Green as a President in Austria, Green mayors in several big cities in France, Green majors in three of the 19 communes of Brussels, Greens governing in coalitions in nine of the 16 German states (Länder) and an EU Commission with a Green Deal as the main program. 

6. Germany: Quo Vadis? 

All of that is now topped by the last poll from Germany. A new government is predicted, led by the Greens – after the elections for the federal parliament (Bundestag) on 26 September this year. With 28% (+5%), the Greens are far ahead of the Christian Democrats with their 21% (-6%), the Social Democrats (13%), the Liberals (12%), Right Wing Populists (11%) and the Left (7%). What a perspective: the economically strongest EU Member State country led by a Green politician.

7. Brussels and the European Parliament

For the capital of Europe, it is an additional specific novelty: the two leading contenders have a political; past linked to the European Parliament and its 705 Members of Parliament (MEPs). The choice for the German electorate will be this autumn between the 40 year old Green Annalena Baerbock (former MEP assistant) and the 60 years old Christian Democrat Armin Laschet (former MEP). What other countries will follow that new wave?

L’article Greenland: a forerunner for Europe? est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

1. Never in our history, humans have been confronted with so many existential challenges: artificial intelligence, biodiversity, China as an additional key player, climate change, cyberwar, migration, pandemics, populism, shift from hydrocarbons to renewables, social inequality, terrorism, (un)social media …

2. It is easy to agree that the answers will not be possible on a national level, but on a global one – multilateralism instead of unilateralism.

3. Our understanding of “multilateralism” is that different nations are working together hand in hand. Recent years have shown that that is more effective than America’s first and similar approaches – but the subject of such cooperation stays always the “nation”.

4. In a certain way, we are in that respect a sort of mental slave of the 1648 Westphalia Peace Treaty, where Western nations (not the indigenous one’s) were recognized as the sole subject of international law and of the 1815 Vienna Congress – leading to the export of that notion of a nation all around the globe with all the conflicts about borders and the emergence of nationalism.

5. The beginning of this century shows us that we have to overcome the understanding that it is not enough that “Nations should work together” – something more inclusive, involving especially civil society, has to replace the narrow definition of multilateralism.

6. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant might show the adequate way when he looked already in 1797 for a Universal Peace (Weltfrieden) by using omnilateral (from omnibus in Latin for all and by all) to express a constellation which is “derived from the particular wills of all the individuals”.

7. In case we would develop and progress the term multilateralism to “omnilateralism”, we would show by such a naming that not only nations are included, but also Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) as well as private actors and civil society at large: all with the aim to contribute together to the advancement of the common global good.

8. The reality in our 21st century has already developed towards first steps of omnilateralism:

– at the Paris Climate Conference of the parties (COPS), the number of non-state actors (especially NGOs, academics etc) has always been higher than the number of state actors,

– the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) as a mechanism aimed at increasing direct democracy by enabling EU citizens to participate directly in the development of EU policies,

– the work of “Citizen Spring”, calling on citizens to put the future in their own hands by building citizen-led initiatives to tackle key challenges,

– Macron and his experiment in participatory democracy with the “Citizens’ Climate Convention”,

– the creation of an independent self-organised citizen-driven EU-wide 2021 “Conference on the Future of Europe”.

9. Such an inclusive approach might assist us to overcome as well some Western-Asian tensions and to adapt democracy along with non-Western ideas and practices in order to solve common global issues.

10. All of this is not only applicable exclusively on the global level – such an inclusive approach on ther local level might as well result in an enhanced democracy, where citizens can contribute in decision making and rule-setting.

L’article Pandemics and other key challenges: wake-up call to go beyond multilateralism – 10 thesis for Omnilateralism est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

On the 8th April, something happened in Germany, which supports the second path: the most exclusive German bi-annual award for centre-right economists and politicians was handed over to Jeffrey Sachs. Not only has, for the first time in 60 years, a non-German been awarded – but he is one of the most radical critics of nowadays capitalism, identifying financial oligarchy as responsible for racism and global poverty, praising during the years of Trump a strong cooperation between the EU and China.

How is it possible that a generally conservative structure takes a decision so much out of the box? What other reason might exist for such an unusual behaviour than a profound disorientation provoked by Covid-19, which has reached all sectors and minds – and all hierarchies – of society?

The German economist and sociologist Alexander Rüstow (1885-1963) created in 1938 the term “neoliberalism” and became after WW2 one of the founding fathers of the German model of “social market economy”. To honour his heritage, an “Alliance for the Social Market Economy” awardings the bi-annual Alexander Rüstow Award. The up to now 35 German recipients include a President, federal Finance and Economy Ministers, Presidents of the Bundesbank, business leaders, and Angela Merkel. None of them had the reputation of being an intellectual rebel, who created a Zero-Carbon Action Plan that charts a technological, financial, and employment pathway for decarbonizing the US, who speaks of “America’s unholy crusade against China”, who are denouncing the US involvement in Venezuela, who praised Bernie Sanders: “he alone has honestly focused on the deep economic changes we need in this country” and compared him to Joe Biden as “the braver and I believe more accurate candidate of the deep policy changes that we require”.

Jeffrey Sachs, being honoured “for his advancement of a Humane Economy” despite – or more correctly: because of – his radical views and proposals, is an indication that the tsunami of COVID-19 challenges has now also reached traditional conservative minds and convinced them that a “business as usual” after the end of the pandemic is no longer the right way to act…

PS: The next logical candidate for that award is certainly Ursula von der Leyen with her Green Deal, orienting all policies towards sustainability and making Europe climate neutral in 2050.

L’article A smell of post-Covid-19 times: an intellectual rebel honoured by German conservatives est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

1. Goscinny and Uderzo

All rivers? That is a little bit like with Asterix and Obelix (slightly modified): “The year is 2021. Europe is entirely under the influence of those who want to domesticate all the rivers. All?! Well, not entirely…One small river of indomitable Albanians still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for those who from Tirana, Berlin, Brussels, and Paris want to change the character of the Vjosa river with their dam projects…”

2. Europe’s last big wild river

The Vjosa (Albania) is Europe’s last big wild river outside Russia and a unique natural ecosystem with about 300 yet untouched kilometers. The future of that river has now become a much-disputed question in the country: some of the decision-makers (including Prime Minister Edi Rama and President Ilir Meta) are open to establishing the first Wild River National Park in Europe along the river, while others intend to build several hydropower dams.

3. First Wild River National Park in Europe

In the light of the Albanian national elections on 25 April, international and national (Albania, Austria, and Germany) environmental NGOs have intensified their national – and international – efforts for the creation of that Wild River National Park. Generally, well-informed sources are speaking of a “deal”: to protect only the very first kilometers and use the major part of those dams.

4. Ursula von der Leyen and four EU Commissioners

Therefore, a European-wide campaign “Vjosa National Park Now” had been started. One of the elements will be the hand-over of a souvenir from the Vjosa to Ursula von der Leyen and three EU Commissioners (Frans Timmermans, Virginijus Sinkevičius, Olivér Várhelyi) on 22nd March, International Water Day. Even if Albania is not a member of the European Union, the European Green Deal and EU Biodiversity Strategy can be a basis for action.

5. Video – the exceptional beauty of the Vjosa

A video is asking for international solidarity and proposing to the citizens in Albania to take the destiny of the Vjosa river into consideration, when they go on 25th April to the ballot boxes for the national elections. I do not know what you are feeling when you clicked on the video – me, I took the decision to visit that remote part of Albania after the end of the Covid-19 restrictions.

L’article A hidden treasure in the middle of Albania est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

To understand these differences and to identify what new elements should/could be incorporated in the national social security systems, it might be helpful to look at the first social security system in Europe. It was set-up in the 1870s in Germany by chancellor Otto von Bismarck (not necessarily because of philanthropic ideas, but to reduce the public support from the socially deprived population for the social democrats and trade unions).

Last Saturday, I organized the debate “New Social Security Models in times of Covid-19.” Those who attended the briefing were grateful that Jeremias Pappert, manager of one of the leading German social security companies, offered this week in Brussels a presentation of the German system to a small group of experts.

Born in Munich, having studied law and economics in Erlangen and Bayreuth (both Germany), Trondheim (Norway) and Wuhan (China), he worked with the German Development Ministry (BMZ) and the German Development Agency (GIZ), Deutsche Bank and Siemens in Australia and Namibia. His presentation contained finally eight key elements:

1. History

Bismarck could count on a certain tradition of social assistance in Germany and was pressured by upcoming social challenges:

• organisation in guilds and mason’s fraternities, care structures along pilgrimage routes dating back to medieval times;
• tripartite hospital structures until 19th century (civil charity, church, military);
• change from agricultural to industrial economy;
• strengthening of trade unions through industrial revolution;
• political unrest due to poor working conditions;
• the 1794 Prussian general land law (recognition of state responsibility for caring those in need, “paternalism”);
• the 1854 Prussian Miners’ Act: unification of miners, smelters and salt workers in miners’ associations.

2. Development

During half a century, new pieces of legislation covered more and more aspects of social security:

• 1881 “Imperial Message”, the “Magna Charta” of the German Social Insurance with the decision for a three-part social insurance and the aim: to prevent further social unrest (“Pull the ground off socialists”);
• 1883 “Bismarck social legislation” (introduction of compulsory health insurance for workers;
• 1884 accident insurance;
• 1889 pension and disability insurance;
• 1911 National Insurance Code (Gradual expansion of compulsory health insurance to include salaried professions (auxiliary funds);
• 1927 unemployment insurance (creating institutional foundations that continue to exist up to today; expansion of joint self government).

All of this resulted in a quite decentralised structure of insurance companies (some 12,000 in 1914, 1,200 1990 and 105 in 2010).

3. Principles

The German system of social security is based on seven principles: welfare state, solidarity, subsidiarity, demand coverage, benefits in kind, compulsory insurance and common self-administration. The costs, (=contributions) are equally divided between the employer and the working person.

4. Self-goverment

The social security companies are unlike other companies: they offer their “clients” (=members) a possibility of self-government. Those who are insured vote for representatives to overview the decisions within the company. These social elections (every six years, next one 2023) are the third largest elections in Germany after those for the Federal (four years) and the European (five years) Parliament. This limitation of state activities to framework legislation and legal supervision means an intensive transfer of the execution and implementation of laws to organs of self-government

5. Challenge a decision

For the concerned person, a specific decision on social security is often an existential one. Therefore, it is understandable that there has to be a mechanism to challenge a decision concerning one’s livelihood. In Germany, there are two ways: the appeal courts in self-administration and the State Social Courts (up to the Federal Social Court in Kassel). 

6. United Kingdom vs Germany

It is certainly productive to compare the situation with the one in the United Kingdom. In 1942, the economist and Liberal politician William Henry Beveridge outlined in his “Beveridge Report” the ways to enhance the military defence and to eradicate poverty. The 1945-elected Labour government took that report as the basis for the post-World War II attempts to create a welfare state. The differences between the UK and Germany are multiple: state vs private, total population vs individual membership, tax vs contribution according to the wages. The most serious difference is how to challenge a decision: in Germany via the appeal courts and the State Social Court system, while in the UK no lawsuit is possible against a decision of the NHS (National Health Service) – in pre-BREXIT times, an appeal was possible to the European Court of Justice, the ECJ in Luxembourg.

7. Hospitals

This decentralised structure has resulted in a number of some 2,000 hospitals in Germany with half a million beds. As half of the hospitals have less than 200, they are in general considerably close to the patients and their families – with 8.3 beds per 1,000 inhabitant, Germany has globally a top position (CH 5.0, US 3.1, Sweden 2.7). With some 410-practising physicians per 100,000 inhabitants, Germany is better placed than the UK (some 290), France and Belgium (both some 310). Something similar is the case for intensive care beds: Germany 29.2 per 100,000 inhabitants (France 11.6, UK 6.6).

8. Where to go…

At the end, Jeremias Pappert outlined two main conclusions: 

a. Functioning systems of public health are critical components of health system responses to epidemics. Where responses to Covid-19 have been successful, this appears not just due to the clinical care capacity, but to the capacities in other parts of the health system that have prevented high rates of hospital admission becoming necessary – thus reserving or safeguarding hospital facilities including Intensive Care Units for those patients mostly in need. It is very difficult to transfer specifics of a system mostly based on historic developments – systems have to be analysed and evaluated for a possible crisis, but also for general performance (access, outcome, costs, (mis -)incentives …).

b. In the light of post-COVID-19, the EU has the historic responsibility to support larger and stronger frames that the different actors from the Member States can exchange and analyse their experience to be prepared for the next outbreak of a next pandemic.

L’article Social security: this rescue mechanism during and after Covid-19 est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

As the Brussels authorities are doing nothing to liberate the square Sablon from its function as a parking lot, there seems no Brussels-based real competitor for the Grand Place as the most fascinating square of the city. Since some years, a newcomer has emerged as the square you have to visit (and even to become as thrilling as the Grand Place): Place du Luxembourg. 

Two hundred years ago, the space was forest and agricultural land. With the 1830 independence of Belgium, the financial means resulting from the industrialisation of the country and later the influx of money from the colonial reign in Congo, a new quarter was developed to honour King Leopold: the Quartier Leopold. The new members of the Belgian upper class found there the possibility to live in neoclassical mansions just besides the Royal castle. The need for extraordinary architects and artists attracted temporarily even personalities like Gustave Eiffel and Auguste Rodin. The central square of this quarter is the Place de Luxembourg.

As the will of the people and destiny had brought me as the first Green Member of the European Parliament to Brussels, I have since the mid-eighties observed how this square developed. I have even discovered the “Five Secrets of Place du Luxembourg”, which I would like to share with you.

1. The oldest building of a train station in the world

Since the early years of public railways, train stations were built in – or near – the city centre. As traffic increased, those initial buildings became too small and were replaced by bigger ones. There are eleven countries in the world with early public railways (Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, India, Italy, Netherlands, Pakistan, Russia, Spain and the US). If you look at the buildings of the first train stations of those countries, you will discover that the oldest preserved building is the train station of “Bruxelles Quartier-Léopold”, overlooking since 1855 the Place du Luxembourg.

After having survived two world wars, the train station was in 1990 threatened by destruction when just besides the new buildings of the European Parliament (EP) were erected. A civil society campaign succeeded finally on 21 November 1991 to stop this historical sin by achieving a Belgian administrative decision to classify that building. Since then, the building is no longer used for railway purposes but became a part of the European Parliament as the information centre for the Belgian public.

Why did the train station survive? It was an intermediate stop rather than a terminal one and it was especially big compared to other train stations – as it was designed as the station to be used as well by the Royal family (as you can see in the first floor with a St. Petersburg style waiting room at their disposal).

2. Prime Minister and Peace Nobel Prize laureate

At the corner of Rue d’Arlon you will find the house where Auguste Beernaert lived, for ten years Belgian Prime Minister and 1909 Nobel Peace Prize laureate (to be objective: the Grand Place has more prominent names to offer: the houses where Karl Marx and Victor Hugo lived).

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Auguste Beernaert was as well President of the International Law Association, played a key role to unify international maritime law, was involved in the setting up of the system of Permanent Courts of Arbitration, represented Belgium in the Hague Peace Conferences and fostered the construction of transport infrastructure (rail, canal and road) in Belgium. 

3. A very diverse history of traffic: a caterpillar turns into a butterfly

In case you are strolling around below the Palais de Justice in the Marolles quarter, you will certainly pass by the square Jeu de Balle with its daily flea market from 06.00 to 14.00. There you will find among others postcards with a view from Place du Luxembourg in the early days of the 20th century with several tram lines, buses, cars and pedestrians as the square became quite popular with bars, restaurants and hotels.

In the middle of the 20th century the trams disappeared, cars dominated (including parking spaces), few room for pedestrians … and in the 90ies everything changed: The public authorities proposed to narrow the street, to eliminate parking and to create walkways the size we know from Paris and New York. Despite the resistance of the owners and tenants of the bars, the square became the face we know today: outdoor catering with tables and hundreds of chairs and parasols against sun and rain (and the once so reluctant bars are profiting). 

The square lived through a process – like in nature, where a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.

4. … you can even meet Belgian government Ministers

The implementation of the European Union and the new building of the EP brought tens of thousands of newcomers: politicians, civil servants, representatives of hundreds of law firms, consulting companies, NGOs, media, associations, diplomats and visitors. Therefore, this international public has taken over the bars and restaurants of the square. At lunchtime and after work, the square is becoming a mix of the cafeteria of a building of the United Nations and the Tower of Babel (with English as the lingua franca). 

No one will contest that the highlight is happening every Thursday: Since some ten years, the square has become after work a sort of beehive of well-educated, ambitious, multi-lingual Millennials and Generation Alpha who are either in the starting blocks for a job in the EU institutions (or have just achieved it). Over a glass of wine or beer, a cocktail or an energy drink, they are looking for a flirt (or more) partner. If the weather is supporting this process, two to three thousand people are invading the bars, the lawn and the streets around the square – transforming the Place du Luxembourg into the “Flirt Square”.

This internationalisation became an unexpected advantage for local Belgian politicians as well: if they want to have a quiet drink without being recognised – who of those Estonians and Maltese will recognise the face of the Belgian regional or federal minister? Those indigenous politicians have therefore the privilege to mingle with that international public and remain anonymous.

5. Water cannons and human rights

Political life all over the world is not only happening in the temples of power but – with through demonstrations – outside those buildings as well. Brussels and the EU are no exception. The Place du Luxembourg is besides the Place Rond Schuman the preferred spot for those EU related demonstrations.

One can distinguish two sorts: the first one is the angry reaction of professional groups in the EU, the second is a lobbying effort of a small group. For the Place du Luxembourg, the consequences are quite different.

When 10,000 dockers from the harbours are approaching or 20.000 farmers arrive with their tractors (sometimes even cows), the police are blocking the square – the presence of (sometimes) Molotov cocktails and (always) water cannons is changing the square into a sort of no man’s land.

The second sort of demonstration is happening much more often: Not more than 100 human rights activists or opposition forces to their government occupy the lawn in the middle of the square with banners, posters, photos and megaphone to inform about human rights violations, a manipulated election, the lack of self-determination or military interference of outside players. While three or four policemen are supervising, the general public in the bars is consuming their cappuccino, Orval beer, wok or pasta – and seems to consider what is happening some 40 meters away as a sort of background entertainment like the music of the piano player in a entrance bar of a five star hotel.

PS: The conclusion: having visited Brussels and not having passed by the Place du Luxembourg is like visiting Rome and not having seen the Piazza del Popolo, Piazza Navona or Piazza di Spagna.

L’article 5 Secrets of Place du Luxembourg est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.