Dear Friends,
The global Covid-19 epidemic has abruptly changed our ways of life, our relationships, our work. Reduced mobility and safety measures have put a halt to conferences and many of the “social” activities that belong to a think tank’s daily life and work.
COVID-19’s lethality in Italy is a highly discussed figure. When compared with other major countries, Italy’s 9.9% case fatality rate (CFR) as of 24 March 2020 is the highest by far. But relying on this figure is misleading. By itself, the CFR tells us almost nothing about COVID-19’s plausible lethality (infected fatality rate, or IFR). On the opposite, recent studies place China’s IFR at 0.7%. By relying on this figure, ISPI’s best estimate for COVID-19’s plausible lethality in Italy is 1.1%.
La DG ECHO è la Direzione Generale dell’Unione Europea che si occupa di finanziare i programmi di assistenza umanitaria collaborando con ONG, agenzie ONU e altre organizzazioni internazionali e seguendo specifiche procedure di azione previste nei Framework Agreements.
The field of privacy and data protection is probably the one where the most interesting moves occurred in the European Union's legal system over the last decades, leading to remarkable political externalities, most notably in the relationship with the United States. If a “Balkanization” of cyberspace did take place, the protection of privacy and personal data offers a privileged standpoint from which to look at how the European Union institutions, and above all the Court of Justice, contributed to such a result.
ISPI and the Italian Group of the Trilateral Commission held a Lunch Talk with Mario Monti, President of Bocconi University.
On this occasion, President Mario Monti talked about "Europe after Brexit and the 60th anniversary of the treaties".
By invitation only
Even as migration pressure at the Greek border is on the rise, the 2013-2017 “migration crisis” is increasingly in the past. Yet, EU countries still struggle to come up with solutions to foster safe, orderly, and regular migration pathways. Europeans continue to look in the rear-view mirror.
The European Union’s Operation EUNAVFOR MED “Sophia” will end this March, to be replaced by a different operation altogether. First much vaunted, then much taunted, Operation Sophia is the perfect symbol of how poisonous the debate around rescuing lives at sea in the Mediterranean has become over the past few years. And it is also a symbol of something larger: the failure of EU Member States to come to an agreement on how to manage migration in a sensible, rational, and evidence-based way.
The Three Seas Initiative (TSI) was established in 2015 as a forum for political and economic dialogue that gathers together 12 EU countries in Central and Eastern Europe (from the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas), with a focus on energy and infrastructure. Cooperation under the Three Seas was intended to be an additional format for regional discussion and coordination covering all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that are EU members. As such, it was supposed to complement, not replace, other formats, such as cooperation within the Visegrad Group.
When on December 31 2019, Russia and Ukraine reached a tense and difficult five-year gas supply deal, in Brussels they heaved a sigh of relief, with the EU energy Commissioner Maros Sevcovic addressing the agreement as "great news for Europe's energy security”[1]. Indeed, about 16.3% of the European Union's annual natural gas consumption comes from Russia via Ukraine and the agreement should prevent a repeat of the so-called gas wars that previously disrupted supplies and caused real energy problems for several EU member states.
The last decade has seen the eastern Mediterranean region become a hotspot of the global natural gas industry, attracting increasing attention from multiple stakeholders also as a result of its high geopolitical stakes. Notwithstanding this momentum, progress has been bumpy.
Whenever the security of gas supplies is at stake, the shared EU mantra calls for “diversification”. We cry wolf, and the wolf happens to be Russian. The more we cry wolf, however, the more we import volumes of Russian gas. It could just be that when it comes to buying, prices prevail over policies and that in the UE a gas market with transparent prices is finally emerging.
On Wednesday the 5th of February the European Commission proposed a revised methodology for the accession process for candidate and potential candidate countries. This methodology will be applied to Albania and North Macedonia, although for Montenegro and Serbia there has also been foreseen an opt-in in case they want to join.
