Today, the EU sets out its economic security plan to counter China. Parliament votes on whether Boris Johnson lied. Alexei Navalny is in court once more. And a sub taking visitors to see the sunken Titanic goes missing.
From TLDR News, this is your Daily Briefing for Tuesday, the 20th of June 2023. The EU will today set out its first economic security strategy, its plan to restrict European companies outsourcing sensitive supply chains and critical technologies that can be used for military purposes to autocratic countries. The strategy document seen by Politico's Brussels Playbook and set to be discussed by member states at a meeting later this month does not specifically mention China, but it's blindingly clear to all that Brussels has both Beijing and Moscow firmly in its sights with the plans. At the heart of the European security strategy is the specific plan to ban European countries from making sensitive technologies, most notably supercomputers, AI and computer chips in the likes of China.
The paper stresses the need to de-risk and remove over-reliance on a single country, especially one with systemically divergent values, models and interests. The EU will, again, according to Politico, seek greater powers in three specific areas. Inbound investment screening, i.e. screening and potentially blocking foreign companies from investing or buying up critical European infrastructure and companies.
Outbound investment screening, doing the same with EU companies investing in foreign critical infrastructure. And export controls. This last area in particular, export controls, is significant. Currently, member states are in the driving seat for the vast majority of export control decisions.
In EU speak, export controls are a national competence. And whilst the EU does have some jurisdiction over so-called dual-use items, items that have both civil and military purposes, even then it's up to member states to administer these controls. As such, there's significant potential for the strategy to come unstuck in the face of political opposition from member states. The likes of Germany and France are wary of any plans that would interfere with their competence on national security, according to an EU official talking to Bloomberg.
It's worth also stressing just how significant the very existence of an economic security strategy is in the EU context. For decades, the European project has had free trade liberalism at its core. Change has, however, been a long time coming, even before the war in Ukraine, starting with the pandemic and then China's blockade of Lithuania over Taiwan. The strategy, if adopted, puts the EU closer in terms of economic policy to the US and Japan, who have put national security concerns and considerations at the very heart of policy, something evidently visible in the US's Chips and Science Act, which pledged some $280 billion in domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research.
In any case, it remains to be seen whether member states give the final sign-off. There's more on the way, but be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to make the daily briefing part of your daily routine or just search for us on your podcast app to listen along. Last night, we saw what might be the final act in the long-running PartyGate saga, a vote on Privileges Committee's proposed sanctions against former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Following a lengthy investigation, the committee concluded that Johnson had misled the House, and then subsequently the committee, and that an appropriate sanction for this was a 90-day suspension from the House alongside banning him from being given a former MP's pass.
Johnson signalled his intention to resign upon receiving a copy of the report's findings. The vote on the proposed sanctions took place in the House of Commons last night, with the Conservative Party not instructing their MPs to vote in any particular way. Some of Johnson's key allies had indicated that they would vote against the sanctions. Any such protest, though, simply didn't come to fruition, with only seven MPs total voting against the sanctions.
354 MPs voted in favour, with this consisting of 118 Conservatives. 255 Conservatives abstained. This vote appears to demonstrate that any support Johnson once had from his MPs seems to have, now for at least, disintegrated. So that's what's been happening in Westminster recently.
Let's move and discuss what's been happening in relation to Alexei Navalny. Prominent Putin critic and opponents, Alexei Navalny, was seen yesterday on trial, again. This time on charges of extremism. Charges which could see Navalny be sentenced with up to 30 years in prison, on top of the nine years he's currently serving for multiple different offences, including fraud, embezzlement and contempt of court.
Although the case is nominally being held by a Moscow court, his trial is being conducted in a highly unusual fashion, in the penal colony in which Navalny is currently serving his sentence, and behind closed doors. According to Navalny, prosecutors gave him a 3,828-page document detailing the crimes he's alleged to have committed while in prison, including financing extremist activity, publicly inciting extremist activities and rehabilitating the Nazi ideology. If convicted on these extremism charges, Navalny is likely to be transferred to a different top-level security facility, where contact with the outside world would be restricted even further. Navalny's imprisonment and further trials are considered politically motivated by many in the West, including the European Union, who have stated previously that the Russian legal system continues to be instrumentalised against Mr.
Navalny. On Sunday, a submarine that was carrying passengers on a voyage to see the wreckage of the Titanic went missing. Onboard are five individuals, with some speculation suggesting that Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, the company behind the voyage, is amongst them. The wreckage of the Titanic was first discovered back in 1985, and in the past few years, people have paid thousands of dollars for a trip to see it.
These trips usually take a couple of days and take place entirely within a small submersible. People who have gone on these trips previously have mentioned that the very first page of the waiver mentions death on three separate occasions. So these trips are clearly not without risk. Due to the design of the craft, it cannot be opened unless released by an external crew, as the doors are bolted shut from the outside.
Right now, it's believed that the submersible has between 70 hours and 96 hours of oxygen left, and a huge search is currently taking place, a search which includes the US Coast Guard. In our final story today, last week, the German government agreed to pay more than $1.4 billion next year to Holocaust survivors around the world. Following negotiations with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also known as the Claims Conference, the government agreed to provide just shy of $900 million towards home care for vulnerable survivors, as well as extending the hardship fund supplemental programme, a pandemic-era support payment, through until 2027. In a statement, the Claims Conference said, For those who were able to flee and survive, they are some of the poorest in the survivor community.
The loss of time, family, property and life cannot be made whole. By extending payments to these survivors, the German government is acknowledging that the suffering is still being felt deeply, both emotionally and financially. That's all we have time for on YouTube, but the briefing isn't over. That's because we explain just who NATO's next leader might be and why no one really knows in the extended ad-free edition of The Daily Briefing, only on Nebula.
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