The European Union faces political chaos ahead of crucial Brexit talks, according to a leading German banker, who fears for the future of the Brussels-led bloc. Andreas Dombret, former member of the Deutsche Bundesbank's executive board, said that EU is in the middle of a crisis, following the coronavirus pandemic. He also pointed to the recent German constitutional court ruling on the ECB's government debt purchases, which called into question the supremacy of European laws over national laws.
Last week, Germany's top court sparked a European crisis after questioning whether European law trumps that of member states.
The court ruled that the European Central Bank was violating the law by failing to properly justify the bond-purchase programme, known as quantitative easing, following the financial crisis.
The judges said that the Bundesbank can no longer take part in the programme unless the ECB explains its policies within three months.
The decision dealt a huge blow to the EU's unity as the fallout from the coronavirus and lockdown continues to strain relations between member-states.
In response, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen raised the prospect of the EU suing Germany, the bloc's biggest economic power.
European Council President Charles Michel also defended the authority of the European Court of Justice.
He told MEPs: “European law has primacy. The role of the European Court of Justice is essential to ensure uniform interpretation of European law."
Peter Huber, who drafted last week’s ruling for Germany’s constitutional court, took another dig at the EU, claiming the European Central Bank "shouldn’t see itself as the Master of the Universe".
He continued: "Maybe the German presidency in the second half of this year will helpful in resolving that.
"Particularly given that Brexit is coming, we need a better understanding of how we want to craft European politics."
One of Germany's top judges Andreas Vosskuhle denied that the EU top court always has the last word in matters of the country's law.
Angela Merkel said she will respond to the court’s ruling, telling lawmakers on Wednesday: “I have an interest that options are used to defuse the conflict."
She appeared to surrender to the EU's furious threats of legal action, saying the European Commission was justified in questioning the German court’s jurisdiction.
Britain's children betrayed? Lord Blunkett blasts teaching unions for 'working against the interests of children' by blocking June reopening plan in blistering row with teachers' leader
Government aiming for the phased reopening of primary schools from June 1
But National Education Union has told members not to engage with Government
Union chiefs cited safety fears and want guarantees on staff and pupil safety
But Lord Blunkett accused NEU of working against the best interests of children
David Blunkett, the former education secretary, today accused teaching unions of 'working against the interests of children' after they told members not to engage with the Government on its plans to reopen schools in June.
Lord Blunkett, who served in the role from 1997 to 2001, said ministers and teachers needed to work together to figure out how to get children safely back into the classroom as soon as possible.
He warned it is the least well-off in society who will be worst affected by the continued coronavirus shutdown of education institutions.
He said reopening schools is a 'matter of risk' and that teachers will likely have to accept that in the same way that supermarket staff and care workers have.
The Labour peer said he was 'deeply critical' of the National Education Union (NEU) which has told its members not to work with the Government on its planning for reopening schools from June 1.
Lord Blunkett (right) today accused teaching unions including Mary Bousted (head of the NEU, left) of acting against the best interests of pupils.
Across Europe schools have returned with social distancing rules in place. Children are pictured in 'isolation sections' in France
Which other nations have reopened their schools amid Covid-19?
Pictured: A classroom in Morges, Switzerland
Schools in Switzerland reopened this, with many teachers splitting classes in half. Attendance has been trimmed to just two days a week per group to accommodate the change.
Denmark became the first European country to resume after a month-long closure, with nursery and primary classes opening on April 15.
In France, around 85 per cent of schools are set to reopen from this week. There will be a maximum of 14 students per class in primary schools and 10 in pre-schools.
Spain's students are mostly set to return to schools in September, with children under six whose parents cannot work from home resuming classes on May 25.
Classrooms in Italy will also not reopen until September, though the government is considering opening nurseries and daycares before the summer.
Outside of Europe, schools in South Korea reopened to students in mid-April after weeks of closure.
But Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, today defended the union's stance as she suggested it would not support reopening until it is persuaded there is only a low risk of children spreading the disease.
Boris Johnson announced in his address to the nation on Sunday that he wanted primary schools to begin a phased reopening 'at the earliest by June 1'.
The phased plan would see reception, Year One and Year Six pupils return first with the rest joining them later. Secondary schools are not expected to reopen before the summer holidays.
The Government and unions are increasingly at odds with each other over the plan with the latter questioning how pupils can safely return in just a matter of weeks.
Ms Bousted told the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme that the NEU had not 'ordered' members not to engage with ministers but 'we can advise them'.
A number of European countries have now reopened their schools. Ms Bousted was told this morning that it does not sound as if the NEU is doing everything it can to get children back into classrooms.
She replied: 'Listen, if we could say that children can go back into class and there is a low or a reasonable risk that they will not go into school, will not infect each other, will not infect the staff in school and will not go home and infect their parents and their relatives then it would be wonderful, wouldn't it, if schools could reopen because that is what we all want to happen.'
Lord Blunkett savaged the NEU's approach as he told the same programme minutes later that 'we have all got to work together to get over fear as well as dealing with the genuine risk'.
'I am being deeply critical of the attitude,' he said. 'It is about how can we work together to make it work as safely - we can't 100 per cent - as safely as possible.
'Anyone who works against that in my view is working against the interests of children.'
Lord Blunkett said other professions had accepted a level of risk in performing their jobs as he suggested teachers will have to do the same.
He said: 'In the end this is a matter of risk. We know, I am just stating this as a fact, we know that children transmit the disease less than adults, they are less likely to get it and therefore they are less likely to be a risk.
'When teachers and tens of thousands of really good teachers have been doing what they have been doing and they have been shopping and thanking the people on the counters in supermarkets and shops or they have got parents who are being cared for by those carers in those harms, they thank them and they know they are taking a risk.
Finnish teenagers have also returned to school and are pictured practicing social distancing
Schools have also returned successfully in Denmark, where the youngest pupils have been back for a month
'I know that in asking teachers from the 1st of June very carefully with the best possible advice, with risk assessment, with cleaning, with testing, to go back and start teaching those children, that has to be in the best interest of the most disadvantaged in our country who will not have tutors to be able to recover, who will not have parent who had higher education, who will rely entirely on us getting back to normal as quickly as possible.'
Teachers and pupils have been reliant on online learning during the coronavirus lockdown.
But Lord Blunkett said the current situation means many children are not receiving any tuition and that will have long term implications if it is allowed to continue.
'The children of the highly-educated, of the well-off, of the better-informed have been getting some form of education over the last few weeks,' he said.
'The children that are most disadvantaged, and it is only one in seven of the most vulnerable children are actually getting educated.
'We have got a vast swathe of youngsters with varying degrees of online teaching.
'Some children actually getting nothing, some teachers really pulling themselves out to make this work and to be there for the children and other schools which are not.
'If we are not clear about this it is the children and the future that we will let down.'
Ms Bousted said the NEU's members had done a 'huge amount' to support online learning during the outbreak.
But she was put under pressure over the union's decision to advise teachers to limit online teaching.
'We said that you should be very careful about online teaching from your own home, in your own home, there are dangers there,' she said.
'We didn't say you shouldn't do it we said you have to be careful about it. You should use the school's resources.'
A group of education unions yesterday urged the Government to 'step back' from its June 1 reopening plan.
In a joint statement, the AEP, GMB, NAHT, NASUWT, NEU, NSEAD, Prospect, Unison and Unite unions said: 'We all want schools to reopen, but that should only happen when it is safe to do so.
'The Government is showing a lack of understanding about the dangers of the spread of coronavirus within schools, and outwards from schools to parents, sibling and relatives, and to the wider community.'
The unions said they wanted ministers to 'work with us to create the conditions for a safe return to schools'.
New Zealand has entered level two of lockdown easing - and the country is open for business.
Shopping centres, retail stores and restaurants reopened as of midnight with many people returning their workplaces during the coronavirus pandemic.
Image:A family reunites with each other for the first time in New Zealand after the lockdown restrictions are eased
But most gatherings will be limited to 10 people and social distancing guidelines will remain in place under the level two restrictions.
During the pandemic, New Zealand has created a numerical system which details the specific measures that are being taken to protect people and prevent the spread of COVID-19.
It is known as the "Alert System" and ranges from levels one to four, with four being the most restrictive.
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Level two allows for businesses to reopen safely, travel between regions and socialise with friends and family in groups of up to 10.
In addition, weddings, religious ceremonies and recreation activities can have up to 10 people. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a similar alert system for the UK last week.
More from Covid-19
New Zealand reported no new cases of the virus on Tuesday and Wednesday. More than 1,400 of the nearly 1,500 people who contracted the virus that causes COVID-19 have recovered in the country, while 21 have died.
Most New Zealand schools will reopen on 18 May but bars will not reopen until 21 May, a decision that was prompted in part by the experience in South Korea, which has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases linked to nightclubs in Seoul.
Barbers and hairdressers have also reopened as part of the easing of restrictions.
Image:People surfing at Houghton Bay in Wellington, New Zealand as lockdown restrictions. Pic: Dave Lintott/Shutterstock
Conrad Fitz-Gerald said he received about 50 inquiries for midnight haircuts, but limited the initial customers to a dozen, starting with his 18-year-old son Heathcliff.
The owner of Cathedral Junction Barbers in Christchurch added: "People are saying their hair is out of control, they can't handle it anymore.
"Lots of parents of teenage kids have been calling up, too, thinking a haircut at midnight would be a great novelty. Unfortunately, we are full up."
Mr Fitz-Gerald said he was trying to make sure the virus could not spread in his shop, adding he made his own "supercharged" hand sanitiser from isopropyl alcohol and also had masks available for his customers on request.
The nation's reopening coincides with the release of the government's annual budget on Thursday afternoon.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the nation faces the most challenging economic conditions since the Great Depression.
"New Zealand is about to enter a very tough winter," she said.
"But every winter eventually is followed by spring, and if we make the right choices we can get New Zealanders back to work and our economy moving quickly again."
Any vaccine against Covid-19 should be patent-free, produced at scale and made available at no cost to people everywhere, three African leaders and more than 140 public figures, including 50 former world leaders, have urged in an open letter.
Calling a vaccine humanity’s best hope of “putting a stop to this painful global pandemic”, Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president who also chairs the African Union, called for a “people’s vaccine” that would act as a global public good.
Signatories of the letter, including Macky Sall, President of Senegal, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, president of Ghana, and Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister, expressed fears that developing countries might not have quick or affordable access to a vaccine that is expected to be discovered and manufactured in the global north.
“We cannot afford for monopolies, crude competition and nearsighted nationalism to stand in the way,” said the letter, organised by UNAids and Oxfam which was signed by dozens of former leaders, including Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Gordon Brown of the UK and Helen Clark of New Zealand, as well as economists such as Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
The letter comes after a number of vaccine producers pledged at-cost manufacture and called for billions of dollars in upfront funding from governments to help them swiftly invest in large-scale production even while they are clarifying safety and efficacy.
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Activists have expressed concern that civil society groups have had little voice in discussions over funding and that richer countries will dominate in a scramble for access to limited supplies.
Ebba Kalondo, spokeswoman for the AU, said African efforts to pool resources to buy diagnostic kits, reagents and personal protective equipment had been stymied by richer countries. That has raised genuine fears that when a vaccine is developed, it might not be available to people in poorer parts of the world, she said.
“Even when we are paying market rates, we are not getting the goods because they are being taken by richer countries,” Ms Kalondo said. “We have to think about solidarity as a practical and pragmatic realisation of shared vulnerability and the common interest to fight a threat we cannot fight alone . . . We cannot have pockets of wellbeing in a world that is unwell.”
Ha-Joon Chang, a Cambridge economist who also signed the letter, said there was well-established precedent in the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement that allowed for overriding intellectual property in times of a public health emergency.
This had been invoked during the Aids epidemic in the early 2000s as well as in 2001 when, after a spate of anthrax attacks in the US, Washington threatened to override patents held by Bayer, the German pharmaceuticals company, if it could not match generic prices for its anti-anthrax drug.
“The vaccine does not work unless a huge majority of people have access to it,” Mr Chan said. “It’s not like other drugs where rich people can pay and save themselves while other people are left to take care of themselves.”
In the letter, Mr Ramaphosa praised international efforts, including a pledge this month by 40 countries for $8bn in funding to help develop a vaccine, diagnostics and treatment. But “this massive and moral task”, he warned “could not be left to market forces”.
Instead, Mr Ramaphosa said, the WHO should press for mandatory sharing of all Covid-19-related technology as well as the scale-up of manufacturing so that any vaccine could be made available worldwide, regardless of ability to pay.
“Access needs to be prioritised first for frontline workers, the most vulnerable people and for poor countries with the least capacity to save lives,” he said.
Philippe Duneton, acting executive director of Unitaid, a UN-backed group funding global health innovation, said the worldwide scramble for technology to fight Covid-19 presented a huge supply-and-demand challenge. “We are facing a unique moment in history, at least for health, where everybody wants the same product at the same time,” he said.
MEPs rejected the European Council’s proposal to “allow the United Kingdom to participate in the automated searching” of fingerprint data stored in the EU’s Prum DNA database. They voiced concerns that allowing the UK access “could create significant risks” because the Prime Minister has rejected a role for the European Court of Justice in the future relationship. A report said: “Dactyloscopic data is a particular sensitive category of personal data that requires a specific protection as its processing could create significant risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms.
“Union law requires that when such processing is to be carried out, it has to be subject to appropriate safeguards for the rights and freedoms of the data subject.
“In view of the current state of play of the negotiations on the future relations between the UK and the EU, it is not yet clear whether after December 31, 2020 the UK will meet the conditions required under the Union law to be considered providing an essentially equivalent level of protection to that provided by the Union law.”
The dossier, drawn up the by the EU Parliament’s Committee of Civil Liberties, said the UK must sign up to an “equivalent level of protection of personal data” in order to access the database.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar, a Spanish MEP and chairman of the committee, wrote: “The Rapporteur, therefore, advises the Parliament to reject the Council draft implementing decision and to request the Council not to adopt its draft implementing decision and not to take any decision in this regard until guarantees from the UK as regards full reciprocity and data protection are obtained and the new legal framework for the new partnership cooperation with the United Kingdom is negotiated and concluded.”
MEPs want the Council to wait until the future relationship deal between Britain and Brussels is decided before considering access to the bloc’s finger print database.
The EU Council’s draft proposal was defeated by 357 votes to 329, with four abstentions, in a tight contest.
The vote was carried out online with most MEPs still under orders to work from home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Guy Verhofstadt’s liberal allies in the Renew group were the main opponents to the Council’s draft plans.
Whereas, the centre-right European People’s Party, the largest political bloc in the Parliament, backed the proposal.
The Governments wants to maintain close security cooperation with Brussels after the post-Brexit transition expires on January 1, 2021.
Britain has previously been criticised for not sharing DNA data from UK-based suspects despite having full access to the scheme,
Any decision to revoke access would see EU police forces lose access to the UK’s own DNA database, which holds information on more than five million people and evidence from 500,000 crime scenes.
A UK spokesman said: “The safety and security of our citizens is the government’s top priority. It is in everyone’s interest that we reach an agreement with the European Union that equips operational partners on both sides with the capabilities that help protect citizens and bring criminals to justice.”
Perhaps understandably, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced many other international stories off the news agenda.
It is global, it is deadly and it is multi-faceted, raising all sorts of questions, not just about how we respond to the initial crisis, but about the way we organise our societies and the way we run our affairs.
Some major international problems have been pushed to the sidelines since the outbreak of the crisis and it may now be too late to deal with them. Others have been made much more intractable. And some governments are seeking to use the distraction of the Covid-19 pandemic to pursue long-held ambitions.
Here are five issues that we should be keeping an eye on in the weeks and months ahead.
A renewed nuclear arms race?
The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New Start, that limits the long-range nuclear arsenals with which the US and Russia threaten each other, expires in early February next year. Time is getting short if it is to be renewed. This is the last of the great arms control agreements inherited from the Cold War which still survives.
Without it, there are real fears that the absence of constraints and the lack of transparency could result in a new nuclear arms race. The fact that esoteric weapons like amazingly fast hypersonic missiles are being developed gives this threat of a new arms race an added danger.
Russia seems willing to renew the agreement, which would be simple in procedural terms. The Trump administration, though, seems determined to abandon the New Start treaty unless it can expand it to bring China on board. There is absolutely no interest in Beijing in joining the regime. And it is now far too late to draft a comprehensive new document anyway.
So, unless there is a late change of heart in Washington, or a new administration, the New Start treaty looks as though it could be history.
Heightened tensions with Iran?
The row over the US withdrawal from the JCPOA agreement that seeks to limit Iran's nuclear activities is just about to get a good deal worse.
Currently there is a wide-ranging United Nations embargo that prevents countries from selling various kinds of advanced weaponry to Tehran. But under the UN resolution that backed the nuclear deal, this arms embargo is due to expire on 18 October this year. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has already warned that if the US succeeds in its desire to have the embargo renewed, then there will be "grave consequences".
However, there is little chance of Russia agreeing to an extended arms embargo. In which case Mr Trump wants the Europeans to invoke a mechanism in the nuclear deal that restores much more widespread economic sanctions against Iran (the very sanctions that were largely lifted in the wake of the agreement).
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Mr Trump's gambit is to say the least extraordinary. The US walked away from the JCPOA and has since sought to ramp up pressure on Tehran. Iran has breached many of the agreement's terms, but not necessarily in ways which are irreversible.
Now though the administration seems to be saying that Iran should stick to the deal that the US has abandoned or face renewed sanctions. It is an effort by the Trump Administration, as one senior former Obama-era official noted, "to have its cake and eat it".
Relations between the US and Iran will get even worse and existing tensions between the US and its key European allies will be exacerbated. And it is not as if the arms embargo has significantly changed Iran's regional behaviour nor its ability to arms its proxies.
Israel's annexation bid in the West Bank?
Israel's long-running serial election campaign has come to an end with the embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retaining his post, at least for a period, after a power sharing deal with one of the main opposition parties.
Despite the legal cases that are pending against him - indeed, possibly in part because of them - Mr Netanyahu is proposing a controversial nationalist agenda which includes a desire to annex areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, effectively making them a permanent part of Israel.
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Arguably, this would end once and for all any chance of a "two-state solution" - despite provisions for one in Donald Trump's peace plan - that has been the waning hope of many who want to see a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The Palestinians themselves are already crying foul and several governments in Europe and elsewhere are urging caution, in some cases talking about potential sanctions if this policy goes ahead. As ever, the Trump administration's position will be crucial. Will it effectively give a green light for the move or will it counsel constraint?
It certainly appears that Mr Netanyahu has been emboldened by President Trump's decisions to back Israel's annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. The current US position is ambiguous, with suggestions that it will make its support of annexation in areas of the West Bank conditional on Israel agreeing to negotiate over a Palestinian state.
Some analysts believe that having used the issue of annexation to mobilise nationalist support during the election season, Mr Netanyahu may find some way to back down. Maybe the Americans will help, since there is no way hard-line Israeli nationalists want to see any kind of Palestinian state.
But it's going to be a bumpy period ahead.
Brexit: It hasn't gone away
It's a term that so many of us have almost forgotten.
But the clock is ticking: the transition period following Britain's departure from the European Union ends on 31 December. Talks on the terms of their future relationship have begun in a tentative way, but there is no indication that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government is even contemplating any delay or extension to the transitional phase.
However, the pandemic has changed the whole context of Brexit, not least by precipitating an economic slump that it could take years to recover from. There seems little appetite in Britain to revive the old debate. Time is anyway short.
While the EU's initial response to the Covid-19 crisis did not present it in an especially favourable light, it has to some extent rallied. It is not going away. And Britain's own handling of the crisis has been no great example either.
Britain's departure from the EU is going to strain both sides. Maybe it will produce a more consensual approach to guide their future relationship. But battered by an economic recession and making its way in a much less hospitable world, key economic and diplomatic decisions - how far to back the Americans? How far to stand up to China? - are going to play out for the UK in a much harsher light.
Climate change: The really big one
The global response to the pandemic is in a sense a testing ground for the international community's capacity to deal with the biggest and most complex international challenge of all - climate change.
In terms of co-operation, the Covid-19 experience so far yields a very mixed report. And the tensions that are likely to persist in the post-pandemic world will complicate things greatly.
Getting the "process" of climate change back on track is one thing - crucial meetings, like the UN's Cop26 climate conference that was to have been held in Glasgow in November, have been postponed until next year.
But the question that remains is how will the international mind-set have changed? Will there be a renewed sense of urgency and purpose? And how far will the new global order allow for rapid progress on this hugely complex issue?
A test to find out whether people have ever been infected with coronavirus has been approved by health officials in England.
Public Health England said the antibody test, developed by Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, is a "very positive development".
The blood test looks for antibodies to see if a person has already had the virus and might now have some immunity.
Until now, officials have said such tests are not reliable enough.
But sources say this is the first one to offer serious potential.
Experts at the government's Porton Down facility evaluated the test last week, Public Health England said, and found it to be "highly specific".
Prof John Newton, national coordinator of the UK coronavirus testing programme, said: "This is a very positive development because such a highly specific antibody test is a very reliable marker of past infection.
"This in turn may indicate some immunity to future infection, although the extent to which the presence of antibodies indicates immunity remains unclear."
Roche is understood to be in talks with the Department of Health and Social Care about possible use by the NHS in England, though other testing products are also being assessed.
Health officials in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland make their own decisions, but are likely to follow suit if England does adopt it.
The device already has approval from medical regulators in the EU and the United States.
But it is not yet clear what amount of immunity from coronavirus a patient might gain from having previously been infected.
The swab tests currently being carried out in the UK determine whether someone has the virus at the time of the test.
An antibody test for coronavirus has long been seen as an important part of the toolkit for plotting a route out of lockdown restrictions.
If workers have already had the virus and gained immunity they are safe to go to work - especially health and social care staff.
Recent attempts to buy antibody tests have floundered because they have been deemed unreliable.
Sources say this latest test device, produced by Roche, is the first to offer serious potential.
Talks are under way with the government over whether it can be produced at scale and at a reasonable cost.
Understandably, Whitehall sources are not giving much away because they don't want to undermine their negotiating hand.
'False hope before'
Last week, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the UK was in talks with Roche about a "very large-scale roll-out" of coronavirus antibody testing.
But he acknowledged there had been "false hope before" and that he would only make an announcement when the government was "absolutely ready".
The Department of Health and Social Care said an announcement on antibody testing would be made "in due course".
A spokeswoman said: "Antibody testing is an important part of our strategy to counter the spread of Covid-19 and to help us understand who has had the disease."
