A new story from Monocle 24: The Globalist
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Focusing on the security section is the situation in East Africa. Yes, you're absolutely correct. When Sweden also joins and when Finland joins will be in a situation where almost all the EU countries are members of NATO, and also if you look at the map of Europe, you will see that all the countries almost all the countries bordering Russia in Europe will then be NATO members. So that will definitely help increase the political and military clout of Europe and then also just simple military strategic planning, you know, when you have the whole sort of northern dimension of NATO as member countries because before it was just Norway who was a NATO member so that will also help the defense strategic planning. And finally, just what's the timeline on this? Will Finland have to wait for the NATO summit at the end of June to be considered for rapid accession. In all likelihood, it's going to happen much before that actually. So just now this morning I read that the finished broadcasting company Y Elise correspondent in turkey said that turkey will ratify Finland's membership in all likelihood on Wednesday, so that's tomorrow. And after that, all that remains is basically Finland to some representative of Finland to travel to Washington, D.C., to permanently lodge Finland's native membership papers in a vault with that's basically a formality that always takes place. And then that basically means that Finland is a member. So it's said to happen already this week. Patrice, that's exciting news. Thank you very much indeed. That was monocles Helsinki correspondent petty birds off. Well, let's continue now with today's papers and joining me from Monaco studio in Zürich is Florian egley, who's a senior associate at fur house the Swiss foreign policy think tank. Florian lovely to talk to you again. We're going to start off by looking at retired women who are suing the Swiss government over climate action. Tell us more. Good morning. Yes, this is a story today in the end it's at and actually tomorrow will be the first time that the European court of human rights is debating at climate case. So there will be debated in the grand chamber and that means it's public in this case is a case that is brought about by swimming so on average there is 73 years old and they're suing the Swiss government for not reaching the climate targets that the Swiss government has committed to as part of the Paris agreement. And I mean, there are some suggestions in this article that Greenpeace is behind this. Indeed, so Greenpeace is sponsoring that effort. So there is supporting it financially and of course they're supporting it legally so they basically paying for the lawyers because as you can imagine you need excellent lawyers to pull that case off and they've gone through all the courts and Switzerland, they've lost and now they're in Strasbourg at the European court of human rights and Greenpeace is using this as an effective campaigning tool, I would say. So it's not the green pink, Greenpeace case. Up front, it's basically these women claiming their rights to save livelihoods to health because part of their case is the health issues that some of these members quite personally and explicitly can prove due to heat stress in summer. So that is really kind of like a very personal story. And it isn't the usual campaign that you would see from an environmental NGO. Let's move on now to news from the UN Security Council. So this is a story that has been picked up by some online media, so Francois van gaat gisera news, Brazil has put up emotion in the UN Security Council and to conduct a comprehensive transparent and impartial investigation on all aspects of the act of sabotage on north stream one and two gas pipelines. This motion unsurprisingly failed. But it got the approval of China and Brazil together with 12 abstentions. And I think what's interesting in this is not necessary that China and Brazil supported it, but rather that Russia, I mean, of course it is politically motivated in original texts. It explicitly mentioned the U.S. as the subway, which has then been removed. So there is really evidently politically motivated, but there is, I think, a point to this, which is the investigation is currently conducted by Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. And this calls for an international UN led investigation. And I think that would be necessary. Now, the question is, is Russia being honest here? Probably not, but the general kind of direction of an investigation that is led by the UN on this matter, I think goes into right direction. And we have to see whether other kind of attempts in this direction will be more successful in the future. Now, closer to home for you, at least, and this is a new splendid building for the university of Zürich. This is a fun story, so this is in target on Tiger. University of Zürich just got approved 600 million from the canton candle parliament, which is kind of the canton of Zürich is the owner of the university of Zürich. 600 million for a new building at building for 6000 students. So that's a CHF 100,000 per student, which is quite generous. I would say. It's a 7 story building in the middle kind of city center of Zürich designed by hats are going to do. And there was a big political debate, but it wasn't about the 600 million. It was about the art and whether they should be art in the building. And will there be? I think there will be. But less than supposed to, so there was a 2.7 million credit within these 600 million just for the art in the building, and of course then liberal parties and the right-wing parties argued the building itself is art already, and it's very expensive, so why should we pay additionally for art and they manage to lower it to 1.4 million. So they saved 1.3 million on art in this 600 million building and we'll see what's going to hang there now. So I'm given the scandals in the kunst to us down the road. I don't know what they can pull up from their sellers. Maybe they have some pieces lying there that might be suitable for the university. And that's not the only controversy bicycle parking too has sparked debate. Indeed, so if funnily in a 600 million project, there is a huge debate about a CHF 100,000 for bike and bicycle parking because the planning is only that there is going to be bicycle parking for staff, but not for students. So imagine that now you have these 6000 students coming to the building and in summer in Zürich, we're in Central Europe. I mean, I would say, I don't know. Two thirds, three quarter will come into bicycle. So there will be many bicycles. And the question is where are they going to put them? Because there's only a bike parks for staff. And an additional CHF 100,000 would have solved the issue, but this motion was rejected. How odd they could have used the money saved on the art to pay for the bike parking spaces. Even I can work this out. Let's finish by looking at higher the high unemployment rate amongst Chinese youth. This is from le monde. This is from Le Mans. It's reporting from the correspondent in Shanghai. And it says, you know, it's an interesting story about youth and employment. So in the cohort of 16 to 24 years old, Chinese, unemployment is up to 17% from an initial 11% before COVID. So this article really talks about how COVID and the associated lockdowns led to an economic downturn and leads to now a youth in China that being quite either like delusion because they don't have the economic opportunities that they kind of were thinking they would have or kind of extremely distressed because they have to kind of get from job to job to make a living in a city that is still very expensive being Shanghai. So I think there's quite a lot of detail in that article, but it points to a broader issue that China I think the growth model of China might not continue as it was kind of in the past two decades. And associated with that, there is a lot of internal struggles coming which might actually limit China on what they can do internationally as well because they will have to focus on domestic issues more in the coming years, I think. Florian, thank you very much indeed. Please give our love to everybody in the Zürich studio. I can almost smell the coffee from the cafe there. Thank you so much, sergino. That's Florian ugly there. And this is the globalist.