The European Commission on Wednesday published legal proposals to slash deadlines for authorities across the EU to approve permits for energy projects

International News via Reuters:

The European Union is set to slash permit wait-times and introduce top-down planning of electricity grid infrastructure across Europe, as it scrambles to curb high energy prices that industry executives have warned make Europe uncompetitive.

Industrial energy prices in Europe are more than double those in the United States and China. Domestic energy-intensive manufacturers say they deter investments in the continent.

The European Commission on Wednesday published legal proposals to slash deadlines for authorities across the EU to approve permits for energy projects, in a bid to speed up the modernisation of power networks, confirming draft plans previously reported by Reuters.

For grid projects, the deadline would be two years, down from current wait times of up to a decade. If authorities fail to respond within the new timeframes, permits would be automatically approved.

EU countries and lawmakers will negotiate and approve the proposals, before they pass into law.

A severe blackout in Iberia this year highlighted a lack of interconnectors between countries to allow power to flow to areas of greatest need. 

Brussels will also develop centralised EU plans for cross-border electricity infrastructure and trigger a “gap filling” process to request project proposals if none exist. The EU has earmarked 30 billion euros from its 2028-2034 budget for cross-border energy projects.

Years of lagging investments have resulted in ageing grids that cannot absorb Europe’s growing supplies of fluctuating renewable power. Wind and solar generators are often switched off to avoid overloading networks, wasting low-cost renewable electricity and boosting costs.

Wind power projects with more than 500 gigawatts of potential capacity are in queues for permits to connect to Europe’s grid, industry data show.

Brussels also plans to drop requirements for grid projects to undergo environmental assessments, hoping to expedite construction. Campaigners have criticised this plan.

SECURITY CONCERNS

Recent instances of Russian-linked ships damaging European energy cables and pipelines have heightened concerns among governments about the security of their energy networks.

The proposals require EU-funded cross-border energy projects to be assessed for physical and cybersecurity risks.

They would also be screened by regional groups of EU governments, regulators and companies for ownership or involvement by foreign companies, to flag potential security concerns.

Foreign investments can “increase the Union’s exposure to energy-security related risks such as disruptions or reduced reliability of cross-border flows, in particular where such foreign investments originate from third countries with diverging geopolitical interests from the Union,” the Commission said.

Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by David Gregorio, Kirsten Donovan

Kast is running against Jeannette Jara, the governing leftist coalition’s candidate and a member of the Communist Party

International News via Reuters:

With a commanding lead in opinion polls and an electorate clamoring for security, far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast is widely expected to win Chile’s presidential run-off on Sunday and become the country’s most conservative leader since its military dictatorship. 

Kast is running against Jeannette Jara, the governing leftist coalition’s candidate and a member of the Communist Party. A victory for Kast would mark the country’s strongest political shift in decades and add to the rising tide of right-wing governments across Latin America, as anger over reports of crime and migration has replaced demands for greater equality as the key driver for many voters.

“It would bring to power Chile’s most right-wing president since Pinochet,” said Nicholas Watson, managing director of consultancy Teneo, referring to Augusto Pinochet, the dictator who ruled the country with an iron fist from 1973 to 1990.

Kast, 59, had campaigned as a student to keep Pinochet in power during a 1988 referendum. But Watson said Kast is a democrat and less bombastic than other right-wing leaders in the region, such as Argentina’s Javier Milei or El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.

“Kast is no Pinochet,” Watson said. “One of the big questions, should he win, is how ideologically flexible he will prove to be.”

MODERATING CONGRESS

A consistent hardliner throughout a decades-long career that began in local politics, Kast split off from the traditional conservative Independent Democratic Union Party in 2016 and later founded his current Republican Party. 

The Republicans played a prominent role during Chile’s second attempt to rewrite its constitution, which dates back to the Pinochet dictatorship, but was rejected by voters as it was seen as polarizing and more conservative than the original text.

Now Kast has pledged to deploy the military to high-crime neighborhoods, build border walls and trenches and form a specialized police force modeled on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, tasked with tracking down and deporting migrants in the country illegally, most of whom are from Venezuela, according to government data.

But while Kast’s Republican Party and other far-right parties gained clout in both houses of Congress during the November vote, the legislature is split between right- and left-wing parties and will require deal-making to pass reforms. 

The legislators that Kast needs to secure a majority are moderate, said Patricio Navia, a professor of liberal studies at New York University.

“If he starts governing from the far right, he’s going to be a minority president and won’t be able to do anything,” he said.

Outgoing President Gabriel Boric, who once pledged to turn Chile into the grave of neoliberalism, faced the same issue after his left-wing rhetoric clashed with a divided Congress, Navia said. His attempt to rewrite the constitution was also overwhelmingly rejected by voters.

Chileans will expect changes from their new president – quickly, said Marta Lagos, founder of Latinobarometro, a public opinion survey in Latin America.

“I don’t think he’ll have a honeymoon at the start. He’s someone who a week in, if he hasn’t managed to stop carjackings, shootings, all that, after a week they’ll say he hasn’t succeeded,” she said.

Investors have mostly priced in expectations of a political shift to the right, which has helped drive a year-long market rally on expectations of more market-friendly policies and regulations.

UNDECIDED VOTERS

In the first round of Chile’s presidential election on November 16, Jara and Kast each won about a quarter of the vote, with Jara narrowly ahead.

But the bulk of the other candidates were on the right, and their votes are expected to go to Kast, giving him the 50% he needs to secure the election. 

Populist outsider Franco Parisi came third with just under 20% of the vote, and he has urged his voters to vote blank. Voting on Sunday is mandatory and the latest polls show about 20% of voters are undecided, adding an air of uncertainty.

However, most analysts see the chance of Jara winning as being very slim, and think the main question is by how much Kast will win and how he will govern.

“The most important thing on Sunday isn’t going to be if Kast wins, we know that already, but what he says in his speech,” Navia said. “Will it be a sign of a unity or a sign of division?

Reporting by Alexander Villegas and Lucinda Elliott; Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said on Wednesday that his office was in “survival mode” due to major funding cuts from global donors, while rights violations and needs in conflict-affected areas surge

International News via Reuters:

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said on Wednesday that his office was in “survival mode” due to major funding cuts from global donors, while rights violations and needs in conflict-affected areas surge.

“Our resources have been slashed, along with funding for human rights organisations – including at the grassroots level – around the world. We are in survival mode,” the high commissioner for the U.N. human rights office (OHCHR) told reporters.

OHCHR has $90 million less in funding than it needed this year, which resulted in 300 jobs cuts, directly impacting the office’s work, Turk said.

“Essential work has had to be cut, including on Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Tunisia and other countries at a time when the needs are rising,” Turk said.

He said country visits by UN special rapporteurs, who are independent experts, as well as investigative missions by fact-finding bodies have been reduced, while dialogues with states on their compliance with UN human rights treaties have had to be postponed, with the number of state parties reviews falling to 103 from 145.

“All this has extensive ripple effects on international and national efforts to protect human rights,” Turk said, pointing to grave human rights concerns in Sudan, Gaza and Ukraine.

“I am extremely worried that we might see in Kordofan a repeat of the atrocities that have been committed in al-Fashir,” he said, referring to the conflict in Sudan.

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces took over Darfur’s city of al-Fashir in late October in one of its biggest gains of the two-and-a-half-year war with Sudan’s army. This month, advances have continued eastward into the Kordofan region, and they seized the country’s biggest oil field.

Russia’s increased use of powerful long-range weapons had driven a sharp rise in civilian casualties in Ukraine – with these rising 24% from the same period last year, he said.

Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin Editing by Madeline Chambers, Miranda Murray