4 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Thursday5 March 2020
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
L AU R A P I T E L— I S TA N B U L
H E N RY F OY— M O S C O W
C H LO E C O R N I S H— B E I R U T
European countries must support Tur-
key in Syria if they want a solution to
their concerns on migration, President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned, as
Turkish authorities accused Greeceof
using live rounds against refugees.
Mr Erdogan, who has alarmed Europe
by encouraging Turkey’s refugees to
attempt to cross into the continent, said
the only way to resolve the issue was to
help Turkey halt the offensive by Rus-
sia-backed Syrian forces in the rebel-
held province of Idlib, which has trig-
gered a humanitarian crisis on Turkey’s
eastern border. “If European countries
want to resolve the issue, they must sup-
port Turkey’s efforts for political and
humanitarian solutions in Syria,” he
said yesterday.
Mr Erdogan accused European coun-
tries of reacting to the situationonly
after some of Turkey’s 4m refugees
began to head to its frontier with
Europe. He urged the EU to provide
greater support. “Please behave hon-
estly. If you’re going to give [funds],then give them, if you’re not going to,
then don’t. But don’t try to cheat us.”
Theremarks came as the governor of
Turkey’s Edirne province accused
Greek border guards of using tear gas,
rubber bullets and live fire at the
Pazarkule crossing point to prevent ref-
ugees and migrants fromentering the
country.The governor’s office said six
migrants had been shotandonehad
died.Greece denied the allegation.
The several thousand people who
have flocked to the Turkish-Greek bor-
der have not come directly from Idlib,
where hundreds of thousandsremain
trapped after fleeing escalating violence
since the start of the year. The Turkish-Syrian border has been closed to the
vast majority of refugees since 2015.
But Mr Erdogan has attempted to use
European concerns about migration ot
secure more help in Idlib, where Turkey
has lost more than 50 soldiers sinceFeb-
ruary as it battlesan offensive by the
Syrian regime o reclaim the province.t
The Turkish leader’swarning to
Europe came on the eve of talks with
Russian president Vladimir Putin in
Moscow. Mr Erdogan has said he hopes
to secure a ceasefiredeal.
The surge in fighting for control of
Syria’s last rebelenclave hasstrained
relations between Russia and Turkey.
The countries back opposing sides inthewar but have previously sought to
uphold a mutually beneficial alliance.
Russiayesterday accused Turkey of
fighting alongside terrorist groups in the
province and of breaching international
law by deploying “an offensive group as
large as a mechanised division”.
The defence ministry said: “Terror-
ists’ strongholds and Turkish observa-
tion posts... have merged together.
“Attacks and mass artillery shelling of
adjacent civilian communities and Rus-
sia’s Khmeimim air base have grown
from sporadic ones into a daily routine.”
Additional reporting by Kerin Hope
Notebook age 8p
Opinion age 9pM I C H A E L P O O L E R— L E H AV R E
D O M I T I L L E A L A I N— PA R I S
On Saturday evening, protesters against
the French government’spensions
reforms covered Edouard Philippe’s
constituency office in Le Havre in graf-
fiti. “49.3 Philippe has the fever,” one
slogan read. “Put him in quarantine,”
demanded another.
Earlier that day, France’s prime min-
ister had triggered article 49.3 of the
constitution in order to force through
the retirement changes by decree.
The government’s use of that provi-
sion came as Mr Philippe stakes a claim
for renewed political legitimacy by
standing as mayor in the Normandy
port city. He previously held the mayor-
alty there between 2010 and 2017.
He is banking on local support in Le
Havre, an industrial enclave with a pop-
ulation of about 170,000,at a pivotal
moment in his career — and in the five-
year term ofPresident Emmanuel
Macron.
A victory would deliver a boost to Mr
Macron’s administration, which is navi-
gating its most testing period since the
gilets jaunes rotest movement firstp
erupted in late 2018. The president’s
ruling La République en Marche party is
expected to fare badly in this month’s
municipal elections.
“The idea behind this is to re -
legitimise the prime minister and other
members of the government who are
standing,” said Nicolas Bouzou, an econ-
omist at Asterès, a consultancy.
“There’s a desire to show that govern-
ment ministers can receive the support
of the people.”
The danger, however, is that instead of
focusing on local issues, voters could use
the elections to express their opposition
to the national reforms that have trig-
geredwaves of strikes and protests.
Le Havre’s status as a key battle-
ground in the pension dispute will be
personally uncomfortable for the prime
minister, who comes from a family of
dockers and briefly belonged, as a stu-
dent, to the social democratic wing of
the Socialist party, before leaving and
moving to the centre-right.
Pauline Cornier, a 28-year-old teacher
and new mother in Le Havre, said: “Peo-
ple say [Mr Philippe] is a good guy. But if
he really had any leftwing convictions,
maybe he wouldn’t have gone all the
way with the reform.”
Serge Olivier, 68, said he would proba-
bly cast his ballot for Mr Philippe, but
agreed that “people will vote for or
against the pension reform, not for the
town”.
A Communist bastion for three dec-
ades from the 1960s, Le Havre has
returned centre-right mayors for 25
years since it first elected Antoine
Rufenacht, Mr Philippe’s mentor, who
was credited with launching a regenera-tion drive following years of industrial
decline.
Despite a fragmented opposition and
his high local profile, Mr Philippe’s
homecoming threatens to be less trium-
phant than 2014, when he won the may-
oralty with 52 per cent of votes and no
need for a run-off.
As the architect of the contentious
pensions project, he is first in the line of
fire of public opinion. The role of the
prime minister in France’s Fifth Repub-
lic has often been to shield the president
from criticism.
“He should hold his local strong-
hold of Le Havre. He has a very
solid anchor, as well as a reputa-
tion which partly protects him,”
said Chloé Morin of the think-
tank Fondation Jean-Jaurès.
“The real risk would be that he
does not win in the first round.”
In his favour, Mr Philippe — who is
not actually a member of La République
en Marche — does not face a big rival
from the centre-right. And if successful,
he would hand over the mayoralty to
deputy Jean-Baptiste Gastinne, the
incumbent who has been in the post for
almost a year.
For Mr Gastinne, speaking from histown hall office,the choice for voters is
whether to continue with economic
redevelopment or abandon course.
He acknowledges there is still much
work to be done. “We have an unem-
ployment rate which is higher than the
French average. Even if it has dropped a
lot, it is still too high. There is deindus-
trialisation and also an imbalance
between job offers [and skills] in Le
Havre.”
Critics say the fruits of regeneration
have not been spread widely enough,
while there are other pressing issues,
such as a lack of doctors.
But efforts to form a common leftwing
front to defeat Mr Philippe have fallen
flat, in part because of disagreement
between Communists and the Greens
over a coal-fired power plant ear-
marked for closure next year. Yet Jean-
Paul Lecoq, a Communist MP who
heads a list also backed by the leftwing
La France Insoumise and Génération.s
parties, believes the use of article 49.
may still influence the outcome.
“Maybe it will make more citizens get
out and vote, because it’s not an
approach that pleases people in France,”
he said. “It’s a negation of democracy,
even if it’s in the constitution.”G U Y C H A Z A N— B E R L I NA long-running political crisis in the
east German state of Thuringia linked
to the rise of rightwing populism
appeared to have been resolvedyester-
day when MPs in the regional assembly
elected a hard-left politician as prime
minister.Thuringia hit international headlines
last month when Angela Merkel’s party,
the Christian Democratic Union, broke
one of the mostenduring taboos f post-o
war German politics by teaming up with
the far-right Alternative for Germany to
elect a little-known politician as
regional leader.
The election of Bodo Ramelow of Die
Linke partly defuses the scandal. A
trade unionist who governed Thuringia
between 2014 and 2019, Mr Ramelow
was re-elected with the votes of 42 of the
90 MPs in the local parliament.
The 64-year-old had ruled at the head
of a three-party coalition made up of Die
Linke, the Greens and the left-of-centre
Social Democrats.
But inelections late last year, he coa-t
lition lost its majority, while the anti-im-
migration AfD made huge gains. Since
then, Thuringia has proven virtually
ungovernable.
At his first re-election attempt last
month, Mr Ramelow lost out to a little-
known politician called Thomas Kem-
merich who was backed by both the AfD
and the CDU. It was the first time in Ger-
many’s postwar history that a regional
prime minister had come to power on
the votes of the hard right.
The resultant scandal pitched the
CDU into crisis. Its leader, Annegret
Kramp-Karrenbauer, who had long
been seen as Ms Merkel’s favoured suc-
cessor, was forced tostand down nda
abandon her ambitions to run for chan-
cellor in next year’s general election.
She had urged the Thuringian branch of
the CDU not to throw in its lot with the
AfD, but it defied her.
Mr Kemmerich himself resigned just
three days after his election, under pres-
sure from the national leadership of his
own party, the pro-business Free Demo-
crats.
Mr Ramelow’s electionyesterday
brought the curtain down on the crisis —
at least temporarily. But the CDU
remains eeply dividedd ver how ito
should respond to the AfD and Die
Linke.
Its leadership has banned all forms of
co-operation: but many regional party
functionaries think the prohibition is
unworkable, especially in states like
Thuringia, where the AfD and Die Linke
are particularly strong and where it is
becoming increasingly difficult to form
workable centrist coalitions.
Mr Ramelow failed to be elected in
yesterday’s first two rounds of voting
but succeeded in the third round, where
he required only a plurality of votes.
CDU lawmakers abstained in the vote.
Mr Ramelow beat Björn Höcke, the
AfD leader in Thuringia, who stood in
the first two rounds of voting but pulled
out in the third. A nationalist firebrand,
Mr Höcke is a leader of a hard-right
branch of the AfD known as “The
Wing”, which is particularly strong in
east Germany.K AT R I N A M A N S O N— WA S H I N GTO N
P R I M R O S E R I O R DA N A N D JA M E S KY N G E
H O N G KO N GThe US has blocked China’s contender
from taking the helm of the World
Intellectual Property Organisation sa
part of wider efforts to curb Beijing’s
influence at the UN.Daren Tang, head of Singapore’s intel-
lectual property office, had been nomi-
nated to be Wipo’s incoming’s director-
general, the UN organisation said yes-
terday,subject to confirmation from the
body’s general assembly in May.
Mr Tang defeated Wang Binying,cur-
rently a deputy director and a former
Beijing trade official, in a second round
of voting with 55 votes to 28, according
to people briefed on the election.
Mr Tang’s nomination followed a
fresh push by Washington to limit
China’s influence at the UN.
The Trump administration has grown
alarmed after Beijing won the leader-
ship of its fourth UN agency last year.
None of the other five permanent mem-
ber countries of the UN Security Council
heads more than one of the UN’s 15agencies. The US decision to counter
China’s influence on international bod-
ies comes as Washington has confronted
Beijing on trade — with intellectual
property being an important issue.
“This is a big win for Washington, and
shows that Beijing will not be able to eat
up UN posts unopposed from here on,”
said Richard Gowan, UN director at
International Crisis Group.
“A lot of US allies, including the Euro-
peans, will be quietly relieved the US is
pushing back against China’s multilat-
eral power games more effectively.”
China’s efforts to increase its involve-
ment in UN agencies reflected fforts bye
Beijing to reshape the international sys-
tem “to accommodate its political and
economic interests”, a senior Trump
administration official said.
China heads the Food and Agriculture
Organization; Unido, the industrial
development organisation; Itu, the
international telecoms body; and Icao,
which oversees civil aviation.
US and European officials say Beijing
has also sought to fill a host of entry-
level jobs to bolster its advancement at
the UN.Civil war
Erdogan asks Europe to back his Syria policy
Turkish president uses
concern over refugee flow
to seek more help in Idlib
Germany
Thuringia
crisis resolved
with hard-left
premier
appointed
Le Havre. Mayor poll
French PM’s homecoming threatens to turn sour
Philippe has a strong local
base but risks backlash over
his national pension reforms
Pension protest:
a march in Paris
last month.
Below, graffiti
adorns the Le
Havre office
of Edouard
Philippe, right
MartinBureau and Natalie
Castetz/AFP/Getty‘People will
vote for oragainst the
pensionreform,
not forthe town’
Patents
US effort blocks China at UN
M E H R E E N K H A N— B R U S S E L S intellectual property agency
Brussels is fighting off attacks from
MEPs andenvironmental campaign-
ers, including teenage activist Greta
Thunberg, on its climate law.
These threaten the EU’s nascent plans to
become the world’s first continent to hit
net zero emissions by 2050.
The European Commission’s draft
“climate law”, publishedyesterday, has
come under fire rom activists for lack-f
ing ambition, and from EU govern-
ments who accuse Brussels of attempt-
ing to bypass member states by unilat-
erally imposing ramped up targets on
governments every five years from
2030.
Ursula von der Leyen, commission
president, has calledthe 2050 climate
neutrality goal Europe’s “compass for
the next 30 years”. “It will guide us in
every step as we build a sustainable new
growth model,” Ms von der Leyen said
yesterday.
The climate law commits the bloc to
hit net zero emissions by 2050 com-
paredwith 1990 levels and is the centre-
piece of Ms von der Leyen’s European
Green Deal. The 2050 milestone already
has the political backing of all but one of
the 27 member states, with Poland the
only holdout. Warsaw has resisted for-
mally agreeing to climate neutrality
over concerns that its economy — it is
reliant on coal or 80 per cent of itsf
energy — will suffer disproportionately
from the green transition.
Although climate neutrality has near-
universal support, the commission has
faced criticism for failing to nail down
more immediate milestones that will
determine whether the 2050 target can
ever be reached.
The most politically sensitive is an
EU-wide emissions target for 2030. As it
stands, EU governments have agreed 40
per cent cuts over the next decade. Ms
von der Leyen has promised to upgrade
the target to between 50-55 per cent and
propose the final figure in September
this year.
Climate campaigners accuse Brussels
of dragging its feet on the target in a vital
year for international climate diplo-
macy. A group of 12 member states —
including France, the Netherlands, Den-
mark, Italy and Sweden — want the
commission to propose the target in
June to give MEPs and governments
time to agree the climate law ahead of
international talks at the COP26 meet-
ing in Glasgow in November.
Michael Bloss, a German Green MEP,warned that without a common EU line
on 2030 before Glasgow, Europe risks
undermining the international Paris cli-
mate change accord to keep global
warming below 2 degrees.
Later this year, all member states will
have to present their national action
plans that lay out how they intend to hit
the 2030 goals to comply with the COP
agreement. “We need a 2030 goal to
save Paris and to save Glasgow,” said Mr
Bloss.
The absent 2030 target has also
been slammed by Ms Thunberg, who
told MEPsyesterday that the proposal
was a “surrender” and “completely
insufficient” without defined emissions
cuts for every year between now and
2050.“Your distant targets will mean noth-
ing if higher emissions continue,” said
Ms Thunberg who said the EU was “pre-
tending to be a climate leader while still
building fossil fuel infrastructure”.
Ms Thunberg’s criticism will sting a
commission which has courted her
backing to burnish the EU’s credentials
as a leading force on global climate
action.Yesterday, the Swedish teenager
was welcomed into the heart of Brussels
decision-making body before the law
was formally announced.
Ms von der Leyen must also face down
resistance from member states over
other parts of the climate law. Diplo-
mats have balked at the idea that Brus-
sels can unilaterally set new targets in
2035, 2040, and 2045. Esther de Lange,
a centre-right Dutch MEP,called the
idea a “power grab”, as it would rob the
European Parliament and EU govern-
ments f a say. The climate law will needo
majority support among MEPs and gov-
ernments to come into force.
Frans Timmermans, the EU’s com-
missioner in charge of the green deal,
said the proposal for unilateral targets
was not a “big deal”. “Someone has to be
the sat nav to tell us whether we’re still
on track or not. This is what the com-
mission is best placed for.”Emissions targets
Brussels draft climate law criticised by activists and MEPs
Ursula von der Leyen: wants to build
a ‘sustainable new growth model’MARCH 5 2020 Section:World Time: 3/20204/ - 18:31 User:andy.puttnam Page Name:WORLD3 USA, Part,Page,Edition:USA , 4, 1