Posible conflicto de intereses de la ministra Nadia Calviño al no renunciar a su empleo como máxima funcionaria de la UE

POLITCO.- Spain’s new Socialist government faces its first ethical dilemma: Should Nadia Calviño, the economy and enterprise minister, be forced to resign from her job as a top European Union official in Brussels?

Calviño, who until June 6 was director general of the European Commission’s budget department, has not formally quit the EU institution, a Commission spokesperson told POLITICO.

Instead she has taken leave from her job in Brussels on “personal grounds.”

Calviño’s appointment received widespread praise — because she knows the EU inside-out and was the civil servant in charge of steering the next long-term EU budget — but those qualities could now result in a potential conflict of interest.

While negotiations on the next EU budget will likely be handled by María Jesús Montero, Spain’s treasury minister, one of Calviño’s chief tasks will be to lobby her former colleagues and political masters to get a good deal for Spain. The Commission’s proposed €25 billion fund to support national economic reforms and its nearly €100 billion proposed research budget would both have ties to her new department, according to a 2016 royal decree outlining Spanish government responsibilities.

According to EU staff regulations, “permission shall not be granted to an official for the purpose of his engaging in an occupational activity, whether gainful or not, which involves lobbying or advocacy vis-à-vis his institution and which could lead to the existence or possibility of a conflict with the legitimate interests of the institution.”

Calviño’s path is an uncommon one, but not without precedent.

In 2009, Ladislav Miko made the jump from the Commission’s environment department to be environment minister in the Czech government. Michel Barnier, now the EU’s Brexit negotiator (a civil service post), left his role as a European Commissioner in 2004 to become foreign minister of France. He later returned to the Commission. Josep Borrell, Calviño’s new colleague in the Spanish cabinet, was in 2012 forced out of an EU role — as president of the European University Institute — amid conflict of interest allegations.

European commissioners are required to wait out a two-year “cooling-off” period before taking on roles that may have a conflict of interest with their Commission posts.

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Las fotos de los centros de detención ilegal de Obama que los medios no les mostrarán

Todo el mundo se muestra cada vez más indignado por la decisión de la administración Trump de detener y enjuiciar a inmigrantes que cruzan ilegalmente la frontera. Sin embargo, nadie quiere recordar que la administración del presidente Obama también usó centros de detención.

Las leyes actuales de inmigración de los Estados Unidos, cuando se aplican, tienen la consecuencia de separar temporalmente a los adultos que llegan con niños en distintos centros de detención con el fin de enjuiciar a los adultos. Esta política de detener y enjuiciar a los inmigrantes que cruzan ilegalmente la frontera no ha sido diseñada por Trump sino que ha sido implementada por múltiples administraciones. Obama, por ejemplo, procesó a medio millón de inmigrantes ilegales y separó a familias de manera similar a lo que está sucediendo ahora. También lo hizo la administración Bush.

La diferencia es que, tras mandar mensajes contradictorios desde la Casa Blanca, Trump ha anunciado hoy que “queremos mantener a las familias juntas. Es muy importante. Voy a firmar algo pronto sobre inmigración que va a hacer eso”. Eso que no hizo Obama.

Las fotos de las instalaciones de detención fronteriza de la época de Obama, tomadas durante 2014, parecen casi idénticas a las tomadas durante ahora en la época de Trump.

Más información e imágenes, aquí


Para los que no se lo crean les recomiendo leer esta editorial de The New York Times de 18 de julio de 2016:

The family detention centers the Obama administration has been operating in Texas and Pennsylvania have been an expedient way to handle the soaring numbers of Central Americans, many of them young children, who have arrived at the Southern border since 2014. They give a sense that Homeland Security has the border situation under control, and they supposedly send a message to other would-be refugees not to come.

But these privately run, unlicensed lockups are no place for children. Or mothers. Their existence belies President Obama’s oft-professed concern for the humane treatment of people fleeing crime and violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

And the centers stand on dubious legal ground. Last year, a district judge ruled that the administration was violating a 1997 court-ordered settlement, called the Flores agreement, that governs the treatment of underage migrants who seek asylum or enter the country illegally. The judge said the children were being held for too long, and ordered the administration to release them as quickly as possible to the care of relatives or other guardians as their cases move through the immigration courts.

The administration appealed, saying that the agreement applied only to children who had crossed the border alone, not those who were accompanied by parents or other adult relatives. On July 6, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disagreed, upholding the district ruling that Flores covers all children, accompanied or not. But it said the administration could still detain their parents.

Leer la Editorial completa aquí

Por lo que a las deportaciones se refiere, Barack Obama batió todos los récords al sumar 2.750.000 expulsiones (faltan sumar los datos de 2016, no disponible aún). Sin embargo, Obama sigue siendo el bueno y Trump el malo.

Tras las fotos, un par de gráficos. Son los gráficos de los aranceles que aplican la UE, supuesta campeona del libre comercio, a EEUU. Trump, más que volver al proteccionismo puro y duro lo que pretende es modificar los tratados de libre comercio vigentes para suprimir todo aquello que les perjudica. Y eso parece lógico, lo que ya no lo parece tanto es declarar guerras comerciales a diestro y siniestro porqué puede terminar perdiendo más de lo que esperaba ganar. De momento, sin embargo, "la estrategia de “proteccionismo disfrazado de mercado libre” de algunos de los líderes del G7 se vino abajo cuando Trump les dijo: “se han aprovechado de Estados Unidos durante décadas” y reclamó la eliminación de todos los aranceles y barreras por completo. Curiosamente, aquellos que se presentan como defensores del libre comercio lo rechazaron".

Lo cuenta Daniel Lacalle, aquí. Y lo ilustran los dos gráficos que siguen: