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22. CTC Sentinel: June 2024 Issue
- Author:
- Paul Cruickshank, Petter Nesser, Wassim Nasr, Alexandre Rodde, and David Mcilhatton
- Publication Date:
- 06-2024
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- Beginning in late July, the world’s attention will focus on Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, followed by the Paralympics. In our cover article, Petter Nesser and Wassim Nasr describe a threat landscape facing the Games that is “diverse and multifaceted” with “both known and predictable terror threats and others that are less likely on paper but hold the potential for surprise.” “Jihadism,” they write, “remains the main non-state terror threat to Western Europe, France, and the Olympics, with Islamic State Khorasan posing a clear and present danger to the Games.” Richard Walton, former head of the London Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command who led its counterterrorism efforts during the 2012 Olympics, offers insights into what security services are facing with the Paris Games. “This will be France’s biggest peacetime security policing challenge,” he surmises. “It will be France’s biggest test of their new intelligence infrastructure since they reviewed it post-2015 after the Paris attacks.” The stakes will be high throughout the entire country for the duration of the Olympics and Paralympics, he notes. “Any attack in France during the Games is an attack on the Games.” Alexandre Rodde, David Mcilhatton, John Cuddihy, and Rachel Monaghan describe the attractiveness of sports venues as terrorist targets as well as the associated public spaces that support these competitions, such as hotels, restaurants, and public transportation—what they refer to as the events’ “supply chain.” While security at venues is always robust during competitions, they warn that “what is left more exposed is the supply chain to these events. There are simply too many locations and businesses to provide protective security measures at scale … significant importance must be placed on engaging as many of those locations as possible, by providing training for businesses to help them understand the threats they might face, what to do if something does happen, and how to recover.” Finally, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage examines right-wing extremists’ use of 3D-printed firearms (3DPF). Utilizing an original dataset of 35 incidents worldwide, he investigates “the geographical and temporal spread of 3DPF use by RWE” and outlines several of the main motivations for their use. He finds “a troubling increase in the incidents involving 3DPF across multiple regions, indicating a spread beyond isolated communities into more mainstream adoption among right-wing extremist factions” with the number of cases rising from just one incident in 2017 to 11 in 2023. This data-driven article will serve as an important foundational piece of work upon which other researchers and practitioners can build so that the CT community can better track the evolution of this important and evolving threat area.
- Topic:
- Security, Terrorism, Olympics, Supply Chains, and Salafi-Jihadism
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, Europe, and France
23. Long-term care policies in practice: a European perspective
- Author:
- Svend E. Hougaard Jensen, David Pinkus, and Nina Ruer
- Publication Date:
- 12-2024
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Bruegel
- Abstract:
- This paper offers a comprehensive study of the long-term care (LTC) systems in Germany, France, Slovenia, Italy and Denmark. In many EU countries, the demand for LTC services already exceeds supply. Without major reforms, this ‘care gap’ is likely to widen further because of population ageing. This paper highlights a number of recent reforms to reduce this care gap by affecting the demand for and supply of long-term care services. We find that most measures to increase the supply of formal LTC services focus on workforce attractiveness. By examining recent policy efforts and reforms, we aim to understand in which direction LTC policy is going, and to showcase measures to prepare for the future increase in demand for care.
- Topic:
- Health, Public Policy, Macroeconomics, and Aging
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, and Slovenia
24. The Long‐Run Effects of Immigration: Evidence across a Barrier to Refugee Settlement
- Author:
- Antonio Ciccone and Jan Nimczik
- Publication Date:
- 02-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Some 280 million people around the world are first‐generation immigrants; in Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries, first‐generation immigrants make up around 14 percent of the population. The economic effects of immigration have become better understood in recent decades. A new focus of research on the effects of immigration is its long‐run impact on productivity, wages, and income. We contribute to this research by examining the long‐run economic effects of the arrival of refugees in what would become West Germany after the end of World War II (WWII) in 1945. This period was characterized by one of the largest population movements in modern times. Between 1945 and 1949, millions of people from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and eastern parts of prewar Germany were displaced westward. When the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was founded in 1949, these refugees made up around 15 percent of the country’s population.
- Topic:
- History, Immigration, Refugees, Resettlement, and World War II
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, Germany, and United States of America
25. Macron’s Tour: A new French strategy for Africa
- Author:
- FARAS
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
- Abstract:
- French President Macron ended a four-nation tour of Africa earlier in March, which took him to Gabon, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hopeful of restoring France’s influence in the continent, Macron met with African presidents amid popular protests – signs of rising anti-French sentiment in parts of Francophone Africa.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Migration, and Economic Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Africa, France, and Democratic Republic of Congo
26. Employment Effects of Offshoring, Technological Change and Migration in a Group of Western European Economies: Impact on Different Occupations
- Author:
- Michael Landesmann and Sandra Leitner
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
- Abstract:
- This paper estimates conditional demand models to examine the impact of offshoring, technological change, and migration on the labour demand of native workers differentiated by four different types of occupational groups: managers/professionals, clerical workers, craft (skilled) workers and manual workers. The analysis is conducted for an unbalanced panel of five economies Austria, Belgium, France, Spain, and Switzerland covering the period 2005-2018. Our results point to important and occupation-specific effects: offshoring seems to have beneficial employment effects for native craft workers in this set of economies, while negative effects for native manual workers across a wide set of industries (including manufacturing and services industries) and managers/professionals in manufacturing. Furthermore, there are important distinctions whether offshoring occurs in other advanced economies, in the EU13 or in developing countries. The analysis of the impact of technological change shows the strong positive impact which the additional IT equipment has on most occupational groups of native workers (with the exception of manual workers), while robotisation in manufacturing showed strongly negative impacts on the employment of all groups of workers and especially of craft workers. Increasing immigrant shares in the work forces showed strongly negative impacts on native workers – however, considering only the partial substitution effects and not including the potential for productivity and demand effects – and this is mostly accounted for by immigration from low- to medium-income source countries.
- Topic:
- International Trade and Finance, Migration, Labor Issues, Immigration, Foreign Direct Investment, Employment, Competition, Income Distribution, and Offshoring
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, and Austria
27. The Élysée Treaty, FrancoGerman reconciliation and European integration: myth and reality
- Author:
- Hartmut Marhold
- Publication Date:
- 01-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Robert Schuman Foundation (RSF)
- Abstract:
- “During General de Gaulle's visit last week, I thought often of you, the man who, with his proposal to create the European Coal and Steel Community, laid the foundations of the friendship which would henceforth bind our two countries so closely together. I always think of our cooperation with great appreciation. I feel the need, especially in the present circumstances, to express this gratitude to you[1],” wrote the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, on 10 September 1962 to former French Foreign Minister, Robert Schuman. Konrad Adenauer was anxious to set things straight and avoid the creation of a myth. For him, Franco-German reconciliation, at the service of European integration, began on 9 May 1950 with the “Schuman Declaration”. It was not going to start with the Treaty in progress, the future Elysée Treaty. Robert Schuman, in his "Testimony on Adenauer", confirms this: "When in May 1950, the French government offered to the European nations to sit down, without discrimination between victorious and defeated countries, with equal rights and obligations, for a work of joint cooperation guaranteed by mutual control, this truly political revolution required Franco-German reconciliation. Even before consulting our friends and allies, we asked Chancellor Adenauer. If he had said no, Europe and European integration could not have existed. Our expectations were not disappointed[2].” Three years earlier, at a solemn ceremony, Konrad Adenauer had already had the opportunity to address Robert Schuman in front of a Franco-German audience, emphasising that it was he, Schuman, who had "definitively put an end to the Franco-German history full of atrocities thereby creating a lasting friendship between the two peoples". He said: "You, Mr Schuman, took the initiative for this great work and began to build it. That is why we are deeply grateful to you.” The Chancellor concluded by insisting that "it was Monsieur Schuman who laid the foundations for a good and lasting understanding between France and Germany and for a European future, that Europe owed its survival to his action[3].”
- Topic:
- Treaties and Agreements, History, and Regional Integration
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, and Germany
28. Rebooting the Entente: An Agenda for Renewed UK-France Defense Cooperation
- Author:
- Alice Billon-Galland and Élie Tenenbaum
- Publication Date:
- 02-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
- Abstract:
- The Franco-British Summit on March 10th, 2023, will mark a much-needed reset in bilateral cooperation, following years of strained relations. With a recently re-elected French president and a new British Prime minister, both sides are committed to making this summit a success and re-launching a positive agenda for bilateral cooperation. The summit, the first since Sandhurst in 2018, will focus on three key topics: migration, energy, and foreign policy. Defense cooperation will also be addressed, as it remains the cornerstone of the bilateral relationship, though it may take a less prominent part than on previous occasions. Rebooting the Entente: An Agenda for Renewed UK-France Defense Cooperation Download 1.38 Mo Several concrete topics for joint work should therefore be discussed and agreed, from strategic discussions on European security frameworks to joint operational deployments and capability projects. It is crucial to ensure that the symbolic reset of the bilateral relationship at the summit leads to a realistic yet ambitious defense roadmap, with concrete commitments and deliverables. As the Franco-British Summit approaches, defense cooperation remains the cornerstone of the bilateral relationship. As the war in Ukraine continues, it increases the rationale for resuming closer UK-France defense cooperation. Lessons needs to be drawn from the Lancaster House Treaties : overly ambitious and structuring plans are less likely to succeed than pragmatic, budget-conscious and ready-to-use projects. The need to prepare for high-intensity warfare opens new perspectives for capability development in all domains and for operational cooperation across the globe. This Briefing is part of a joint Chatham House-IFRI research project, the "Cross-Channel Strategic Dialogue", investigating prospects for UK-France defence and security cooperation.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, International Cooperation, Bilateral Relations, and High Intensity Warfare
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, Europe, Ukraine, and France
29. Imagining Beyond the Imaginary. The Use of Red Teaming and Serious Games in Anticipation and Foresight
- Author:
- Héloïse Fayet and Amélie Ferey
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
- Abstract:
- The Red Team Defence demonstrates the Ministry of the Armed Forces' desire to appropriate new foresight tools. Thus, brain games or serious games aim to bypass the weight of the military hierarchy, the standardisation of thoughts and cognitive biases in order to avoid strategic unthinking. In September 2022, The New York Times revealed that the successful Ukrainian offensive on Kharkiv had been prepared in a series of wargames conducted that summer. Given this success, further wargames have been undertaken with a view to a possible Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring. This rise in the popularity of wargames, which come in various forms, is due to their ability to immerse participants in a situation, helping them to become aware of their strategic and tactical blind spots and to identify their own vulnerabilities by putting themselves in the enemy’s position. The ability to anticipate crises and foresee conflicts is essential in order to maintain the initiative and ultimately win out. Thus, the aim of defense foresight is to understand the different forms future wars might take (asymmetric, hybrid, high intensity), the weapons systems that may be employed (drones, high-velocity missiles), and the factors that could trigger them. The use of wargames or scenario analyses to facilitate anticipation and foresight goes hand in hand with changes in the relationship between military and political leaders and civilians, who no longer hesitate to hold the former to account when they have failed to foresee a crisis. The German sociologist Ulrich Beck thus refers to the paradox of a society that is keen to predict the future because of its aversion to risk and the fact that it is now much more difficult to foresee what might happen in the short term due to very rapid technological developments. The modern world generates both risks and progress, and the inability to foresee strategic ruptures carries significant political costs, which explains why politicians set so much store in anticipation and foresight. The initiatives launched by Florence Parly after being appointed French minister of the armed forces in 2017 included promoting experimentation in new cognitive tools. Beyond the issue of technology, the aim was to rethink information management within the ministry in order to make it more agile and cross-cutting. In addition to a significant budget allocated to innovation in the 2019–2025 Military Programming Law, the Ministry of the Armed Forces has drawn inspiration from methods often originating in other organizational cultures, such as start-ups and the private sector, in order to improve its creativity and accelerate its adoption of digital technology.
- Topic:
- War Games, Military, and Anticipation
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, North America, and United States of America
30. Environmental Inequality in Industrial Brownfields: Evidence from French Municipalities
- Author:
- Charlotte Bez, Michael Ash, and James K. Boyce
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Abstract:
- Recent research on environmental inequality has extended its focus from ongoing pollution to legacy pollution by examining the geography of industrial brownfields, defined as nonproductive, contaminated land. This article is the first extensive brownfield analysis for a European country from an environmental inequality perspective, exploiting the political momentum in France where brownfield restoration has become a national priority. In doing so, we combine data on over 7,200 industrial brownfields from the 2022 geodatabase ‘Cartofriches’ with socio-economic variables at the municipality level. We demonstrate communities with higher percentages of foreign-born and unemployed persons are disproportionately more likely to be located near brownfields. The social gradient increases significantly in communities that host many brownfields, the so-called hotspots. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship with income, with a positive correlation until the 75th percentile (C23,700 annually). These findings are robust to different controls, including across urban and rural areas, though with regional differences. Further, we also account for the location of noxious industrial facilities sourced from the E-PRTR database to show the existence of cumulative impacts of environmental risks. Our analysis provides crucial entry points for restorative environmental justice considerations and has important implications for Europe’s just transition and cohesion policies.
- Topic:
- Environment, Inequality, Pollution, Industry, and Municipalities
- Political Geography:
- Europe and France