Australian fires leave tens of thousands in financial hardship and stress

James Cogan

Around the world, the universal outcome of climate-change related disasters is that those who can least afford it—the working class and the poor—suffer the greatest and longest-term impact. The fires that have burnt through large areas of Australia since October have most severely affected low-income workers and welfare recipients, self-employed contractors, small-business owners and family farmers who were already struggling to make ends meet. The recovery measures being provided by the federal and state governments, and the assistance from charities, offer only short-term relief.

Losses are already devastating. At least 28 people have lost their lives nationally, including four volunteer firefighters. Thousands more have been injured, traumatised or forced to seek emergency treatment for respiratory conditions aggravated or caused by the toxic smoke blanketing large areas of the country.

Some 11 million hectares have gone up in flames, including hundreds of thousands of hectares of prime farmland, orchards, vineyards, commercial timber plantations and logging forests. An estimated seven thousand beehives have been incinerated, with major implications for honey production and the pollination of valuable agricultural industries. Stock losses run into the tens of thousands, especially on Kangaroo Island. The impact on native vegetation and wildlife has been immense, with as many as one billion animals killed.

Fire on the outskirts of Harrington, NSW (photo credit Kelly-ann Oosterbeek)

Nationally, over 2,600 homes have been lost. In New South Wales (NSW), currently the worst affected state, the Rural Fire Service reported on January 13 that 2,132 homes, 4,518 “outbuildings” such as sheds and 218 “facilities,” such as shops and other commercial buildings, have been destroyed. Hundreds more homes and buildings have burnt out in the fires that have ravaged eastern Victoria, South Australia’s Adelaide Hills and Kangaroo Island, along with areas of Western Australia, Queensland and the southern island state of Tasmania. Thousands of cars and farm vehicles have also been destroyed.

So far, over 11,000 insurance claims have been made, totally over $1 billion, according to the Insurance Council of Australia. But it can be predicted with certainty that many people who have lost assets were either underinsured or had no insurance at all because they could not afford the premiums. While there is not yet an estimate for the current crisis, at least 13 percent of those who lost their homes in the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria were uninsured. A study undertaken after the 2003 fires in Canberra concluded that insured households were underinsured by between 27 and 40 percent of the cost of rebuilding.

Even those households with the most comprehensive insurance coverage are likely to struggle. The cost of replacing lost assets generally far exceeds the insurance pay-out, particularly for older properties that have to be rebuilt to meet more stringent construction standards.

Banks are offering no-interest loans to cover the gap and 12-month mortgage repayment freezes, but people will still only be able to afford to rebuild by going deeper and deeper into debt. Insurance premiums will also soar over the long-term in every area that the banks and finance companies assess as “high-risk” natural disaster zones. With major flooding now taking place regularly in the tropical north-eastern state of Queensland—another consequence of global climatic change—insurance costs have increased by 300 percent or more in particularly prone areas—or coverage for floods is not offered at all.

As part of the $2 billion package announced by the federal Coalition government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison this month, fire affected households are now eligible for one-off emergency assistance of just $1,000 per adult and $400 per child under 16. State governments are offering their own small financial aid to the worst impacted people. Private charities, which are taking in tens of millions in donations, are also offering cash grants.

Examples beginning to appear in the media give a glimpse of how people have been left for weeks without meaningful relief. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) interviewed people this week in the north-eastern NSW town of Wytaliba, which was devastated by fire on November 8. Two people lost their lives. Dozens of homes and the public school were destroyed.

Al Bacon, a concreter, suffered serious burns and was hit by a car during the worst of the fire emergency in the town. He was uninsured and lost his home and virtually all his possessions. He spent weeks in hospital and has been unable to return to work. One month after the fire, he and his partner received a total of $1,280 from a state government relief fund, which was immediately spent on an ambulance bill and covering rent for temporary accommodation. Eight weeks after the fire, they are still waiting for financial assistance from the charity St Vincent de Paul. They are only now applying for the federal amount.

Initially, the federal social welfare agency Centrelink was refusing to even give out the $1,000 payment to people unless they had been rendered homeless. Amid the storm of anger over fire victims being denied relief, Morrison personally intervened. Even so, only 33,000 payments have been made, totaling just $40 million.

Morrison has also announced that the owners of some 19,000 farming businesses and other small businesses which have been severely impacted by the fires can apply for an immediate $75,000 cash grant. State governments are also offering packages of up to $15,000.

Such amounts pale in comparison with the losses that have been suffered. Crops have been decimated or smoke damaged. Farmers have had to sell or destroy valuable stock and are spending thousands of dollars each week to buy emergency fodder as grazing land has been burnt out. Just the fencing that has been destroyed on some farms will cost up to $100,000 to replace.

Farming couple David and Carolyn Duff, who own a cattle farm on the NSW mid-north coast, told the ABC this week that, while grateful for any assistance, “$75,000 has been swallowed up just with feeding cattle.” They are spending up to $12,000 a week just trucking in hay to their property. They estimate their total losses from the fires—including machinery, fences, outbuildings and stock—to be at least $1.2 million.

Moreover, the number of businesses indirectly affected by the fires—through loss of trade in particular—is estimated by the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia to number over 100,000. Many of the impacted regions are popular holiday destinations during the Christmas-New Year period. Hotels, motels, caravan parks and sight-seeing operators have suffered a collapse in bookings, while restaurants, cafes and service providers have gone weeks with drastically reduced custom.

In many cases, businesses have lost between 50 and 90 percent of the revenue they earn during the peak season of the year. Moreover, agricultural industries and the wilderness and natural beauty that attracts holidaymakers have been laid waste and will not recover for several years. A legacy of the fires will also be the perception, both in Australia and internationally, that what were once considered prime tourist destinations are dangerous to visit during the fire season. Areas of the country face the prospect of protracted economic slump, large-scale business failures and mass unemployment.

The victims of the fire crisis being treated with the greatest indifference are the low-paid temporary, casual, part-time and contract workers who have lost hours or been stood down. They will never be compensated for the loss of income they are suffering. The only assistance they are eligible for is 13 weeks of payments equivalent to the below-poverty unemployment benefit—providing they can demonstrate to Centrelink that their loss of paid employment is the “direct result” of fire. Thousands of impacted workers in the major cities and regional towns cannot provide such “proof.”

Hundreds of thousands protest pension cuts in France

Alex Lantier

Yesterday, over a half-million French strikers and youth marched for a 43rd day of strikes against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension cuts. They rejected Prime Minister Édouard Philippe’s announcement this weekend of a “temporary” withdrawal of a planned two-year increase in the pension age from the text of the bill, which Philippe intends to rework and add back into the bill after four months of talks with the unions.

According to the unions, 550,000 people marched across France, including 150,000 in Paris and tens of thousands in cities including Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes. In Toulouse, they interrupted a ceremony held by right-wing mayor Jean-Luc Moudenc, holding a banner saying “Emmanuel Moudenc, mayor of the rich” and singing “yellow vest” songs.

The protest in Paris

Among workers, there is growing opposition to Macron and support for the strike. An Odoxa poll for France-Info and the right-wing daily Le Figaro found that 66 percent of the population still considers the strike “justified,” even though 57 percent would like it to stop, as rail and mass transit strikes lengthen commutes to work. Moreover, 67 percent told Odoxa they agreed that Philippe’s announcement this weekend was “a half-measure that comes too late.”

Philippe’s proposed talks with the unions to identify possible spending cuts only underscore that such talks are a dead end for the workers. There is nothing to negotiate with Macron. The way forward is to organize independently of the unions, in committees of action mobilizing broader layers of workers in a struggle to bring down Macron.

Emma, a schoolteacher protesting in Paris, told the WSWS: “We demand the pension cuts not be implemented. Philippe can say whatever he wants to anybody about his announcements on the pension age, we don’t care—at all.” She added, “What is unprecedented is that the strike belongs to the strikers. The workers have escaped the control of the unions. So, the union leaderships can negotiate whatever they want. We will not give up anything.”

This is not a pension reform...it is armed robbery

Emma added that her pension could fall by up to €1,036 per month due to Macron’s cuts: she is a teacher with three children and, in addition to cuts specifically to teachers’ pensions, Macron’s reform slashes bonuses paid to women for bearing children. She said: “Women are unjustly attacked by this reform, though media peddle the line that this is a pro-woman reform, that things will be much fairer for them if their careers were interrupted by childbirth.”

Sylvie, who works in Paris mass transit, said Macron’s pension cut “is bad for everyone. It is a swindle. They cannot tell us how much it will take away from the French people… But we’ve seen such cuts in other European countries. Cutting our pensions twenty to thirty percent or more, is that good? Who wants to earn less—and I mean much, much less? They aim to impoverish the people.”

Sylvie

Sylvie stressed that she did not trust the unions negotiating with Macron in Philippe’s four-month conference: “They are negotiating for themselves, not for the people. That is all that I can say. They are negotiating for themselves, not for Paris mass transit workers… The media are denouncing us, but it is just to impose a pension reform that is harmful to everyone, that will impoverish people.”

The discrediting of the French union bureaucracy and the emergence of a militant movement in the working class reflects an explosive, international resurgence of the class struggle transforming class relations worldwide. Recent months have seen mass strikes of tens of millions of Indian workers, of US autoworkers and teachers, of Polish teachers, and mass protests in dozens of countries—from the Czech Republic in Europe to Iraq, Lebanon and Algeria in the Middle East to Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador in Latin America.

This upsurge of international class struggle unfolds amid a descent of the capitalist class into criminality and militarism, epitomized by Washington’s drone murder of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani on January 3 in Baghdad. This assassination, carried out with blatant contempt for international law, exposed the danger of all-out war between the major powers in the Middle East.

As the strike against France’s “president of the rich” continues, it is ever clearer that this struggle raises far broader issues that ultimately workers can resolve only via international, revolutionary action against the financial aristocracy and the capitalist system.

Jules

Jules, a Paris high school student, told the WSWS: “There is a lot of concern among high school students about the danger of war in the coming years. When certain individuals start bombing the Iranian military … then it’s not even a proxy war anymore, it is America and Iran that are nearly at war, or at least in violent armed conflict. And there is a lot of concern about the future of the peace we had in Europe for the last few decades.”

Jules linked the war danger to the aggressive domestic repression and austerity measures against workers at home. He said, “After attacking pensions, Macron will attack public health care and the universities… If he has given the Legion of Honor medal to the head of BlackRock, it is that he has very close links to BlackRock,” the $6 trillion global asset management firm that discussed Macron’s pension cuts with him just after his election in 2017.

The WSWS also interviewed Adrien, a worker at the Grandpuits refinery that is on a three-day strike. French refinery workers are discussing a possible indefinite national strike, which in 2010 rapidly led to a national fuel shortage and a direct clash with the state. Isolated by the unions, the refinery workers in 2010 were forced to return to work.

Adrien

In 2010, Adrien said, “we arrived for our 5a.m. shift and discovered 17 trucks of riot police in front of our workplace. They came with the police prefect with requisition letters addressed to each of us by name, threatening us with three years of prison and €45,000 fines if we did not return to work. The UN International Labor Organization later ruled against the prefecture’s position, calling it illegal: they cannot requisition a private company except to supply critical public services… It was completely illegal, and a violation of our constitutional right to strike and of democracy.”

Workers are discussing what Macron might do against a nationwide refinery strike today. Adrien said, “This government and the bosses behind it dream of just one thing: outlawing the right to strike in France. They will not hesitate to requisition us, even with illegal requisition orders. They will try to requisition us; we will struggle for our right to strike.”

This experience of the class struggle underlines the need to build committees of action, organizations independent of the unions, to mobilize broader layers of workers to defend strikers. This entails a struggle against the diktat of the banks and of the police-state machine raising key political questions—above all, that of revolutionary perspective and leadership.

When all the poor get involved in the struggle ...

Éva, a student protesting in Paris against Macron and students’ precarious living conditions due to low scholarships, said she “absolutely” supports bringing down Macron: “I never supported Macron and never will.” However, she added, “today I see no one I could support to take his place: as always in the last years and decades, we only have politicians who want power to serve capitalism. We are ruled by finance.”

The emergence of a strike consciously impelled by the workers against the union bureaucracy is rapidly transforming the political situation. While strike participation rates in rail, mass transit and education are falling—with workers temporarily returning to work part-time to earn some money, financially exhausted after weeks of striking, or striking in shifts—the radicalization of the working class continues to grow. The class gulf separating workers from the ruling class and its political agencies is ever more evident.

The Parti de l’égalité socialiste advances in this context the perspective of an international, revolutionary struggle by the working class to take power, expropriate the financial aristocracy, and build a socialist society as the alternative to the bankrupt capitalist system.

UK energy costs soar, leaving millions of households in fuel poverty

Alice Summers

Energy costs in the UK have risen by 40 percent since 2015, according to research by comparison website comparethemarket.com. The average UK household now pays a record £2,707 in bills annually.

These figures, which were based on data inputted by comparethemarket.com customers, only include costs for energy (gas and electricity), home and motor insurance, excluding expenditure associated with broadband, mobile phones and television, which also come at a significant cost.

The majority of this increase in expenditure on bills comes as a result of the massive increases in gas and electricity charges, with the 40 percent hike between 2015 and 2019 being well above the inflation rate. Average energy costs in 2015 were £1,289 a year, compared to £1,813 in 2019.

The surge in energy bills far surpasses the rate of inflation. Had charges risen in line with inflation, they would be 11.6 percent higher now than in 2015, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This is despite a nominal “cap” on energy prices introduced by the Conservative government in January 2019. The price cap—which does not limit the total cost of the bill, only the amount a supplier can charge per kWh (kilowatt hour) of gas and electricity—was initially set at a still huge £1,137 a year for a dual-fuel customer using a typical amount of gas and electricity and paying by direct debit.

However, only three months after introducing the cap, the government fuel regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), announced a 10.29 percent increase, raising the upper limit from £1,137 to £1,254.

As Richard Neudegg, head of regulation at price-comparison website uSwitch, commented: “People could be forgiven for feeling that they’ve been completely and utterly conned by the Government’s energy price cap. … It’s now crystal clear that households were never going to save what was promised.”

Ofgem claimed that the cap would “give 11 million [people] a fairer deal,” and that customers would save around £76 on average and as much as £120 on the most expensive tariffs. But as could be expected, rather than reducing the amount charged by suppliers, many of the most prominent energy providers—including British Gas, EDF Energy, E.ON UK, npower, Scottish Power and SSE—saw the setting of an upper limit as a golden opportunity to increase their prices towards the maximum permissible.

Those living in London and other major urban centres have been particularly hard hit by these rising costs, with the average household in the capital paying £3,129 a year—over £400 more than the national average. The West Midlands region, with the second most expensive annual costs in the UK, was paying an average of £2,910 on bills in 2019.

By comparison, those living in Scotland, the cheapest area, spend “only” £2,470 on bills, according to comparethemarket ’s survey.

Many families are being crippled by a huge increase in essential services required for life in the 21st century. Simon McCulloch, director at comparethemarket.com, noted that the increase in energy bills was a “stark reminder of not only the high cost of essential services but of the huge increases that have been seen in the past few years. The average cost of energy and motor and home insurance is now £675 higher than in 2015.”

The survey did not include the cost of a home phone, mobile phone, broadband and TV services, which cost families hundreds of pounds in addition. Another huge outlay for working people is the cost of Council Tax, which also increased on average by 4.5 percent on average last year—more than twice the rate of inflation.

For a working-class resident earning the misnamed “living wage” of £8.21 an hour, the statutory minimum for those aged 25 and older, these extortionate pay-outs to multibillion-pound energy corporations are a significant and often unaffordable cost.

Despite increased competition from 60 smaller firms that have entered the domestic energy supply market and to whom they lost 1.3 million customers, the big six firms—Centrica’s British Gas, E.ON, SSE, EDF Energy, npower and Scottish Power—still reported collective profits of £599 million in 2018.

Costs of heating and lighting homes are so high that millions of people earning lower incomes are forced to choose between eating and heating during the colder winter months.

According to a study released by uSwitch last November, 3.4 million UK households live in fuel poverty and are unable to adequately heat their homes. The study found that 1.6 million of these households will be forced to choose between warming up their homes or putting food on the table this winter.

The worst affected areas of the UK are in Sheffield, where 14 percent are in fuel poverty, Norwich (12 percent) and Plymouth (11 percent). The uSwitch report indicates that across the whole country, more than a third of households (36 percent) are worried about how they will afford their energy bills during the colder months.

Around 4.6 million households suggest that they wouldn’t turn the heating on even if it is cold, and 2.3 million households owed their energy supplier a combined total of £267 million before winter even began.

Living conditions have become so bad for many working-class households that the winter of 2017-2018 (the last for which data is available) saw the highest recorded Excess Winter Deaths—fatalities directly linked to cold weather—since 1975-1976, with 50,100 excess deaths in England and Wales. These figures, from fuel-poverty charities National Energy Action (NEA) and Energy Action Scotland, showed that of these deaths, 15,030, or 30 percent, were directly attributable to cold homes.

According to a 2018 study by NEA, some 36,000 deaths over the last five years, mostly of older people, can be attributed to conditions related to living in a cold home. A further 17,000 people are estimated to have died as a direct result of fuel poverty. This is the second-worst rate of unnecessary winter deaths of 30 countries in Europe, beaten only by Ireland.

The never-ending austerity programme and stagnating pay—implemented by the main political parties of the ruling class over the last decade, the Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats—have plunged millions into poverty. They are responsible for ever-growing rates of fuel poverty and avoidable winter deaths.

It is an indictment of capitalism that in the 21st century, millions of people are worried about putting their heating on, for fear of the bill that will arrive. Heating, lighting and all basic utilities are a requirement of civilised life and a social right, and their provision cannot be dependent on affordability.

Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe linked to international drug trafficking through Sinaloa Cartel

Julian James

Allegations have recently emerged linking Colombia’s former right-wing president and current senator Álvaro Uribe with Mexican drug cartels, right-wing paramilitary groups and the American Drug Enforcement Agency in a plot to traffic large quantities of cocaine into Mexico between 2006 and 2008.

If true, the allegations would represent the latest in a series of incidents and revelations exposing the so-called “war on drugs” waged by the United States and Colombia as a phony pretext for decades of militarization, as well as the intimate role played by both countries’ governments in the lucrative multi-billion-dollar narcotics industry.

Uribe has long been a dominant figure in Colombian politics and is the chief political patron of current President Iván Duque, who heads the Democratic Center (CD) party founded by Uribe in 2014. Before the most recent allegations, Uribe had already been under investigation since 2018 by the Colombian Supreme Court on charges of tampering of witnesses who had testified that he was one of the founders of the far-right paramilitary group Bloque Metro when he was governor of the province of Antioquia. Recent revelations that the military has been spying on the prosecutors involved in this case, with President Duque being fully aware, have fueled widespread popular opposition to his administration, which has an approval rating of merely 24 percent.

A series of nationwide strikes and protests against government corruption, social inequality, political assassinations and state violence erupted on November 21, 2019, and are set to resume on January 21, with none of the protesters’ demands having been met. The protests have been the largest in Colombia since 1977 and are part of a region-wide and global resurgence of class struggle.

The recent allegations against Uribe were made by a former security chief for Colombian airliner Air Cargo Lines, in an interview with whistleblower and investigative journalist Richard Maok. Maok, a former detective and IT specialist with the Cuerpo Tecnico de Investigacion (CTI, the Colombian equivalent of the FBI) went public two decades ago with strong evidence showing top right-wing paramilitary figures working in close coordination with the army, intelligence agencies and other government institutions, including congress, to install Álvaro Uribe as the future president of Colombia.

For his exposures of criminality in the Colombian state, Maok faced death threats and assassination attempts, and was granted political asylum in Canada where he continues his journalistic activities and remains a fierce critic of the Colombian government.

According to the Air Cargo Lines security chief, between 2006-2008, while president, Uribe received large bribes from representatives of the Sinaloa Cartel in exchange for helping traffic 10,000 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico. As part of the deal, Uribe authorized the construction of a hanger on the grounds of a Bogotá airport to be used as a logistical hub for the operation, and instructed the country’s aviation authority to allow a privately owned Mexican DC8 aircraft to fly in and out of the country without first passing through customs.

The cocaine exported was provided by the Colombian Paísa cartel, which was composed of ex-members of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC, or United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), accurately described by Latin American crime research organization Insight Crime as “a coalition of right-wing death squads that used the [civil war] to camouflage their illicit economic activities [including] drug trafficking, displacement, kidnapping, and extortion.”

The AUC paramilitary group has been exposed by Richard Maok as playing a key role in bringing Uribe to power in 2000. The latest whistleblower interviewed by Maok also alleges that he met several times at the American embassy with Emir Abreu, an official of the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) stationed in Colombia, who gave his blessing for the operation. The arrangement ended in 2006 when a metric ton of cocaine went missing from the sixth shipment to Mexico.

While the former airline security official has chosen to remain anonymous, the allegations appear credible in light of other reports connecting Uribe to Colombian paramilitary and drug trafficking organizations. These date back to the early 1980s, when Uribe, then head Colombia’s civil aviation agency, was accused of giving air licenses to drug traffickers.

Previously classified cables from the early 1990s released by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and State Department in 2018 describe a politically emergent Álvaro Uribe as a “close personal friend” of Pablo Escobar, the richest and most powerful narco-trafficker in the world. Uribe was said to be “dedicated to collaboration” with Escobar’s Medellín Cartel, at the time responsible for most of the cocaine imported to the United States. The Medellín Cartel terrorized the population of the city and surrounding Antioquia region from 1976 to 1993, assassinating thousands and making Medellín the murder capital of the world.

As for the United States, among the most infamous drug trafficking episodes in the last five decades was the CIA’s facilitation in the mid-80’s of cocaine trafficking from Colombia through Panama into the United States by the CIA-backed Contra guerrilla group that waged a bloody insurgency against the left-nationalist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Public exposure and a congressional investigation into the sordid affair did nothing to end the ongoing involvement of powerful sections of the state in international drug trafficking.

As the WSWS noted in 2014:

Relations between the US ruling elite and organized crime have flourished in the decades since the Contra war. In April 2006, the capture of a cocaine-laden DC9 owned by the Sinaloa cartel exposed money laundering operations by Wachovia bank on behalf of the massive cartel, which operates across more than 40 countries. The cartel, responsible for 25 percent of illegal drugs sold in the US, passed some $370 billion to Wachovia, investigators found. Large infusions of drug money played a key role in stabilizing the finances of the big banks during the 2008 financial crisis, according to top UN official for drugs and crime Antonio Maria Costa. During a 2012 Al Jazeera interview, an official spokesman for the government of Mexico's Chihuahua province accused the CIA of “managing the drug trade.”

Another notable incident possibly linking the CIA to the Colombian drug trade was the crash in 2007 of a Florida-based Gulfstream II Jet over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Several tons of cocaine were discovered on the jet, which took off from the Rio Negro airport in Medellín, Colombia.

As documented by the WSWS, the bill of sale for the Gulfstream jet was listed as Greg Smith, a pilot previously employed by the FBI, DEA and ICE. The sale of the aircraft was facilitated by the son of Ismael Zambada Garcia, a top official in the Sinaloa Cartel, through Wachovia accounts. Highlighting the interconnection between the fraudulent “war on drugs” and “war on terror,” the plane was also identified as being involved in the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” and torture program, transporting captives to secret prisons around the globe.

The most recent revelations about Alvaro Uribe’s involvement with international cocaine smuggling further expose that large sections of the Colombian state—the closest ally of US imperialism in South America—are deeply involved in the multi-billion-dollar cocaine industry stretching from Colombia to Mexico and the United States.

Colombia’s more than three-decade-long US-backed “war on drugs” was waged under the auspices of “Plan Colombia.” Launched under the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton in 1998, in funneled some $10 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia, financing a bloody counter-insurgency campaign that killed many tens of thousands, while driving millions from their homes.

The so-called drug war in Colombia, like that in the US itself, has served as a smokescreen for government criminality, while providing a pretext for violence inflicted upon the broader population. In Colombia, this “war on drugs” has translated into decades of militarization, political assassinations, the indiscriminate murder of workers, the poisoning of the rural population through Vietnam-style aerial fumigation and support for right wing death squads such as the AUC.

US-China trade deal leaves basic conflict festering

Mike Head

In a somewhat bizarre and deranged political extravaganza at the White House yesterday, US President Donald Trump signed a supposed “phase one” trade agreement with China, claiming it to be “the biggest deal there is anywhere in the world, by far.” Clearly, Trump was desperate to proclaim some kind of “victory” in the US economic war against China.

For almost an hour, Trump rambled through a long list of congratulations aimed at his closest advisers, cabinet members and dozens of the business leaders gathered at his feet. The assembly included the CEOs of some of the world’s biggest financial, industrial and technology companies, such as News Ltd, Boeing, Honeywell, Citibank, UPS, AIG, JPMorgan Chase, Dow Chemical and ConocoPhillips, Blackstone and Citadel, a prominent hedge fund.

“Most of you, I can say, you’re doing fantastically well,” Trump told the business leaders. “Thank you Mr President,” he said, as if on their behalf. He nervously noted that while the confrontation with China had triggered stock market falls—more than $US1 trillion in one day in August—since his arrival in the White House there had been “141 days where we had all-time” highs.

For all the bombast, the interim deal—arrived at after two years of aggressive “America First” trade-war measures against China, disrupting and reducing global trade, triggering financial market meltdowns and fueling a worldwide slump—resolves none of the fundamental issues at stake.

Not only does it leave most of the punitive US tariffs and Chinese counter-tariffs in place. It does not address the core demands issued by Washington, which have been for the wholesale restructuring of the Chinese economy to prevent it from overtaking that of the US, particularly in high-tech industries. This underlying offensive has been set aside, for now, for a so-called phase two deal, for which no timetable has yet been set.

Trump said he would remove tariffs on more than $US300 billion of Chinese goods only “if we do phase two.” He added: “Otherwise we have no cards to negotiate with.” While expressed in the gangster language of a billionaire speculator, this epitomises the drive by the US ruling elite to escalate the confrontation with China in order to shore up the global supremacy that it secured by victory in World War II.

As China’s delegation, led by Vice Premier Liu He, stood in stony-faced silence, America’s TV networks gradually tired of the spectacle, switching their coverage away to moves in the House of Representatives to send articles of impeachment to the Senate.

After nearly an hour, the Chinese vice premier was invited to read out a message from President Xi Jinping, in which he applauded the negotiations. “It also shows that our two countries have the ability to act on ... equality and mutual respect,” Xi’s letter stated. To make “even greater progress,” Xi wrote, “I hope the US side will treat fairly Chinese companies and their regular trade and investment activities.”

Whatever hopes the capitalist regime in China has for a mutually-profitable and power-sharing settlement with US imperialism, the underlying conflict will only intensify. Just two days before the White House ceremony, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo provocatively threatened China.

In a speech at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute in California, he said Iranian leader Qassem Suleimani was killed as part of a broader strategy of deterring challenges by US foes that also applies to China and Russia—exposing the assertion that the Suleimani was assassinated because he was plotting imminent attacks on US targets.

“The importance of deterrence isn’t confined to Iran,” Pompeo said. “That’s the whole point of President Trump’s work to make our military the strongest it’s ever been.” He cited the imposition of tariffs on Chinese imports as an aspect of the administration’s strategy. “We’re restoring credibility to deterrence,” he said.

Even in the short-term, many aspects of the “phase one” deal remain unclear. US officials said the agreement would reduce some tariffs and allow Beijing to avoid additional taxes on almost $160 billion of the country’s goods. The Trump administration also said it received commitments from China to purchase billions worth of goods and crack down on alleged intellectual property theft.

The administration refused to make public all details of the agreed Chinese purchases, but listed specific targets for four industries in 2020 and 2021. These included $75 billion in manufactured goods, $50 billion in energy, $40 billion in agriculture and as much as $40 billion in services.

About two-thirds of all US imports from China—roughly $370 billion worth—would still be covered by tariffs after the deal is signed, according to a December analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. And more than half of US exports to China would still be subject to retaliatory tariffs, the institute said.

“Steep tariffs are the new normal,” wrote Chad Brown, a senior fellow at the institute and former economist at the World Bank, pointing to the wider use of trade war measure by the US, including against Japan and the European powers.

The US ruling class remains intent on reversing China’s rapidly-gained ascendancy in developing artificial intelligence, 5G mobile networks and other technology that will be critical for economic and military activity this century. China and the US are already locked in a fight over US demands for bans on Chinese tech company Huawei, a leading global provider of telecoms equipment used to build 5G networks.

Trump has vowed that the phase one pact will be followed up with phase two negotiations, despite widespread scepticism that anything will happen before the US election in November, if at all.

Zhu Feng, dean of the School of International Relations at Nanjing University, said this week he did not expect Beijing and Washington to reach a phase two deal in 2020. “The US will still try and force China to change its economic structure,” he said. “China will make some concessions in this area, but the US should also make a similar level of concession.”

Significantly, US Democrats condemned Trump for not going far enough to beat China down. They sought to whip up nationalist and protectionist sentiment, claiming to be wanting to protect American workers and farmers, while aligning themselves with the most aggressive elements within the military and intelligence apparatus.

“President Trump’s ‘phase-one’ trade deal with China is an extreme disappointment,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents New York, wrote in a twitter post, sharing a clip of himself criticising the agreement from the Senate floor before it was signed. “He’s conceding our leverage for vague, unenforceable ‘promises’ China never intends to fulfill.”

Schumer echoed the official statement issued by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in December, shortly after Trump announced the pending deal. “Trump got rolled by the Chinese,” the DNC said. “Trump agreed to major concessions to China without addressing the major structural issues he promised to fix or even undoing all the damage that’s been done since he promised to take on China.”

In tune, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was among the most vociferous critics. “Trump’s deal with China won’t fix a failed trade policy that has destroyed 3.7 million US jobs,” he tweeted yesterday. In effect, Sanders, like the other presidential contenders, is blaming Chinese and other overseas workers for the ruthless job destruction, cost-cutting and profit-gouging of the US corporate oligarchy.

This reactionary bid to split increasingly poverty-stricken and angry American workers from their global counterparts serves to heighten the danger of a catastrophic military war with China.

Malians protest to demand departure of French occupation troops

Alex Lantier

More than a thousand Malians demonstrated on Monday in Independence Square in the capital, Bamako, to demand the withdrawal of French troops who have occupied Mali since 2013. Anger is exploding against the carnage produced by French intervention and against the official lie that served to justify it: that France would wage a global war against jihadist terrorist networks that threaten to conquer Mali.

As a mass strike breaks out against President Emmanuel Macron and anti-war sentiment rises among the ‘yellow vests’ in France, and protests continue against the Algerian military dictatorship, objective conditions are emerging for an international workers’ struggle against the neocolonial wars waged by France and its imperialist allies across Africa.

Demonstrators in Bamako brandished posters “France Get Out,” and chanted slogans like “France out”, “Down with France” and “The Barkhane Forces must leave.” Operation Barkhane is the official name of the French military intervention in Mali.

Many demonstrators stressed that their anger was not directed against the French but against the foreign policy of French imperialism. “We are not angry with the French people, but against the policies of their state,” one demonstrator told Le Monde.

Likewise, a woman protesting in Bamako said, “France must withdraw its army from our lands. That’s why the Malian people are here, that’s why the Amazon that I am, is here.”

Another demand was to overcome the rivalries between Tuaregs, Dogons, Fulani and other ethnic groups that the French occupying forces and their German auxiliaries are playing on. One protester called for a march on Kidal, a northern Tuareg town at the centre of French military operations: “Soon, we must march on Kidal, in the coming days. If there is no improvement, there will be no change. We will march on Kidal. Even if everyone, all of Mali, dies, we will march on Kidal.”

Another demonstrator pointed to the complicity between Paris and the Islamist or ethnic militias active in Mali: “Despite the massive presence of the world's largest armies, the terrorist groups continue to operate and are even growing in strength. We must therefore beware of these nocturnal arsonists who suddenly turn into firemen at dawn. These foreign powers use terrorism to control the immense wealth of the region.”

Vast anger is rising in Mali against the French occupation, following NATO’s war in Libya, where Paris destroyed Moammar Gaddafi’s government with the help of jihadist militias. France then invaded Mali in 2013, supposedly to protect Malians from jihadist militias coming from Libya. In 2020, 80 percent of Malians are critical of the French presence, according to a poll for Maliweb.

The protest in Bamako follows a number of strikes and demonstrations against France and its neo-colonial puppet, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. Malian teachers and railway workers went on strike in 2019 because Paris and Keïta, who are spending hundreds of millions of euros on the war, refused to pay their salaries. And after several protests in Bamako and elsewhere in 2019, another demonstration against French interference took place on January 3 near Bandiagara in central Mali.

These demonstrations defied the slanderous statements of Macron and Keita, who accuse opponents of the French occupation of Mali, that is, the vast majority of the Malian population, of playing into the hands of Al Qaeda and Islamic State militias.

On December 31, in presenting his New Year’s greetings, Keïta said he was “convinced” that most Malians felt a “sense of gratitude” towards the French occupation troops, adding: “This should not be confused with a minority of activists, snipers or centrifugal forces who are trying to play the game of terrorists.”

This slander only reinforces the contempt Malians feel for Keïta and the regime in Bamako. A demonstrator in Bamako told the French press: “The president cannot make himself clear. All African presidents are chosen by France. They are under its domination.”

Even as anger mounts against his presidency and repeated attacks by the police on strikers in France, Macron denounced opposition to the war in Mali, which he called “anti-French.” He declared, “I cannot and will not have French soldiers in the Sahel, as long as ambiguity persists regarding anti-French movements, that are sometimes led by politicians.”

Meanwhile, Macron has intensified the war in Mali in defiance of public opinion in both Mali and France. On Monday, he held a summit with the “G5 Sahel” countries--Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali—to announce the deployment of 220 more French troops to Africa. Le Monde wrote that Paris had convened this conference “to obtain a 'clarification' from the countries of the region after accusations of interference and neocolonialist aims.”

Convened in Pau, the five governments of the Sahel signed a shameful statement defending the French intervention opposed by the workers and oppressed masses of the region. In this statement, they “expressed the wish for the continuation of France's military engagement in the Sahel.” They also “expressed their gratitude for the crucial support provided by the United States and expressed the wish for its continuation.”

Many political questions remain to be clarified in order to build a real fight against the neo-colonial wars in Africa. African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence, a party linked to the petty-bourgeois New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) in France and which has welcomed French interference in 2013, joined the demonstration on Monday as well as Keita’s Rally for Mali (RPM). The Group of Patriots of Mali (GPM), whose members are calling for Russian military intervention in Mali, organized the rally.

It is impossible, however, to fight against imperialism and war by calling on one or another capitalist regime.

The best allies of Malian and African workers in the struggle against oppression by France, or other imperialist powers, are the European and American working class fighting against wars and the reactionary policies of their own governments. A broad opposition is developing among these workers to the neo-colonial wars which the imperialist powers have been waging for decades in Africa and the Middle East.

“It is always the same ones who rule everywhere, and it is the same ones who do the same damage everywhere. When you talk to a Malian who tells you about Total and Bolloré, you realize that we all have the same enemy, the same parasites, the same people who are trying to destroy all nations,” a worker who was demonstrating against Macron this weekend in Paris told the WSWS.

Such comments underscore the need to consciously build an anti-war movement among the international working class to end the wars in Mali and throughout Africa and the Middle East.

Russian government resigns after Putin’s state of the nation address

Clara Weiss

On Wednesday, a few hours after the conclusion of Putin’s annual state of the nation address to the Federal Assembly, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced that his government would resign, effective immediately. Putin has nominated Mikhail Mishustin, an almost unknown figure, to be Medvedev’s successor and has asked the current cabinet to remain active until he has picked their successors within the next week. Mishustin’s nomination is set to be confirmed by the Duma (parliament) on Thursday.

The unexpected resignation of the entire Russian government comes amid staggering social tensions and escalating war tensions between the US and Iran which threaten to draw in the entire South Caucasus region and Russia itself. The global resurgence of the class struggle, in particular, is sending shock waves through the oligarchy which has engaged in massive assaults on the working class in recent years, while vastly enriching itself.

Putin’s state of the nation address which preceded the announcement of the government’s resignation was dominated by desperate attempts to promise remedies to a social crisis for which the Kremlin and the oligarchy bear direct responsibility.

Putin described the raising of incomes as the top priority of the government, promised a series of measures aimed at providing more state support to poor families, in particular, in order to facilitate a reversal of the long-standing decline of the Russian population. Thus, he proposed a monthly payment of 5,500 rubles ($89,50) per child between 3 and 7 to families with multiple children. He also demanded that, starting 1 September 2020, schools offer free food to children from first through fourth grade.

He furthermore declared that salaries for doctors, teachers and state employees had to be paid based on his 2012 May decrees. Recent years have seen a number of protests by teachers, doctors and paramedics, in particular, many of whom receive wages that place them below the official poverty level of just $150 per month. Putin also addressed the acute medicine shortages for life-threatening diseases like cancer and other illnesses like schizophrenia which have affected untold thousands last year and angered millions. He promised that the state would take over payments for several drugs and asked the government to organize the import of critical medicines that are not registered in Russia.

Putin also proposed a number of changes to the Constitution. These include a formal, slight increase the powers of parliament, allowing it to approve the nomination of the Prime minister by the president, and an increased role of the State Council which Putin currently heads. The proposed changes are believed to be designed to ensure that Putin, who played a leading role in Russian politics for two decades, can continue to play a leading role beyond the end of his last term in 2024.

Putin stressed that Russia had to remain a “presidential republic” with the main military and political powers effectively lying with the president. He proposed changing the requirements for presidential candidates from a minimum of 10 years of permanent residency in Russia to 25 years. This move was clearly intended to undermine the legal basis for members of the liberal opposition, many of which have lived for a longer period in the West or are still residing there. Putin also advocated banning any kind of foreign citizenship not just for presidential candidates but for all running for or holding official government office on a federal or regional level. Putin, who is now serving his fourth term as president, also suggested to limit the terms a president can serve to two.

He announced a national referendum on these proposed constitutional changes with media reports suggesting a bill might be proposed before the summer of 2020.

Underlying the sharp political crisis within the Russian oligarchy are growing class tensions and the escalating war crisis in the Middle East.

The reshuffling of the government is not least of all aimed at deflecting mass social anger about far-reaching austerity measures all the while ensuring that the basic course will continue.

In 2018-2019, Medvedev government, with the full support of Putin, rammed through a reform raising the retirement age, against the opposition to this measure by 90 percent of the population. In what has been the most dramatic assault on living standards of the working class since the 1990s, the age of retirement for men was raised from 60 to 65 and for women from 55 to 60, effective since 2019.

The pension reform has been overwhelmingly perceived as a blatant act of plunder by the state and has been a critical factor causing a dramatic decline in the popularity of the government and Putin himself. According to the polling agency VTsIOM, 30.9 percent of Russians trusted Putin in November 2019 down from 70 percent in 2014. The same poll indicated that only 22.5 percent trusted Medvedev. Other leading politicians, including defense minister Sergei Shoigu and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, enjoyed the trust of only 13.1 and 11.2 percent of the population respectively.

The assault on pensions has come on top of a decline in real incomes, growing poverty and further austerity measures. Real incomes for the vast majority of Russians have plummeted five years in a row and are, according to a report in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 6.4 percent below their level in 2013. Prices for most food items have risen on average by 50-80 percent in 2015-2019. One in eight Russians now officially live on less than $150 a month. The actual number is likely to be much higher. According to the newspaper Vedomosti, 27 percent of those aged 18 to 30, 34 percent of those aged 31 to 40 and 38 percent of people aged above 60 perceive themselves to be “extremely poor.”

The Russian government has engaged in far-reaching austerity over the past years, forcing the working class and lower middle class to shoulder the burden of the economic crisis in the country that has been dramatically exacerbated by the US and EU’s economic sanctions in the wake of the Ukraine crisis in early 2014. Since 2012, spending in health care has been slashed by 16 percent and in education by 14 percent. An estimated 80 percent of Russian schools are now housed in unsafe or poorly maintained buildings and hundreds of hospitals have been shut down in recent years, leaving entire sections of the population, especially in the countryside, without immediate access to medical care.

Meanwhile, Russia’s leading oligarchs, all of which have close ties to the government and Putin, in particular, have been massively expanding their wealth. According to Bloomberg, Russia’s richest men Vladimir Potanin alone increased his personal fortune by $8.5 billion within one year. Vagit Alekperov, the head of Russia’s largest independent oil producer Lukoil, added $6.2 billion, and now owns $22.3 billion. In all, Russia’s richest collectively increased their personal wealth by 21 percent up to $51 billion.

Even though Russian economists see the economy plunging into a recession, with almost zero growth in the manufacturing sector in the last quarter of 2019 and a decline in oil production, Russia was the best performing equity market in the world last year. Companies registered with the Moscow stock exchange increased their payout of dividends from 1.8 trillion rubles in 2018 to 2.7 trillion rubles in 2019.

Putin’s nomination of Mikhail Mishustin as prime minister, who has overseen the Federal Tax Agency since 2010, and has ties to representatives of international finance capital through his previous position as the head of the investment management company UGF Capital, makes clear that the new government will continue and escalate the social attacks on the working class.

In addition to these growing class tensions and prospects of a further deepening of the economic crisis, the oligarchy is feeling besieged by the escalation of the drive to war by US imperialism. The killing of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani at the beginning of the year was met with a remarkably muted response by the Kremlin who had had close ties to Suleimani. It further fueled ongoing heated debates about the foreign policy orientation of the country under conditions where an open war by the US with Iran threatens to draw in Russia directly and spill over to its borders in the South Caucasus.

Germany: Auto manufacturer Opel to wipe out 4,100 jobs

Peter Schwarz

German automaker Opel plans to cut another 2,100 jobs in Germany by the end of 2021. The news was announced by the company’s Human Resources manager Ralph Wangemann and Works Council Chairman Wolfgang Schäfer-Klug at a meeting of the workforce at the company headquarters in Rüsselsheim on Tuesday.

These layoffs are just the tip of the iceberg. The Opel executive has been given a green light by the works council and the IG Metall union to wipe out an additional 2,000 jobs by the end of the decade. After these cuts take place, out of the 19,000 employees who worked for Opel in Germany before the company was sold by General Motors to the French company PSA in 2017, just 8,100—less than half—will remain.

In addition, thousands of jobs in related supply industries have been lost, jobs which are not covered by protection against compulsory layoffs. The logistics service provider Rhenus SCR, which employed 700 people two years ago in Rüsselsheim, has announced it is shutting down operations and shedding its remaining 95 workers. Opel terminated its contract with the company and plans to carry out the same work with its own workforce.

The Lear Corporation, which produces seats for Opel, also plans to close its plant in Ginsheim-Gustavsburg after reducing the number of its employees from 400 to 250.

As has long been the case in Germany’s auto and engineering industries, the plans for layoffs were worked out and signed off by the so-called “employee representatives” in the trade unions before the workforce was even informed. The unions and works councils regard as their top priority the suppression of any opposition on the part of the workforce and to smoothly facilitate the company’s strategy.

Citing comments from “trade union circles,” Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper wrote that the agreement is painful, but the “best possible solution” with “Opel boss Lohscheller fiercely determined to further reduce the number of staff. Unfortunately, this cannot be prevented entirely.”

As is customary in such cases, well-paid works councillors and union officials claim that job cuts will be implemented in a “socially acceptable” manner and that the company has committed to avoid “compulsory layoffs” until 2025.

In practice, this means that short term contract workers will be the first to be fired, while older workers will be pushed out of the company via partial or early retirement and severance payments. This is to apply to workers born before 1963, i.e., from the age of 57. For those affected, the end result is a reduced pension and the prospect of a retirement in poverty. Their jobs are gone forever—with devastating effects for the regions concerned.

If Opel makes use of its agreed option of slashing more than 2,100 jobs, then the ban on compulsory redundancies will be gradually extended up until 2029. The deal is just as absurd as it is cynical: the more workers lose their jobs, the longer alleged protection against dismissal applies!

This latest round of job cuts comes at a time when Opel is once again posting increasing profits: 859 million euros in 2018 and 700 million euros in the first half of 2019.

When PSA took over Opel two-and-a-half years ago, PSA boss Carlos Tavares set a target of a six percent profit margin by 2026. Now, thanks to the services of the works council and IG Metall, he can achieve this goal much earlier. Although sales have dropped significantly, the slashing of 6,800 jobs has produced such an increase in individual worker productivity that the group is once again generating high profit levels.

In fact the worst is yet to come. “With the new job cuts,” writes the Handelsblatt, “Opel boss Lohscheller is reacting on the one hand to underutilisation in his factories and the shift in auto manufacturing to electro-mobility. On the other hand, he is responding to a certain extent to the expected merger of parent company PSA with the Italian-American rival Fiat Chrysler (FCA).”

As the result of this merger, which will produce a colossus comprising 16 different brands and an annual turnover of 170 billion euros, “thousands of jobs are likely to be on the line,” the Handelsblatt predicts. This applies not only to production, but also to research departments. FCA currently has 18,000 auto developers, PSA over 19,000, with 4,000 of them based in Rüsselsheim, PSA’s largest research and development center. “Experts consider at least a third of these positions”—over 12,000—“to be obsolete.”

The PSA takeover of Opel and the forthcoming merger with Fiat Chrysler are part of a global process of concentration that is wiping out hundreds of thousands of jobs worldwide—in France, Italy and Spain, as well as in Germany, the United States and many other countries. Auto workers are being subjected to increasingly brutal exploitation while profits, stock prices and managers’ salaries soar to astronomical heights.

Workers confront not only the global auto companies and their multi-billionnaire shareholders, but also the unions and works councils that support the company offensive and divide workers by playing off one factory and location against another. Not a single job can be defended without breaking with these organisations which have been bought and paid for by the company.

The defence of jobs, wages and social rights requires an international strategy and a socialist program. Developments in the auto industry show “the madness of the capitalist system, in which every technological advance serves to increase the exploitation of the working class, fill the pockets of a small minority and plunge hundreds of thousands into misery,” as we wrote two months ago, when Audi announced the cutting of 9,500 jobs. “It is a powerful argument for transferring the car industry to social ownership, putting it under worker control and planning rationally.”

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party call for the establishment of independent action committees organised and led by ordinary workers. In contrast to the pro-capitalist unions, such action committees must defend the rights and needs of the working class, which are incompatible with the interests of capitalists. These committees must be based on the principle of internationalism and the unity of the working class, which faces the same corporations and financial interests around the world. Their goal is to organise resistance to corporate attacks and establish contact with other action committees around the world.

Onassis Fellowships Program 2020/2021 for International Scholars

Application Deadline: 28th February, 2020

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International (Non-Greek citizens)

To be taken at (country): Greece

Field of Study: The Program covers courses in the following academic fields:

• Humanities:
• Social Sciences
• Economics/Finance:
• Arts

The consideration of an eventual interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approach/dimension for the proposed research would be highly appreciated.

Type: Post-doctoral, Fellowship

Eligibility: The Program covers scholarly research in Greece only and in the fields stated above.

1. Eligible to participate are the following candidates:

• Persons of non-Greek descent
• all applicants should have already completed their Ph.D.
• Cypriot citizens are also eligible to apply for Category D and E fellowship only, provided they permanently reside and work outside Greece
• Persons of Greek descent (second generation and on) are also eligible to apply for a fellowship or scholarship, provided they permanently reside and work abroad or currently study in foreign Universities
• Category D and E also applies to Scholars of Greek descent or citizenship provided they have a professional academic career of at least ten (10) years in a University or Research Institute abroad
• The above mentioned clarification (d) also applies to Ph.D. candidates of Greek descent or citizenship, who pursue post-graduate studies outside of Greece (Category C – please see below), have conducted their high school studies and have obtained a degree outside Greece and permanently reside outside Greece for more than fifteen (15) years

2. Former Fellowship Recipients of the Foundation can re-apply for a fellowship only if five (5) years have elapsed since their previous fellowship scholarship.

3. Former Fellowship Recipients of the Foundation who have twice received a fellowship cannot apply again to the Onassis Fellowships Program for International Scholars.

4. No extension of the duration of the fellowship beyond the period mentioned in this announcement for each category will be permitted.

5. It is not possible to postpone or defer the fellowship to a later academic year

Number of Awardees: up to ten [10]

Value of Scholarship:

 1. Coverage of the travel expenses for a round trip air-ticket from and to the country and place where the fellowship recipient permanently resides, for the grantee only, for the beginning of the scholarship and upon definite departure from Greece that amount a) up to Three Hundred Euros (€300.-) for a European country or b) up to One Thousand Euros (€1,000.-) for a transatlantic trip or travel to and from countries of Asia and Africa. Fellowship recipients will be solely responsible for the purchase of their tickets

2. A monthly allowance of One Thousand Five Hundred Euros (€ 1,500.-) for subsistence, accommodation and all other expenses.

Duration of Scholarship: up to Three [3] months during the academic year October 2019 – September 2020

How to Apply: Candidates are kindly requested to read carefully the text of the scholarship announcement listing the terms and conditions of the scholarship and the available specializations and study levels before completing and submitting the online application.
The required supporting documents can also be submitted by the candidate in person or via a representative at the mentioned address in the Link below.


Visit Scholarship Webpage for details