The revamped trade deal with Mexico, and the titanic agreement with the South American trading bloc Mercosur, are also part of this success story, but it’s significant to note the effort the EU is putting into developing ties with the Far East. It was only two years ago that the EU lamented the lack of a coherent policy for southeast Asia, with only a free trade agreement with South Korea already in place. Two years later, the EU has signed large-scale deals with Singapore, Vietnam, and Japan – with the latter deal already undergoing implementation. This undoubtedly strengthens the European position in the Far East.

The Terms of the Deal

For starters, the free trade agreement will eliminate 99% of the tariffs on both sides. ‘Sensible goods’, i.e. agricultural products, will be the exception, and will be limited by quotas. The volumes involved are important: currently, the EU is Vietnam’s second largest export market after the United States, accounting for around 19% of its total exports. The main Vietnamese products that make their way to Europe are textiles, electronics, and coffee. The EU also exports to Vietnam, mostly high tech products, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and aircraft. The volume of these exports is growing by 11% every year, and stood at €12 billion for 2018.

As usual, the agreement has provisions for the protection of food or drinks with a specific geographical origin. This protection includes both Vietnamese and European traditional products, like Mộc Châu tea or Calvados. It also contains provisions for public procurement. Under the framework of the agreement, companies will be able bid for public procurement contracts and access the services market both in Vietnam and in the EU. At the same time, the free trade agreement will not curtail the right of the two parties to decide how to organise their public services.

One the most important part of the FTA are the provisions for sustainable development: the FTA includes the implementation of the Conventions of the International Labour Organisation. These include the core standards on freedom of association, and prevention of child labour and slavery. The agreement also requires the implementation of international environmental deals, such as the Paris Agreement. In a classic exercise of EU soft power, the issues of fighting climate change and strengthening democracy go hand in hand with the economics of the trade deal.

The Road Ahead

The agreement has been discussed for a long time. It began as a negotiation between the EU and ASEAN, in 2007, but in 2009 the two parties decided to switch to bilateral negotiations. Future trade deals between the EU and ASEAN will start from the existing agreements and expand their scope. The free trade agreement with Vietnam would be the first of these ambitious trade deals, to be followed by the deal with Singapore, giving the EU a stable trading foothold in Southeast Asia.

The implementation of the free trade agreement will begin after the two parties ratify the agreement. For the European Union, this means that the European Parliament will have to vote in favour of the deal. One obstacle, however, remains: Vietnam’s human rights track record. This was one of the biggest concerns during the seven years of negotiations, and with good reason: Vietnam is a one-party State, known for the harsh treatment of dissidents. Reporters Without Borders classified Vietnam as the 176th country out of 180 for freedom of press.
Cecilia Malmström sees the free trade agreement as a way to engage with, and influence Vietnam on human rights. While she is adamant that the deal alone cannot remedy the lack of human rights in Vietnam, she also believes that increased contact and exposure will soften many of Vietnam’s positions.

Indeed, the final version of the agreement contains clauses that enable the parties to take action, should the human rights obligations contained in the text be breached. These actions include the suspension of the trade agreement itself. The European Parliament will have to decide if these provisions are enough.

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It was promoted as a product fit for the future of Germany. East German magazines often praised caffeine’s effects. Alertness and productivity were desirable traits for the socialist people, so it was a beverage of the future.

For the past, the DDR wanted to tap into the German history, possibly avoiding the too recent past. A connection to the previous history would foster their position as legitimate Germany, so the German coffee tradition was perfect. Especially considering that the tradition was quite strong in Saxony as the firsts German coffee houses opened in Leipzig. As a form of luxury, coffee was relatively affordable. It was also easier to provide to the population than a working car… Or so they thought.

The black frost, chicory coffee, and other unpleasantries:

In 1975, the so-called “black frost” spoiled Brazilian production of coffee. It destroyed more than half of the coffee trees. At the same time, the civil war ravaged Angola and Ethiopia. An earthquake hit Guatemala and Colombia had floods. Coffee leaf rust appeared in Nicaragua.

Let’s just say that it wasn’t the best time for production. Prices hiked, and imports became prohibitively costly for the DDR. Oil imports already consumed a big part of the import budget, so the SED tried to curb the import of luxury goods. They pulled Kosta, the cheapest caffeine brand, away from the market. In its place, East German citizens found coffee mixes: fifty per cent coffee, and fifty per cent other, unpleasant, things. Mostly chicory, beans, and grains.

Citizens’ reactions were far from stellar. People jokingly called this mix Erichs Krönung, a play on Jacobs Krönung, a western coffee brand, and Honecker’s name. Citizens resorted to the last available form of protest in the DDR: writing letters of complaint. More than fourteen thousand letters complained about its flavour, taste, and how it would clog coffee machines. But why was so important? People were used to disservices, lateness and goods shortage. However, coffee, as part of the propaganda, was a proxy for the living conditions. If the DDR’s capability was put in question, so would its legitimacy.

Chto delat?

What is to be done? Reserves dwindled down because people preferred to buy the costlier mix, without weird ersatz, so the state had to get new sources of coffee. Prices were sky-high, and the state had limited reserves of foreign currency, so how could they afford it? Barter, of course. The DDR tied foreign aid in machinery and services to coffee exports. The plan was to start up the production in various, neglected, countries. They targeted places like Laos, Vietnam, and Angola where they set up farms, trained the populations, and sent pieces of machinery.

Did it work out? Technically no. This was because the coffee production was often below agreed targets, but it was a (baby) step to act in a globalized world and to push their own ambitions. Unsurprisingly, the propaganda could spin it in a better way. It was presented as an alternative approach to the “Western neocolonialism”. Plantations where locals only worked as assistants to German technicians were justified as a supervision and assistance towards their socialist brethren. At least, the propaganda was a part of the East German state that worked with Teutonic efficiency.

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What is a pandemic?

Even today, the common flu often causes epidemics, that is outbreaks of a disease contained within a particular region or population. In temperate climates like Europe, seasonal flu epidemics occur mainly during winter, as we have all experienced. It is only when an epidemic starts to spread worldwide that becomes what is known as a pandemic. As defined by the World Health Organisation: “a pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease. A pandemic occurs when an influenza virus which was not previously circulating among humans and to which most people don’t have immunity emerges and transmits among humans”. In the last 300 years we have had nine pandemics: the Spanish flu was the second one, and the last one was the swine flu in 2009.

Typically a pandemic happens when a flu jumps from one species to another. Sometimes, it is possible for a subject to be infected at the same time by different strains, for example a swine and a human flu. More commonly, a strain that infects an animal mutates and acquire the ability to infect humans. The Spanish flu seems to belong within the latter category, as discovered by looking at a reconstructed virus. This was possible thanks to the analysis of old samples of victims, obtained also by digging up a mass grave in the Alaska permafrost.

How the Spanish flu developed

Notwithstanding its name, the Spanish flu didn’t come from Spain. Thanks to Spanish neutrality in World War I, local newspapers weren’t subject to war censorship and were just the first to openly write about the epidemic. The other States involved in the World War suppressed the news, but at the same time underestimated the flu. The armies from both sides preferred to celebrate heroic death on the battlefield instead of deaths by disease. For example, German death cards rarely mentioned flu as a death cause.

The Spanish flu hit in three waves: the first in the spring of 1918, the second in the autumn, and the third in the winter of 1918-1919. The first wave was quite mild and not unlike a normal flu. Only with the second wave it became apparent that it was quite different. Obviously the death rate was higher than average, but that wasn’t the only peculiarity. Usually, common flu hits harder on older and younger people, as their immune systems are unable to battle the virus effectively. On the other hand, the Spanish flu was extremely effective on young adults, like soldiers on the battlefronts. Even the symptoms were way more lethal than those of a normal flu, including cyanotic skin and bloody sputum.

Occasionally, it is said that the demobilisation of national armies brought the flu in the various States. However, this seems to be historically incorrect, as the armies massively demobilized only after the third wave. Scholars have proposed different places of origin. These include a hospital camp in France, a military base in Kansas and even China (carried by the Chinese Labour Corps), all which suffered heavily from the flu. But ultimately, the origin of one of the deadliest maladies in European – and human – history is still unknown.

Did you enjoy this article? You might also like Climate Resilience in the United States or Birds Without Borders: the Great Avian Migration between Europe and Africa.

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The babà is a mushroom shaped cake, made with a buttery, yeast-based dough, soaked with liquor, typically rum. It is sometimes served with cream or pastry cream, lemon being a popular dressing choice. It’s one of the most characteristic sweet snacks in Naples, and Southern Italy at large – but what are its origins?

As with any good fairy tale, we begin with a king: Stanislaw Leszczynski, King of Poland. The story goes that the king, or more correctly, former king in exile in Lorraine, was served a local cake, a Gugelhupf. Stanislaw eventually tired of the cake’s taste, and dunked it in sweet wine. The result left him so happy that he gave the experiment a name, “babà”, inspired by the book he was reading, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Then, when the former-king became father-in-law to Louis XIV, the king’s cook, Nicholas Stohrer, introduced the babà to the court of Versailles.

This is what the legend claims, at any rate. The narrative mirrors other mythical origins of recipes, especially French ones, linking their creation to famous people, often as a result of a lucky mistake. This account is obviously a make-believe. Even the detail about the alcoholic dunk is quite improbable, as the oldest recipes flavoured the babà with saffron and sultana, and the alcoholic dunk appeared only later, as punch became fashionable in the Old Continent.

Still, the fantastical tale probably holds a kernel of truth: Stohrer did open the oldest pâtissierie in Paris, which is still open to the public, and made the babà famous and fashionable in in the country. He could have been inspired by the Gugelhupf of the tale, common in central Europe. The Gugelhupf, or Kugelhupf, Kouglof – and known by many other names – is a ring-shaped yeast cake. It probably originated in German-speaking lands, then became popular in all central Europe, including Poland and France.

The long journey of the babà came to an end in Naples. The chefs of the aristocratic families of the Kingdom of Naples were influenced by the fashionable French cuisine, an influence demonstrated by the title of respect awarded to talented chefs and cooks in Southern Italy: monzù (or monsù in Sicily), a word derived from the French “Monsieur”. Needless to say, the French culinary repertoire imported to Naples now included the babà.

The lovely pastry thus started out as a German cake, was then modified to the benefit of a Polish king during his exile in France, and subsequently imported by Neapolitan cooks: a long journey, crowned by the immense popularity it now enjoys.

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The new proposal comes after Jean-Claude Juncker’s speech on the subject, and sets a roadmap for future integration. Most of the proposals build up on previous instruments, fixing, completing or expanding them.

The changes are intended to be operative in two years, and they are as follows:

-Integrating the (so-called) fiscal compact into European law, since, for now, it relies on an intergovernmental treaty.

-Expanding the European Stability Mechanism into a full fledged European monetary fund, including the possibility, in emergency situations, of acting with a qualified majority.

-Completing the Banking Union, setting up a deposit insurance scheme and a backstop, namely a safety net that will act when the Single Resolution Fund can’t finance the resolution of a failing bank.

As for the brand new tools proposed by the Commission, they are intended as support for reforms in Member States, and include a convergence support for members that want to adopt the single currency.

Two additional proposals are intended for future developments:

-A stabilisation mechanism, to deal with asymmetric shocks, that could potentially include a European Unemployment Reinsurance Scheme or an Investment Protection Scheme.

-A European minister of Finances, accountable to the European parliament.

The content of this roadmap isn’t set in stone, but the intention is to establish a common position between the Member States and European institutions, in order to build consensus for the future of the Union.

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