First Independent Mena Newspaper
Gallia Lindenstrauss and Iftah Celniker Croatia’s expected entry into the European Union as its 28th member in July 2013 is yet another reminder that Turkey, who started formal accession talks at the same time as Croatia, is still in line waiting. Along with Turkey, other actors in the Western Balkans are aspiring to become member […]
Dustin Dehez The freshly confirmed U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, has only been in office for a couple of weeks and has already raised some eyebrows. Despite some misgivings from the foreign policy establishment, his first overseas trip took him to Europe and some key Middle Eastern allies. Most had expected him to go […]
The IMF Deputy Managing Director, Naoyuki Shinohara, pointed out last year that “the most striking trend in Asia’s rise as the world’s leading source of exports has been the growth in intraregional trade. While global trade and Asia’s trade with economies outside the region have doubled since 2000, intra-Asian trade has tripled, and regional trade […]
Long before the advent of the Arab Spring, the region was boiling as people in most of the countries of the region were denied basic social and economic rights: Unhealthy housing, below standards education, inaccessible health care, ramping unemployment etc. However hard the situation was, people seemed accommodating with their daily hardships, thanking God for […]
In 1991, shortly after the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War had ended, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released their 8th album called “Into the Great Wide Open”. The album included a song by that very title and in it, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne had penned the following line: “Out in the […]
In the past ten years, North African countries progressed in liberalizing their trade relations with the EU as well as Korea. As part of the Euro-Mediterranean (Barcelona Process) Partnership, North African nations and the EU entered association agreements with provisions for free trade in industrial goods. This opened doors for European manufacturers to new export and investment markets. Most recently, North African nations and the EU launched initiatives to extend their agreements to trade in agricultural products, trade in services, government procurement, and trade harmonization. Trade between North Africa and Korea also exploded in the past five years. As latecomers to North Africa, […]
The drop of benefits prompted banks, fast earning mongers, to proceed to a wave of dismissals. In 2011, Barclays already split up with more than 4,400 employees, Crédit Suisse planned to expel 2,000 persons and Lloyds Banking Group, 10,000. The massive suppression of jobs is a trend that has affected the financial world for many […]
Doing business in North Africa seems to be very challenging and still largely for the intrepid. The World Bank’s annual survey ‘Doing Business’ provides data on the relative easiness (or difficulty) of running a business around the world. A high ranking on the ease of doing business index means the regulatory environment is more conducive […]
In the context of the Arab Spring, the use of the term “Islamism” is very common. The new political elites throughout the North Africa, commonly referred to as the “Islamists”, often talk of replacing the old and more or less authoritarian secular regimes in the Middle East. Journalists also use the term quite excessively and […]
It has been more than a year since Muammar Gaddafi died during the Battle of Sirte, his home town, thus symbolically bringing Libya’s 42-year-long nightmare to its end. Since then, Libya has experienced a relatively speedy transition from Gaddafi’s brutal dictatorial regime to a fledgling democracy when it held, in July 2012, its first free […]