“The Windsor Framework…”

EU and UK open ‘new chapter’ with Northern Ireland Protocol deal

Brussels and London on Monday said they were beginning “a new chapter” in their relationship after striking a deal on the contentious Northern Ireland Protocol.

The new agreement, called the Windsor Framework, was announced by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after a meeting in the south-eastern English city.

“The United Kingdom and European Union may have had our differences in the past, but we are allies, trading partners and friends, something that we’ve seen clearly in the past year as we joined with others to support Ukraine. This is the beginning of a new chapter in our relationship,” Sunak said during a joint press conference.

Von der Leyen meanwhile said that “the new Windsor Framework respects and protects our respective markets and our respective legitimate interests, and most importantly, it protects the very hard-earned peace gains of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement for the people of Northern Ireland and across the island of Ireland.”

The von der Leyen-Sunak meeting was the second one in less than two weeks with the first held on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visited Northern Ireland on Tuesday after the UK and European Union sealed a deal a day earlier to resolve their post-Brexit dispute over trade in the region.

Speaking on the BBC on Tuesday morning, Sunak said he believed “hand on heart” that “this agreement is going to make a huge difference” to businesses and people in Northern Ireland.

“That’s what I’m going to talk to people about today, listening to them and explaining how this deal is going to be positive.”

Oil prices slip as global demand concerns weigh

Oil slipped on Thursday on worries about rising U.S. crude inventories and concerns about more rate hikes in Europe potentially hitting growth, paring this week’s gains on signs of a strong economic rebound in China.

Both contracts rose about 1% in the previous session after data showed manufacturing activity in China in February grew at the fastest pace in more than a decade, adding to evidence of an economic rebound in the world’s second largest economy after the removal of strict COVID-19 curbs.

However, a tenth consecutive week of crude stock builds in the United States pressured the market.

Expectations of rate hikes by the European Central Bank (ECB) are growing after inflation in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, rose more than expected in February, with food and energy prices increasing despite relief measures.

This comes after France and Spain, also key economies in Europe, posted unexpected gains in inflation.

Greece train crash kills at least 39 people, many of them students

At least 38 people were killed when a Greek passenger train collided head-on with a freight train late on Tuesday, derailing carriages which then burst into flames in the country’s deadliest rail crash in living memory.

Many of the victims were thought to be university students returning home after a long holiday weekend. Officials said the death toll was expected to rise further – temperatures in one carriage had risen to 1,300 deg C after it caught fire.

Authorities are working to establish how the high-speed passenger train collided with another carrying shipping containers, coming in the opposite direction and on the same track at speeds thought to be up to 160kmh.

“Everything in this tragedy points, unfortunately, mainly to human error,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised address on Wednesday.

Passengers described a “nightmarish” crash which engulfed their train in flames just before midnight near the central town of Larissa, some 340km north of Athens. It had departed from the Greek capital and was headed to the northern city of Thessaloniki.

Some kicked through windows to escape the inferno. Others were flung up to 40m on impact.

“Windows were being smashed and people were screaming… One of the windows caved in from the impact of iron from the other train,” another passenger, who escaped from the fifth carriage, told Skai TV.

A station master was arrested as investigators tried to work out why the two trains had been on the same track “for many kilometres”, while the country’s transport minister resigned.

FATF reforms will improve fight against money laundering and terrorism financing

The Financial Action Task Force – better known by its acronym FATF – will be carrying out assessments of jurisdictions every six years instead of every decade and will be presenting key recommended action roadmaps to countries which do not get onto its greylist.

These are two of the important changes made by Marcus Pleyer, who headed the FATF between 2020 and 2022. Dr Pleyer was recently in Malta to address the annual FinanceMalta conference.

In an interview, he told FinanceMalta that the global financial system was only as strong as its weakest link.

“No country in the world can afford to ignore where the money comes from. Money – which includes dirty money – flows to those parts of the world where the legal regimes are weak or the legal regimes are applied ineffectively. Because money can enter the financial system through these loopholes, even small jurisdictions can provide a gateway,” he said, stressing that in this way money could flow into even those jurisdictions where compliance was better.

The FATF was set up during the 1989 G-7 Summit and is now the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog. It sets international standards currently implemented by over 200 countries and jurisdictions. The approach is based on the use of due diligence to identify a customer but also, just as importantly, to identify the origins of the money – particularly with high-risk customers.

The war in Ukraine has made this aspect even more important, he explained.

“The same AML tools are applied to sanctions regimes, and we can see how necessary it is for us to identify who is behind the money, the assets, and the high-value companies. This is important: it is a matter of national security to know who actually economic and political power over our countries has,” he said.

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