Italy’s tough new approach to Russia & More News Here

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Italy’s tough new approach to Russia

Joanna Kao
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, May 2nd, and that is your FT News Briefing.

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EU officers are discussing their hardest sanctions but on Moscow, and certainly one of Europe’s largest member states isn’t so sympathetic to Russia anymore.

Amy Kazmin
It’s simply not doable to make excuses for Moscow anymore. Moscow as a market of curiosity might be over for an excellent very long time.

Joanna Kao
And we’ll let you know a few shareholder marketing campaign geared toward getting large meals firms to up their sport on well being and vitamin. I’m Joanna Kao, in for Marc Filippino, and right here’s the information you want to begin your day.

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European vitality ministers are holding an emergency assembly as we speak, they usually’re discussing Russia’s choice to halt fuel provides to Bulgaria and Poland. This comes because the EU is attempting to attain an settlement among the many varied member states to ban Russian vitality. Hungary’s prime minister has mentioned he is not going to help a ban on Russian fuel or oil. But Germany is asking for a phased-in ban on Russian oil. Berlin’s willingness to pace up its timeline will increase the probability of a full EU oil embargo.

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For many years, certainly one of Russia’s largest allies within the EU was Italy. Even after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, Italian companies opposed sanctions. And the prime minister again then, Silvio Berlusconi, travelled to Crimea to drink wine with Vladimir Putin. But the battle in Ukraine has been a turning level. I spoke to our Rome correspondent Amy Kazmin about this.

Amy Kazmin
So, look, Italy got here out of world battle two with the most important Communist celebration in western Europe, and it was part of the political institution that helped write the Italian structure. So because of the sort of communist affect in Italy’s home politics, Italy had a sort of an affinity with the Soviet Union. And then within the Sixties, Italian firms, together with the state-owned vitality firm Eni, began doing enterprise within the Soviet Union. And a whole lot of Russian entrepreneurs began investing in Italy. And mainly there was fairly a powerful tie. And then comes Silvio Berlusconi, who sort of sees Italy as a bridge between Russia and the west and sort of tries to assist carry Vladimir Putin and Russia in from the chilly. And Italy, due to its sort of shut affiliation and deep consolation degree with Russia, had all the time been seen as sympathetic in the direction of Moscow’s standpoint, extra sympathetic than maybe different international locations.

Joanna Kao
And even after Putin invaded Crimea, Berlusconi was nonetheless supporting him. So what’s modified now?

Amy Kazmin
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has been an enormous shock to Italy. We even have the truth that Mario Draghi is the prime minister, and he’s a former central financial institution president of the EU central financial institution. And he has a really completely different approach. He may be very dedicated to sort of multilateralism, the European establishments, the, you understand, the Atlantic relationship with America. He’s truly been out on the forefront actually, actually stridently denouncing this as an assault on all the post-world battle two multilateral order. And he seems at this invasion as, I feel he’s actually, really appalled, like morally appalled.

Joanna Kao
And what about public opinion? Has that modified as properly?

Amy Kazmin
I feel the general public opinion, in fact, is kind of aghast on the sort of brutality and the harm that’s being carried out. There are very robust individuals to individuals hyperlinks in Italy. Nearly 236,000 Ukrainians resident in Italy. They play an vital a part of the economic system. Many of the migrant employees in Italy are middle-aged ladies who’re closely concerned in caring for Italy’s aged inhabitants. So many Italian households even have very robust private hyperlinks with Ukraine by way of these caretakers and caregivers and can, in fact, have an enormous sympathy for what’s taking place. And many, many Ukrainian refugees have made their manner to Italy drawn by these hyperlinks. There’s many Italians internet hosting Ukrainian refugees in their very own houses. And Draghi has additionally been very robust in regards to the sort of the welcome to the Ukrainians and affirming them as a really valued and vital a part of, you understand, the Italian inhabitants and the group right here.

Joanna Kao
So, Amy, extra broadly, how important is Italy’s shift away from Russia and what does this imply for EU’s response to the battle?

Amy Kazmin
So at this level, Italy’s more durable stance makes it simpler for the EU to act extra swiftly, extra decisively, extra cohesively. Of course there’s not whole cohesion as a result of you’ve got Hungary, which may be very shut with Putin and Russia. But Italy is now sort of firmly within the mainstream of European opinion as a substitute of being this type of outlier which was pleading Moscow’s case. So I feel there’s a really robust political dedication to pare down Italy’s dependence on Russia and Russia’s vitality. And I feel the enterprise group sees the writing on the wall that there’s now going to be an unwinding of this relationship solid over many years.

Joanna Kao
Amy Kazmin is the FT’s Rome correspondent. Thanks, Amy.

Amy Kazmin
Thank you very a lot.

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Joanna Kao
A bunch of buyers just lately pushed Unilever to publish vitamin scores for its meals utilizing exterior metrics. It was a giant victory over the corporate, which is understood for Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Lipton teas, amongst different merchandise. The shareholders had been co-ordinated by a non-profit known as ShareAction.

Judith Evans
And it does embrace some pretty main gamers, Legal and General Investment Management, which is the most important asset supervisor within the UK; BMO Global Asset Management, which is the funds arm of Canada’s BMO and a number of other others.

Joanna Kao
That’s the FT’s shopper trade’s correspondent Judith Evans. She says this group is now focusing on different meals multinationals like Nestlé and Kraft Heinz.

Judith Evans
So this situation has been there, sort of effervescent underneath for a few years as weight problems charges have risen. But a whole lot of the so-called ESG focus has been on local weather for comprehensible causes. However, there’s a contemporary concentrate on weight problems and well being following Covid-19, which impacts overweight individuals and folks with circumstances like diabetes worse than common. And governments just lately have additionally grow to be extra interventionist on this, bringing in measures like mushy drinks taxes and initiatives to promote bodily exercise and more healthy existence.

Joanna Kao
But Judith says meals firms face a tough balancing act.

Judith Evans
They clearly can’t come out and say, oh, we’re high quality with weight problems. And the truth is, a whole lot of firms have already reformulated their meals. There was a marketing campaign within the UK to take away salt from bread within the early 2000s, which is claimed to have saved many lives. But then again, firms don’t need to lose their aggressive benefit by making their merchandise sort of merely not tasty sufficient. And neither do they need to come out and say, oh, sure, now you talked about it, our meals truly are fairly unhealthy. So there are a lot of pressures on these firms from many alternative instructions.

Joanna Kao
That’s the FT’s shopper industries reporter Judith Evans.

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Before we go, steelmakers are attempting to scale back their carbon footprint. And one of many trade’s largest firms says it’s reached a milestone. ArcelorMittal says engineers at certainly one of its industrial websites in Canada efficiently examined using inexperienced hydrogen to scale back iron ore. That’s a part of the steelmaking course of that’s extremely carbon-intensive. The firm says it was in a position to exchange 7 per cent of the pure fuel usually used with hydrogen constituted of renewables. The firm mentioned scaling up stays a problem as is the quantity of hydrogen that might be wanted to decarbonise.

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You can learn extra on all of those tales at FT.com. This has been your each day FT News Briefing. Make positive you verify again tomorrow for the newest enterprise information.

This transcript has been mechanically generated. If by any likelihood there’s an error please ship the main points for a correction to: [email protected]. We will do our greatest to make the modification as quickly as doable.

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