Euractiv - Fernando Heller / Far-right Vox urges centre-right PP to torpedo all Spanish socialist candidates in Brussels

• The far-right Vox party, the third-largest force in the Spanish parliament, on Thursday urged the centre-right Partido Popular to veto all potential Socialist candidates for European commissioner from the Iberian country. 

• “Neither Teresa Ribera nor (Luis) Planas nor any of those responsible for the fact that in Spain we are plunged into unprecedented misery in terms of energy and in terms of the primary and industrial sector,” Pepa Millán, Vox spokeswoman, said on Thursday.

• Núñez Feijóo this week secured the support of Manfred Weber, leader of the European People's Party, to block Ribera as the new commissioner for competition and vice-president of the Commission for a Clean, Fair, and Competitive Transition—at least temporarily. 

• PP sources quoted by EFE said this week that the centre-right party could give Ribera the go-ahead if she commits to resign if she is indicted over her handling of the Valencia disaster, in addition to explaining her management of the crisis to the Spanish parliament.
      

Financial Times - James Politi / Donald Trump’s rubber-stamp government takes shape

• Donald Trump has raced to pluck loyalists from the fringes of American politics to fill key jobs — a succession of personnel decisions designed to smooth passage of his agenda and concentrate his power.    

• Within the space of two days, the president-elect has tapped Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccination activist, to be health secretary, Tulsi Gabbard, a pro-Russian former Democratic congresswoman, to be director of national intelligence, Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, to be defence secretary, and Matt Gaetz, a far-right conservative facing a Congressional ethics probe into sexual misconduct, to be attorney-general. 

• The choices mark a contrast with the cabinet that Trump assembled at the start of the first term, which included outside figures and members of the traditional Republican policy establishment — who he eventually blamed for undermining his plans. 

• Trump has made some conventional choices for his new administration — the kind who might have entered any Republican White House. Those include Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, to be secretary of state, Mike Waltz, the Florida congressman, to be national security adviser, and Jay Clayton, the former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to be US attorney for the southern district of New York.

Bloomberg / China Stimulus Boosts Domestic Consumption as Trump Tariffs Loom

• China entered the fourth quarter with a more balanced economy as consumption growth nearly caught up to factory output, in an upswing that now depends on how much more stimulus Beijing may deploy in the event of a tariff shock when Donald Trump returns to the White House in 2025. 

• Retail sales expanded at the fastest in eight months in October, according to figures published by the National Bureau of Statistics on Friday, exceeding the forecasts of all 29 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Industrial production increased at a slightly slower pace from the previous month but hovered above a level critical to achieving the government’s 2024 growth target of around 5%.

• Beijing has also sought to spur consumer spending by subsidizing purchases of equipment, appliances and cars in a program announced earlier this year and ramped up in the last few months. 

• Finance Minister Lan Fo’an has promised ‘‘more forceful’’ fiscal policy next year, hinting at an increase in the budget deficit, an expansion in special local bond issuance and freer use of the funds raised. He also suggested great support for the cash-for-clunckers program.

The Guardian - Fiona Harvey, Dharna Noor, Damian Carrington and Ajit Niranjan / Cop summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, say leading climate policy experts

• Future UN climate summits should be held only in countries that can show clear support for climate action and have stricter rules on fossil fuel lobbying, according to a group of influential climate policy experts. 

• The group includes former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, the former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, the former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and the prominent climate scientist Johan Rockström. 

• They have written to the UN demanding the current complex process of annual “conferences of the parties” under the UN framework convention on climate change – the Paris agreement’s parent treaty – be streamlined, and meetings held more frequently, with more of a voice given to developing countries. 

• At least 1,773 coal, oil and gas lobbyists have been granted access to Cop29, according to data analysed by the Kick Big Polluters Out activist coalition. That is more than all but three countries (Azerbaijan, Brazil and Turkey), and considerably more than the 10 nations most vulnerable to the climate crisis, who have a combined 1,033 delegates.

   

Our opinion reads for today:

• Foreign Affairs - Nataliya Gumenyuk / Ukraine’s Trump Tightrope 

• Foreign Policy - Lizzi C. Lee / Beijing Has Already Prepared for Trump’s Return 

• Project Syndicate - Barry Eichengreen / The BRICS Currency Charade 

• Al Jazeera - Ghada Ageel / The Gaza genocide may not be in the news, but it hasn’t stopped