BRITISH ELECTION NOW A REAL FIGHT: A new poll by YouGov shows the U.K. Conservative party just five points ahead of Labour. Their lead has shrunk from 24 points to five during the course of the campaign. If this result carries through to polling day Theresa May would be in danger of losing her majority entirely. The polling came in the wake of the Manchester terror attack, but is likely to also reflect a bad week for the Conservatives following their much-criticised aged care policy that opponents labeled a âdementia tax.â ANOTHER FRUITFUL EURO MANSPLAINING SUMMIT: This yearâ™s European Business Summit may well have set a record for the number of all-male panels and overall on-stage male to female ratio at a major policy event. Hereâ™s the breakdown: All four ânetworking momentsâ â what ordinary people call lunch and dinner â had men-only speaker lineups. Nine out of 10 small âagoraâ format sessions had all-male panels. Twelve of 19 âmeet the expertsâ sessions only featured men. Of the 16 plenary session panelists, 15 were men. Of the 60 roundtable speakers, 50 were men. Of the top 40 speakers advertised on the summit website, 37 were men. There were plenty of female moderators, though. HOW TO COMMUNICATE BETTER: The European Commission has a communication problem. The first step of its recovery program â admitting it has a problem â is over. The second step was to ask Luc Van den Brande to produce a report âon how to strengthen [its] dialogue with the general public.â The choice of author is unlikely to bring mass disruption to the EU communications sphere. Van den Brande is a 71-year-old former minister-president of Flanders, who also ran the EUâ™s Committee of the Regions for two years. Heâ™ll be looking at âthe Commissionâ™s outreach and synergiesâ with other organizations, especially âthe local and regional dimension of communication.â EU TELLS BELGIUM TO TACKLE AIR POLLUTION: As part of the European Commissionâ™s annual economic boot camp for national governments, confusingly labeled the âEuropean semesterâ or âspring package,â Belgium was told to fix its smog problem. Belgium suffers from âserious air pollution problemsâ and faces an urgent challenge in upgrading basic rail and road infrastructure, particularly in âeliminating missing links between the main economic hubs,â the recommendations said. JAM TODAY, JAM TOMORROW: Belgium already has a proposed solution for taming traffic jams and air pollution. Instead of trying the eliminate the huge numbers of free company cars that clog up the countryâ™s roads and tax system, the green-minded Brussels government will instead join them. Businesses offering their staff a company car will soon be obliged to also offer them either free train transport, a free bicycle, or free membership of the bike-sharing scheme Villo. The companies will have to foot the bill. In other words, people already getting a tax break for their car will also get a second one. **A MESSAGE FROM IBEC, IRISH BUSINESS: Ireland is an island off an island off a continent, yet it is central to a globalized business community and one of the EUâ™s greatest economic success stories. Brexit will uniquely challenge Ireland through trade and investment flows, but it remains a beacon destination for mobile, globalized corporations and talent. Learn more.** HEAVEN IS … MOLENBEEK: Four real estate developers are seizing the opportunity of U.S. President Donald Trumpâ™s visit to Belgium this week to unveil their plans for Sint-Jans-Molenbeek. Together, they are investing in the construction of 450 new houses, apartments, schools, kindergartens, offices and stores. Their slogan? âMolenbeek is not a hellhole, but a heaven for investors.â THREE MACRONISTAS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE: The Benelux constituency in the French national assembly election (11 of the assemblyâ™s 577 seats are for French nationals living elsewhere) is set to go all in for Emmanuel Macron. Every candidate on the ticket says they are on Macronâ™s team, so heâ™s guaranteed to have another supporter in parliament. The current MP, Socialist Philip Cordery, endorsed Macron before the presidential first round. However, it is Pieyre Alexandre Anglade, an adviser to Czech liberal MEP Pavel TeliÄka, who is the official Macron candidate. Another contender, Muriel Réus â who launched the group âWomen with François Fillonâ during the Les Républicains primary â has also pledged her support to the new French centrist president. Réus told French website Le Lab âif we look carefully at the three manifestos â Emmanuel, Alain Juppé and François Fillon â the same liberal principals are being expressed.â With those verbal flexibility skills, Réus will surely be in the running for a spin doctor job if she loses the election. FEUD OF THE WEEK Mariano Rajoy vs. Carles Puigdemont: The Spanish PM and the president of Catalonia are always feuding, of course. But the rhetoric heated up this week over Catalan plans to hold a binding referendum on independence in the fall. On Monday, Rajoy challenged Puigdemont to a face-to-face debate in congress about his planned ballot, which he dubbed âpolitical, juridical and social nonsense.â The Catalan leader responded defiantly at a press conference in Madrid town hall, where a few dozen far-right activists welcomed him by shouting âPuigdemont to prison.â This oneâ™s going to run and run. [Untitled-1] QUOTE OF THE WEEK “Evil losers” â U.S. President Donald Trump on those responsible for the May 22 Manchester attack that killed 22 people. BY THE NUMBERS 10: Number of seconds Facebookâ™s new monitoring staff have to decide whether to delete a questionable piece of content, according to leaked internal documents seen by the Guardian. 62: Percentage of people worried about weapons of mass destruction, according to a global survey. 24: The maximum number of hours U.S. President Donald Trump will spend in Brussels. 2,000: The number of extra local police officers on duty for the Trump visit. GAFFES AND LAUGHS: FOR PEAT€™S SAKE: Ireland has been awarded the gold medal at the European Fossil Fuel Subsidy Awards, a mock awards ceremony staged by Climate Action Network Europe and a coalition of NGOs. Members of the public voted on a shortlist of the âdeadliest, dirtiest and sneakiest subsidies to fossil fuels in Europe.â The winner was burning peat for electricity, an ancient heating tactic that the NGOs think should stay in the history books. âBurning peat produces just 9 percent of our electricity but 22 percent of our climate pollution from power generation,â said Meaghan Carmody of Stop Climate Chaos. VIOLINING FOR EUROPE: Miha PogaÄnik â billed by the Slovenian government as âviolinist, visionary and cultural ambassadorâ â will perform a âmusical strategy for development of polyphonic European identityâ on May 30 at the Slovenian permanent representation to the EU in Brussels. What does that mean? Well, seems heâ™ll âdemonstrate with his violin the method of transferring formative forces of masterpieces to the field of business and politics, igniting idealism urgently needed for EU identity to emerge.â Thatâ™s all right, then. BIG IN ESTONIA: Nigel Farage keeps rising to greater and greater heights. On Friday he was keynote speaker at Estoniaâ™s top management conference. The Estonians were nothing if not brutally honest about why they turned to Farage for advice and inspiration. A recent survey conducted by the organizers âfails to show Estonian managers having made any progress in the development of leadership qualities and competencies over the last five years. Among the weakest are our collaboration skills.â Farage is, of course, noted for those very skills. MAY€™S STRONG AND STABLE DIET: The U.K. election campaign has at times appeared more like a coronation than a contest. That is starting to change thanks to Theresa Mayâ™s ability to literally shake in the face of hard questions. Itâ™s not the best look when your whole campaign pitch is based on stability. Playbookâ™s favorite example came when May was asked by a parent if she would ensure children would be guaranteed a vegan option for lunch in school. May, visibly shaken, said it was the first time she had ever been asked a question about veganism. âIâ™m afraid I eat meat,â was all she could manage in response. WHO€™S UP MARIANNE THYSSEN: Inequality and higher wages are finally getting a place in the EUâ™s national economic proposals. PEDRO SáNCHEZ: The former leader of the Spanish Socialist Party staged a comeback after winning a vote to become party leader for a second time. WHO€™S DOWN: SIGMAR GABRIEL: The German foreign minister was shot down by Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble after he suggested Greece should be let off the debt hook. ALEXIS TSIPRAS: Despite implementing reforms and having better economic results than expected, the Greek prime minister failed to get Eurogroup to agree to debt relief. **A MESSAGE FROM IBEC, IRISH BUSINESS: If geography shapes destiny, then Ireland is disadvantaged being an island off an island that wants to sever its EU ties. Yet, Ireland is thriving. Its globalized business model is driving living standards to heights that defy the proponents of Single Market centripetal forces. Its biggest threat, however, is from Brexit. The trade implications are obvious, but less so is the investment challenge from Britain. Ireland is, and will be, on the EU team in this competition to attract mobile corporate investment. Hampering your team by overly restrictive state aid rules, fiscal rules that take no account of abnormal population flows, and centralized encroachment corporate tax sovereignty is self defeating. Ireland has gone from economic laggard to the fastest growing economy in the developed world. It is the EUâ™s poster country and is based on real business successes. Ireland: a model of substance. Learn more.**
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