Month: November 2022

Memperkasa hak pengguna syarikat penerbangan

Setiap hari lebih daripada 100,000 penerbangan berlaku di seluruh dunia.

Dalam kesibukan itu, sudah tentu akan ada risiko gangguan seperti penerbangan ditunda atau dibatalkan, kehilangan atau kerosakan bagasi, dinafikan menaiki pesawat kerana lebihan tempahan, kehilangan tempahan atau masalah yang lain.

Semakin kerap penerbangan, semakin tinggi kebarangkalian masalah seperti itu timbul.

Oleh sebab itu, Kod Perlindungan Pengguna Penerbangan Malaysia (MACPC) diwujudkan pada 2016. Ia bertujuan untuk melindungi hak dan kepentingan pengguna dalam usaha untuk mewujudkan industri penerbangan yang berorientasikan pengguna.

Setelah enam tahun dilaksanakan Suruhanjaya Penerbangan Malaysia (Mavcom) menerima lebih daripada 22,000 aduan, dengan separuh pertama 2022 sahaja sebanyak 1,251 aduan direkodkan.

Sebanyak 99.1 peratus daripadanya melibatkan syarikat penerbangan.

Daripada jumlah itu 577 (46.1 peratus) aduan adalah mengenai pembatalan penerbangan, penjadualan semula dan tempahan dalam talian secara kolektif.

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War on Plastics Misguided

Do you feel bad when you see pictures of plastic waste in the world’s oceans? Most certainly, and any decent human being would. In fact, governments fail to do enough to stop the dumping of plastic waste into the environment and are still inefficient at holding companies to account for these ecological disasters.

That said, the solution of many environmental campaigners – banning all plastic items and packaging – is misguided.

A new report by Greenpeace outlines that a large section of plastic waste in the United States is not recycled and pairs this with its advocacy for banning single-use plastic items. In fact, campaigners have argued for the General Services Administration (GSA) to cease all acquisition of single-use plastic items.

This ignores the fact that we need plastic for many things: ranging from medical equipment to cleaning gear, from packaging to extend shelf-life to containers to keep our food intact for delivery. Neither the federal government nor individual consumers can afford to phase out plastic.

That said, we shouldn’t preserve plastic for plastics’ sake (even if it is associated with countless jobs). In fact, all too often, plastics outperform their substitute products in efficiency and environmental impact — as anyone who has tried to use a single-use paper bag in the rain can attest to.

As I’ve outlined for Newsmax before, single-use plastic shopping bags outperform all its alternatives when it comes to the environment, not least because cotton or paper bags are not reused as often as they should be, but also because consumers reuse plastic bags as an alternative to bin liners.

If we were to abandon plastic packaging, we would reduce the shelf-life of groceries and eliminate ready-made meals that consumers want. This would increase food waste. Since food production has a carbon footprint far higher than plastic packaging, this move would be counterproductive.

Let’s also not forget that about 11% of ocean plastic pollution results from microplastics, and 75%-86% of plastic in the Pacific Ocean garbage patch comes directly from offshore fishing, not consumer products. Not all waste is littered, and the same applies to plastic waste; it is thus misleading for activists to unfairly amalgamate both aspects of plastic waste disposal.

Of Americans living in cities with a population of over 125,000, 90% already have access to recycling facilities for single-use plastic items. What the United States needs is even more access to these facilities and the boosting of advanced recycling, which not just washes and compounds polymers, but dissolves plastics into their original compounds.

This aspect of the circular economy will make plastics a more sustainable consumer good. On top of the existing recycling rate, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the specific goal of increasing the recycling rate to 50% by 2030.

Any rule or regulation that restricts the choices of consumers is bad. However, it somehow is even worse when the suggested rule does not even achieve the results it intended. Banning plastics would not just deprive us of products we need but also increase our carbon footprint in many sectors.

Originally published here

Economía colaborativa y tres ciudades de la región

El Consumer Choice Center ha presentado su tercer índice anual de economía colaborativa, en el que clasifica algunas de las ciudades más dinámicas del mundo en función de su apertura a la economía colaborativa.

Este índice único en el mundo es la herramienta para que los consumidores tomen decisiones informadas sobre su próximo destino urbano.

El índice clasifica 60 ciudades de todo el mundo, 6 de ellas de América Latina. Las dos ciudades con mejor puntuación en el Índice de Economía Colaborativa de América Latina de 2021 (otro índice del Consumer Choice Center) fueron Bogotá y Santiago de Chile. Sin embargo, en la escena internacional, las dos ciudades tienen problemas para competir con destinos mundiales más abiertos (y por tanto más atractivos), por lo que han terminado en la mitad inferior del índice.

Por otra parte, tres ciudades latinoamericanas -São Paulo, Buenos Aires y Ciudad de México- figuran en el TOP 10 mundial de las ciudades más favorables a la economía colaborativa. Estas ciudades demuestran una extraordinaria apertura a todos los servicios de economía colaborativa considerados en el estudio. En particular, todas ellas ofrecen aplicaciones de entrega ultrarrápida, una categoría totalmente nueva añadida al índice de este año.

“Para sacar el máximo partido al índice, puedes utilizarlo como un menú de opciones que te ayude a elegir la ciudad que mejor se adapte a tu estilo de vida. Si te gusta el transporte compacto y respetuoso con el medio ambiente, en nuestro índice puedes ver que los patinetes eléctricos ya no se pueden alquilar en la capital de Colombia, pero que sí puedes disfrutar de ellos en las concurridas calles de Ciudad de México”, señala Anna Arunashvili, Knowledge Management Associate del Consumer Choice Center.

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Democrats’ ‘newest megadonor’ plummets on Election Day, forced to sell crypto company to biggest rival

Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of crypto exchange FTX and considered the Democrats’ “newest megadonor” ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, reportedly saw around $6 billion of withdrawals within 72 hours before Tuesday morning, forcing him to sell the company to its biggest rival on Election Day. 

Reuters reported that Changpeng Zhao, the leader of competitor Binance, said the company signed a nonbinding agreement on Tuesday to buy FTX’s non-U.S. unit to help cover a “liquidity crunch” at the rival exchange. The stunning bailout came about as American voters simultaneously went to the polls. 

“This is a truly crazy event in startup world. Dot-com bust level event,” tech reporter Eric Newcomer tweeted of the sale. 

Bankman-Fried, 30, was the second-biggest individual Democratic donor this election cycle behind top-ranking liberal billionaire contributor George Soros. He ranked sixth on the overall list of individual donors for the 2022 midterms regarding federal contributions. 

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Orban’s Price Caps on Food and Fuel will lead to shortages

Budapest, HU: This week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling party announced that the third wave of price caps would be introduced by having a fixed price on potatoes and eggs. Commenting on this move, Consumer Choice Center’s Government Affairs Manager Zoltán Kész:

“Hungarians experienced state-controlled price caps under communism, and we don’t have good memories of that. It leads to shortages that we already see emerging again, the rise of black markets and poverty.”

“In the past year, we have seen petrol stations close down, empty supermarket shelves, and soaring prices of other products. It is very bad for consumers to experience an increase of close to 50% in food prices and to be faced with one of the worst devaluations of the Hungarian currency”, says Kész.

“Fixing the prices of fuel, chicken, or mortgage rates will not help tackle inflation, which is expected to reach 25% by the end of the year. We have the world’s highest VAT with a rate of 27%, but our government still manages to blame everyone else for skyrocketing consumer prices. Before freezing prices at the expense of availability and business closures, we should first bring down our sales taxes by a third. This would massively reduce the burden on consumers”, concludes Kész.

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An Overzealous FTC Isn’t Good for Consumers or Startups

Last month, Facebook’s parent Meta Platforms asked an American judge to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s lawsuit attempting to block Meta’s proposed acquisition of virtual content producer Within Unlimited- maker of the Supernatural virtual reality fitness app. The lawsuit makes the tenuous, speculative claim that since VR platform Meta already owns many VR apps, including movement-based ones like Beat Saber that compete for users with Supernatural, a “monopoly” will “tend to be created” and competition and consumers will be worse-off if the deal proceeds. Never mind that Supernatural faces competition from more similar squarely fitness-focused VR apps that Meta doesn’t own, like Liteboxer and FitXR, as well as non-VR fitness apps like those offered by Apple and Peloton.

It’s the latest in the FTC’s many efforts, under current chairperson Lina Khan, to more aggressively contest tech acquisitions on the basis that tech giants have too much power and influence, even where harm to consumers is spurious or non-existent. Although large tech giants like Meta, Google and Amazon may indeed be guilty of wrongdoings that warrant legal sanction, the stifling of legitimate business deals by unelected bureaucrats will only harm consumers and the viability of start-ups by deterring competition and innovation in the cutthroat, investment-intensive tech world.

Since the 1970s, antitrust enforcement has focused on whether a business practice actually hurts consumers, rather than harming their competitors or some other stakeholder. After all, elected officials are capable of passing laws that target concrete harms corporations inflict on workers and the public. And private businesses shouldn’t expect protection from cutthroat competition since it’s a consequence of doing business. Consumers benefit from companies having to deliver new, better or cheaper products to attract and retain customers. So long as a firm doesn’t use its position to harm consumers by restricting output relative to prices, there’s no reason why antitrust regulators like the FTC should stifle its expansion. Especially when that expansion benefits consumers.

This is especially true for tech. Start-ups depend on millions in investment to develop and deploy their products. Investors value these firms based not only on the viability of their products, but on the firm’s potential resale value. Larger firms also often acquire smaller ones to apply their resources, existing expertise and economies of scale to further develop their ideas or to expand them to more users.

Making mergers and acquisitions more expensive, without strong evidence they’ll hurt consumers, makes it tougher for start-ups to attract the capital they need and will only deter innovators from striking out on their own or developing ideas that could improve our lives in an environment where 90% of start-ups eventually fail and 58% expect to be acquired.

It doesn’t matter that the FTC’s merger challenges may fail in court or even before their own internal administrative judges, including recently under chair Khan. The risk and cost of lawsuits themselves deter investment and beneficial deals. Especially given the uncertainty posed by incorporating vague, amorphous concepts like “fairness” into antitrust analysis that could lead to arbitrary decisions inconsistent with the rule of law. As noted by the late Supreme Court Justice Stewart, the only consistency in antitrust cases when there’s no clear guiding principle like the consumer welfare standard is that “the government always wins.”

Conversely, opponents of the “consumer welfare” standard, including Khan, argue that it fails prevent the concentration of economic and political power. However, this prioritizes speculative harm from a firm growing too big over real harm from giving governments and regulators ability to wield power for political ends or of those lobbying them.

Former presidents Johnson and Nixon both used threats of antitrust enforcement to coerce media outlets into favorably covering their governments. And it’s no secret or surprise that the FTC is frequently approached by firms urging it to deploy taxpayer resources towards antitrust suits against their competitors. More recently, Mark Zuckerberg, who has openly asked for politicians to tell him what content to censor, admitted that Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story after government agency pressure. Conservatives should be especially conscious about encouraging agencies to target companies on vague or speculative grounds.

The FTC has the resources it needs to go after malicious actors that definitively harm consumers, as evinced by its multimillion-dollar settlement with extramarital affair website Ashley Madison over poor cybersecurity and data privacy practices and consumer deception, and other successful cases including chair Khan’s commendable pursuit of businesses that illegally collect and misuse children’s data. These are a far better use of the agency’s time and taxpayer funding than a zealous approach to blocking acquisitions and other legitimate business practices that could benefit consumers and that the innovative start-up ecosystem depends on.

Originally published here

Europe’s Food Protectionism Is Taking on a New Dimension

The war in Ukraine has affected Europe’s agricultural sector and slowed the ambitions of the European Union to enact sweeping new farming rules. Reforms in Brussels are modeled on the so-called Farm-to-Fork strategy, a roadmap through which the union wants to slash pesticide use, reduce farmland and push organic agriculture well beyond its current market share. In the wake of Ukraine’s inability to export food to its European counterparts, some countries, including France, have argued that the EU should take a step back on the planned legislative changes, which had already come under fire from farmers.

In the Netherlands, thousands of livestock farmers protested the government for weeks over its new rules to reduce nitrous oxide, a byproduct created when manure decomposes. The Dutch government’s approach was to minimize livestock farms, even if it meant buying out farmers.

Farming representatives cautioned the European Union that Farm-to-Fork will undermine the European food sector and that more data is needed on the effect of the strategy on the farming sector. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture studied the European plans, it found a food price inflation risk of 20 percent to 53 percent and even a high risk of a drop in gross domestic product as a direct result of the policy. According to Politico, the European Parliament’s agriculture committee asked the European Commission to revise its impact assessment, as it does not consider the effects of COVID-19, food price inflation or the war in Ukraine.

Despite the internal fights over agricultural reforms, the European Commission is going ahead with its policy of banning certain imports into Europe. It announced that imports of products containing residues of insecticides belonging to the neonicotinoid group will be banned from 2026. According to the EU, there is a risk of those compounds harming bees.

Whether that is the case warrants its own scientific discussion, but more important, this move marks a significant and worrying turn in Europe’s approach to agricultural regulation. More than just following a political goal of reducing crop protection chemicals in Europe, it now tries to impose those rules on its trade partners. It is most certainly one of the more transparent attempts at policy through trade, but it isn’t a very believable one. 

In Europe, numerous countries are not respecting the EU’s ban on neonics: France has a three-year derogationon neonics because its sugar beet industry would have been wiped out without it. Belgium also uses neonics for its sugar beet production. Denmark produces neonics for the EU and the non-EU markets. Whenever EU rules don’t reflect what is needed in farming, individual EU member states can implement emergency provisions to re-authorize a chemical compound.

Even though the European Commission says that it consulted with our World Trade Organization members on the move, it is likely that its decision will be contested. The United States formed opposition earlier this year against a similar decision of the EU to ban the import of products treated with the insecticide sulfoxaflor, a neonic substitute.

The unfortunate reality is that EU leaders have promised more ambitious targets than they can keep. The Farm-to-Fork strategy was unveiled in May 2020, when the full scale of the COVID-19 pandemic was unknown, inflation was stable and there was no full-scale war in Ukraine. 

The commission is facing the dilemma of having set a political, not scientific, pesticide-reduction target without a strategy of substitution, surrounded by crises it can hardly control. However, instead of walking back its ambitious targets, it now sets the stage for another needless trade war, the likes of which we have seen enough over the last few years.

Originally published here

Consumers Stand to Lose From Swipe Card Regulations

Politicians and a coalition of powerful retail giants are pushing bills intended to limit the fees that businesses pay when a customer buys things with a credit or debit card. 

Bipartisan Senate Amendment 6201 would require cards to allow businesses to route payments through networks unaffiliated with Visa or Mastercard — the nation’s two biggest card issuers and would force issuers to make all payment networks available to retailers for routing transactions, regardless of which one the customer wants.

The amendment’s proponents argue that it will undermine Visa and Mastercard’s hold on the card sector, where they collectively hold 80 percent of the market share while providing some inflation relief to consumers by lowering transaction costs that businesses typically pass on to them. 

But the reality is murkier. The amendment doesn’t mention consumers, and there’s no guarantee we’ll face lower prices at the store or online. Instead, consumers stand to lose from fewer choices, less credit access, less secure transactions, and the evaporation of reward programs and other benefits.

Card interchange fees typically account for just 1 percent to 3 percent of the final price, even when passed on to consumers. Previous restrictions, like the 2010 debit card interchange fee cap, didn’t even lead to cost savings for most businesses. Smaller businesses often saw their costs increase. Only a small number of large retailers experienced lower costs. And 22 percent of retailers increased prices charged to the consumers, while 1 percent lowered prices. 

A lack of significant perceived benefits for most retailers could partly explain why Australia, where financial institutions have allowed merchants to choose lowest cost payment networks for routing customer transactions since 2018, has seen low take-up rates for this functionality.

Moreover, interchange fees help pay for various services, including rewards programs, interest-free periods, and payment guarantees, so merchants don’t have to worry about a customer’s credit history, security protocols, and other banking services. Forcing card issuers to reduce the fees they can levy means cuts to these benefits and programs — reducing consumer choice while deterring fraud protection and cybersecurity innovation. 

It’s not just the wealthy who rely on these benefits. Eighty-six percent of credit cardholders have active rewards cards, including 77 percent with a household income lower than $50,000.

Australia’s 2003 interchange fee restrictions resulted in fewer services, fewer benefits and higher annual fees. Americans could soon feel similar pain.

Cardholders are also likely to bear at least some of the estimated $5 billion cost of the technical infrastructure needed for issuers to comply with the amendment. Banks have also responded to previous interchange fee restrictions by hiking the feesthat Americans are charged for opening and using checking accounts, with fewer banks offering no-fee accounts.

Lower-income Americans could be harshly affected by reduced access to credit. Credit unions that serve underbanked communities are already expressing concerns about the policy. Credit unions and community-owned banks also rely more on interchange fees to stay afloat than larger banks, which depend more on interest rates. Lower interchange fees could force these institutions to raise interest rates on credit cards, even though they serve a higher proportion of cardholders who don’t carry a balance or don’t pay penalty fees.

Congress can provide long-term inflation and cost-of-living relief by repealing costly, counterproductive regulations that benefit moneyed special interests at ordinary Americans’ expense. 

This makes more sense than a misguided payment system regulation that will lower choice, benefits and payment security for cardholders while putting pressure on banks and credit unions to hike interest rates and fees.

Originally published here

The Farming Reform Europe May (not) Need

Agriculture is an issue which is viewed very differently depending on which European country you look at it from. Whether it is the subsidies or the methods, it seems like there is no real understanding among all the EU member states. In this edition of the CEA Talks podcast, host Zoltán Kész is joined by Bill Wirtz, senior policy analyst at the Consumer Choice Center. 

Mr Wirtz starts by saying that in agriculture, currently there have been very interesting developments, for example the ‘farm to fork’ policy. As for beginners, often the European Union establishes framework, which is essentially telling us where we want to go and then it creates legislation to make it happen: “The ‘farm to fork’ strategy is essentially what I would call the most significant overhaul of agriculture in the history of the European Union. Listeners will know that depending on the budget between 30 and 40% of the EU budget It’s already given out and subsidies to farmers and now the EU gets into the policy of how is the food produced and what exactly is the output that we have there so the farm to fork strategy publishes very ambitious targets to reach, it also tries to be part of the European Green Deal and reach sustainability goals.” The CCC experts argues that the strategy wants to cut synthetic pesticide use half by 2030, cut the fertilizer use half, as well as increase organic agriculture production to 25%. Presently, organic agriculture represents about 4% in the US, while this number is 8% in Europe. However, it’s quite divided between countries so if you’re in Bulgaria and if you go to the supermarket, the likelihood of you finding organic food products is quite low because it represents about 0.3% of the overall market, but in Germany or in Austria (where the organic agriculture is about 25%), you have entire an supermarket chain dedicated to organic food, and essentially, this is where we bump into some issues. 

Mr Wirtz starts by saying that in agriculture, currently there have been very interesting developments, for example the ‘farm to fork’ policy. As for beginners, often the European Union establishes framework, which is essentially telling us where we want to go and then it creates legislation to make it happen: “The ‘farm to fork’ strategy is essentially what I would call the most significant overhaul of agriculture in the history of the European Union. Listeners will know that depending on the budget between 30 and 40% of the EU budget It’s already given out and subsidies to farmers and now the EU gets into the policy of how is the food produced and what exactly is the output that we have there so the farm to fork strategy publishes very ambitious targets to reach, it also tries to be part of the European Green Deal and reach sustainability goals.” The CCC experts argues that the strategy wants to cut synthetic pesticide use in half by 2030, cut the fertilizer use half, as well as increase organic agriculture production to 25%. Presently, organic agriculture represents about 4% in the US, while this number is 8% in Europe. However, it’s quite divided between countries so if you’re in Bulgaria and if you go to the supermarket, the likelihood of you finding organic food products is quite low because it represents about 0.3% of the overall market, but in Germany or in Austria (where the organic agriculture is about 25%), you have entire an supermarket chain dedicated to organic food, and essentially, this is where we bump into some issues. 

Related to Central and Eastern Europe, Mr Wirtz mentions that the region is described as one “lagging behind”, in terms of organic farming and consumption. Not enough organic production, as well as the high use of synthetic pesticides are mentioned here. He also says that the region has been at the forefront of questioning the real effects of farm to fork and whether we should implement this because it’s more of a political goal than a scientific goal. The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia raised concerns on whether this is something we should do because the strategy was drafted before COVID or the War in Ukraine: “While the world turned to its toes the EU has not yet adapted its predictions of what is going to happen with the project. As these events show, our food system is quite dependent on, as Ukraine being the EU’s main trade partner for non-GMO soybeans, 41% of rapeseed, and 26% of honey. In fertilizers, we usually get nitrogen-based fertilizers from Russia, which provides about 25% of the world’s exports but currently under sanctions. So, as we look at the situation, we realize that huge chunks of our agricultural dependency is currently unavailable. So, if our imports are compromised but at the same time the farm to fork strategy wants us to reduce farmland by 10% these ideas just do not add up at the moment. In my opinion, especially countries in Central and Eastern Europe are and will be experiencing this loss of trade.”

As an analyst at the Consumer Choice Center, Mr Wirtz also emphasized the important work his organization is doing in the European Union in order to change the policy. He says that “In general, as any organization should require from legislation is sort of an impact assessment, basically asking them to tell us what happens if you do this, and at least create awareness for the public, and a common line of understanding. However, the EU’s impact assessments have been very charitable towards their own strategies. Fortunately, we have more unbiased data on this. The USDA did an impact assessment as to what happens if the EU implements this: production down at 12%, food prices up by 17%, exports down by 20%, and it would cost us about $71 billion. So, while this is obviously very concerning, we’ve been asking policymakers to request an impact assessment which not only considers all implications of this strategy but also takes into account the effects of COVID and the war in Ukraine. Before it had a chance, but now with many trading partners unavailable, it is just impossible. The problem is that some political people have staked their reputation on these projects (an unfortunate reality of Brussels politics in general when in the departments or some policy makers act based on their own political reputation, they need legislation to pass, because without it, they have nothing to show.“

When asked about future agricultural innovations, Mr Wirtz responded that they found a lot of the solutions that do address these problems including reducing synthetic pesticide. The use of genetic engineering is a prevalent option. He states that “Emmanuel Charpentier, French scientist who has done research at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. With the scientist from the University of California they developed breakthrough gene editing technology. Essentially it works by removing undesirable DNA from a crop so that it responses to weather changes better by making it more resilient as an example. What people generally known as GMO (genetically modified organisms) uses ‘transgenesis’, which combines DNA from multiple organisms to improve them in a desired way. Now gene editing is the is newest of the new what we have there and what we can do in solving food production problems. The technology is quite amazing, you can make nuts that don’t cause allergies for people who have nut allergies, you can make gluten-free wheat, you can make all the crops more resistant so that they need less water and so on. As a result of that and what you end up with is you produce more food with less resources and I think that’s the amazing story of humanity in a way, because if you think about it, even though we have virtually used up all the available land for agriculture, this technology not only allows us to feed a growing population, but do so with less resources and on lass overall land. I think that’s truly amazing that we have the technology to produce food that is affordable, safe, and reliable, and I think that’s the route we should go down unfortunately right now that’s still restricted by legislation, but I see some positive input coming from EU of people who want to change that.”

CRYPTOMONNAIES : QUE PROPOSE L’UNION EUROPÉENNE ?

Les cryptomonnaies, NFT et autres tokens divers et variés attirent toute l’attention des législateurs européens. 

Le règlement de l’Union européenne sur les marchés de crypto-actifs (MiCA), en chantier depuis début 2018, est enfin finalisé. Cette législation vise à « harmoniser le cadre européen pour l’émission et la négociation de divers types de tokens cryptographiques dans le cadre de la stratégie de l’Europe en matière de finance numérique ».

Depuis sa première annonce, il a suscité de nombreuses discussions et quelques controverses. Il a longtemps été redouté – mais aussi salué – par l’industrie des cryptomonnaies.

Examinons pourquoi ce texte de loi pourrait être l’un des plus importants que nous ayons vus pour le marché des cryptos jusqu’à présent.

Le MiCA sera applicable dans tous les États membres de l’UE, ainsi qu’avec toutes les entreprises opérant dans l’UE. Il a d’abord été discuté suite au marché haussier de 2017, une période enivrante où le Bitcoin atteignait de nouveaux sommets. A l’époque, plus d’un millier de tokens ont commencé à fleurir au milieu d’Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs, l’équivalent des introductions en Bourse pour les actions), et plus de la moitié avaient disparu moins de quatre mois après leur création.

Un marché plus rapide que la loi

La Commission européenne a publié son plan d’action fintech en mars 2018 et a demandé à l’Autorité bancaire européenne (ABE) et à l’Autorité européenne des marchés financiers (AEMF) d’examiner si le cadre réglementaire européen existant en matière de services financiers s’appliquait aux crypto-actifs. Après avoir décidé que la plupart des crypto-actifs n’entraient pas dans le champ d’application de la réglementation financière actuelle, les régulateurs ont commencé à travailler sur un nouveau cadre législatif dans le cadre du « Digital Finance Package », qui est finalement devenu le MiCA.

Depuis le début de ces discussions, le marché des cryptomonnaies a connu un marché baissier, atteignant son point le plus bas dans les premiers jours suivant les annonces de la pandémie. Un autre marché haussier a suivi, avant que la tendance à la baisse reprenne le dessus, fin 2021.

De nouvelles craintes réglementaires sont apparues au cours des deux premiers trimestres de 2022. Puis des événements tels que l’effondrement du stablecoin Terra et les faillites de Three Arrows Capital et Celsisus ont suivi.

Dans un environnement aussi changeant, il n’est pas difficile de comprendre que le champ d’application du MiCA a dû évoluer par rapport à sa conception initiale. Les NFT n’existaient pratiquement pas à l’époque de la conception de la législation ; le « DeFi Summer » n’était pas d’actualité ; Meta s’appelait encore Facebook, et travaillait à ce moment-là sur son « Libra », un projet fort méprisé (vous en souvenez-vous ?).

Il n’a pas été facile de créer un cadre juridique offrant une sécurité juridique à la fois aux investisseurs et aux émetteurs de cryptomonnaies dans ce type d’environnement, et les régulateurs sont retournés à la table à dessin à plusieurs reprises. Ce que nous avons devant nous aujourd’hui sera le texte de loi le plus important pour les cryptomonnaies jusqu’à maintenant.

De nouvelles règles pour tout le monde

L’une des principales règles qui affectera le secteur est l’obligation à laquelle devront se soumettre les Crypto Asset Service Providers (CASP), c’est-à-dire les entreprises d’investissement et toute personne fournissant des services de garde (« staking »). Ils seront responsables de toute perte de fonds de clients, sauf s’ils sont en mesure de prouver qu’elle résulte d’événements indépendants de leur volonté. Un certain nombre de mesures visent à prévenir les délits d’initiés et les manipulations de marché.

Au cours du processus d’élaboration du MiCA, plusieurs discussions animées ont eu lieu sur la preuve de travail (« proof of work »), ce que l’on appelle le « minage », et les effets potentiels de cette pratique sur l’environnement. Malgré la pression importante exercée par certains groupes, les législateurs ont, à juste titre, évité toute interdiction potentielle de la preuve de travail, qui est l’une des méthodes utilisées pour vérifier les transactions sur la blockchain (par exemple celle de Bitcoin). Toutefois, les acteurs du marché des cryptomonnaies seront tenus de déclarer des informations sur leur empreinte climatique.

Quant aux protocoles financiers décentralisés, ils n’entrent pas dans le champ d’application du MiCA et la Commission européenne publiera un rapport distinct à leur sujet en 2023.

Les cryptomonnaies stables, ou stablecoins, ont fait l’objet d’une grande préoccupation et de nombreux débats lors du processus de rédaction du MiCA. Suite aux préoccupations exprimées par le Conseil européen, des restrictions supplémentaires sur l’émission et l’utilisation de ces monnaies ont été ajoutées à la législation. Les stablecoinspourraient selon eux constituer une menace pour la souveraineté monétaire et « les banques centrales devraient pouvoir demander à l’autorité compétente de retirer l’autorisation d’émettre des tokens référencés par des actifs en cas de menaces sérieuses ».

Comme indiqué dans le texte, les tokens référencés par des actifs (ART) doivent pouvoir être rachetés à tout moment au prix d’achat, ce qui rend plus ou moins impossible le lancement de tout stablecoin non libellé en devises. Cela rend presque impossible l’innovation dans ce domaine et prive les consommateurs européens de la possibilité de participer à de tels investissements potentiels. Avec les plafonds d’émission et les limites sur les paiements à grande échelle pour les stablecoins non libellés en euros, cela crée un environnement confus et peu convivial pour les consommateurs lorsqu’il s’agit de ces tokens.

Et pour les NFT ?

Même avec toutes les mises à jour et la volonté de suivre les évolutions du secteur du crypto, le MiCA ne couvre pas certains éléments très importants de la crypto-économie actuelle.

Les NFT sont pour la plupart hors du champ d’application de cette législation. Cependant, les membres du Parlement européen ont fait valoir que de nombreux NFT sont en fait utilisés comme des instruments financiers et pourraient être soumis à des normes différentes.

En revanche, les NFT fractionnés, ainsi que les « tokens non fongibles dans une grande série ou une collection doivent être considérés comme un indicateur de leur fongibilité » et seront traités non pas comme des crypto-actifs uniques, similaires à l’art numérique ou aux objets de collection.

Les actifs ou les droits représentés par les NFT doivent également être uniques et non fongibles pour qu’un actif soit considéré comme tel. Le fait que les autorités nationales chargées de l’application de la loi puissent adopter des points de vue divergents sur la question de savoir si un actif peut être considéré comme non fongible ou non, s’il nécessite un livre blanc (whitepaper) ou comment il sera réglementé, est quelque chose qui devrait être préoccupant. Cela pourrait en effet potentiellement créer de nombreuses incohérences et préoccupations tant pour les émetteurs que pour les consommateurs. L’UE devrait publier un autre rapport sur les NFT afin d’apporter plus de clarté dans ce domaine.

Une fois que les traducteurs en auront terminé avec la version finale du texte, on s’attend à ce que le MiCA soit publié officiellement aux alentours d’avril 2023, ce qui signifierait que les règles relatives aux cryptomonnaies stables commenceront à être appliquées en avril 2024 et que les règles du CASP seront appliquées à partir d’octobre 2024.

L’Union européenne étant la troisième économie mondiale, les effets de cette législation auront un large impact sur le secteur, sur les consommateurs et les investisseurs, et auront certainement une certaine influence sur les autres régulateurs dans le monde.

Le fait que l’UE soit à l’avant-garde de la réglementation de l’innovation technologique est quelque chose que nous n’avons pas souvent vu dans le passé.

Avec l’adoption du MiCA, il appartiendra aux acteurs du secteur et aux consommateurs de s’assurer que les mesures introduisent la certitude et permettent à l’innovation de se développer. Et, si ces priorités sont maintenues, que ces mesures soient copiées et appliquées ailleurs. Quoi qu’il en soit, un long et passionnant voyage nous attend dans le domaine.

Originally published here

Ford takes aim at housing gatekeepers

Ontario seeks to reform zoning rules that slow construction and increase costs

Last week Doug Ford’s Ontario government introduced legislation that will seek to rapidly increase homebuilding in the province, primarily by peeling back exclusionary zoning. Premier Ford’s bill will allow for up to three units to be built on a single residential lot without any bylaw amendments or municipal permissions. This allows for the building of basement apartments, garden suites, duplexes, and triplexes on a single residential lot. In addition to allowing these units to be built, the legislation also exempts these units from development charges and parkland dedication fees, which significantly increase the cost of building and are ultimately passed on to buyers.  In a city like Toronto, this could be a game-changer for calming the housing crisis.

Upwards of 70 per cent of Toronto is zoned exclusively for single-family homes, a restriction that significantly limits building options, which in turn constrains the housing supply. The impact of these zoning rules can’t be overstated. A family in Toronto needs an annual income of $280,000 to purchase a detached home, $214,000 for an attached home, $167,000 for a townhome and $148,000 for a condo. But the median income for a couple in Toronto is only $97,700.

Why zoning reform is needed is simple: artificial limits on what can be built keep the housing stock low, which in turn prevents supply from keeping pace with demand, thus putting upwards pressure on home prices and rents. Because of these zoning rules, Ontario has a terrible record for building new homes. Among G7 countries, Canada ranks dead last in population-adjusted housing units per 1,000 people with 424. Ontario, which has only 398 units per 1,000 people, is a major cause of the problem.

Increasing the housing stock would put downward pressure on prices and foster economic growth. Research on zoning rules in the U.S. has shown that, by freezing workers out of high-rent areas like New York and San Jose where their productivity would be higher, local zoning rules lowered U.S. economic growth by fully 36 per cent between 1964 and 2009. There is no reason to assume similarly exclusionary zoning laws aren’t having the same negative impact in Ontario and across Canada.

The benefits of zoning reform aren’t just theoretical. Reform has made housing more affordable in both the United States and Japan. Minneapolis, which abolished exclusionary zoning before the pandemic, now appears to be bucking the trend of rising U.S. rental prices. Rents for one- and two-bedroom units are actually lower in 2022 than they were in 2019. Some of that presumably can be chalked up to having made it easier to build for increased density.

Before the pandemic Japan was building nearly a million new homes per year because of its relaxed approach to zoning. This approach is largely why average home prices in Japan have stayed relatively flat for nearly a decade. Enabling supply to keep up with demand is the keystone of Japan’s success in creating a stable housing market, one where home ownership is feasible and rental prices are stable. On the rental side, from 2008-2018 rent for the average two-bedroom apartment in Tokyo hovered around $1,000 (U.S.) per month. A two-bedroom apartment in Toronto is now more than double the price of an equivalent unit in Tokyo.

Now, for some, the thought of smaller Tokyo-style apartments doesn’t seem appealing. But the point here is that with limited government involvement in the building of new homes the market is able to adjust and build in a way that better meets housing demand. And to really demonstrate the power of supply: Japan’s rental prices were stable without the use of rent control, a policy often touted as a means to curb rising rents.

For those who like the suburbs and want them to stay that way, this bill could work to increase density in high-demand areas like Toronto, while easing housing pressure in surrounding areas. Opening up 70 per cent of Toronto to increased density will help curb the trend to suburban sprawl, as people who prefer to live in these high-demand areas will find it easier to do so.

This new bill takes the issue of chronic housing undersupply seriously by saying “Yes, In My Backyard.” Welcome to Team YIMBY, Premier Ford.

Originally published here

Widespread misinformation about vaping hurts public health

Quitting cigarettes is one of the hardest things to do, as many former and current smokers know from painful personal experience. Public health and politicians must do better to help smokers quit. 700,000 deaths per year in the EU should be enough of an incentive to make us rethink our current approach.

To effectively help smokers quit for good, three conditions must be met:

Firstly, smokers must be able to choose from as many options as possible to find out what smoking cessation method works best for them. People are different, and therefore different ways to give up smoking must be made available and affordable. For very few people (less than 4%), quitting with no help works. For a few, nicotine replacement therapy (such as nicotine gums or patches) works, and it turns out that for many people, new nicotine alternatives help them with quitting smoking once and for all. Those products range from vaping and heat-not-burn products to snus or nicotine pouches. What all these new forms have in common is that they separate nicotine consumption from the combustion of tobacco (which produces the vast majority of the toxicity of smoking), making them far less harmful than smoking cigarettes. Each one is different, each working best for each different person.

62% of smokers in France and 53% in Germany believe anti-smoking policies ignore how difficult it is to stop smoking. Clearly, smokers are not satisfied with traditional cessation methods and therefore look to vaping as a means of quitting

Secondly, we need a modern, open regulatory framework to fit these new alternatives. These new products are not the same as smoking. Hence, they must not be painted with the same regulatory brush. What we need instead is risk-based regulation. Vaping is 95% less harmful than smoking and, therefore, must not be treated the same way. Harm reduction must become a centrepiece of anti-smoking policies, like in the field of pharmaceutical drugs. Harm reduction follows practical strategies and solutions to reduce harmful consequences associated with using certain substances instead of an unrealistic `just quit´ approach. Encouraging smokers who are not able to or don’t want to quit smoking to switch to vaping is a best-case example of harm reduction.

Thirdly, smokers must have accurate information about the potential risks of different products to make decisions. The same applies to medical professionals who are working with those smokers. They need to know the facts to make a lasting difference for smokers.

Read the full text here

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