Limites ao alojamento local pedidos pelo BE rejeitados na assembleia municipal

Limites ao alojamento local pedidos pelo BE rejeitados na assembleia municipal

INÊS BOAVENTURA 31/05/2016 – PÚBLICO

https://www.publico.pt/local/noticia/limites-ao-alojamento-local-pedidos-pelo-be-rejeitados-na-assembleia-municipal-1733685

“Não podemos estar a tomar decisões de forma precipitada”, diz o vice-presidente da Câmara de Lisboa. Na segunda-feira, o tema é debatido na Trienal de Arquitectura.

A Assembleia Municipal de Lisboa rejeitou a proposta do Bloco de Esquerda (BE) que defendia a introdução de um conjunto de limitações ao alojamento local, tendo por base a convicção de que este está a contribuir para “um aumento significativo dos preços dos imóveis”, numa cidade “com graves carências no acesso à habitação”. Também a Câmara de Lisboa se mostrou contra a moção, defendendo que não se deve “tomar decisões de forma precipitada”, sob pena de elas poderem ter “efeitos perversos”.

Na moção que apresentaram esta terça-feira, os bloquistas defendiam a necessidade de haver “uma maior limitação ao licenciamento de estabelecimentos de alojamento local através de uma alteração legislativa”. Entre outros aspectos, propunha-se que passasse a ser possível fixar-se, por regulamento municipal, um tecto para o número de estabelecimentos “por área geográfica”, “impedindo o despovoamento e êxodo da população residente”.

O BE pretendia também que fosse criada uma limitação para o número de estabelecimentos que cada requentente pode ver licenciados, “acentuando o carácter residual da actividade de alojamento local”, e outra para aqueles que podem funcionar “em cada prédio”.

Na moção, que foi apresentada pela deputada Sara Goulart, dizia-se que a existência de alojamentos locais “em prédios destinados a habitação contribui para defraudar os objectivos estabelecidos nos Planos Municipais de Ordenamento do Território”, podendo pôr em causa “o exercício das competências de planeamento dos municípios”. Nesse sentido, sustentava o BE, devia ser dada às câmaras “a possibilidade de decidir sobre limitações ao licenciamento de estabelecimentos de alojamento local”.

Em resposta à moção, os deputados do PS propuseram a realização de um debate sobre o tema, na assembleia municipal. “Sem dúvida que há que regulamentar, aí estamos todos de acordo”, afirmou Inês Drummond, defendendo no entanto que antes disso “há um debate que tem que ser feito na cidade, sobre o que queremos em termos de alojamento local, se queremos ou não limitação e em que termos”.

“Nestas matérias é muito fácil a ideia de que quando há um problema toca a fazer um regulamento e a tomar decisões a nível municipal. E depois a nível nacional nós não dizemos nada”, criticou por sua vez o vice-presidente da Câmara de Lisboa, sublinhando que “o alojamento local não é uma realidade só de Lisboa”.

Quanto às medidas concretas propostas pelo BE, Duarte Cordeiro manifestou dúvidas sobre os resultados que elas teriam. “Não podemos estar a tomar decisões de forma precipitada e depois ver os efeitos perversos dessas decisões”, alegou.

O autarca socialista frisou ainda que apesar de o alojamento local poder gerar “alguns efeitos negativos” ele tem também “efeitos positivos”. Entre eles, enumerou, a “economia partilhada” em torno do fenómeno e o facto de este ser “um factor de reabilitação urbana”.

A moção do BE acabou por ser rejeitada, com os votos contra da maior parte dos deputados do PS (cinco abstiveram-se), dos Cidadãos Por Lisboa e do CDS e com a abstenção do MPT. Já a recomendação do PS para que haja um debate temático sobre o alojamento local foi aprovada por unanimidade.

No próximo dia 6 de Junho, o assunto voltará a estar na ordem do dia: na sede da Trienal de Arquitectura vai ter lugar um debate intitulado “Quem vai poder morar em Lisboa?”. Num documento a propósito dessa iniciativa, subscrito por sete moradores da cidade, aponta-se o “brutal aumento dos valores da habitação” como “a mais devastadora das transformações” que “a grande intensificação do turismo em Lisboa tem implicado”.

Criticando “a aparente ausência” de “uma estratégia de planeamento” e a “quase inexistente regulação do processo”, os autores do documento sugerem um conjunto de medidas para “estancar a sangria do centro histórico da cidade” e para evitar que esta se torne “exclusiva dos turistas e dos muito ricos”. Entre elas a suspensão temporária da atribuição de licenças a hotéis e hostels e a criação de “uma nova lei restritiva do alojamento local”. Para sustentar a importância destas medidas, destaca-se que em Lisboa o rácio de dormidas de turistas por habitante é de 21,47, enquanto que em Barcelona, “uma das cidades que mais sofrem com o fenómeno da turistificação”, esse valor se fica pelos 14,23.     

Ministro das Finanças quer travar emigração portuguesa Ideia é "retomar o caminho do crescimento da população activa"

“Crise força saída de 485 mil portugueses Só no ano passado emigraram 135 mil cidadãos” nacionais.

Ora, atenção para aquilo que escreve hoje Fernanda Pedro, Directora do Diário Imobiliário

(OVOODOCORVO)https://www.facebook.com/465825430137758/photos/a.465828520137449.1073741828.465825430137758/1017157618337867/?type=3&theater

(…) “Outra situação grave que não abona em favor do sector é a saída do país em massa dos nossos jovens. No final de Outubro de 2015, o Banco Mundial revelou que se estimava que haveria cerca de 2,3 milhões de portugueses a viver no estrangeiro há pelo menos um ano (corresponde a cerca de 35 Estádios da Luz completos) e Portugal era já, o 12º país do mundo com mais emigrantes.

Estes são, na verdade, os factores que vão determinar o futuro do mercado imobiliário português.

Devemos andar felizes pelo facto de os estrangeiros andarem a comprar casas por toda a cidade de Lisboa e Porto e pelo país?

Sinceramente, não é isso que me preocupa neste momento, o que me apoquenta são os nossos jovens, os nossos filhos e netos, quais vão ser as suas hipóteses de constituírem uma família e terem a sua própria casa? Que projectos de vida podem fazer para o futuro? Que possibilidades têm de morarem no centro da cidade sem terem de ser novamente empurrados para as periferias?

Desejámos tanto que os centros urbanos voltassem a ganhar vida mas afinal não será para os nossos jovens. Andávamos todos enganados, será apenas para uma elite que nem fala português.”

Fernanda Pedro

Directora Diário Imobiliário

Ministro das Finanças quer travar emigração portuguesa

Ideia é "retomar o caminho do crescimento da população activa"

14:10 Económico com Lusa

http://economico.sapo.pt/noticias/ministro-das-financas-quer-travar-emigracao-portuguesa_250769.html

O ministro das Finanças, Mário Centeno, sublinhou hoje, em Paris, a necessidade de estancar a emigração portuguesa para “retomar o caminho de crescimento da população activa”.

“Tenho vindo a referir há bastante tempo aquilo que é o impacto negativo sobre a conjuntura económica portuguesa de termos uma sucessão já muito grande de trimestres - já são mais de 17 trimestres - em que a população ativa se reduz. E ela reduz-se precisamente por via dessa emigração. É necessário primeiro estancar esses fluxos [de emigração] e isso já está a acontecer”, disse Mário Centeno.

O ministro das Finanças precisou que “no trimestre passado, a evolução da população ativa foi mais alinhada com essa evolução”, sublinhando, ainda, que “é necessário retomar o caminho de crescimento da população ativa e esse é um aspeto muito importante para a capacidade de recuperação da economia portuguesa”.

Mário Centeno falava aos jornalistas na sede da Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Económico (OCDE), onde participa, esta terça e quarta-feira, no fórum anual da instituição e na reunião ministerial do Conselho desta organização, no âmbito da Semana OCDE 2016.

You’re witnessing the death of neoliberalism – from within

You’re witnessing the death of neoliberalism – from within

Aditya Chakrabortty

Tuesday 31 May 2016 06.59 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/31/witnessing-death-neoliberalism-imf-economists?CMP=fb_gu

IMF economists have published a remarkable paper admitting that the ideology was oversold

What does it look like when an ideology dies? As with most things, fiction can be the best guide. In Red Plenty, his magnificent novel-cum-history of the Soviet Union, Francis Spufford charts how the communist dream of building a better, fairer society fell apart.

Even while they censored their citizens’ very thoughts, the communists dreamed big. Spufford’s hero is Leonid Kantorovich, the only Soviet ever to win a Nobel prize for economics. Rattling along on the Moscow metro, he fantasises about what plenty will bring to his impoverished fellow commuters: “The women’s clothes all turning to quilted silk, the military uniforms melting into tailored grey and silver: and faces, faces the length of the car, relaxing, losing the worry lines and the hungry looks and all the assorted toothmarks of necessity.”

But reality makes swift work of such sandcastles. The numbers are increasingly disobedient. The beautiful plans can only be realised through cheating, and the draughtsmen know it better than any dissidents. This is one of Spufford’s crucial insights: that long before any public protests, the insiders led the way in murmuring their disquiet. Whisper by whisper, memo by memo, the regime is steadily undermined from within. Its final toppling lies decades beyond the novel’s close, yet can already be spotted.

When Red Plenty was published in 2010, it was clear the ideology underpinning contemporary capitalism was failing, but not that it was dying. Yet a similar process as that described in the novel appears to be happening now, in our crisis-hit capitalism. And it is the very technocrats in charge of the system who are slowly, reluctantly admitting that it is bust.

You hear it when the Bank of England’s Mark Carney sounds the alarm about “a low-growth, low-inflation, low-interest-rate equilibrium”. Or when the Bank of International Settlements, the central bank’s central bank, warns that “the global economy seems unable to return to sustainable and balanced growth”. And you saw it most clearly last Thursday from the IMF.

It is the very technocrats in charge of the system who are slowly, reluctantly admitting that it is bust

What makes the fund’s intervention so remarkable is not what is being said – but who is saying it and just how bluntly. In the IMF’s flagship publication, three of its top economists have written an essay titled “Neoliberalism: Oversold?”.

The very headline delivers a jolt. For so long mainstream economists and policymakers have denied the very existence of such a thing as neoliberalism, dismissing it as an insult invented by gap-toothed malcontents who understand neither economics nor capitalism. Now here comes the IMF, describing how a “neoliberal agenda” has spread across the globe in the past 30 years. What they mean is that more and more states have remade their social and political institutions into pale copies of the market. Two British examples, suggests Will Davies – author of the Limits of Neoliberalism – would be the NHS and universities “where classrooms are being transformed into supermarkets”. In this way, the public sector is replaced by private companies, and democracy is supplanted by mere competition.

The results, the IMF researchers concede, have been terrible. Neoliberalism hasn’t delivered economic growth – it has only made a few people a lot better off. It causes epic crashes that leave behind human wreckage and cost billions to clean up, a finding with which most residents of food bank Britain would agree. And while George Osborne might justify austerity as “fixing the roof while the sun is shining”, the fund team defines it as “curbing the size of the state … another aspect of the neoliberal agenda”. And, they say, its costs “could be large – much larger than the benefit”.

IMF managing director Christine Lagarde with George Osborne. ‘Since 2008, a big gap has opened up between what the IMF thinks and what it does.’ Photograph: Kimimasa Mayama/EPA

Two things need to be borne in mind here. First, this study comes from the IMF’s research division – not from those staffers who fly into bankrupt countries, haggle over loan terms with cash-strapped governments and administer the fiscal waterboarding. Since 2008, a big gap has opened up between what the IMF thinks and what it does. Second, while the researchers go much further than fund watchers might have believed, they leave in some all-important get-out clauses. The authors even defend privatisation as leading to “more efficient provision of services” and less government spending – to which the only response must be to offer them a train ride across to Hinkley Point C.

Even so, this is a remarkable breach of the neoliberal consensus by the IMF. Inequality and the uselessness of much modern finance: such topics have become regular chew toys for economists and politicians, who prefer to treat them as aberrations from the norm. At last a major institution is going after not only the symptoms but the cause – and it is naming that cause as political. No wonder the study’s lead author says that this research wouldn’t even have been published by the fund five years ago.

From the 1980s the policymaking elite has waved away the notion that they were acting ideologically – merely doing “what works”. But you can only get away with that claim if what you’re doing is actually working. Since the crash, central bankers, politicians and TV correspondents have tried to reassure the public that this wheeze or those billions would do the trick and put the economy right again. They have riffled through every page in the textbook and beyond – bank bailouts, spending cuts, wage freezes, pumping billions into financial markets – and still growth remains anaemic.

And the longer the slump goes on, the more the public tumbles to the fact that not only has growth been feebler, but ordinary workers have enjoyed much less of its benefits. Last year the rich countries’ thinktank, the OECD, made a remarkable concession. It acknowledged that the share of UK economic growth enjoyed by workers is now at its lowest since the second world war. Even more remarkably, it said the same or worse applied to workers across the capitalist west.

Red Plenty ends with Nikita Khrushchev pacing outside his dacha, to where he has been forcibly retired. “Paradise,” he exclaims, “is a place where people want to end up, not a place they run from. What kind of socialism is that? What kind of shit is that, when you have to keep people in chains? What kind of social order? What kind of paradise?”

Economists don’t talk like novelists, more’s the pity, but what you’re witnessing amid all the graphs and technical language is the start of the long death of an ideology.

Coral bleaching spreads to Maldives, devastating spectacular reefs

“Extreme El Niños, which spread warm water across the Pacific and warm the globe, were not seen before 1982 and have occurred three times since. Extreme El Niños are expected to increase in frequency as a result of climate change.”

Coral bleaching spreads to Maldives, devastating spectacular reefs

Exclusive: Images from the Indian Ocean archipelago reveal the extent of the longest global coral bleaching event in history

Michael Slezak

Wednesday 1 June 2016 06.19 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/01/coral-bleaching-spreads-to-maldives-devastating-spectacular-reefs

The longest global coral bleaching event in history is now devastating reefs in the crystal clear waters of the Maldives, with images released exclusively to the Guardian powerfully illustrating the extent of the damage there.

Photographed by the XL Catlin Seaview Survey, the images captured the event in May as it moved beyond the now devastated Great Barrier Reef and into waters further west.

“The bleaching we just witnessed in the Maldives was truly haunting,” said Richard Vevers, founder of the Ocean Agency.

“It’s rare to see reefs bleach quite so spectacularly. These were healthy reefs in crystal clear water at the height of an intense bleaching event. The flesh of the corals had turned clear and we were seeing the skeletons of the animals glowing white for as far as the eye could see – it was a beautiful, yet deeply disturbing sight.”

The Maldives is series of coral atolls, built from the remains of coral. The livelihoods of people there depend on the reefs through tourism, fisheries and as a wave-break that helps prevent inundation on low-lying islands.

The photographs were part of an ongoing project, in partnership with Google, the University of Queensland and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency to capture the global bleaching event as it moves around the world.

“We’ve been following this third global bleaching event since the start nearly two years ago and just when you think you’ve seen the saddest sight you’ll ever see, you see something even worse,” Vevers said.

The event started in mid 2014 in the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii, which then got hit again in 2015. In early 2016 it spread to the Great Barrier Reef where 93% of its nearly 3,000 reefs were hit by bleaching.

Western Australia’s reefs in the Indian Ocean have also experienced severe bleaching.

When Noaa declared the event was a global bleaching event in October 2015, Mark Eakin, Noaa’s Coral Reef Watch coordinator, said it could last well into 2016. That prediction appears to be proving correct.

“The current global bleaching event is already lasted longer than any previous bleaching event and is likely to last until at least the end of the year,” he said.

The bleaching event started with an El Niño that appeared to be developing in Pacific Ocean, in 2014, warming the waters there, but which failed to eventuate. It was then combined with a large patch of unusually water, nicknamed “the blob”, that lurked around the Pacific, as well as an extreme El Niño that eventually did develop in 2015.

Extreme El Niños, which spread warm water across the Pacific and warm the globe, were not seen before 1982 and have occurred three times since. Extreme El Niños are expected to increase in frequency as a result of climate change.

Those El Niños were also occurring in an ocean where the surface has already warmed by 1C, putting corals near their thermal limits.

When coral sits in water that is too warm for too long, it gets stressed and expels the algae that provides it with about 90% of its energy. If it stays stressed for more than a couple of weeks it starts to starve, become diseased, and dies.

A new study has found the conditions that led to the devastating bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef were made 175 times more likely by climate change, and on the current trajectory, would become the average conditions by the 2030s.

Hubert Védrine: It’s time for ‘a European pause’

Hubert Védrine: It’s time for ‘a European pause’

An architect of EU integration says the push for more Europe is leading people to reject it.

By PIERRE BRIANÇON 6/1/16, 5:32 AM CET

http://www.politico.eu/article/hubert-vedrine-its-time-for-a-european-pause-eu-integration-foreign-policy/

PARIS — The man who once was the face of French diplomacy — and a key player in European integration for almost 20 years — now says Europe needs a time-out.

Hubert Védrine was François Mitterrand’s trusted foreign policy adviser, and his chief of staff in the last years of the French Socialist’s presidency in the mid-1990s. He went on to become foreign minister under the divided government of conservative President Jacques Chirac and Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, from 1997 to 2002. He was even approached by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 to serve yet another term as foreign minister.

That means Védrine was a big player in, not a mere witness to, the negotiations that led to the Schengen agreement in 1985, and the launch of the European monetary union in 1990. He had a front-row seat when Germany reunited in 1990, when the USSR collapsed in 1991, and when the euro became Europe’s common currency in 1999. Now, Védrine says, Europe needs a pause.

In a series of recent speeches, articles and interviews that have sometimes infuriated his former comrades on the front lines of European integration, Védrine, now 68, has been pushing the case that it’s time for EU leaders to deal with the growing rejection of Europe by voters and public opinion in general across the continent.

‘If you want people to massively reject Europe, just keep on’

“In most countries today you have 15 to 20 percent of voters who reject Europe altogether, and another 15 to 20 percent that remain die-hard Europhiles. That leaves at least 60 percent in the middle who are what I’d call euro-allergic,” Védrine said in an interview with POLITICO in his office overlooking the rows of trees lining the banks of the Seine, in Paris’ 8th arrondissement. “Yet you see governments and parties all over jumping up and down asking for ‘more Europe, more Europe!’”

“If you want people to massively reject Europe, just keep on,” he added.

It may be strange to hear one of the architects of Mitterrand’s diplomacy take such a big step back from the enthusiasm the former president showed for European integration, and the reaction in French political circles has reflected that. Some of his former peers and other Mitterrand confidantes — such as current National Assembly foreign affairs committee chairwoman Elisabeth Guigou, who was once Mitterrand’s European affairs minister — have been especially angered by his recent statements.

But even some of those who disagree with him acknowledge that Védrine has always been lukewarm to the lyrical enthusiasm shown by some about all things European. In 2000, right after his German counterpart Joschka Fischer had proposed further European integration among a hard core of countries willing to move forward, Védrine shot down the idea. “European people, over the centuries, have suffered too much from Pied Pipers who led them to cruel disappointment,” he said.

Realism, not cynicism

A self-styled “realist” in foreign policy, Védrine doesn’t belong to the Wilsonian school of foreign policy. He’s more on the Kissinger line: Countries have interests, they act to preserve them and diplomacy is the art of compromise. Védrine shows little sympathy for those he calls “human-rightists,” such as the man who finally took on the foreign minister job under Sarkozy, Doctors Without Borders founder Bernard Kouchner. And he has little appetite for the ideological crusade he says the West embarked upon after the fall of the Soviet Union. “It’s just not true that the Western model and values appeal to all countries in the world,” he said.

Védrine refutes the notion his views are “cynical.”

“That’s not what realism is about,” he said. In a book out earlier this year, “Le Monde Au Défi” (“Challenge to the World”) he defended the idea that the so-called “international community” doesn’t exist — either in politics or the economy. Nothing can fully transcend national interests, he argues: not post-war ideals, nor post-Soviet illusions, nor the globalized market.

The only area where a common purpose could be found now, he argued, would be on environmental issues. Summits on global warming, or preserving biodiversity, offer the only real opportunities to overcome national barriers, he told me.

Back in Europe, Védrine said, the lyrical approach favored by integrationists “means that you try to shame governments by always complaining about their ‘national selfishness’ etc. But these are legitimate national interests we are talking about.”

The only man in Europe who understands the problem, Védrine said, is Jean-Claude Juncker, the current European Commission president. He said Juncker once told him the story of an EU summit that debated a plan to save water — and of the Commission bureaucrats who got to work without waiting on a plan to regulate the form of shower heads throughout the EU. That’s the type of regulatory zeal the U.K.’s Brexit campaigners denounce as a sign that the EU has gone awry.

‘The U.K. has all that’s good in Europe, and isn’t involved in the bad stuff — Schengen and the euro. Why leave?’

Other EU leaders also seem to have woken up to the risk of European over-reach. European Council President Donald Tusk told a gathering of the center-right European People’s Party Monday night in Luxembourg that insistence on more Europe was fueling the rise of populism. “Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share our Euro-enthusiasm,” Tusk said.

As Védrine sees it, EU governments should solemnly call for “a pause” in further integration. He doesn’t think that a joint European initiative by France and Germany if U.K. voters choose to leave the bloc on June 23 would be useful. “France,” he said, “will not be strong until its economy is repaired, through fiscal discipline and structural reforms on the model of what Gerhard Schröder did in Germany.”

That is bizarre to hear from the former member of a government — Jospin’s — that pointedly and explicitly refused in the late 1990s to join the “Third Way” manifesto pushed by Schröder and U.K. prime minister Tony Blair. But it is no more bizarre than hearing François Hollande similarly laud today the same Schröder reforms on which he poured so much scorn as head of the Socialist Party back then.

True, Védrine wasn’t in charge of domestic politics at the time. But isn’t there a contradiction, I ask him, about the “pause” he’s calling for and his wish for further eurozone integration? “I agree there is one,” he said. “But we need to complete what was only partly done when we started.”

Védrine thinks that the U.K. leaving the union would be a major blow to Europe — and probably prefers to keep in a country that has always been pragmatic about the EU, and steered away from the intellectual approach more common in France or Germany. I ask him as I leave his office: What would he say to a Brexit partisan?

“That he or she is stupid,” Védrine said. “The U.K. has all that’s good in Europe, and isn’t involved in the bad stuff — Schengen and the euro. Why leave?”

Poles refuse to back down in confrontation with Commission

Poles refuse to back down in confrontation with Commission

Polish delegation travels to Brussels for last-ditch talks.

By JAN CIENSKI 5/31/16, 9:33 PM CET

http://www.politico.eu/article/poles-refuse-to-back-down-in-confrontation-with-commission-rule-of-law-democracy-warsaw-beata-szydlo-jaroslaw-kaczynski-frans-timmermans/

Poland on Tuesday dug in its heels in a standoff with the European Commission over the country’s constitutional crisis, with a Polish government delegation in Brussels taking a tougher line than just a few days ago, sources told POLITICO.

The Polish delegation met with Commission officials ahead of a planned Tuesday evening phone call between Frans Timmermans, the Commission’s first vice president, and Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło.

The rush of diplomacy comes before a regular meeting of all 28 European commissioners on Wednesday, when Timmermans may decide to continue pressing the right-wing Polish government to end the confrontation over the country’s top constitutional court.

However, the terms presented by the Poles on Tuesday were tougher than had been discussed last week in Warsaw, when Timmermans met with Szydło.

The new Polish position mirrors the stance Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party and the country’s most powerful politician, spelled out in a recent Polish press interview.

“Kaczyński’s stance is much tougher,” said a Commission source.

In that interview, Kaczyński also cast doubt on the Commission’s right to carry out its unprecedented rule-of-law procedure against Poland, launched in January over concerns that the authorities in Warsaw were violating the EU’s democratic rules. He called it a “made up” procedure and threatened to challenge it in the European Court of Justice.

The sources said the new Polish government standpoint doesn’t meet the requirements set out by the Venice Commission, the legal arm of the Council of Europe, which earlier this year issued a report on the crisis.

Ending the crisis

The Venice Commission called for the government to recognize three judges elected to the 15-judge Constitutional Tribunal by the last parliament. It also said the government should respect the tribunal’s March 9 verdict which found that a new law regulating the way the tribunal works was unconstitutional. That law was widely criticized for preventing the tribunal from properly functioning, eroding its ability to vet laws passed by parliament.

Szydło and Kaczyński have refused to recognize the March 9 verdict, saying that it did not meet the requirements of the new law, which demanded verdicts be reached by a two-thirds majority, not by a simple majority.

The government insists that three judges chosen by the new parliament and sworn in by President Andrzej Duda are legitimate. The delegation in Brussels discussed how to seat the disputed judges without displacing the new ones.

It also talked about how to treat the March 9 verdict.

One option is to publish more recent tribunal verdicts, which have also been disregarded by the government, and then to only publish the March 9 decision once a new law regulating the court is in place.

However, that position varies significantly from the recommendations of the Venice Commission.

The European Commission has also stressed it will not accept tribunal voting rules that water down the principle of a simple majority being enough to issue a verdict.

That presents a conundrum for Timmermans, who is guided by the Venice report. He is due to discuss the Polish situation with his fellow commissioners on Wednesday.

Timmermans was given permission to send an opinion to Warsaw last week, which would note the Commission’s concerns and give the Polish government two weeks to respond.

It’s the first part of a three-step process that theoretically could end with Poland losing its EU voting rights under an Article 7 procedure. However, that decision has to be approved by all other 27 EU member countries, and Hungary has said it will back Poland.

A Commission official said that moving that far is a “nuclear option” which Brussels will do what it can to avoid.

The Commission held back on sending the opinion last week, after a leak of the draft provoked fury in Poland. Warsaw has portrayed the probe as an unfair attack by Brussels bureaucrats on a legitimately elected conservative government.

Jacopo Barigazzi contributed to this article.

Judge at EU’s top court backs workplace ban on headscarf

European Court of Justice Follow

Judge at EU’s top court backs workplace ban on headscarf

Non-binding opinion upholds restriction as long as it applies to all symbols of religion

YESTERDAY by: Duncan Robinson in Brussels

https://next.ft.com/content/01188ec2-2709-11e6-8ba3-cdd781d02d89#axzz4ADqs3eXA

Companies can ban Muslim staff from wearing headscarves as long as they also forbid other symbols of religion in the workplace, according to an opinion from the European Court of Justice.

The case stemmed from a complaint by a Muslim woman fired as a receptionist by the Belgian division of G4S for wearing a headscarf to work against the company’s rules.

Samira Achbita sued the security company in Belgium, where the courts referred the question of whether such bans were legal under EU rules to the ECJ.

In a non-binding opinion on Tuesday, a senior judge from the court argued that such bans were justifiable under certain circumstances. A final judgment will come later this year.

The case is the first of two landmark decisions expected this year on whether such bans are allowed under the bloc’s rules. It underlines the growing role played by the Luxembourg-based ECJ.

Once the preserve of arcane trade disputes and competition cases, the court rules increasingly on social issues after its remit was expanded by the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 to give it oversight of issues such as security and fundamental rights. Unlike the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, decisions from the ECJ are binding upon national governments.

The ECJ is considering a separate case involving a French IT engineer dismissed after she refused to take off a veil at the request of a client.

Juliane Kokott, the advocate-general at the ECJ who wrote the opinion on the Belgian case, said: “While an employee cannot ‘leave’ his sex, skin colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or disability ‘at the door’ upon entering his employer’s premises, he may be expected to moderate the exercise of his religion in the workplace.”

Although such opinions do not amount to a final verdict, they are often followed by the court in its judgment.

Related article

An Airbus A318 passenger aircraft, operated by Air France-KLM Group, taxis at Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE) in Venice, Italy, on Monday, Feb. 1, 2016. Air France-KLM operates airlines and offers travel booking, catering, freight transportation, aircraft maintenance, and pilot training services. Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg

Air France resumes flights to Iran after headscarf fight

Female staff who object to covering their heads will be allowed refuse to work the routes

According to the opinion, companies must have a legitimate reason for banning symbols of religion, but these can vary. “The bar set for justifying differences of treatment based on religion is high but not insurmountable,” said the judge.

Companies such as G4S should be able to ensure “religious and ideological neutrality”, she wrote. Other reasons for banning religious symbols could include hygiene considerations as well as whether staff came face to face with customers. Banning headscarves in a call-centre would not be appropriate, argued the judge.

Such a prohibition would not be able to target specific religions, according to the opinion, and must apply across the board.

But in general, what counted as a necessary or legitimate ban on symbols of religion should be a matter for national courts, the advocate-general argued. A country’s “national identity” should be taken into account when determining whether bans on headscarves broke EU rules, which would give some countries more leeway than others.

For instance, countries such as France, which has a constitutional commitment to secularism, may be able to enforce stricter rules on banning religious items than other member states, without falling foul of EU rules, according to the opinion.

Imobiliário: Um mercado mutante!

Texto crítico de Fernanda Pedro, Directora do Diário Imobiliário e dedicado pelo OVOODOCORVO a Manuel Salgado , Fernando Medina e entidades Governamentais …

OVOODOCORVO

–--------------------------------------------------------------

Imobiliário: Um mercado mutante!

15 de Abril de 2016

Fernanda Pedro, Directora Diário Imobiliário

http://www.diarioimobiliario.pt/Opiniao/Imobiliario-Um-mercado-mutante

O Diário Imobiliário celebra hoje 3 anos. Nasceu num dos piores momentos vividos no país. Portugal atravessava uma grave crise económica, financeira e social e naturalmente, todos os sectores de actividade sofreram as consequências. O imobiliário foi um dos mais atingidos: a construção caiu a pique, empresas faliram, desapareceram os promotores portugueses e estrangeiros, a banca fechou a ‘torneira’ do crédito à habitação e a população portuguesa da classe média/baixa entrou em colapso. Grande parte das famílias deixaram de conseguir pagar as prestações mensais ao banco e de repente as instituições ficaram com um património alargado de casas, armazéns, lojas, terrenos, etc. A compra e venda de habitação estagnou e o arrendamento moribundo também não tinha forças para aproveitar o momento.

A Troika impôs a austeridade, o desemprego disparou e o poder de compra diminuiu. Quando tudo estava ‘negro’ e sem esperança, surgiu o Diário Imobiliário para mostrar que mesmo em tempos difíceis o mercado ia mexendo. Mas tudo mudou e temos a consciência que nada vai voltar ao que era. O que é perfeitamente normal, faz parte da evolução de um povo, de um país e mesmo de uma Europa que está a ‘braços’ com uma nova definição de poderes nesta ainda ‘criança’ União Europeia e que é vista sempre como uma ameaça por outras potências mundiais, que têm como finalidade destabilizar e enfraquecê-la.

Voltemos ao imobiliário e o que se viveu nestes três anos. Resumidamente não pretendo aborrecer os leitores com análises conhecidas por todos, mas lembrando o mais relevante neste período: a tentativa de reavivar o arrendamento, contudo, a oferta nunca acompanhou a procura e mesmo para quem pretendia tirar alguns rendimentos neste mercado a opção não foi conseguida.

Seguiu-se a corrida dos Vistos Gold. Foi a luz ao fundo do túnel para o mercado que viu no investimento estrangeiro a salvação do sector, que se encontrava nesse momento deprimido e a ‘oxigénio’. O importante era vender a chineses, franceses, a investidores do médio oriente, ou a qualquer outro. Já que os portugueses são demasiado pobres e não compram, venham os estrangeiros. Claro, que depois do desmantelamento de redes de corrupção à volta dos Vistos Gold, a corrida abrandou.

Entretanto, no final de 2014 novos ventos começaram a soprar no imobiliário e em 2015 foi a concretização: os investidores estrangeiros entraram em força no país. Os grandes fundos internacionais de pensões, sobretudo norte-americanos, com riquezas incalculáveis decidiram investir em imobiliário e como a Europa é sempre atractiva, vieram literalmente, às compras. Londres, Paris e outras cidades europeias foram o alvo preferencial e depois deixaram alguns ‘trocos’ para Portugal. Grandes negócios de compra e venda de activos, sobretudo comerciais, escritórios, turísticos e também edifícios no centro de Lisboa, para reabilitar e transformá-los em habitação de luxo, bem como o ‘el dourado’ do momento, o turismo e os hotéis. Todavia, estes grandes negócios são bons apenas para as grandes consultoras, só elas beneficiam disso e competem para conquistar estes clientes mostrando triunfantes, os grandes números alcançados no final do ano.

Para o mercado imobiliário nacional, é algo que não lhe traz algum benefício, talvez uma pequena demonstração que o nosso mercado pode ser atractivo para o investimento estrangeiro.

No entanto, para a mediação nacional a realidade é outra, este pode ser realmente o ano em que se verifique algum dinamismo. Os bancos estão novamente a apostar no crédito à habitação e é sem dúvida, a única forma de dinamizar o mercado de compra e venda, excepto o mercado de luxo.

Mas temos a consciência que nada será como antes. Esta suposta melhoria da economia não é visível para a maioria dos portugueses. Vivemos uma época em que o mercado de trabalho passa por uma crise sem precedentes. Mesmo quando divulgam números revelando que o emprego subiu, as condições de trabalho continuam no entanto, em estado de degradação. Os vínculos são precários, os benefícios são escassos e os impostos aumentam. Para a maioria dos trabalhadores portugueses, o emprego hoje, está a um passo muito ténue da escravidão. O ordenado mínimo é o rendimento de quase todos os portugueses e como todos sabemos é praticamente o mesmo valor de uma renda de casa, seja no arrendamento ou para uma prestação ao banco.

Outra situação grave que não abona em favor do sector é a saída do país em massa dos nossos jovens. No final de Outubro de 2015, o Banco Mundial revelou que se estimava que haveria cerca de 2,3 milhões de portugueses a viver no estrangeiro há pelo menos um ano (corresponde a cerca de 35 Estádios da Luz completos) e Portugal era já, o 12º país do mundo com mais emigrantes.

Estes são, na verdade, os factores que vão determinar o futuro do mercado imobiliário português.

Devemos andar felizes pelo facto de os estrangeiros andarem a comprar casas por toda a cidade de Lisboa e Porto e pelo país?

Sinceramente, não é isso que me preocupa neste momento, o que me apoquenta são os nossos jovens, os nossos filhos e netos, quais vão ser as suas hipóteses de constituírem uma família e terem a sua própria casa? Que projectos de vida podem fazer para o futuro? Que possibilidades têm de morarem no centro da cidade sem terem de ser novamente empurrados para as periferias?

Desejámos tanto que os centros urbanos voltassem a ganhar vida mas afinal não será para os nossos jovens. Andávamos todos enganados, será apenas para uma elite que nem fala português.

Em três anos o mercado imobiliário mudou, não sei se para melhor ou pior mas não há dúvida que para os nossos leitores vamos continuar a dar o nosso melhor. Cabe-nos dar as notícias e trazer toda a informação do sector, de forma a ajudar todos a aumentar os seus negócios e consequentemente, a terem uma vida mais feliz.

Fernanda Pedro

Directora Diário Imobiliário  

Espanhóis estão fartos de turistas. Em Mallorca já os mandam embora

Espanhóis estão fartos de turistas. Em Mallorca já os mandam embora

Graffitis em Palma de Mallorca mandam os turistas ir embora.

POR ANDREA PINTO / Notícias ao Minuto

https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/mundo/597212/espanhois-estao-fartos-de-turistas-em-mallorca-ja-os-mandam-embora?&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer&utm_content=geral

As ilhas espanholas vivem, essencialmente, do turismo. Não é de admirar, pois, que sejam um dos destinos turísticos mais procurados em todo o mundo, graças às suas praias, tempo quente e paisagens paradisíacas.

Porém, parece que os espanhóis lá residentes estão a ficar fartos de ver as suas terras repletas de estrangeiros. É isso que, pelo menos, indicam algumas palavras escritas em paredes de Palma de Mallorca.

"Turistas vão para casa. Refugiados são bem-vindos" ou "Turistas vocês são os terroristas" são algumas das palavras que se podem ler nas ruas e que dão a entender que os espanhóis não estarão contentes com o aumento do número de turistas na cidade.

Recorde-se que com o aumento do terrorismo, destinos como a Tunísia, o Egipto ou a Turquia foram preteridos, estando agora a Espanha entre a lista dos mais procurados.

Embora por um lado este aumento de procura possa ser encarado como uma forma de a Espanha fazer frente à crise, por outro lado, os espanhóis temem que as suas cidades se estejam a transformar em "parque temáticos, um local onde se pode fechar as portas porque ninguém vive lá".

Um dos motivos que os levam a afirmar isto é, por exemplo, o facto de em Palma de Maiorca se ter restringido os estacionamentos para não estragar as paisagens aos turistas.

'Tourists go home': Spain tourism surge brings backlash

May 30, 2016 2:33 AM EDT

By Sarah White

http://www.streetinsider.com/Reuters/Tourists+go+home%3A+Spain+tourism+surge+brings+backlash/11686904.html

PALMA DE MALLORCA, Spain (Reuters) - On the walls of the grand old houses of this Balearic port which attracts millions of foreigners every year, a new kind of graffiti has flourished: "Tourists go home".

Although still a minority protest, it points to tensions in Palma de Mallorca and elsewhere in Spain over rising numbers of visitors who are propelling the economy but also disrupting the lives of locals and straining services from transport to water.

With tourism accounting for 12 percent of economic output and 16 percent of jobs, Spain can ill afford a backlash.

Long a popular beach destination, this year Spain is drawing record numbers of visitors who are shunning destinations where security is a concern, notably Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey.

The surge has helped the country recover from recession and alleviate a jobs crisis. But, for many Spaniards, the jump in tourism has a downside.

"They want to turn us into a theme park, a place you close the doors on at night because no-one lives there," said Luis Clar, who heads an association in the La Seu neighborhood of Palma de Mallorca, home to its main monuments.

Here the city council has recently banned parking near the sandstone cathedral, where vehicles on its sea-facing esplanade were deemed an eyesore.

But losing that parking space has forced many families living in the area's narrow alleys to park much further afield or spend hours circling, Clar said. Most streets are narrow and often filled with sightseers. One couple had recently left the area as a result, Clar said.

In the Balearics off Spain's eastern Mediterranean coast, nearly a third of employment depends on the sector. It accounts for nearly half the economic output, more than in any other region. The local economy has just recovered to its pre-crisis level after a five-year downturn.

Yet unease over the boom is spreading among the population.

In drought-prone island Ibiza water reserves are getting tight and in rural Menorca fears are mounting that natural beauty-spots risk being spoiled.

On one day last August, the population across the Balearics nearly doubled, reaching a record 2 million.

The latest data from March shows visitors to the archipelago were up nearly 50 percent from 2015 in that month alone, swelled by arrivals from Britain in particular. All-inclusive holidays for the peak summer months are selling out.

FINITE RESOURCES?

In Palma, residents know there are days to avoid the city center, especially when cruise ships carrying thousands of passengers mass in the harbor, and some worry entire neighborhoods will turn into holiday lets.

Similar concerns led to angry protests in Barcelona two years ago, where residents in beachfront areas rallied against the rise in drunk and disorderly holidaymakers that coincided with a blossoming trade in tourist apartments.

For Gaspar Alomar, a temporary worker in a bookshop in one of Palma's medieval quarters, the recent spate of anti-tourist graffiti in the city has at least appeared to stoke a debate over whether this type of growth is desirable.

"The resources we have are finite, it's logical that there should be a finite number of people coming," 30-year-old Alomar said. "If we build our whole economy around tourism we'll have nothing to hold onto if trends change, in the long run it's not sustainable."

In some respects local authorities are leaning if not toward limiting tourism, at least toward controlling it.

Next year the smallest of the Balearics' four main islands, Formentera, could introduce taxes on cars entering the area, and the region is looking into capping accommodation for tourists, said Biel Barcelo, the local tourism minister.

TOURISM TAX

In July, the left-wing government in charge of the archipelago since 2015 will bring in a tourism tax of up to 2 euros for overnight stays, though measures such as these have also sparked an outcry among travel firms and hoteliers.

"We already live well enough from tourism - we should not be demanding a top-up," said Monica Garcia, a worker at the small Ritzi guesthouse in central Palma.

Hotel groups have warned it could hurt revenues in the long run, and dismay at any attempts to curb tourism is also evident among many people who depend on the trade in Mallorca, from taxi drivers to souvenir sellers.

Barcelo argued improved regulation and planning - from more efforts to attract visitors out of season to better management of the glut of visitors disembarking all at once from cruise ships - would help protect the industry from the risk of a backlash if residents become overwhelmed.

The tax, he said, aims to raise between 50 million and 70 million euros ($78 million) a year mainly for environmental projects.

"The tourism sector should be the first to want to ensure there is no backlash," Barcelo said. "We want to keep living off tourism and we need to make it sustainable for the next 30 or 40 years."

($1 = 0.8921 euros)

(Editing by Julien Toyer and Janet McBride)

Cinema Odeon poderá dar lugar a apartamentos e loja

Cinema Odeon poderá dar lugar a apartamentos e loja

INÊS BOAVENTURA 30/05/2016 – PÚBLICO

A Direcção do Património deu parecer favorável condicionado. O projecto de transformação num centro comercial foi abandonado

O futuro do antigo cinema Odeon, em Lisboa, deverá passar pela sua transformação num edifício de uso habitacional, com 13 apartamentos. No piso térreo do imóvel prevê-se a instalação de um espaço comercial, com cerca de 600 m2, no interior do qual será preservada a boca de cena existente e outros elementos, como o tecto de madeira pau-brasil.

No sábado, o Fórum Cidadania Lisboa tornou público que a Direcção-Geral do Património Cultural (DGPC) tinha proposto a aprovação condicionada do mais recente projecto apresentado para o antigo cinema, na Rua dos Condes. Segundo a informação que foi transmitida ao movimento de cidadãos pelo Ministério da Cultura, com a proposta em apreciação ficava “garantida a salvaguarda das principais características do edifício, nomeadamente a leitura urbana da imagem do antigo cineteatro (…) e, no interior, a preservação do frontão da boca de cena”.

Nessa mesma informação fazia-se referência a um anterior projecto para o local, que “previa a transformação do cinema em centro comercial” e que tinha também merecido a aprovação da DGPC. Quanto ao conteúdo da nova proposta, que deu entrada nessa entidade em meados de Abril, nada é dito na comunicação que chegou ao Fórum Cidadania Lisboa, o que gerou alguma confusão sobre se o uso anteriormente previsto seria ainda para concretizar.

Ora, o PÚBLICO apurou esta segunda-feira que o projecto de reconversão do Odeon que foi divulgado em 2013, e que contemplava a sua transformação num espaço comercial com valências culturais e estacionamento subterrâneo, foi abandonado. Esse projecto era da autoria do arquitecto Luís Pereira Coelho e gerou na altura alguma polémica.

Segundo o vereador do Urbanismo, no passado dia 31 de Março deu entrada na Câmara de Lisboa um outro projecto, com a assinatura do arquitecto Samuel Torres de Carvalho. Em declarações ao PÚBLICO, Manuel Salgado explicou que esta proposta prevê a criação de uma loja com 666 m2, “com o pé direito correspondente ao volume todo da sala” de espectáculos, no interior da qual serão preservados a boca de cena e o tecto de madeira.

Na “parte de trás” do edifício, na área que de acordo com o vereador corresponde aos antigos “balcões”, a ideia é instalar 13 apartamentos, com uma área total de cerca de 2100 metros. “A fachada será toda recuperada”, garante, explicando que a alteração mais significativa passa pela colocação de janelas de trapeira na cobertura do imóvel.

Manuel Salgado acrescenta que o projecto que foi submetido à apreciação da autarquia prevê ainda o surgimento de 22 lugares de estacionamento, num sistema robotizado. O autarca diz ter “sérias dúvidas” sobre essa solução, lembrando a proximidade do parque de estacionamento subterrâneo dos Restauradores.

O autarca frisa ainda que os serviços camarários só apreciarão este projecto depois de receberem os pareceres solicitados a entidades externas. Entre eles o da DGPC que, segundo as informações divulgadas pelo Fórum Cidadania Lisboa, condicionou a aprovação “à preservação das caixilharias/carpintarias dos vãos exteriores do piso térreo”, “à implementação de um solução com menor expressão nas divisórias entre fracções nas varandas existentes nos pisos 1 e 2” e “à execução da caixilharia das novas trapeiras em ferro ou madeira”.

Inaugurado em 1927, o cinema Odeon está encerrado desde a década de 90 do século passado. O PÚBLICO tentou, sem sucesso, falar com o arquitecto Samuel Torres de Carvalho e com a empresa Parisiana, que é a requerente do processo que deu entrada na Câmara de Lisboa.   

Turkey's Erdogan: No Muslim family should engage in birth control

"We will multiply our descendants.”

No Muslim family should engage in birth control: Turkey's Erdogan

World | Mon May 30, 2016 2:28pm EDT Related: WORLD

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-erdogan-women-idUSKCN0YL1RR

No Muslim family should engage in birth control or family planning, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday, calling again on pious Muslims to have more children.

"We will multiply our descendants. They talk about population planning, birth control. No Muslim family can have such an approach," he said in a speech in Istanbul broadcast live on television. "Nobody can interfere in God's work. The first duty here belongs to mothers," he said.

Women's groups and opposition politicians have criticized Erdogan, a devout Muslim for telling women how many children to have and dismissing the Western idea of gender equality. He has previously equated birth control with treason.

Kenya's new front in poaching battle: 'the future is in the hands of our communities'

Kenya's new front in poaching battle: 'the future is in the hands of our communities'

In a country hit by a devastating poaching surge for rhino horn and elephant ivory, local people are turning the tide – but the wider problems of demand, corruption and organised crime remain

Adam Vaughan in Lewa and Nairobi

@adamvaughan_uk

Monday 30 May 2016 09.40 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/30/kenya-poaching-elephant-ivory-rhino-horn-future-communities

It’s hard work. I cut their tusks off with an axe,” said Abdi Ali, a northern Kenyan pastoralist who became a full-time poacher at 14. With three other men it took him about 10 minutes to kill each of the 27 elephants he poached, cutting off the trunk, splitting the skull and removing the ivory that would later fetch 500 Kenyan shillings (£3) a kilo.

But while he became rich compared with the cattle herders, who mostly live on less than $1 (68p) a day, he did not find happiness. “Much as I had money, it was money I couldn’t enjoy in peace, because I was on the run.”

Men like Ali are the bottom rung of a network of organised crime that is devastating Africa’s wildlife. It stretches from the remote wilds of Kenya to the port of Mombasa and out to China and south-east Asia, where an affluent middle class buy ground-up rhino horn as a status symbol and ivory is carved and sold as ornaments and trinkets.

This week, the UN Environment Programme launched a global campaign to end the multibillion dollar trade, backed by celebrities including footballer Yaya Touré and model Gisele Bündchen.

Kenya, hit by a devastating poaching surge in 2012 and 2013 that resulted in the loss of more elephants and rhino than at any time in the past two decades, is taking the problem seriously. Last month it set ablaze more than 100 tonnes of seized ivory, in what conservationists said was an “SOS to the world”. It followed a new wildlife law that can inflict a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for poachers.

The men who kill in the field are relatively easy for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and private rangers to catch, compared with the middlemen and kingpins orchestrating the trade.

Lochuch Lotak is another who swapped the poverty of grazing his livestock in northern Kenya for killing elephants with a gun for their valuable ivory. Like Ali, he says it was an uneasy existence. “By the time it became common knowledge I was a poacher, I became really scared and suspicious of everyone, I thought everyone was telling on me. It got to the point where I was ready to die or kill [people].”

Yet Ali and Lotak’s route out of poaching was not via a jail cell, but an extraordinary 27-year-old woman who chastised them for their crimes and, later, recruited them as rangers.

“She got me out of a mud pool and into a pool of light,” Lotak said of Josephine Ekiru, the chair of the Nakuprat-Gotu conservancy, a community-run conservation area in northern Kenya where the two former poachers now work.

In a pastoral community where women are traditionally expected to defer to their husbands and keep their opinions private, a 16-year-old Ekiru insisted on attending community meetings that were normally the preserve of men, and began trying to reform the men she knew were poaching. But confronting the poachers put her own life on the line.

“First they wrote a letter to me threatening me. The second time, they called in [five men] to me and threatened me. That time they were pointing guns at me. I said I was ready to die but can I tell you some reasons [why she was trying to persuade them],” she recalled.

For 20 minutes she told them they were being used, that they were creating conflict between ethnic groups and were destroying the “treasure” that was their local wildlife.

“One of them said: ‘Don’t kill her’, he dropped his gun. He said, ‘Nobody has ever told us about this.’”

Ekiru’s conservancy is one of 33 in a network known as the Northern Rangelands Trust, which prides itself on being community-run and working with local people as a way to curb poaching. The conservancy model was born out of Lewa, a privately owned and well-armed cattle ranch that was transformed into a safe haven for black rhino.

More than two decades after it was established, Lewa teems with endangered Grévy’s zebra, elephants, African buffalo, cheetah, reticulated giraffes, baboons, warthogs, and a riot of birds including the Kori bustard, one of the world’s heaviest flying birds. With 61 black rhino, it also has about 10% of all the country’s remaining and critically endangered black rhino.

Those animals are protected by 150 rangers covering 62,000 acres, 37 of them armed, five dogs for tracking, three aircraft, a helicopter, and a hi-tech operations centre that plots rangers’ and elephants’ movements across a Google Earth map. And it has the neighbouring communities, which John Pameri, head of security, calls his first line of defence. “If you get those people on your side, you are really winning on poaching,” he said.

Lewa has not lost a rhino in the past three years but 17 were killed by poachers between 2010 and 2013, before its security operation was beefed up. “I’ll admit we were caught with our pants down in terms of our capacity to deal with it and our understanding of the dynamic,” said Mike Watson, its chief executive.

With a single rhino’s two horns worth $40,000-$60,000 on the black market, Lewa insiders giving information could earn $3,000 for tipping off poachers, Pameri said. An internal corruption investigation led to nine staff being dismissed or arrested.

“Any organisation that says it is not internally compromised is living in cloud cuckoo land,” said Watson.

Dr Richard Leakey, the renowned conservationist whom president Uhuru Kenyatta appointed as chair of the struggling KWS last year, shares the sentiment.

“I don’t think anyone today would deny Kenya is a very corrupt country. The corruption isn’t just in wildlife management, but at the ports, at law enforcement agencies, it’s with the customs, parts of the judiciary, it’s certainly present at many levels in the police force, it’s certainly very real and still is to a certain extent in the KWS. Government administration is in places, particularly in the countryside, compromised,” he said.

Leakey, 71, who has taken on the full-time job unpaid, discovered a national wildlife service that had been “run into the ground financially”, filled with middle managers instead of rangers on the ground, vehicles that didn’t work, houses that were falling down and plummeting morale. He installed a former banker as KWS’s director to get its finances under control, slim down the bloated bureaucracy and weed out corrupt officials.

But Leakey is under no illusions as to the scale of the challenge. More ivory is shipped out of the port at Mombasa on Kenya’s coast than anywhere in Africa and, despite a recent staff cleanup by Kenyatta, the corruption is still there. Cameras get switched off, or pointed briefly at the sun, or truck scanners are deactivated. “There are too many people employed there, something like 6,000 people. There’s a built-in probability that a good number of people are there for the wrong reason.”

Critics say the KWS is only catching the bottom of the food chain, a charge Leakey does not duck. “Inevitably, we will get the majority of people caught red-handed with firearms or trophies. In some cases they lead you to middlemen. The link between middlemen and kingpins is a much harder route to follow, because kingpins are generally associated with syndicate crime.”

Despite the tougher penalties under the 2013 Wildlife Act, just 6% of wildlife criminals convicted during 2014-15 received a prison sentence, according to the respected Kenyan non-governmental organisation, WildlifeDirect. “To date no high-level trafficker has been convicted and sentenced by Kenyan courts,” it said in a report looking at more than 500 court cases in 2014 and 2015.

Ofri Drori, a private investigator who runs the Eagle Network, which has put 1,300 wildlife traffickers behind bars in nine countries, said the big traffickers were not being targeted, and the reason is corruption.

“The poacher is very easily replaceable,” he said of men like Ali and Lotak, who poached to escape grinding poverty. “The ability to pull the trigger and hunt something as big as an elephant doesn’t require much talent. It’s organised crime, so when you are chasing poachers in the field, you are really not understanding how organised this crime is.”

In the field, the battle to save Kenya’s last 32,000-odd elephants and about 1,000 black and white rhino continues.

To Ekiru, the answer lies in having local people run the show. “The only future we have for this wildlife is in the hands of the communities living with this wildlife.”

For Leakey, sitting in his office in Nairobi, the problem will not go away until the demand in China does – and he thinks there are signs the Chinese government is committed to ending that.

“If we can persuade the market that it’s a shame to do this, as we did before … there just won’t be the need for these elephants to be killed.”