27 minute read
TRENDS
Hybrid working: What is the best way to resolve conflict between remote employees?
’Drama’ in offices has transferred to technological tools like emails and workplace messaging services
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by Jackie Bischof*
Silvina Moschini is in the business of remote work. As the founder of SheWorks!, a digital platform focused on remote working opportunities for women, and president of TransparentBusiness, a remote workforce management company, her entire career has focused on running remote teams.
So Moschini says she was shocked recently when a longtime, treasured colleague came to her with the news that she wanted to resign. Why had her employee not felt compelled to say anything? “I told her that I would be sad if she leaves, but I am even sadder that she didn’t bring the topic to me, and that she had to go through all this stress to tell me she wants to leave.” Her colleague was upset by a leadership change that had happened in the organization, and didn’t want to be seen as undermining her manager. They worked things out.
Even the most thoughtfully designed distributed workforce can have hiccups when it comes to dealing with tensions and conflict, from identifying it when it happens, to dealing with it quickly.
The advent of hybrid work has also introduced a new dynamic into working lives which is compounding people’s already frayed nerves, says Mark Mortensen, a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD business school whose research has focused on remote work. Just as we got used to running everything in the cloud, we now have a new opportunity for friction: balancing the needs of people who have started coming back into the office with those who have chosen to remain at home.
“The playing field is changing,” Mortensen says. “It’s like we’re trying to play a sport, and the rules are changing constantly, and the field is getting longer.”
Moschini’s situation was a reminder that employees need to feel comfortable sharing their challenges, and that there’s value in admitting when things aren’t perfect. “If there was a mistake that was made consciously or unconsciously by the leader—just say it so,” she says. “Vulnerability really pays off, because your people, your team, need to know that you are not a machine. And we are all co-responsible for making things work.”
What does that co-responsibility look like, almost two years after the coronavirus pandemic upended our world? To start, it’s helpful to remember how big of a disruption that was.
WHY CONFLICT CAN BE HARD TO MANAGE REMOTELY
People tend to struggle with difficult conversations in any context. But at work, it can be hard to separate the personal from the professional. While some conflict can aid innovation, it needs to be dealt with productively. Otherwise, it risks triggering our “fight or flight” response—and there’s not that many places to run to in an office.
The pandemic and the sudden shift to remote work made that even harder. Everyone who wasn’t working on a distributed team had to learn to do so, as the world around them shifted dramatically. We’re only just starting to see the effects that changes wrought by the pandemic are having on the workforce.
Even teams that are used to remote work can struggle to productively deal with arguments. Technology can
make it difficult to talk those things through, from connection glitches interrupting conversations, to not having a full sense of what another person is working on or their context, and not being able to process the full richness of their reactions, as you would face-to-face.
Problems can also fester due to under-communication and in the absence of trust (something that is often generated over multiple in-person interactions, and has to be built intentionally amongst remote teams).
“When it comes to working remote and hybrid, you have to pay for the stuff that used to come for free,” says Mortensen, describing how critical it is that companies work to replicate the casual, real-life interactions that help employees connect, commune, or vent.
Managers of remote teams need to have a heightened sense of awareness, says Massimiliano Tirocchi, the Uruguay-based co-founder and CMO of e-commerce group Trafilea, which at only seven years old has 400 employees in more than two dozen countries. The company has been largely remote since it began. He’s heard peers say, “since we are not in the office, we are having less drama. [But] that is not really what is happening,” he says. Rather, the drama is just “translating to a different tool,” like Slack or email.
ERR ON THE SIDE OF OVER-COMMUNICATING
Remote and hybrid work needs to be very specifically designed to reduce friction—such as creating work handovers over time zones—but you also have to create an environment for letting off steam in a productive way, and sometimes embrace disagreements in the moment. In the last two years, working “relationships have shifted and changed to feel thinner and weaker,” Mortensen says. “That affects how much time and effort we put into resolving these conflicts, and how well we are able to do that.”
You’ll head off an eruption of emotion, or be more equipped to have productive conflict, if you’re consistently letting teams talk through what’s working or not. These kinds of regular check-ins are often described as “pulse checks.”
Don’t air this as an opportunity for people to moan about something—or somebody—they’re angry with, Mortensen says. Rather “frame it as, ‘Here’s how I need your help.’” You’ll get a more positive (and probably useful) response.
Being intentional about workflow, giving space for people to talk—these acts are all in the service of creating a work environment where employees don’t have to wait for a meeting to discuss something. They feel empowered to talk to their managers about an issue, because they’ve created the space to allow them to do so.
When complaints began to surface between Trafilea’s marketing and product teams that changes were not being made fast enough on the company’s website, an investigation unveiled a conflict over resource allocation that had been lingering for months.
CMO Tirocchi was taken aback. As a wholly distributed firm, Trafilea has a hiring and onboarding process that specifically highlights to employees how much the company values radical transparency and feedback. “We coach our managers and leaders to make sure that they are open to having conversations with talent, and really understand and deep dive into what is the real truth,” he says. Each department has “people business partners” who are on hand to mediate conversations and come up with solutions.
That worked within teams, but in the case of the cross-departmental conflict, Trafliea discovered that managers were not talking to each other, people were working at cross-purposes, and the problem had begun to impact the company more broadly. It took an extensive process of bringing together the project managers and people business partners of the affected departments, and pairing them with process analysts to walk through the perspectives and workflows that were at
the core of the conflict. This helped to get the teams on the same page about objectives, and how to communicate around them.
“In the end, people like their company because they believe in the same purpose, the same mission, and they’re aligned with the core values. So when they understand that they need to detach from their own perspective about things and conflicts, they really understand better where they need to go,” Tirocchi says.
Moschini’s guiding principle when it comes to conflict is to “make explicit the implicit,” from communicating precisely what you need, to making sure you agree on definitions of the terms you’re using. “Even the concept of flexibility could be understood very flexibly,” she says.
This proved the case for Carin Taylor, the chief diversity officer for Workday, who had to work through a conflict with a colleague over a series of remote conversations. “I do think that being in this remote environment has made us think differently about how we communicate with one another…and removed some of the barriers of that discomfort of being in-person,” Taylor says.
If you need to hash something out, it’s helpful to set up “rules of engagement” ahead of time. These could include agreeing to talk with the camera on, and potentially bringing in a mediator. Taylor says she found it helpful to acknowledge that the conversation was going to be uncomfortable, stating that the purpose was to “create a safe space for both people to be heard,” and building in breaks.
“One of the things that became really important was to give each other a pause and allow [each other] to adjust, process, think about what was going on, take a break and then come back and have the conversation,” Taylor says. “I remembered walking away from the conversation afterwards, just feeling so much more refreshed from the fact that I had taken that break, [and in] a better state than what I thought I was going to be.”
Mortensen, together with conflict expert Amy Gallo, also suggests starting the conversation with what you share in common, and working to understand each other’s experiences by asking questions like: “How are you seeing this situation? What am I missing?”
“Meet your employees where they are, and understand that [you] have to come up with different solutions for different situations,” Taylor says.
THE VALUE OF PERSPECTIVE TAKING
A common theme among the leaders interviewed for this piece was the power of asking people involved in an argument or tense discussion to consider the other person’s view. This may sound like common sense, but in a hybrid environment, especially one that has sprung from a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, this needs to be an intentional request. Teams who aren’t in the same physical space are still equally capable of teaming up against each other.
Mortensen recalls chairing a department that was split across two different locations, France and Singapore, but working towards a common organizational goal. He began to notice that people were becoming polarized based around different issues, and in some cases, geographically.
The first thing he tried to do was remind people, “that we are first and foremost a we,” as opposed to an “us and them.” The second was to start asking people to try and understand why their counterpart might have done something.
“Perspective-taking remains probably the most critical and undervalued tool in leadership and management,” he says. The act of “accepting [another person’s reality] and then saying, ‘OK, given that, would I behave in the same way? To me that unlocks incredible doors.”
*Jackie Bischof
Deputy Editor, Quartz
Why rethinking care work is crucial for a gender inclusive recovery
Almost two years since the start of the pandemic and women continue to be disproportionately impacted due to an inadequate gender responsive recovery from the health and socioeconomic crises
by Dharrnesha Inbah Rajah*
In the labour market, more women than men were unemployed due to the pandemic. While men’s employment in 2021 is expected to recover to 2019 levels, women’s employment recovery is likely to fall short by 0.9% compared to 2019 levels. Additionally, only 43.2% of global working age women will be employed in 2021, compared to 68.6% of working age men. Put simply, more women are exiting the workforce.
The pandemic has also widened the global gender poverty gap. Poverty rates for women and girls are expected to rise to 12.5% in 2021 (11.7% in 2019) compared to 12.1% for men and boys (11.3% in 2019). By this year, for every 100 men aged 25 to 34 years old in extreme poverty, there will be a corresponding 118 women. WHY ARE WOMEN MORE VULNERABLE TO THE SOCIOECONOMIC IMPACTS OF THE PANDEMIC?
In mitigating the widening gender gap, it is pertinent to understand the underlying challenges women face compared to men. These include the burden of care work, unemployment statistics reporting, and disproportionate female representation in certain economic sectors.
Traditionally, women have carried the brunt of unpaid caregiving and domestic work within families. Even before the pandemic, women already did three times the amount of care work compared to men – or an additional 8.3 billion hours of unpaid work. With schools
and childcare centres shut for most of the pandemic, the burden of unpaid childcare once again rested heavily on women’s shoulders. Last year, women took on 173 additional hours of unpaid childcare, compared to only 59 additional hours by men.
This increase in unpaid care work is a crucial factor in the declining women’s labour force participation rate, even as employment is indicating signs of recovery in several countries. However, the actual decline is often much larger than the reported figures. The unemployment data reporting obscures the declining numbers of women in the workforce by definition and construct, in both developed and developing countries.
In the US, a woman who has left the labour force entirely and is not job hunting is no longer counted in monthly unemployment rates. In Malaysia, a woman is still considered employed if she switches from paid work to unpaid family work, as long as it is for at least one hour per week. Unpaid family work remains vaguely defined. Coupled with reporting constructs that overlook the growth in unpaid work by women, enumerating the economic losses faced by women and countries becomes a daunting task.
The economic impact experienced by employed women in the manufacturing, services, and social sectors have been exacerbated by the pandemic. In fact, women account for 70% and 75% of the health and care, and garment supply chain workforces, respectively. Some working age women are not even captured in employment data due to participation in the informal economy. With 63% of the informal economy workforce comprised of women, they are more vulnerable to precarious income and safety arrangements, and lack access to social protection. PUTTING WOMEN AT THE CENTRE OF RECOVERY EFFORTS
For an inclusive recovery, we need to invest in women. Governments need to adopt gender responsive policies that are long overdue.
There needs to be a rethinking of care work. The care economy remains largely invisible and inadequately resourced. To reduce further gender gap losses, targeted fiscal spending should be channelled to improve care leave and welfare interventions. Specifically, it is crucial to expand the coverage of care policies for longer and more evenly designed maternity and paternity leaves, and for more flexible paid parental leaves.
Currently, only 117 countries legally guarantee at least 14 weeks of paid maternity leave, and only 79 countries legally mandate paid paternity leave. An added complexity with paternal leaves is the persistently low uptake. To encourage a paradigm shift in attitudes on paternal leaves, compensations such as tax credits and cash transfers can be used as short-term nudges.
More expansive care policy coverage is crucial for the promotion of equality in employment. These should pave the way for long-term policy measures such as strengthening non-discrimination labour laws to reduce gender wage gaps and enable easier transition back into the workforce for women with employment breaks due to care responsibilities. Basic legal frameworks enabling women’s economic inclusion is non-negotiable.
Other interventions include sustainable provisions of care services. One such policy is developing training programmes for women to run community day-care and pre-school centres with the support of state and local welfare agencies. These centres can also be expanded to provide childcare and nutrition guidance for new and young parents to reduce the time spent by women on childcare, and to encourage healthier division of care work at home.
While we shift to living with the unprecedented health, economic, and social impacts of the pandemic, the widening gender gap cannot take the same approach. Women need to be at the centre of recovery and growth efforts if we are truly serious about a brighter and more equitable future for all.
*Dharrnesha Inbah Rajah
Global Shaper, Kuala Lumpur Hub
Athens "sous le ciel de Paris"
"Paris-Athenes: Naissance de la Grece moderne 1675-1919" in the the Louvre Museum
by Alexandra Papaisidorou*
Strolling around the Musee du Louvre on the occasion of the exhibition "Paris-Athens. The birth of Modern Greece, 1675-1919" was a world of emotions inside the Hall Napoleon.
Emotions are the first hidden signs of each form of art and literature. Eyes, ears, sounds, images even odors by our memory and cognition reached us on the Louvre’s Pyramid entrance with elan.
Just few and counted were the lucky ones to enjoy the peace and serenity of Louvre with no visitors and to acknowledge these collective and individual emotions during a recap of that historical processes re-vived in front of us during the pre-opening of the exhibit. The embattled director of the Musee du Louvre in Paris, Jean-Luc Martinez, welcomed us and our first steps had alredy taken their way along the cyclical stairs and memorial backgrounds of each one of us who had started whispering the emblematic historical extracts of that incoceivable historical and cultural source.
"Is there anything special about the ancient Greeks and their emotions?", asked me and the reply was given in an attempt to transmit all these feelings at once. Basic emotions are not a Greek canvas. Attempting to give explanations, our steps headed to the painting “On the Terrace or Athenian Evening”, by Iakovos Rizos in 1897 on a neoclassical building in Plaka, near the Acropolis of Athens, a painting being placed as a plisse wall
across the side of the first hall giving the sense of walking nexto to the figures of Rizos’.
And then, together with awe-struck French pairs eyes, we headed to the following themes... signified our plod to deeper Louvre.
The halls of themes related to Ottoman Greek and the Independent war include artworks of war, warriors, historical momentums of glory or caning. Important personalities such as ambassadors, politicians, intellectuals and scholars of that age became the reason of the Philhellenism wave to be spead across Europe.
Special landmarks of archaelogy followed showing off the need to deepen the scientific research and discover a new discipline.Greece was officially recognised as a state in 1830 and Athens became its new capital in 1834. Neoclassicism, the prevalent movement in art and architecture at the time, which drew inspiration from the culture of classical antiquity which trigger thoughts as depicted in works of arts under the exhibition title The colour of Antiquity and the construction of thne Greek identity accompagnied by artwork related to the Entry of Modernity and the construction of a European identity through lots of references and characteristics in Parisian form and vein.
According to Mr. Martinez statements, the exhibition aims to combine the history of archaeology with the history of the evolvement of the Modern Greek state and the art created in it unfolding the anthem of historical events and points under a different content, focused more on conceived notions of that extrovertion and how the rest of the world was influenced by.
It is highly mentioned that the date of 2021 as an anniverasry date, does not only serve as a tribute to the country’s bicentenary of the struggle for independence, but also to commemorate the introduction of the renowned Venus de Milo to the Louvre, one of the most magnificent sightseeings in the passage of time.
Eugene Delacroix, Theodoros Rallis, Nikos Lytras,Nikolaos Gyzis, Leonidas Drossis among the ones who represent the most special paintings in an exhibition that will last exhibition, which will run from 30 September 2021 to 7 February 2022 and it is organised by Marina Lambraki Plaka, director of the National Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum in Athens, Anastasia Lazaridou, director of Archaeological Museums, Exhibitions and Educational Programmes at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, and Jean-Luc Martinez, president-director of the Louvre, assisted by Debora Guillon, in a unique aesthetic experience indicating emotional evaluations and motivations of such emotions that penetrate every aspect of our lives.
Leaving back Paris-Athens exhibition of the Louvre Museum, one is for sure: Great histories are said by the ones who could manage to create them.
*Alexandra Papaisidorou
Editor-at-large/ PhD cand. University of Piraeus, Cultural Diplomacy & international Relations
Former President Trump still dominates the news media, a book review
by John Daniels*
Former President Donald Trump is still in the limelight. And it's not just about his statements about politics in America, but also about the number of books that have been published about him this year. The books were mainly about Donald Trump as president. One book used a very different angle, the mainstream media, fake news and framing, and how they reported about the former president’s actions and statements. The book is called “Trump’s
Daily Domination of The News Media.”
The so-called mainstream media continue to report negatively about him, unlike about Joe Biden, the current president. He is protected by the media about decisions. The biased media hate Trump since his announcement to run in the 2016 presidential election.
The explosive written book is about the working methods of the so-called mainstream media, the Big Tech, and the left-wing socialists of the Democratic party. The book is written by political journalist and publicist Hans Izaak Kriek, who has followed Trump since his announcement in 2015 to compete in the battle for the presidency of America.
Kriek wrote critical observations, opinions and thoughts for various media. In his vision, journalism is made and presented as real news for real people. In his book, you can read how the various newspapers, radio, and television stations reported on Trump's statements and actions on Trump's last day as president. Consistently negatively, every day. But Donald Trump dominated the daily coverage in the news media every day. His opponents were the mainstream media—such
as CNN, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, the New York Times, The Washington Post— the Big Tech, and the Democrats.
The book is mainly about these protagonists in the political theater. After four years, "the swamp" hits hard back. Trump has been humiliated by the Big Tech, the mainstream media, and the Democrats in his wake after a discussable election result. There is a hatchet day for everyone who supported him and worked with him. But Trump managed to make things difficult for the ruling elite for four years.
Author Kriek: "You either love or hate Trump. I like the man, but it wasn't love at first sight. When I saw his first rally before he elected Mike Pence as vice president, Trump and General Michael Flynn made a speech. What Trump said appealed to me, but I thought the general would be a better candidate. He was younger and muscular, and he spoke more directly than Trump. Later, that changed. The more I saw Trump, the more I understood and liked him. Then, on November 8, 2016, I was in Amsterdam with my wife. We watched CNN breathlessly and saw how the billionaire beat the predicted winner, Hillary Clinton. From that time on, I have been following Trump closely.
Subsequently, Big Tech unleashed algorithms on the population, and Mark Zuckerberg paid $420 million to a left-wing organisation that provided votes for Joe Biden. It worked. Although Trump had received seventy-four million votes, he lost to the colorless Biden, who had not campaigned for fear of COVID-19. Millions of people wonder how he could win an election only sitting in the cellar of his home.
Trump kept fighting to the very end. Forty percent of Americans believe the election results are incorrect. Ninety percent of Trump supporters believe this. So that's more than one hundred million Americans. Here we come to a hypocritical point: while there was keen interest in Mueller's yearlong investigation, which searched for evidence of Trump's 2016 electoral fraud, now and while there is doubt about the Democratic electoral result, there is no interest in in-depth research.
There is peace between Israel and the Sunni world and between Serbia and Kosovo. Trump did not start a war and brought the soldiers back from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. The whole Left world conspired against Trump, and that has become too much for him. We must cherish the miracle of Trump. Unlike Freud, I can take comfort in the idea that a benefit never lasts forever.
This book shows how the mainstream media reported Trump's statements and rallies in the last one hundred days of Trump's presidency. The coverage is diverse, from newspapers and news channels; most are negative and seem like a conspiracy by the mainstream media, Democrats, and Big Tech to destroy Trump. There is a daily summary about this from October 1, 2020, to January 21, 2021.
Readers will see three media mentioned per day with the headlines, of which an article has been placed in total. In October, it is mainly about the run-up to the elections and the COVID-19 problem. In November, about the polls and the results. December is about whether the elections were fair and whether there was no fraud. And finally, in January, the main topics were the official appointment of Biden as the forty-sixth US President, Trump's continued resistance to the outcome of the presidential election and the Capitol's storming.
The most important question in the book is: “Who owns and rules the mainstream media?” The answer is: fifteen billionaires and six large corporations own most US media outlets. The giant media conglomerates in America are AT&T, Comcast, the Walt Disney Company, National Amusements (which includes Viacom Inc. and CBS), News Corp, and Fox Corporation (both owned in part by the Murdoch's), Sony, and Hearst Communications.
While it's important to consider who controls the media, it's also important to remember that many media owners are hands-off in content, but some are invasive. Will news companies run a story that paints their umbrella corporation in a negative light? It depends on the publication, the parent company, and the ethics of their journalists.
The author also wrote his book to warn the public to look critically at media and political leaders. What kind of cat and mouse game do they play or play together? For whom are they doing this, for themselves or for the public? By the way, if Trump will be back in 2024, the world will see how the media in America will react.
*John Daniels
freelance journalist for several media outlets ‘Trump’s Daily Domination of The News Media’ is available online at Amazon in almost every country in the world and also at Apple iBooks.
What are countries doing to encourage the transition to electric vehicles?
by Kayleigh Bateman*
Finding a way to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions is top of the agenda for most countries and many governments see electric cars as part of the solution.
Finding a way to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions is top of the agenda for most countries and many governments see electric cars as part of the solution.
The UK is the first country to introduce a law where new homes and buildings in England will be required to have electric vehicle charging points. Starting next year, it also includes new-build supermarkets, workplaces and buildings undergoing major renovations.
“This is a pivotal moment - we cannot go on as we are,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson told delegates at a Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference. “We have to adapt our economy to the green industrial revolution.”
• New homes in England will be required to have electric vehicle charging points by law, from 2022 • Global electric car sales grew 140% in the first quarter of 2021 • Publicly accessible chargers have grown sevenfold across Europe in the past five years • But there is still a serious lack of charging points in most EU member states, according to European data
The move follows last year’s announcement that the UK aims to switch to electric cars, with the sale of new petrol and diesel cars banned from 2030. This is part of the UK’s Road to Zero strategy, which has set the goal of every car and van being zero-emission by 2050.
As the UK moves ahead with its electric vehicle transition plans, several other countries are following suit. Global electric car sales surged by 140% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). China led the way, followed closely by Europe, while sales doubled in the US.
CHARGING ACROSS EUROPE The installation of publicly accessible battery chargers across Europe has grown sevenfold in the past five years, according to the IEA. However, they also note that only Italy, the Netherlands and France have delivered the number of charging points set by the EU’s Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Directive.
Much of the growth in public charging infrastructure has been in China, where fast chargers increased by 44% in 2020 to a total of 310,000. That compares with 38,000 by the end of 2020 in Europe and 17,000 in the US, the IEA says.
There is a serious lack of charging points “in most EU member states,” according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA).
MORE CHARGERS NEEDED That data reveals that 10 countries - including Greece, Poland, Romania and Latvia - don’t have one charger for every 100km of key road. The ACEA says a total of 18 EU members have under five charging points per 100km of road. “Consumers will not be able to make the switch to zero-emission vehicles if there are not enough charging and refuelling stations along the roads where they drive,” said ACEA Director General, Eric-Mark Huitema, in a statement about the data.
Countries with the most chargers per 100km are the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal and Austria.
Progress on the electrification of the transportation sector needs to speed up, according to the World Economic Forum, which created the Global Battery Alliance to overcome some of the challenges holding the sector back, including making the charging infrastructure better.
To transition to electric vehicles, an estimated 290 million charging points will be required globally by 2040, according to the Alliance, and that would require a global investment of $500 billion.
GOING ALL-ELECTRIC Several of the biggest car manufacturers have already pledged to go all-electric from 2025 and 2030, including Jaguar and Bentley. Ford says all its vehicles sold in Europe will be electric by 2030.
Even so, some of the world’s largest car manufacturers say progress will be stunted in many markets since many countries still plan to rely on fossil fuels to produce electricity.
A shortage of chips for electric car makers has also slowed the progression, leading to a slump in sales in Europe this year. IHS Markit reports that the production of 1.4 million light vehicles was lost in the first quarter of 2021.
While new laws in one part of the world may be helpful, more work is clearly needed to make the automotive industry sustainable.
EU’s emissions rose nearly a fifth as economy bounced back
Greenhouse gas emissions from EU countries jumped by 18% last spring, according to data from Eurostat, Europe’s statistics office, as the economic sector recovered from pandemic shutdowns and returned to releasing climate-damaging gases into the atmosphere.
Eurostat said emissions totalled 867 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent from April to June this year, up sharply from the same period in 2020 when lockdowns across Europe brought emissions to their lowest levels ever recorded.
However, it added that levels remained below any pre-pandemic quarter and continued a long-term trend of steady reduction.
The manufacturing and construction sector – responsible for the largest share of emissions at over a third of emissions – saw levels jump 22% from 2020, while the electricity supply sector rose 17% and agriculture remained steady.
Households contributed almost a fifth of emissions, largely due to their transport-linked carbon footprint, which rose 25% from last year, and heating, up 42%.
But even as Europe’s businesses recover, some countries are mulling fresh lockdowns. For instance, Austria has shut all non-essential shops, bars and cafes to curb a new wave of infections sweeping the continent.
Eurostat’s report represents its first estimates of quarterly EU greenhouse gas emissions, as the bloc edges towards its 2050 net-zero target.
*first published in: www.euractiv.com
