Yesterday I visited Manama in Bahrain. It was a great dtay with excellent meetings.
Manama had change a lot since my last visit in 2008.
I and my colleagues from the region had several important meetings with Government and private sector regarding customs, smart borders, AEO/Trusted Traders and security/facilitation.
His Excellency Customs President Shaikh Ahmed bin Hamad Al Khalifa delivered in the afternoon a great speech about Customs/Border reform and modernization.
Bahrain Customs is a leader that has done an impressive and really important modernization over the last 5-6 years. Today it is a strong and leading agency with outstanding results.
Here above with our Director for the KGH Middle East region, Mr. Daniel Sandberg and his Deputy Mr. Mohamed Rafaat.
It was a really good visit.
In February 2019 I had 17455 visitors on this blog. A new record. This is amazing.
Thank you for following the blog and for reading my views on Customs, borders, trade, development, reform, modernization, music, film, sport & Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Now we go for 20.000!
Two leading Brexiteers have said any delay to Brexit would do “incalculable” harm to public trust in politics.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Tory MP Steve Baker and the DUP’s Nigel Dodds said the “extended uncertainty” would be a “political calamity”.
On Tuesday, Theresa May will again ask MPs to back her Brexit deal, but if they reject it they may get a chance to vote to delay Brexit.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March.
Mr Baker, who is deputy chairman of the pro-Brexit Tory European Research Group (ERG), and Mr Dodds wrote that, for some, any delay would mean “democracy would be effectively dead”.
They added said that such an outcome would be “a costly delay for businesses which have prepared to exit on 29 March”.
Both were confident that without changes to the deal, Mrs May would be “defeated firmly” again on Tuesday.
MPs rejected the prime minister’s deal by 230 votes in January – the largest defeat for a sitting government in history.
If they do the same this week, MPs have been promised a vote on whether the UK should leave without a deal.
If they then reject a no-deal Brexit they could get a vote on Thursday on whether to request a delay to Brexit from the EU.
Since January, the prime minister has been trying to seek assurances from the EU about the so-called Irish backstop – an aspect of her plan which is a sticking point for many MPs.
The backstop is a safety net, designed to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland.
But some MPs fear that – in its current form – the backstop may leave the UK tied to the EU indefinitely.
They want Mrs May to change this aspect of the deal.
Discussions between the UK government and EU officials on how to resolve the problem continued over the weekend.
On Friday, Mrs May said the UK had put forward “serious” proposals to resolve the deadlock.
The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg said what the EU was offering amounted to a “legal beefing-up of existing promises”.
But Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and the DUP, the party Mrs May’s government relies on for a majority in Parliament, were both dismissive of the EU’s latest proposal.
Source: BBC News
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