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MUNICH, Germany — France on Sunday warned Britain to expect a bitter, bloody battle in Brexit trade talks with the EU, saying the two sides would “rip each other apart”.

Negotiations for a deal on future EU-UK relations are not due to start until next month, but London and Brussels have already clashed over rules for British financial firms’ access to the EU after Brexit. 

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian said it would be tough to achieve Britain’s aim of agreeing a free trade deal by the end of the year, with the two sides far apart on a range of issues.

“I think that on trade issues and the mechanism for future relations, which we are going to start on, we are going to rip each other apart,” Le Drian said at the Munich Security Conference.

“But that is part of negotiations, everyone will defend their own interests.”

Britain formally left the EU two weeks ago but still trades like a member under a transition period ticking down to the end of this year.

The remaining 27 EU states are currently drawing up their mandate for the talks on the future relationship, with France in particular pushing for a strong stance, notably on the vexed question of fishing.

France and several other countries want to be able to keep fishing in British waters, while London wants full autonomy and limited access for European fishermen.

“Let’s hope the talks are done as quickly as possible, but there are a lot of issues and some difficult points to deal with,” said Le Drian, who is from the important French fishing region of Brittany.

The bloc’s Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier has said the EU’s top priorities are fishing, security and maintaining fair trading conditions for European companies.

In a sign of the likely bruising exchanges ahead, Barnier this week told London not to kid itself about EU access for its prized financial services sector.

Barnier firmly rejected a British suggestion that City of London companies could be given broad, permanent access to EU markets without conditions.

Before the January 31 exit from the EU, Britain said it wanted an ambitious and comprehensive accord with the European bloc.

But since then, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has dialled back, signalling it is willing to accept trade friction in return for sovereignty.

AMMAN — Jordan Electric Power Company (JEPCO) posted a drop in its pre-tax profit for 2019 which totalled JD9.286 million compared to JD11.096 million in 2018, according to the figures the company disclosed via the Amman Stock Exchange website.

The company’s post-tax profit was also lower in 2019 compared to that of the previous year totaling JD7.451 million compared to JD9.317 million in 2018, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Sunday.

AMMAN — Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company recorded an increase in its pre-tax profit for 2019 as it reached JD53.9 million compared to JD42.7 million in 2018, according to the company’s financial figures disclosed on the Amman Stock Exchange website.

The company’s after tax profit in 2019 was JD45.1 million compared to JD36.8 million in 2018.

The company’s profit was mainly from its oils factory and its marketing and selling of petrol products, according to the Jordan News Agency, Petra.

DAMASCUS — The government in war-devastated Syria decided on Sunday that all property and car sales must be conducted through banks, in an apparent bid to revive the banking sector and fight tax evasion.

Under the directive, which came into immediate effect, buyers and sellers must use bank accounts for vehicle and property purchases, in a country largely used to transactions in cash.

“The decision targets the two important sectors in terms of money supply,” economic journalist Ali Al Agha said.

Notaries and public services can no longer register property and vehicle sale contracts unless documents show “that the sum or a part of the sum has been settled” through banks, under the regulation. 

The move aims to encourage electronic transactions and limit the use of banknotes, Agha said, adding it was also a way to curb tax evasion.

Syria’s almost nine-year-old war has killed more than 380,000 people and ravaged its cities and infrastructure.

The United Nations estimated in 2018 that the conflict had caused nearly $400 billion in war-related destruction.

In other moves, the central bank last week tripled the upper limit on mortgages to 15 million Syrian pounds ($12,500 at the black market rate) as well as the ceiling for renovation loans.

The executive director of the Syrian mortgage credit institution, Madine Ali, said the move would “allow a large portion” of the population to buy or renovate property.

The credit ceiling could be further revised upwards, according to marked demand, Ali said, quoted in the local media.

The Syrian pound has plunged to a historic low of more than 1,200 against the greenback on the black market, while the official rate is 434 to the dollar, down from 48 at the March 2011 start of the war.

The devaluation has driven up prices and worsened dire economic conditions that the government blames on tightening Western sanctions.

WASHINGTON — The United States is increasing tariffs on Airbus planes imported from Europe to 15 per cent, authorities said, in a move the aerospace giant said on Saturday was “deeply” regrettable.

Friday’s decision to hike tariffs from March 18 “further escalates trade tensions between the US and the EU”, the European aerospace giant said in a statement, adding it creates “more instability for US airlines that are already suffering from a shortage of aircraft”.

The announcement from the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) came just days after President Donald Trump said it was time to talk “very seriously” about a trade deal with the European Union.

Duties have been at 10 per cent since October, when Washington hit European products worth $7.5 billion with tariffs.

“Airbus deeply regrets USTR’s decision to increase tariffs on aircraft imported from the EU as well as the decision to maintain tariffs on goods from other sectors,” the company said, referring to products — including wine, cheese, coffee and olives — which have been taxed at 25 per cent since October.

The latest decision also “ignores the many submissions made by US airlines, highlighting the fact that they — and the US flying public — will ultimately have to pay these tariffs”, it added.

‘Ultimately harmful’ 

The German finance ministry said it had taken note of the move by the United States, and reiterated its stance on tariffs.

“Our basic position is clear: We reject any unilateral increase in customs taxes,” it said in a statement. “Customs taxes are ultimately harmful to everyone, including the USA.”

Washington imposed punitive taxes on the $7.5 billion in European products after the World Trade Organisation gave the United States a green light to take retaliatory trade measures against the EU over its subsidies to European aerospace giant Airbus.

Industry executives in Europe and the United States are on tenterhooks awaiting each new announcement from trade authorities.

Trump, a real estate developer turned politician, sees tariffs as a negotiating tool.

After a trade war with China that lasted nearly two years and featured punishing reciprocal tariffs, Trump declared at the signing of a “phase one” trade deal with Beijing in January that it was a “momentous step ... righting the wrongs of the past”.

He has now turned his sights to Europe as Washington brandishes the threat of taxing European auto imports, a move targeting Germany, Europe’s biggest auto exporter.

Trump wants EU member states to further open their markets to American products, particularly agricultural goods.

He has also threatened to hike tariffs on French wine — currently taxed at 25 per cent — even further unless there is a deal on a digital tax which European nations want to impose on American giants such as Amazon and Facebook.

PARIS — Airbus on Thursday reported a net loss of 1.36 billion euros for 2019, weighed down by massive fines to settle bribery scandals and extra costs for the A400M military transport aircraft. 

Airbus has agreed to pay 3.6 billion euros ($3.9 billion) in fines to Britain, France and the United States to settle corruption probes into some of its aircraft sales.

While the bottom line was hit by one-off charges, business operations looked solid with operating profit rising to 6.9 billion euros.

Airbus' current order book establishes it as the world's biggest civilian aircraft maker ahead of arch-rival Boeing which has been struggling with the fallout of two 737 MAX crashes on production and sales.

Airbus said it expects to deliver about 880 commercial planes in 2020 against 863 in 2019 when it booked 768 aircraft orders, up from 747 in 2018, thanks mostly to the A320neo programme.

CEO Guillaume Faury acknowledged, however, that the rollout of the A320neo was six months behind schedule. 

The objective is "to recover this six month delay in the course of the next 18 months", he told a news conference.

"We achieved a great deal in 2019. We delivered a strong underlying financial performance driven mainly by our commercial aircraft deliveries," he said.

"The reported earnings also reflect the final agreements with the authorities resolving the compliance investigations and a charge related to revised export assumptions for the A400M."

Development problems and delays for its A400M transport plane forced Airbus to book 1.2 billion euros in charges to reflect lowered expectations for exports.

Airbus also said that it had bought struggling Canadian manufacturer Bombardier out of the A220 programme, marking the exit of Bombardier from commercial aviation.

Airbus is paying debt-laden Bombardier $591 million for its stake in the A220 joint venture, formerly Bombardier's C-Series.

Airbus now has 75 per cent in the programme, with the government of Quebec holding the rest.

The company had already booked a 64 per cent rise in A220 orders since taking a controlling stake in the programme in July 2018.

Separately Airbus announced the signature of a memorandum of understanding with Nigerian airline Green Africa for the sale of 50 aircraft of the A220-300 range, with a 2018 list price of $4.6 billion.

LUXEMBOURG — Google and the EU battled in court on Wednesday as the search engine giant tried to persuade judges that it was unfairly accused of ill-treating rivals of its Shopping service.

The Silicon Valley juggernaut is appealing a 2.4 billion euro ($2.6 billion) fine from 2017 that was the first in a series of major penalties imposed by the European Commission, the EU’s powerful anti-trust regulator.

The court case launches a new phase in the decade-long duel and is a major test of the combative tactics taken by the EU commission against big tech.

The next months will see Google appeal all three decisions that saw Brussels slap a total $9 billion in EU fines, with the giant’s Android mobile operating system and ad service also caught out for illegal behaviour.

The tech giant has paid the fines and changed its behaviour, but the company on Wednesday strongly condemned the EU’s verdict on shopping in the EU’s General Court as ill-founded and unfair.

“If Google would have faced the commission’s decision in 2008, Google would have had no other option but to abandon its innovative technologies and its improved designs,” Thomas Graf, a lawyer for Google told the EU’s General Court.

Supporting Google, a lawyer for the CCIA tech lobby in Brussels argued that the Commission’s demands “would ultimately harm consumers and internet users”.

The Commission’s lawyer, Nicholas Khan, deplored the power of the Mountain View, California giant. “Google’s status as the colossus of the digital age is unquestioned and until recently unquestionable.”

The commission was joined by other plaintiffs, who shot down Google for aggressive business practices.

“Google’s behaviour constitutes a serious abuse of dominance which must stop or it will destroy competition in all the markets in which it decides to enter,” said Thomas Höppner, a lawyer for three companies fighting the group.

The EU and Google have been locked in battle since 2010 when the commission first looked into accusations that the search engine was squeezing rivals from results in order to promote ads and Google Shopping, its price comparison service.

For several years Brussels and the US giant sought a negotiated settlement, but the EU abruptly reversed course in 2014 after the intervention of member states and the arrival of Margrethe Vestager who took over as EU competition chief.

Vestager, a former Danish finance minister, quickly became known for her relentless pursuit of US tech giants that drew attention worldwide.

Instead of negotiation, she repeatedly fined Google and slapped Apple with a 13 billion euro tax bill that boss Tim Cook dismissed as “political crap”.

The appeal hearing is to last three days with a decision possible by June. The case can then go to the EU’s highest court, the European Court of Justice.

The EU’s case mirrors similar litigation against Microsoft, a legal labyrinth that ran throughout most of the 1990s and early 2000s and saw the Windowsmaker fined about 1.4 billion euros.

Google was expected to plead that the commission had wrongly applied arguments used successfully against Microsoft and that the company has the right to give advantage to its own services.

The company would also underline that the EU case erroneously failed to account for the spectacular rise of Amazon and eBay in its assessment of Google Shopping.

Players in other sectors are following the case closely, and hoping that Vestager swoops in on other features such as maps, travel and job ads where Google has yet to face push back from regulators.

More than 30 travel firms — including TripAdvisor and Expedia — wrote to Vestager on Monday complaining that Google was unfairly trying to enter the vacation rental ad business.

The EU has already said it was looking into Google’s similar push into job ads.