Our daily trip around the world

🇨🇦🇵🇭 Canada agreed to help the Philippines track illegal fishing vessels via satellite. Illegal and unregulated fishing has been a problem across the Philippines’ 7,641 individual islands for years, with the country’s coast guard regularly accusing Chinese fishing vessels of switching off their location-transmitting devices to avoid detection and surveillance. China claims control of virtually the entire South China Sea on historical grounds, and continues to do so despite its claim being invalidated by an arbitration tribunal in 2016.

🇳🇱 Amsterdam is set to enforce the highest tourist tax in Europe. The current tourist tax rate of 7% – which applies to all hotel rooms, short-term rentals, and cruise ships – will increase to 12.5% at the start of next year. Amsterdam is expected to welcome over 20 million tourists this year, prompting concerns from local residents and officials over excess noise, rising prices, and environmental damage. Amsterdam’s government says the extra tax revenue will allow it to manage the consequences of overtourism, with extra funds allocated towards maintaining cleaner streets.

🇪🇺 The EU offered to open its market to the Western Balkans in exchange for reforms. EU leaders presented a new plan yesterday to six Western Balkan nations – Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia – that were previously accepted to join the EU, but have had their accession process delayed for over a decade due to internal issues like poor regulatory structure, corruption, and organized crime. The EU’s plan would open new trade routes to the six nations and move them closer to joining the 27-member bloc, in return for implementing sweeping reforms.