Join the new world

The InterContinental Summit was a fantastic event held on November the 2nd that was hosted by the eUK Ministry of Home Affairs. The nations that took part were Argentina, Brazil, France , Indonesia, the UK and Venezuela with  brief participation from a representative from Pakistan. It was a mammoth summit that lasted for over 5 hours and by the end everyone was thoroughly exhausted but happy with what had been discussed. Seven topics were covered with each nation taking a turn to answer. I would like to say a big thank you to all those who attended, the numbers were great with 50 attendees at one stage. This is a summary of the topics discussed at the Summit.

Social Care and Assistance
Argentina run a scheme called the FSR in which people donate gold to an org and then the org buys food from the national market and gives it to the donating player or other players if it is a charitable donation. This give players health as well as stimulating their national market and giving the government valuable gold. They also have a Ministry of Health which gives free food to new players. Brazil has a Ministry called the 'Assistencia Social' which provides food and weapons to new players and also regularly updates tutorials as the Brazilian government believes information is the most important thing to new players. Brazil were asked a further question about whether their Social Care program was working well with their current babyboom which they replied to by saying that they were still learning about how to best run their Social Assistance program with the babyboom and said that their new players were very demanding, but they are doing their best to keep people playing the game. They said their biggest problem was finding volunteers to work. France have two main Social Care programs, one dealing with the welcoming of new players that includes a portal on their forums, which they are heavily encouraged to join and a school like thing which aims to answer people's questions on IRC and the forums. The second part of the program is a tracking system for new players which works via PMs to the Social Ministry but mainly via a great piece of software they developed which tracks all of France's new players. They were asked a further question about whether they gave rewards for joining the forums but said they didn't.
Indonesia runs the Indo-Sehat, a wellness recovery scheme for their younger players, which is mainly used by players who don't know about the war module and fight down to a low wellness they can't recover from on their own.  They also have a tutorial which tells them how to join the forums and irc and what to do in their first week in erepublik. They also don't offer any incentive to join the forums. The United Kingdom offers free moving tickets to move to their fortress region of London and free food from the British Health Clinic. They also have a comprehensive wiki tutorial which is updated regularly like their New Citizen message which is important to them as they don't have the man power to PM all our new citizens regularly. Venezuela sometimes runs health programs however is mainly working hard to try and create a babyboom and promote forum activity.

Raw Materials

Argentina has two high raw material sources, high stone and high grain. High grain in Argentina and high stone in Bolivian Altiplano, conqurered by Argentina. Their main imports are oil and iron, which they occasionally struggle with acquiring. Brazil has no problems with raw materials due to the relative unimportance of titanium at the moment, as they have plenty of the other raw materials. They are now the major Phoenix exporter of iron and wants to encourage foreigners and other governments to set up RM companies in their resource rich regions. They also hope to attract overseas industry with their high salaries and hope doing all these things will benefit their allies as well as them. France has two high resources, Grain and Stone. To get other resources they run a scheme where French GMs who have raw companies in overseas high iron, oil and titanium regions get given a 10g refund after they buy an export license to France.This dramatically  boosts the number of importers to France and the government makes sure the importers charge a reasonable price for their goods. They have spent 300g on the profit so far and have also participated in a scheme to export stone to resource poor nations like Belgium. Indonesia has high Oil, Titanium and Grain and is aiming to improve its currency to make it more suitable for the export of raws.They don't offer incentives to purchase export licenses as their domestic demand is still very strong however they would encourage foreigners to set up companies in Indonesia.
The United Kingdom has just the one raw material, and that is high grain in London.
This means that they do depend on imports for most of their raw materials. The Ministry of Trade regularly analyses and provides updates on the situation and what their current main sources are. They have problems with getting many raws into the country with the ones that are there being extremely expensive compared to somewhere like Brazil. They have said they will take some of the ideas from other countries on board and will try and implement them to get cheaper RM into the marketplace. Pakistan is in a good position for many countries to take advantage of trade deals as it has high iron, stone and grain and is not a supporter of either of the super alliances. It has low wages which makes production cheaper but lacks workers and is looking to approach countries about running state companies in their resource regions. They are also confident their regions are perfectly safe with even resistance wars not being able to lose them the regions for long as they have kept the war with India open.

How is your military run and how is it structured.

Argentina has a small but highly mobile army which supplies food for all battles and is initiating a major recruitment drive to boost their numbers. They also have a script called 'AlchoTools' which delivers military orders to the erepublik homepage. Brazil's non mobile army currently works in private companies to reduce costs and it also runs a special scheme for new players where they give out free food and weapons. France's  army is using a system created during V2, the idea of it was to reward good soldiers. If they do good damage in the ordered battle they win points. With these points they can "buy" food and weapons. But with the new rules it costs a lot of money, and without the API they are unable to verify who fought where. The Indonesian army is called the ABeRI and is split into 3 divisions of varying rank and skill. Each division is led by a commander and there is a commander in chief that is in charge of the whole army and reports to the Minister of Defence. The United Kingdom's military structure: a standard division that contains mobile soldiers who work in army companies,another division with people who can't move due to politics or who supply themselves. and a third division called UK Special Forces for high-hitting mobile fighters. also a small support division (logistics corps) who deal with companies, stocking, supplying etc. each Division lead by a General and the military is overseen by the Chief of the General Staff, who reports directly to the CP (No MoD)The UK military hub is also a key part of the army, it is an application containing all soldiers and their deployments and also carrying orders for each division, and all supplying is done through irc. Venezuela has a small army with three divisions commanded by the MoD, one division for new players, one division for medium skill players and one division for high skill players. 

How much power the respective Congress hold in each country.

The congress in Argentina causes a lot of problems to the government there, especially in regards to. They cannot do anything without their permission in most spheres of the game. In military aspects they have more freedom, with MPPs and peace proposals passed without much resistance by congress. Brazil's congress is divided in ideas and that makes it hard for it to make important decisions. Some people think the government simply use the congress as a rubber stamp, but they say they don’t oblige people to vote Yes or No. They say they have to make a major effort to get even the smallest proposals through.
Congress in France generally has good intentions however it often wants to take decisions on things it doesn't have much knowledge of, which can sometimes lead to small issues. Indonesia have similar issues to France and Brazil. The United Kingdom government generally has a good relationship with congress although there are occasional disagreement although very rarely.They generally accept the will of the government on nearly all in game issues. The Venzuelans believe they are lucky to have a congress at all,sometimes their congressmen disappear for a while, leaving just a few of them actively working. Recently, they had trouble trying to push down a TO threat, but the PTO was largely unsuccessful. 

How to strengthen and maximize the efficiency of diplomatic missions

Argentina has an academy that trains ambassadors about foreign affairs and what to do as an ambassador. They also have a priority list of countries which means that embassies in allied countries get filled by ambassadors first. Brazil doesn't have a very effective diplomatic system and would like to overhaul it and base it on the UK's system. France believe that there should be an international list of diplomats so countries and people can get in contact with the relevant Minister or Ambassador. The United Kingdom has a system where they have an ambassador to a group of countries and then a chief ambassador who is head of Phoenix countries and one who is head of EDEN/Neutral.This has been quite effective in getting good results, however keeping ambassadors active throughout the month has proved problematic. Venezuela struggles with its ambassador system, currently only having 3 ambassadors, which is mostly down to their very small forum active community.

Preventing, Responding and Engaging in ATO+PTO

Argentina have a small ATO team tasked with helping Phoenix and some of the small countries in South America. They are looking to expand the team however their initial effort has not been met with much success.
Brazil doesn't have an official ATO force however they do sometimes take part in ATO operations with their allies. France had a serious PTO threat from Poland recently after a French traitor who defected to Poland managed to win the PP election in the fourth biggest party. They encouraged people without a party to move into the 5 parties in the top six so they could push out the PTOed party. These efforts were successful and they managed to have a smooth congressional elections. They have an ATO tool which helps them monitor where suspected PTOers are going to vote. Venezuela has been threatened by PTO a number of times but no major damage has been caused so far.

Growth and Employment - Current economic situation of participants

Argentina generally has a strong economy with booms in grain and good similar to those that have happened around the world. They are also pleased with their earnings from trading foreign currency. A strange incident happened last month when the whole of the National Bank was stolen by a hacker and then mysteriously returned in full to the country accounts the next morning. Brazil's economy is growing into one of the largest in the world due to its resources and its booming population. Wages are extremely high with new players earning 10 BRL per day which is great for the government's tax income and is also heavily relied on for RM especially Iron. France suffered an economic crash after the implementation of Rising which was ended by the new 300 wellness rule which boosted their economy heavily. The new war module is bringing them record sales of Weapons and Food.
Venezuela relies on foreign imports for all raw materials and had big problems when grain prices rose and when Spain invaded however thanks to their allies in the region they have had a successful recovery. The employment system is stable.

That's about it, I'd just like to thank everyone who attended the summit and made it possible, I hope we will have more great summits like this in the future

Minister of Foreign Affairs
Keram10