appliances. moves against its legendary chairman officially ousting carlos ghosn after his arrest on financial misconduct charges but the french have yet to act on the star executive who also were no. ans the european union may be a single market but it's not an even playing field for fostering high tech business we look at whether the e.u. can really create a digital single market. i'm stephen beard thanks for joining us the board of nissan has voted to fire chairman carlos cohn he remains in jail on suspicion of falsifying financial reports on japanese car the japanese carmakers french partner renault is meanwhile keeping going on as chief executive at least temporarily naming an interim c.e.o. just yesterday a major rift is threatening to open between the two companies endangering the

profitable lions the french and japanese economy ministers even met today over the matter. it was an equally awaited decision in tokyo and around the world for hours nissen's top executives held consultations with their c.e.o. hero to a psych hour then it became clear go and must leave his position as chairman of newsstand site is expected to be his temporary successor. cornerstone has plans from the plush surroundings of his executive suite to a spartan cell behind the walls of this tokyo jail rumors that mission management was behind his fall from grace spread like wildfire. it's a source of coup de tat by nissan those who didn't like him to nineteen internally to make him full. carlos ghosn is one of the most successful also company bosses of all time in one thousand nine hundred six he

began restructuring struggling french carmaker ran zero three years later he engineered the alliance with nissan he soon had this company back on the road to success as well but a no holds a forty three percent stake in a sand giving the french a lot of power in the company through to even appointing the nissen board the japanese company has only a fifteen percent stake in reno leaving it with no effective vote or power in its french partner. a complete merger would have cemented nissen's possession as the weaker partner even though the company is performing better than ran oh the sting of go on could signify that the japanese automaker wants to expand its influence in its alliance with france's right now. it's complicated story to help us unravel this a little further let's turn to andre spicer the cast business school in london andrea we heard french and japanese officials met today on the subject what do you know they're talking about. on the one hand you can imagine the french officials perhaps

making a case for going he's a representative of all right now i represent of the french company and also i was turned around the company the japanese officials i could imagine are presenting the evidence which has been put to the nests and boards about guns misuse of company and sits but also misreporting of pay this would probably raise logic questions about corporate governance in the group after all if a company cannot tell you how much exactly their chief executive is getting paid what can i tell you. now you heard in the piece there that there's some speculation about what's really behind this or if there is something more to the story is there any reason to believe that the accusations presented by nissan are true well at this stage there is there's not that much but what we have is the accusations which nesat has put forward clearly there's a clear interest on the part of new sand to push forward these allegations and and

present them fairly but on the other side you could argue that there is a clear interest on the part of two to cement and keep their position and try and keep together the alliance which if going indeed does go could begin to fall apart or at least be called into question. now both sides say that they want the profitable alliance to continue but obviously they face a lot of challenges maybe you can tell us about the. well the most the biggest challenge as some wise is the question about the equality between the different groups so we know that. nissen makes around about sixty percent more cars than what then does renault its partner bought renault holds forty three percent of control in sound so it means that new set are in i was the stronger controlling partner despite being in a weaker position there's also kind of questions about japanese corporate

governance at stake here so japan has been through a kind of larger reform of corporate governance in the last few years this is boortz into the prospect that logic companies could from external companies could have a stake in the japanese economy and perhaps this is an example of some of these anxieties being expressed through this particular tussle obviously a lot of national interest at stake here two well known car companies with big histories where would this alliance be or would this alliance be where it is today without going considering all these complications yeah going was the absolute lynchpin of this alliance is the kind of ideal they have also man some people have called him so it's spent his average month one week in france one week in japan then two weeks anywhere in between so he was clearly trying to bring together a global alliance now with him removed it's like removing the lynch pin which holds these companies together which then brings many analysts to question whether

they're going to move towards closer integration such as some analysts were speculating a merger was on the cards or begin to kind of go their own separate ways and that would raise rather large questions for the actual future strategy of each three of these companies so plenty more to watch in the weeks ahead andrea spicer in london many thanks thank you. i think of high tech startups and you might think of silicon alley in the u.s. or china where the tech scene is flush with cash but you're also both success stories like spotify or skype the market there is fragmented however and member states vary in terms of digital investment so can the e.u. create a single digital market computer programming begins at a very early age in a stone in the small baltic state is regarded as a pioneer of digitalisation it's where skype was founded and became a global player digital conditions differ widely in the european union global

successes like skype are rare nordic and baltic countries are way ahead of the e.u. pact though when it comes to digital development denmark tops the blocks index for economic and social digitalisation followed by sweden and finland a stone years in ninth position germany comes in fourteenth pretty much mid-field in the e.u. used twenty eight members rumania is the digital taillight the high speed digital network is paradise for business in some countries authorities now even offer digital services to citizens but with much key business and government data now accessible on the web countries are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. so what role can the e.u. itself play in fostering digital to vellum and christian asked european commission vice president and jews unzip who hails from a stone here whether the e.u. can become a global player in the digital sector for example when talking about robotics about

impeded systems europe is to be doing currently weddle and also when speaking to us about solutions based on not officially intelligence we using small volumes of data then those solutions created here in europe where they are the best in the world so we can be proud about some kind of solutions we already created here in europe and when thinking about artificial intelligence and about industrial data then i think your pros are really good chances to compete with much bigger countries and much bigger so spry the us why does germany up to buy only a midfield position in europe at best what needs to change we have to create teach the single market in the european union instead of huge single market with more than five hundred men don't have the customers in fact we have twenty throw the

list small markets and for start ups for. the young companies it's pretty complicated to scale up here in europe we when we will continue with a fragmented europe we will send the really proud message to our small people stay at home or go to the united states where they already have huge single markets with more than one hundred million of the customers of course we don't want to a cent of its kind of messages to always thought up so we have to create teach the single market in the european union and here you have a problem with germany i don't think we have a problem with the chairman and when speaking about efficient intelligence so then i'm very happy here. about our national strategy we share the same violin and even actions we are planning to take because they are exactly the same on the level of the european union and then here in germany i think that in many heel

member states including in germany people they caught that this understanding that when acting alone we are not able to compete with much bigger contras or global service providers. i'm talking about hype before most computing about quantum computing of what cybersecurity but also about general deficient intelligence we had to join all the forces in the era p. and the only only been able to compete with those global service for a while the sort of countries like the united states of america or china mr vice president thank you very much for the info about the. thousands of tunisians have taken part in a general strike to demand higher wages the demonstration has grounded planes and closed schools a powerful labor union called the strike after a break down and negotiate with the government the union wants a monthly salary hike of up to thirty euros for all civil servants the protests calm as the government faces pressure from international lenders to reform its

economy. and that's it for us i'm stephen there's a thanks for joining us.

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