Far-right French leader Marine Le Pen was handed a four-year prison sentence and banned from holding public office for five years by a French court Monday, in what could be the biggest setback for her political cause in a generation.

Until this week, Le Pen had looked like the likeliest winner in France’s next presidential election set for 2027, but she was found guilty Monday by a court of embezzling European Union funds.

When handing down the sentence, the court said the crimes committed by Le Pen, 56, warranted an immediate ban from public office, Reuters reported. The court also handed her a fine of 100,000 euros ($108,195).

Le Pen’s lawyer said she would appeal the verdict, but she will remain ineligible while she does and could therefore be ruled out of the 2027 presidential race. She was also sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, with two to be served under house arrest and two suspended.

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Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/france-le-pen-marine-guilty-right-national-rally-paris-embezzlement-rcna198816

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The former German chancellor played a critical role in establishing the energy bond between the countries and defending it over two decades.

Earlier this month, following a barrage of criticism, Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft (ROSN.MM) said Schroeder was stepping down from its board.

On Tuesday, shortly after the European Parliament had urged his blacklisting, Schroeder said he would not take a nomination to Gazprom’s supervisory board. Germany had also closed Schroeder’s taxpayer-funded office amid a public outcry over Russia ties.

It marks the end of a controversial career that had seen him forge a friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin underscored Schroeder’s importance as a guarantor for a cheap and steady gas flow in February. “The German citizen should look in his pocket and ask if he is willing to pay three times or five times as much for gas and electricity,” Putin told journalists.

“If he doesn’t want to do that, then he should thank Mr. Schroeder,” said Putin, describing him as a “respectable man” who had laid the foundation for Germany’s gas supply from Russia. “That is the result of his work. It’s his achievement.”

But while Schroeder’s departure from the public eye marks the end of his career, Germany’s energy lobby and pro-Russian voices elsewhere continue to make themselves heard.

“Germany’s policy on Russia is very deeply set in history. It goes far deeper than Gerhard Schroeder,” said Veronika Grimm, one of the German government’s chief economic experts that advises the chancellery.

“If he resigns from his offices in Russian companies, that won’t change much. The dependence on Russian gas remains.”

Grimm now advocates a change in tack but suspects that many in Germany oppose such a shift.

“While no one dares say it, there is, reading between the lines, in some circles, a hope that relations can go back to normal with Russia.”

Despite the announcements on sanctions and promises of arms deliveries, much of which have yet to materialize, Germany’s relationship with Russia has changed little since the war in Ukraine, at least where gas flows are concerned.

Russian gas supplies to Germany have been largely uninterrupted since the outbreak of war.

Long-term gas supply contracts are being honoured, on the grounds that cutting them would trigger an economic meltdown.

Uniper (UN01.DE), Germany’s largest importer of Russian gas, last week said its existing gas contracts with Gazprom would run until the middle of the next decade, at odds with Germany’s Green party economy minister Robert Habeck, who is seeking to end reliance by mid-2024.

Uniper Chief Executive Klaus-Dieter Maubach went as far as describing Gazprom as a reliable supplier, contradicting Habeck, who has said the opposite about Russia. read more

Big German industry names, including chemicals giant BASF (BASFn.DE), underline the importance of Russian gas.

“Russia supplies around 50% of the natural gas consumed in Germany. Russian gas shipments therefore underpin the competitiveness of our industry,” BASF CEO Martin Brudermueller said last month.

“If the natural gas supply from Russia were to suddenly stop, it would cause irreversible economic damage.”

Others in industry, too, see Habeck’s timeline for when ties can be cut sceptically.

Markus Krebber, the CEO of RWE (RWEG.DE), Germany’s largest power producer and importer of Russian gas, said early 2025, rather than 2024, was more realistic to cut ties.

Until then, Germany’s gas lobby hopes to maintain the status quo.

Schroeder appears to still have two positions of influence, as chairman of the shareholders’ committee of Nord Stream 1, which operates the main artery that keeps supplying German industry with cheap Russian gas.

He is also chairman of the board of directors of Nord Stream 2, the sister pipeline that was shelved indefinitely earlier this year, according to his Linkedin profile. Schroeder did not respond to requests for comment.

For many, severing ties with Russia goes far beyond energy.

“It is not just Gerhard Schroeder who has backed Russia,” Michael Huether of the German Economic Institute.

“There is a long tradition of Russian nostalgia in German politics, driven by history, socialist ideology and disillusionment with America. We’ve often turned a blind eye to Russia’s faults.”

Reporting by John O’Donnell and Christoph Steitz; editing by David Evans

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/schroeder-throws-towel-german-industry-clings-russian-gas-2022-05-26/?rpc=401&

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January 20 marks the end of the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency, an administration that promised to respect and rebuild the transatlantic alliance after years of neglect and disdain, that declared, “America is back.” But subsequent experience has not reassured all Europeans.

To get a better understanding of the expectations and hesitations regarding the Biden administration’s second year, I conducted interviews with over 50 European and American experts. And it appears that all is still not well in the transatlantic relationship.

Overall, significant achievements were indeed made in 2021 — resolving bilateral trade disputes, launching technological cooperation, coordinating relations with China. “This went about as positively as I hoped it would on the day of his inauguration,” said a former German ambassador to the United States.

“There were lofty expectations, especially among [American] Europhiles, that Europe would be more of a priority in overall Biden foreign policy,” remembered a foreign policy analyst at a Washington think tank. “There was this sense we would see a new day in the partnership.”

But 2021 was also a year marred by friction: Afghanistan, the AUKUS defense pact, the challenges posed by Russia and China, as well as political developments in the U.S. have all “fed a conclusion in Europe that the relationship with the U.S. will never go back to 2016,” said a former U.S. ambassador to NATO — whether former President Donald Trump returns or not. And now the challenge facing the Biden administration is to prove such concerns wrong.

“You have to know that you have no other friends than Europe,” warned a Polish foreign policy expert. “If you screw up talking with us, that undermines the U.S. system of alliances and that is not useful for the U.S.” And when it comes to the looming confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, Europeans worry the U.S. has not yet learned this lesson, and there is fear, especially among Poles, that a deal affecting their futures will be made over their heads.

Moreover, as observed by a former U.S. ambassador to the EU, AUKUS openly said to Europeans that “the China folks in the White House are driving the bus. And they don’t have an appreciation of the EU as a useful partner on things that matter to the U.S.”

As a result, quipped a Berlin-based analyst: “Anxiety, skepticism and bad juju around the pivot to Asia is prevalent everywhere in Europe. The fear is that it will lead to transatlantic decoupling.” And as Washington’s attention progressively shifts to Asia, more incidents sparking Europeans’ sense of abandonment or betrayal may be inevitable.

The first test of this could be Taiwan, which has opened a representative office in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Beijing has imposed economic sanctions on the Baltic nation and threatened to deny multinational firms exporting from Lithuania access to China’s market in retaliation. If Washington stands idly by while Beijing coerces individual EU member countries and corporations in this manner, much-vaunted transatlantic cooperation on China could prove to be a paper tiger.

More broadly, 2022 may prove a test of transatlantic solidarity over economic sanctions on both Russia and China. A Russian invasion of Ukraine would almost certainly precipitate American and European sanctions, including a shuttering of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, and there is growing support on both sides for sanctions against China for its human rights abuses as well. But with the European economy struggling to recover from the COVID-19 downturn, and the EU’s relatively greater dependence on both the Chinese and Russian markets, Brussels and Washington may find it difficult to act together.

Despite all that, the most corrosive development in transatlantic relations in the coming year may yet prove to be the deterioration of American democracy itself and what that says about the reliability of the U.S. as an ally.

The Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance has judged the U.S. a “backsliding democracy,” and, according to a Pew Research Center survey, a median of only 18 percent of the publics in nine European nations believes that American democracy is a good example for other countries to follow.

“No longer in Europe are they talking about who is the sick man in Europe,” noted a worried New York-based foreign policy expert, “it’s America that is the sick man.”

“America still acts as if it is the leader,” concluded a disdainful Social Democratic member of the European Parliament. “But the preconditions for transatlantic leadership have changed fundamentally. America is not as sovereign as it used to be. America needs its allies as much as the allies need the U.S.”

The upcoming 2022 U.S. Congressional election and Biden’s fading poll numbers also have Europeans worried. “There is panic [over] what will happen in the U.S.,” said a Washington-based veteran of transatlantic relations. “Europeans hear that the Republicans may win the House and Senate in 2022, and the White House in 2024.”

“The Biden administration is working in a very narrow window of opportunity,” noted a U.S. expert at a British think tank. “We may only have 10-11 months,” added the Social Democratic member of the European Parliament worriedly, “because after the midterm election, things may be different.”

Then the real question will be, observed a former high-ranking European Union official, “will Biden have any political capital to expend on things that are important for Europe?”

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/all-is-not-well-in-the-transatlantic-relationship/

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Two hours later, thanks to this surveillance footage, a Libyan Coast Guard cutter caught up with the migrants and ordered them to stop even though they were well outside of Libyan waters. The armed officers then took the migrants on board, beat them savagely, and carried them back to the one place they did not want to go: Libya’s gulag of detention centers.

Efficient and brutal, the at-sea capture and onland internment of these migrants is what European Union officials hail as part of a successful partnership with Libya in their “humanitarian rescue” efforts across the Mediterranean. For many, though, the true intent of this joint campaign, however, is less to save migrants from drowning than to stop them from reaching European shores.

Since the migrant crisis started in 2015 and hundreds of thousands of people began crossing the Mediterranean Sea, European officials have relied heavily on the Libyans to stem the flow. Not only did the EU equip and train the Libyan Coast Guard, it also lobbied the United Nations’ maritime organization to recognize an enlarged search-and-rescue zone so that the Libyans could have wider reach off their coast. The result of this collaboration has been a precipitous drop in the number of people reaching Europe via the Central Mediterranean route: Around 20,000 migrants arrived in the first six months of this year, down from 70,000 during the same period in 2016. Without the support of aerial reconnaissance from Frontex, the Libyan Coast Guard would in effect be searching with its eyes closed.

Frontex has long denied direct cooperation with Libya, a failed state largely run by militias. It has insisted its sole aim is to save lives, and it has said that it only directly alerts Libyan authorities of migrant boats in a true emergency.

A spokesperson for Frontex told me that the agency “International law obliges all vessels to provide assistance to any persons found in distress…[Frontex] has never engaged in any direct cooperation with Libyan authorities.”

But a mounting body of evidence shows otherwise.

Last year, for instance, Lighthouse Reports, a watchdog organization in Europe, documented 20 instances in which Frontex aircraft were in the vicinity of migrant boats later captured by the Libyan Coast Guard. In a dozen of those cases, Lighthouse determined, Frontex was the first to identify the boats, meaning that under international law, it was obliged to notify not just the Libyan Coast Guard, but the nearest vessel — government or commercial — so that a rescue might be promptly undertaken.

“There is a clear pattern discernible,” Lighthouse researchers asserted. “Boats in distress are spotted, communications take place between European actors and the Libyan Coast Guard. No notice is given to nearby commercial shipping or NGO vessels despite its proximity to urgent situations where boats are in distress on the open sea.” While the real numbers could be far higher, this representative sample showed that Frontex was present and watching while at least 91 people went missing and are presumed to have drowned.”

That same year, the Guardian, in collaboration with Lighthouse, published the actual recorded exchanges between a European surveillance plane and the Libyan Coast Guard as the Libyans sought to intercept two migrant boats. “OK sir, my radar is not good, is not good, if you stay [over the boat] I will follow you,” a Libyan Coast Guard captain radioed the plane. “We have approximately five minutes left on station,” said the plane’s pilot, as he tried to guide the Coast Guard to the migrant vessels. “We will go overhead the vessel, the rubber boat, and we will light our landing lights.”

Hussein Baoumi, Amnesty International’s Libya researcher, said he was not surprised by Frontex’s continuing denial of a formal relationship with the Libyan Coast Guard. “They want to separate themselves from the dirtiest aspects of migrant containment,” Baoumi said. “It doesn’t matter. They are cooperating. They are directly complicit.”

The E.U. has also denied directly funding the gulag of migrant prisons in Libya, and has consistently both conceded their barbarity and called for improvements. But it has resisted calls to date to end its work with Libya and take steps to rescue those caught up in the country’s migrant jails.

But if the E.U. does not pay to build the detention centers or staff their guards, European money does pay for virtually everything else in the inhumane system where migrants are routinely tortured, raped, unlawfully held and sometimes murdered. Through Frontex drones and planes, the E.U. is first responsible for spotting the rafts and, via Italian and Maltese authorities, handing this intelligence over to Libya. Then E.U.-purchased boats operated by the Libyan Coast Guard capture the migrants and bring them back to shore.

An investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit news organization in Washington DC, found that funds from the EU and member states, sometimes routed through aid organizations, pays for most of what happens next. These monies bought the shipping containers that double as port offices for the Libyan Coast Guard staff, and the touch-screen tablets used by aid workers who count the migrants as they disembark in Tripoli. This money pays for many of the buses used to transport the migrants from port to the detention centers, and the blankets, winter clothes, and slippers they often receive upon arrival. The bathrooms at some of the detention centers as well as the showers, toilets, soap, hygiene kits, toilet paper were bought with E.U. money. The same goes for the mattresses where the detained migrants sleep. E.U. money paid for the SUVs used by Libyan migration authorities to look for migrants if they escape detention or as they enter Libya in the south through the Saharan desert. When migrants in detention get sick, often the ambulances that take them to the hospital have been purchased by the E.U. And when migrants die — washing ashore or in detention — EU money often pays for the body bags and to train Libyan personnel how to handle the corpses in a religiously respectful fashion.

Much of this funding is well-intentioned, even life-saving. But it is beyond denial that the E.U. and its member states financially sustain the system in Libya by which thousands of migrants are being captured and held in ghastly conditions.

And since Frontex is the tip of the spear, more attention is being paid to the role it plays and the legality of its involvement.

A recent investigation carried out by the European Parliament produced a litany of allegations against the agency — that it turned a blind eye to human rights violations committed by coast guard personnel from both European countries and partner countries in Africa; that its own internal system for receiving and acting on complaints of misconduct was itself a failure; and that the agency’s head, Fabrice Leggeri, had failed to act on four years of warnings made by his agency’s own top human rights official.

In an interview with The Outlaw Ocean Project in late October, a senior Frontex official said Leggeri had engaged in a calculated and disingenuous game for years — insisting “evidence” of misconduct by E.U. border agencies were produced before he would act, all while failing to ensure that complaints of such potential abuse were aggressively investigated.

The senior official said they were no longer confident Frontex was meeting its most essential obligation: making sure the rights of some of the world’s most vulnerable people were respected. The official said the angry and volatile emotions in Europe concerning the question of migration enforcement had eroded Frontex’s complete independence.

“The influence of politics is a problem when you are handling the question of fundamental human rights,” the official said. Even if its participation in returning migrants to Libya is indirect, Frontex may be violating E.U. law.”

“No interest,” the official said of Leggeri and his other most senior aides. “It didn’t matter what you told them. They didn’t want to understand.” Leggeri denied repeated requests for an interview.

This year, two landmark cases are being brought by migrants against Frontex before the Court of Justice of the European Union, the E.U.’s chief judicial authority. The first case, filed in May, claims that Frontex has long been operating in violation of its obligations to report and halt criminal abuse of migrants seeking asylum in Europe. The case alleges that two migrants – a 17-year-old Congolese boy named Jeancy Kimbenga and a woman from Burundi who asked to remain anonymous – were part of a group of 13 that was rounded up by Greek authorities after arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos. They say they were forcibly transferred to a Coast Guard vessel, and brought back out to sea before being abandoned on a lifeboat, eventually ending up back in Turkey.

The allegations in the second case, filed in October, are arguably even more damning for Frontex. The case alleges that a Syrian family, with four young children between the ages of 1 and 7, were deported from Greece in 2016 without being given access to an asylum procedure, and were returned to Turkey on a flight arranged by Frontex, with the four young children separated from their parents while Frontex staff looked on. The family was detained on landing in Turkey, and now lives in northern Iraq.

The cases mark the first time Frontex has been brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Human Rights Watch in a report published last summer issued a sweeping indictment of Frontex’s performance, its organizational culture and its leadership. “Frontex has repeatedly failed to take effective action when allegations of human rights violations are brought to its attention,” said Eva Cossé, Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Its rapid growth into an executive agency of the EU, with increased powers, funding, and legal responsibilities makes it all the more urgent for Frontex to put in place effective tools to safeguard fundamental rights.”

Created in 2004, Frontex now has a budget of more than half a billion Euros and it employs more than 1,400 staff members, including a uniformed force of roughly 600 officers. The agency is governed by a management board consisting of representatives of the 25 E.U. member States and two members of the European Commission. In theory, there are a range of mechanisms by which Frontex could be held accountable, but it has rarely, if ever faced any genuine sanction. Obtaining basic information from the agency, even for a member of the European Parliament, is difficult. “We really have problems with the lack of transparency,” said Tineke Strik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament.

In an analysis of the history of Frontex’s work, Human Rights Watch noted that under its own bylaws, the agency has a duty to suspend or end its operations in countries found to have committed serious abuses. In its entire history, Human Rights Watch said, the agency has only done so once, in Hungary, after a European court ruling.

Leggeri, Frontex’s executive director, has faced calls for his resignation repeatedly in recent months. Protesters gathered outside Frontex’s offices in Brussels recently calling for the abolishment of the agency altogether. In a letter to his staff, Leggeri, who worked on migration enforcement as a member of the French interior ministry, called the protests a “hate campaign,” and vowed legal action.

In June, Human Rights Watch sent the agency’s top officials what it said was evidence of serious misconduct either committed or overlooked by Frontex in three European countries. It has yet to get a response. The organization accused Frontex of a cynical semantic game in avoiding responsibility for abuses taking place in both the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.

“Over the years, Frontex has relied on its coordinating role and lack of executive authority to evade human rights responsibility,” Human Rights Watch wrote. “In December 2020 Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri told the European Parliament there was no evidence of Frontex’s involvement in abuses in the Aegean and that only member states had the authority to make operational decisions, implying that Frontex could not be held responsible.”

Frontex, under pressure, ordered an internal review of its operations. Its own investigators offered a withering critique of the agency’s systems for reporting problems in its ranks. The investigators said the agency needed to acknowledge its failures, and recommended what amounted to an overhaul of the agency’s culture concerning its responsibilities for identifying and acting on concerns about human rights violations. It suggested that Frontex take care to video record the enforcement work being done by E.U. member states and preserve them for investigation.

In June, a migrants rights organization that had for years been part of an independent board of advisers to Frontex, withdrew from the group. Saying it felt ignored and marginalized, the organization, the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, said it had grown uncertain of Frontex’s role in “a civil society.”

On yet another front, in January, the European Anti-Fraud Office opened an investigation into Frontex, with media reports claiming it was looking at allegations of fraud, cases of illegal treatment of migrants pushbacks, and issues of workplace harassment, but the specific allegations have not been made public. Both Frontex and the European Anti-Fraud Office confirmed an investigation was taking place, but did not offer further details. “[They] are operating very carefully,” said Strik. “But I spoke to them in August and they hope to finish within a few months.”

Frontex’s work with Libya, of course, is part of a much larger and more expensive European push to outsource immigrations enforcement to third-party countries. The E.U. has sent billions to countries such as Libya, Niger, Tunisia and others, ostensibly to help them improve conditions in their countries and thus limit the need for people to flee. But tens of millions of those dollars have gone to toughen immigration legislation and empower enforcement agencies in those countries.

In July, Amnesty International issued its latest dire report on the state of migrants in Libya. It noted that the Libyan Coast Guard, often alerted by Frontex to migrants trying to make it to Europe, then race to intercept the migrant boats and capture those aboard, sometimes firing guns at the rafts or dinghies, occasionally capsizing them. In February, for example, the Coast Guard fired on a raft, puncturing it and causing it to sink. Five people drowned as members of the Coast Guard filmed with their cell phones, the report said.

Frontex is surely aware of longstanding concerns about the Libyan Coast Guard it has found itself regularly assisting. The Coast Guard, really a hodgepodge of local port authorities, has for years been understood to be working in concert with the country’s militias, many of whom are involved in human trafficking. Indeed, the head of the Libyan government agency overseeing the crackdown on migrants has openly admitted in a series of recent interviews that corruption exists within the ranks of the Coast Guard.

The senior Frontex official who talked to The Outlaw Ocean Project said they had made clear doing any sort of business with the Libyan Coast Guard was unthinkable, in part because Europe “didn’t have a clue” as to the integrity of those purporting to belong to the Coast Guard. Things were simply too broken and opaque in Libya, a divided and violent country still struggling to emerge from years of civil war.

“It’s impossible,” the official said, “to have any vetting of who is who.”

Ian Urbina is the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington DC that focuses on environmental and human rights concerns at sea globally.

This article is based on a recent report produced by The Outlaw Ocean Project, “The Secretive Libyan Prisons That Keep Migrants Out of Europe.” The full piece may be found in The New Yorker and on The Outlaw Ocean Project’s Substack page.

The opinions expressed herein are the author’s and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

Source: https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/how-europe-s-border-agency-works-with-libya-to-turn-back-migrants

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Guy Verhofstadt is a member of the European Parliament. He is the former leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and a former prime minister of Belgium.

Europe is born from crisis situations, or so the cliché goes. But over the last decade, this has proven untrue. As the world convulsed, time and again, current European Union institutions and policies were left unable to cope, and European politics simply carried on as before. It seemed our leaders were unable, or unwilling, to lead Europe.

Now, that might all change. The new German coalition could be the final missing piece needed to turn the tide across the Continent.

In Emmanuel Macron, France already has an unusually “European” president, with an all-important election ahead of him and the presidency of the Council of the European Union in his hands from January on.

In Mario Draghi, Italy has a highly capable prime minister who unabashedly attaches his political survival to the handling of the COVID-19 crisis and the EU recovery funds dedicated to tackle its economic impact.

In most European capitals, the debate has become more constructive, while the union’s spoiler governments — Poland and Hungary — have finally gone so far as to isolate themselves.

And in Germany, there is now a government eager to lead Europe from the front — and how!

The German coalition deal, Koalitionsvertrag, at times reads not like a weak compromise but more a pre-election party manifesto — and of a party I would vote for.

The deal clearly gets the basics right: A “self-image of a European Germany” that is “embedded in the historical peace and freedom project that is the European Union.” Its goal, “a sovereign EU as a stronger actor in a world shaped by uncertainty and competing political systems.” Its role and responsibilities as a large member country, to go beyond the purely national, “for the EU as a whole.”

This is quite a break from the recent past, where the reasoning was that “what is good for Germany is good for Europe,” and not much more.

These new words matter, as is clear from the coalition’s stance on rule of law: “We want to effectively buttress the values” as outlined in Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union, it says. It calls on the Commission to use the existing rule of law mechanism “more timely and consistently,” and on the Council to “follow through and further develop” the whole range of rule of law instruments — up to the use of Article 7, which could suspend the voting rights of governments that violate EU values.

In short, the “Merkel brake” — which always slowed down and held up any EU action against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán or Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński’s assaults on their country’s democratic institutions — is now off.

Not everything is music to my ears, however. Germany may be finally committed to better investment, building start-ups and taking the lead in the green transition, but to already reject a continuation of the Commission’s Recovery and Resilience Facility is a mistake. The current crisis will not be over any time soon, and financing the recovery program through eurobonds was exactly the paradigm shift Europe needed.

The way we finance the EU budget, through national contributions, is a recipe for disaster. By definition, it leads to acrimonious fights between governments and automatically leads to funds primarily flowing back to national projects. Economically, as well as politically, EU finances are illogical and the opposite of “European.” An extension of the logic and ambition of the rest of the coalition agreement would have instead led to a revisited fund, certainly not a discontinuation.

More importantly, however, the new German government is now eager to have that wider debate.

It strongly underlines the need for the Conference on the Future of Europe for further reform, and it supports the proposed treaty changes that could result from its conclusions. The stated intention that “the Conference should culminate into a constitutional convention and further development of a federal European state” goes further than any other government so far.

This new Germany wants to revalue the community method but will move ahead with core groups of countries when necessary. It will fight for a stronger Parliament with the right of initiative de facto, if not de jure. It is committed to a uniform European electoral law with partly transnational lists and a binding system of Spitzenkandidaten — top candidates.

The balance in this agreement is laudable and promising. In today’s world, a stronger Europe is necessary, and a more democratic Europe is the necessary result. And with Olaf Scholz as chancellor, it will be wonderfully interesting to see a new generation of political stars finally align.

The problems of the real world are not any less for it. But just maybe, shortly, finally, Europe’s greatest weakness will no longer be the politicians leading it.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated Jarosław Kaczyński’s title. He is Poland’s deputy prime minister.

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-finally-has-a-government-ready-to-lead-europe/

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“We are a family. When one of us is under attack, the rest of us will be there for him,” said Margaritis Schinas, vice president of the European Commission, speaking to reporters earlier this week. Schinas, the former EU spokesman who now represents Greece in the Commission, described a proposal to “temporarily” reduce some asylum rights in EU member states Poland and the Baltic states as an act of “tangible solidarity.”

Margaritis Schinas@MargSchinas

When one of us is attacked, we are all attacked.

We stand by the MS managing the external border in the name of the EU.

Tangible solidarity with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in full respect to the right to asylum and the protection of fundamental rights

Schinas introduced the plan to suspend EU law at its borders with Belarus for the next six months along with Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, who is responsible for migration. European treaties, he said Wednesday, do allow for “exceptional measures” like this in an “emergency situation.”

According to the proposal, migrants could be held in closed camps at the border for up to 16 weeks, to undergo a correspondingly extended asylum process. The registration time would be extended to four weeks, and faster deportations will explicitly be authorized. EU interior ministers could approve the proposal next week without the European Parliament having to approve the “emergency measure.”

The move came under immediate criticism from some members of the European Parliament, who called the new approach unacceptable, especially given the decreasing numbers of asylum-seekers at the border. Instead of helping the people on the ground, said Birgit Sippel, spokesperson for the Party of European Socialists, the measures “play straight into the hands of governments that want to use the plight of vulnerable migrants to spread anxiety and fear about a migration crisis at the EU’s borders.”

When presenting their “emergency measures,” the two commissioners acknowledged that the situation in Belarus was de-escalating.They didn’t, however, comment when asked why it was still necessary to limit asylum rights in the area.

Aid agencies criticize move to put ‘politics over peoples’ lives’
“It is extremely doubtful whether the European Commission will be able to put the genie back in the bottle after it has spent 18 months standing by, for the most part, as systematic human rights violations are committed against people seeking protection,” said Erik Marquardt, a German migration expert with the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance in the EU Parliament.

In the past few months, for example, the Polish Border Guard agency has published a daily tally of pushbacks, the summary deportation of people from EU territory, which are prohibited under international law. However, the Polish government has yet to be criticized by Brussels for the practice.

Warsaw is also still preventing people from reporting freely at the border, and hindering access for aid organizations. A new border protection law, which came into force on Wednesday to replace the state of emergency at the border, has legalized the existing restrictions. Under the new law, the interior minister can establish a 15-kilometer (9-mile) wide exclusion zone at the border, effectively creating a legal vacuum.

Both the Polish Senate and the country’s commissioner for human rights have expressed doubts about the law’s legality, arguing that it contradicts the Polish constitution. Rights groups have also spoken out against the legislation.

“Stopping, detaining and criminalising people trying to find safety in Europe breaks international and European asylum law,” said aid organization Oxfam on Thursday. “Supporting the detention of migrants at EU borders puts politics over peoples’ lives.”

“Asylum rules should be upheld, not allowed to be side-stepped by countries via so-called exceptional measures,” said Amnesty International in a press statement, adding that the border arrivals could be easily handled under the existing rules. The group added that it was alarmed by the Commission’s proposal, which it said would “violate people’s rights and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis.”

The European Commission, however, has yet to comment on Poland’s new law.

Pushbacks reported in Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria
Poland isn’t the only EU member state that has been accused of carrying out illegal pushbacks. In Greece, media outlets have uncovered evidence of several cases, yet the government in Athens has maintained that the numerous reports are false. A recent case made headlines in The New York Times on Wednesday, just as Schinas was announcing the Commission’s proposal, once again shedding light on the practices of Greek border guards.

The article said an interpreter working for the EU border agency Frontex was forcibly taken to a remote warehouse with a group of about 100 migrants, including women and children. The interpreter, who is originally from Afghanistan but has been living in the EU legally for years, said they were beaten and stripped. Police allegedly seized their mobile phones, money and documents, before putting them into dinghies and pushing them back across the Evros River into Turkish territory.

Home Affairs Commissioner Johansson said she was “extremely concerned by [the] account.” The New York Times reported that the man handed over audio and video evidence of the abuse and the pushback carried out by Greek authorities, and wrote that the EU “which has mostly looked the other way on abuses of migrants, is now being forced to confront the problem.”

This, however, is by no means certain. The illegal practice has also reportedly been taking place along the EU border in Croatia and Bulgaria, despite forceful criticism by Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, during a recent visit to the European Parliament.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/eu-criticized-for-move-to-restrict-asylum-rights-at-belarus-border/a-60021873

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With the first plenary of the Conference on the Future of Europe on Saturday (19 June) designed to have EU citizen participation at its core, some MEPs believe the event could be a catalyst to change the bloc’s treaties, while others hope citizens are not used as political pawns. EURACTIV Germany reports.

“This conference is already ahead of the previous ones in that we are not just working in our own ‘juices’,” German MEP Nicola Beer of the liberal Free Democratic Party told EURACTIV, noting that while Europe’s citizens view themselves as Europeans, they “are not fans of the current state of the EU, so we have to do better.”

A conference plenary on 19 June will include 108 citizens of Europe, of whom at least 27 must be younger than 25, as well as national and EU lawmakers.

The so-called “citizen panels” will also bring together randomly selected EU citizens to exchange their views and positions which will form the basis for the debate in the plenary.

“The 17,300 participants on the conference’s online platform so far are still expandable,” said German Social Democratic MEP Katarina Barley, who also warned against not taking the suggestions of citizens sufficiently seriously and using them as political pawns.

“We have to be insanely careful not to fall into such a trap,” Barley added. The German MEP also pointed out that EU lawmakers already agree on many organizational matters, which could lead to a situation where the will of the people could be ignored.

Barley gave the example of the Spitzenkandidat principle, according to which the top candidate of the party with the most votes in the EU parliamentary elections is set to become the Commission President – which may make sense to MEPs but not be important to citizens.

Had the Spitzenkandidat principle been upheld following the last European Parliament elections in 2019, EPP chief Manfred Weber would now be at the helm of the EU Commission.

Commission: EU future debate should focus on ‘genuine people’ not ‘Brussels bubble’

Margaritis Schinas, European Commission Vice-President for the Promotion of the European Way of Life, has underlined that the Future of Europe conference should focus on the “genuine people” and not the “Brussels bubble”.

 

 

‘Insights for a new Convention’

“The conference is not a new Convention, but it should provide the insights that will prepare a new Convention,” said Christian Democrat MEP Sven Simon about the Conference on the Future of Europe, which was launched on 9 May and is intended to bring Europe closer to its citizens and set the way forward for European integration in the coming years.

In Brussels, it is mainly the European Parliament – and particularly the liberal Renew Europe group – that has driven the agenda of the Conference as it hopes to gain additional powers in the event of treaty change.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen would not have been nominated president without the promise of a Conference on the Future of Europe, and thus the votes of the Liberals, said Beer.

Results of the conference are expected in a year at the earliest, but French President Emmanuel Macron is keen to have wants recommendations by March next year, ahead of his own reelection bid.

France will taking over the rotating EU Council presidency next January.

EU’s Comittee of Regions calls for local participation in Future of Europe summit

The Conference on the Future of Europe launched Sunday (9 May) in Strasbourg can only succeed if local and regional communities are involved, the European Committee of the Regions has argued. EURACTIV France reports.

 

 

The regions

The plenary on 19 June will also welcome 108 national parliament representatives and 18 representatives from the European Committee of the Regions (CoR).

According to Ilse Aigner, president of the Bavarian state parliament, “the regions must be given sufficient room for manoeuvre in a future Europe.”

“The regions and their parliaments have a central role in the EU’s multi-level system as legislators and as mediators of European policy,” Aigner added.

Federalists: Conference on the Future of Europe could kickstart EU reform

Like the Schuman Declaration in 1950, the Conference on the Future of Europe could pave the way for a reform of the EU, the Spinelli Group – which gathers federalist MEPs and national parliamentarians – with the Union of European …

 

 

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Leading MEPs on Tuesday once again refused to set a date to ratify the EU-U.K. post-Brexit trade deal, saying they would wait until London gives reassurances it will apply the deal.

European Parliament leaders had been expected on Tuesday to announce that the deal would finally be ratified during a late April plenary session — the last step needed for the deal after EU national governments and the British parliament gave their assent.

Yet at a “Conference of Presidents” meeting, Parliament President David Sassoli and political party leaders decided to refrain from setting any vote. Instead, they agreed that MEPs would approve the deal only in Parliament’s foreign affairs and trade committees, where a vote is scheduled for Thursday.

The decision will be “deferred due to the need for progress on roadmap for pragmatic yet full implementation of the #WithdrawalAgreement,” tweeted Christophe Hansen, the lead Brexit MEP on the European Parliament’s trade committee. “Cool heads must prevail,” Hansen added.

The situation could still change in the coming weeks, depending on the ongoing conversations between the Parliament and British officials.

The parliament’s ratification of the deal has been held up amid ongoing tensions between the EU and U.K.

In March, political group leaders in the Parliament decided to postpone their ratification vote after the U.K. unveiled plans to unilaterally extend grace periods on post-Brexit customs checks at Northern Ireland’s ports for at least six months. The European Commission said in a statement at the time that such a move marked the “second time” the U.K. government had been “set to breach international law” after a heated row over the border erupted in 2020.

Technically, the trade deal has provisionally been in effect since January 1, a step taken to avoid the economic uncertainty of a no-deal scenario. U.K. and EU negotiators pushed their talks close to the December 31 deadline before reaching a deal, despite the European Parliament’s warnings that at least three months would be needed for proper scrutiny and ratification.

Sassoli told POLITICO last month the April 26 plenary would be “the last date” for ratification, adding that “there will be no extension” past that session.

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-uk-trade-post-brexit-deal-ratification-delayed-again/

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 Tribunal against the Israeli government, which is conducting illegal experiments on Israeli citizens, through Pfizer. A complaint filed with the Hague Tribunal reads: “This is an association whose members are lawyers, doctors, public activists, and the general public, who have chosen to exercise their democratic right not to receive the experimental medical treatment (Corona vaccine), and feel that they are under great, severe and illegal pressure from the government. Israel, Knesset members, ministers, senior public representatives, mayors, and more.

We want to start with a basic knowledge on the subject: Coronavirus is an innovative medical treatment, which only recently received FDA approval in the United States (in emergency procedure only), a non-final approval, with details on 22 vaccine side effects. In addition, it is clear to all medical factors that the issue of the long-term impact of treatment has not been scientifically tested (testing and research), and the long-term impact and safety of treatment on its recipients is unknown. It is important to note that so far the body has never been given and all previous vaccines have worked in a completely different way, by introducing a disabled or attenuated virus and a natural arousal of the immune system against it. As detailed by a senior virologist, the risks expected in this innovative medical treatment are hereby attached as Appendix 1 to my letter.

“Nuremberg Code” – a code of medical ethics issued on the basis of laws under which Nazi criminals were tried for conducting horrific medical experiments during World War II, in the doctors’ trial known as the Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremberg Code later formed the basis for the enactment of the Helsinki Declaration as well as the basis for the Patient Rights Act in Israel. We intend to present to you and detail how in the State of Israel this year, the Israeli government with its ministers and members of the Knesset, mayors, and other senior officials, are violating the Nuremberg Act illegally, blatantly. And extremists, and unfortunately, not just in one aspect but many, too many!

A. Conscious consent to participate in a medical experiment – The first principle of the Nuremberg Code is the willingness and informed consent of the person to receive treatment and participate in the experiment. The person should exercise the freedom of choice without the intervention of an entity that exercises force, deception, fraud, threat, solicitation, or any other type of binding or coercion. When the heads of the Ministry of Health and the Prime Minister introduced the vaccine in Israel and began vaccinating the residents of Israel, the vaccines were not recommended, because in practice they take part in a medical experiment, and their consent is required by the Nuremberg Code, and only when it became clear, It was first published and also stated by the Prime Minister that this is indeed a medical experiment. , And that this was the essence of the agreement. This is, in fact, a genetic medical experiment in humans, performed without the informed consent and under a serious and blatant violation of the Nuremberg Code.

B. Bibi-Pfizer Agreement. After the incident, it became clear that the Israeli prime minister had signed an agreement with Pfizer (the manufacturing company), under which he would receive a huge amount of millions of vaccine doses, and in preference over other countries, and given that, the vaccines (Israeli residents) would serve as “experimenters” for the drug company. It was agreed that the pharmaceutical company would receive from Israel all the confidential medical information, personal without their prior knowledge or consent. In addition, we must note that up to this moment the content of the agreement related to most of the residents of the State of Israel has not been published, and it is the transparency required by law, and it has been published in the “blackout” / concealment of much information contained in this agreement. It is worth noting and remembering that we do not live in the state of the dictatorship so it is clear, such an agreement must be subject to complete transparency towards the general public. Alternative therapies – On the subject of informed consent to medical treatment, and based on the principles of the Nuremberg Code, there is an obligation to specify and offer the patient a number of treatment alternatives, detailing the medical process (and all that is included) such as advantages and disadvantages. Existing in each treatment, to enable him to make an informed personal decision about the treatment he prefers. As stated, this should be done without exerting pressure and freely as a free person.

Despite all of the above, the State of Israel and the Ministry of Health are unable to present to the citizens of Israel the currently available alternatives for the treatment of corona disease, which have been proven to be effective and without a few side effects and are not dangerous. They question and pressure citizens (in blatant violation of the informed consent process), hide information about vaccines, and create a difficult atmosphere of fear and coercion. A fourth principle is that the experiment should be performed to prevent suffering or physical injury. The treatment is known to cause many deaths, injuries, and severe damage (including disability and paralysis) after vaccination. Despite this fact, the government did not order an investigation into the matter. It is interesting to note that the Ministry of Health openly acknowledged that 41% of the vaccinated, military, education, and medical personnel suffered from severe and life-threatening side effects. It is also a wonder that there are no full reports on the number of dead or injured, as one might expect in such a medical process for the benefit of the public participating in the trial.

A fifth principle states that the experiment must not be conducted when there is reason to believe that actual death or injury is occurring. For a violation of this principle see above. As mentioned, with regard to death data, we citizens hear by word of mouth only on social networks (by friends, neighbors or relatives) and not in the mainstream media. Another principle is that the person responsible for the experiment will be willing to stop it at any stage if there is a reasonable reason to believe that it will result in injury, disability or death of the experimenter. It has already been proven that many good people died from the treatment, were injured, became disabled, and suffered paralysis. However, the Israeli government continues to force this dangerous experiment on the citizens of Israel. The following are recent publications, which illustrate the blatant and criminal violations of the Nuremberg Code on behalf of the government, ministers, and members of the Knesset, mayors and senior public figures, as well as employers:

Apply economic pressure:

1. The Manufacturers Association, backed by a legal opinion, threatens to continue to leave without pay any worker who is not vaccinated. 2. The Minister of Health, Yuli Edelstein, wants to enact a law that will prevent the arrival of immunocompromised people to the workplace. 3. Threat of denial of unemployment benefits

Applying social pressure:

1. Threat of preventing entry to recreation, leisure, and receiving services from the community 2. Artists, opinion leaders, and public representatives in every corner choose to do propaganda and in an aggressive and insulting manner even offer punishment and sanctions. (MK Ayelet Shaked, MK Smutrich, Health Minister Edelstein, MK Bennett, the morning program of Avri Gilad Mareh, singer Yoram Gaon, Judy Nir Mozes, and others) 3. Vehicles with public address systems roaming the streets calling on people to get vaccinated , Aggressive calls and announcements from health insurance companies, and even scheduling appointments for vaccines without the will of the insured, and more.

Inhibited Incentives for Vaccines:

1. Receiving a free night at the hotel, vacation days, and more offered by various company owners to their employees. 2. Discounts at various business establishments, private and public, as well as card benefits promoted by the Israeli Prime Minister have repeatedly stated that Israeli citizens take part in the same innovative medical experiment for the benefit of all citizens of the world, who for some reason are in no hurry to obtain the above medical treatment. Go ahead and see the Israeli experimenters, as well as the agreement signed by the government with Pfizer, which is blacked out in many places, and raises questions about the agreements that the government has reached with Pfizer, emphasizing that the measures currently being used against civilians, including a legislative proposal Not only the Nuremberg Code and the autonomy of the individual over his body but also the existing legislation in Israel, including the people with dignity and a basis for freedom. others.

Therefore, and taking into account the above, we address in your honor two main requirements:

1. Stop the medical experiment and the administration of vaccines to the Israeli public immediately.
2. Instruct the government to take all legislative procedures that violate the principle of informed consent of a person to receive the medical treatment described above, which denies the legal status in Israel and Israeli democracy, including avoiding the green passport legislature, giving names of those not vaccinated to local authorities, or any other domestic harm Legislators.
3. To act with the utmost severity against any public/business/employment entity that violates state laws on labor or other issues required to prevent coercion, coercion or solicitation for vaccination, as well as the issue of discrimination, against those who choose not to receive the innovative medical care mentioned above. We would like to note that a copy of this document will also be forwarded to media outlets around the world for breach of the Nuremberg Code. Relevant in all countries of the free world. 5. And as a final remark it should be noted that only recently a decision was reached in the European Parliament on 77/1/21, ordering all authorities not to exert pressure or solicitation on people to take the vaccine in Corona in any way. Therefore, everything that is good for the advanced European countries is definitely good for Israel as well – and the balance is self-explanatory. “

Advocate Ruth Makhanskovsky told Israel News that “at the same time, the complaint will also be filed in the court in Nuremberg, together with the German lawyer Reiner Polmich. On Monday, the High Court will be filed by and by Aryeh Suchowolski in Israel, regarding the violation of the Nuremberg Code. ”

                                                The Nuremberg Trials/National Library
Photocopy of the complaint to the Court in the Hague     

Source:  https://israel-news.co.il/archives/24845

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