The post What Austria’s electoral results mean for EU affairs first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted Moscow is not trying to split the European Union.

He was speaking hours before arriving in Austria, on his first trip to Western Europe in almost a year.

He told Austria’s ORF television he wanted a “united and prosperous” EU, calling it Russia’s most important commercial and economic partner.

In Vienna, he said EU economic sanctions against Russia were hurting both sides.

Speaking after talks with Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, Mr Putin said Russia had overcome all difficulties caused by the sanctions.

Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s southern Crimea peninsula in 2014 triggered the sanctions, which were later ratcheted up as Russia helped separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has hit back with counter-sanctions on food and raw materials.

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More than 10,000 people have been killed since the conflict began in eastern Ukraine.

Another major concern among many European liberals is close links between the pro-Putin United Russia party with far-right parties in the EU.

The two populist parties now ruling Italy favour closer ties with Moscow and are both Eurosceptic.

In the ORF interview Mr Putin played down the links between United Russia and Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, the FPÖ. The parties have a co-operation agreement, but the FPÖ denies claims it has received money from Moscow.

Splits on sanctions

The FPÖ has some key posts in Austria’s coalition government – it is in charge of the interior ministry and defence – and says it wants to get the EU sanctions on Russia lifted. However, the coalition has agreed to back EU policy on sanctions.

Italy’s new government openly called for a review of EU sanctions on Tuesday, starting with those that “threaten civil society in Russia”. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told parliament in Rome that Italy was in favour of opening up towards Russia, which represented a key partner for Italian business.

“The more problems at the heart of the EU, the more risks and problems there are for us,” Mr Putin told ORF.

“We need to build co-operation with the EU. We don’t have a goal of dividing anything or anyone in the EU.”

Russian soldiers in unmarked camouflage took control of Crimea in March 2014

What some call a “new cold war” was also fuelled by Russia’s role in the Syrian civil war and the poisoning of a former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, in southern England. The UK blamed the Kremlin for that attack; Russia furiously denied any role in it.

Pro-Putin activists have been accused of spreading “fake news” on social media to undermine the tough Western stance on Russia and help empower nationalists in the EU.

Austria and many other EU states depend on Russia for much – and in some cases all – of their natural gas.

Mr Putin is now meeting Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, as well as business leaders.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44364429

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“It has collapsed as a reception system and as a shared system. Europe has lost the sense of shared solidarity. Some states do, some states don’t,” he added.

While various European countries adopted new methods to deal with migrants and asylum seekers who continue to flock to the continent, the “migration crisis,” as it has become known in the Western media, remains pervasive.

A hard-fought agreement between France and the United Kingdom to prevent the formation of another refugee camp at Calais remains the exception. While such agreements can only be reactive, there are deeper issues that address root causes requiring greater effort from the European Union as a whole.

The United Kingdom agreed to pay nearly $55 million for extra security measures, part of a deal that effectively updates the 2003 Le Touquet agreement, which shifted British border control to the French side of the channel.

The money will go towards extra security in Calais and around the channel port, including fencing, CCTV and other detection technology, with the United Kingdom also agreeing to accelerate procedures for accepting legitimate migrants and asylum seekers — including unaccompanied minors — currently in limbo in France.

However broader questions remain on how the system would deal with failed asylum seekers, with many countries accused of allowing the free passage of illegal migrants and failed asylum seekers across their borders once they reach the continent.

Several European countries offer migrants and asylum seekers financial incentives to leave, including Germany, which has moved to pay migrants extra until February 28. Individuals will get about $1,200 and families approximately $3,700 to cover rent or resettlement costs in their home countries.

The United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway pursue similar policies. Figures from the International Organisation for Migration indicate that 98,403 people returned to their countries of origin in 2016. More than half — 54,006 — left from Germany. Around 39,000 (61%) received cash or benefits at a cost of $32.7 million.

A study titled “Out of Africa: The Organisation of Migrant Smuggling across the Mediterranean” by Cambridge University warned that European attempts to stem the tide of migration will fail unless they address root causes in the migrants’ countries of origin.

“Criminal justice responses require the adoption of coordinated tactics involving all countries along the route to target these localised clusters of offenders simultaneously,” said report author Paolo Campana.

“This is a market driven by exponential demand and it is that demand which should be targeted,” he added, calling for Europe to address the conflicts, instability and poverty that drive migration.

The study was released the same week that Europe’s border agency warned that the number of migrants and asylum seekers crossing the western Mediterranean to Europe is likely to increase in 2018, particularly via Spain. It lacks the refugee intake services that have been created in Italy and Greece, with many predicting disaster unless action is taken now.

“The bad news is in the western Mediterranean… Spain deserves more solidarity from the European Union,” said Fabrice Leggeri, the director of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency known as Frontex.

“Economic migrants don’t want to end up in a country [Libya] where there are clashes between armed groups… There are individual cases considering finding an alternative route,” he added.

Frontex said 22,900 people were detected as they reached Spain via Morocco or Algeria in 2017, up from 10,231 in 2016. That figure is expected to be higher in 2018.

The seemingly unending flow of economic migrants and asylum seekers into Europe has infiltrated European politics, with far-right parties normalising anti-immigration discourse in various election campaigns in 2017.

This is a trend that is expected to continue this year with far-right groups in Italy such as Forza Nuova and the Northern League relying on anti-immigration rhetoric to boost their chances in the March general election.

“We cannot [accept all asylum seekers] because we won’t all fit, so we have to make choices… if our ethnicity, if our white race, if our society, should continue to exist or if it should be wiped out,” said right-wing Northern League candidate for president of Lombardy province Attilio Fontana to local Radio Padania.

The Northern League, a right-wing nationalist party, is the largest political party in Veneto and Lombardy in northern Italy.

In Austria, where the far-right, anti-immigration Freedom Party is part of the coalition government and head of several ministries, Interior Minister Herbert Kickl faced criticism after he said that he wanted “basic services centres, suitable infrastructures that enables us to concentrate people in the asylum process in one place.”

His use of the term “concentrate” was viewed as provocative, given Austria’s history under Nazism, including the establishment of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp where tens of thousands of people were killed during the Holocaust. The Freedom Party was established following the second world war by former Nazis.

Kickl’s comments came as Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, who is Austria’s vice-chancellor, said migrants should be held in disused barracks and subjected to curfews to keep “order” in the county.

With Europe braced for increased immigration and hateful far-right anti-immigration discourse becoming increasingly mainstream, many are calling on the European Union to take decisive action to tackle root causes.

Several European countries offer migrants and asylum seekers financial incentives to leave, including Germany.

Mahmud el-Shafey is an Arab Weekly correspondent in London

This article was originally published in The Arab Weekly.

Source: http://middle-east-online.com/english/?id=86972

The post EU lacks cohesive strategy to address ‘migration crisis’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The result could see the Freedom Party enter into a coalition with the right-wing Austrian People’s Party, led by Sebastian Kurz, 31, who is set to become the world’s youngest sitting head of government.

But what is the Freedom Party? And what will the result mean for the future?

Long-Established Outsiders

The Freedom Party is one of Europe’s older surviving right-wing populist parties. Founded in 1955, it has even had one spell as a partner in a coalition government. It joined the center-right People’s Party in power in 2000, which led to Austria briefly facing European Union sanctions.

Like many other European populist parties, the Freedom Party is strongly anti-immigration. “Austria is not a country of immigration,” the party says in its program statement. “This is why we pursue a family policy centered around births.” Its policies include freezing migrants out of welfare payments. Unlike some extreme-right groups, however, it does not campaign for legal immigrants already in the country to be repatriated.

The Freedom Party is strongly anti-Islam. It has long campaigned for a ban on face veils—and this year it got its way, with a ban going into force in Austria on October 1. In the European Parliament, the party is aligned with two fellow anti-Islam parties, the National Front in France and Alternative for Germany, which also made significant gains in the recent German elections.

The Freedom Party has been able to capitalize on the European refugee crisis and topped opinion polls throughout much of 2015 and 2016 as it picked up protest voters unhappy with an influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa.

Also a factor in the group’s recent strength has been its promotion of clean-cut, superficially charming figureheads adept at making its positions seem reasonable. In the country’s presidential election last year, the party came in a close second (the winner was an independent Green politician) with its candidate Norbert Hofer, a man one critic described as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Current party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, blue-eyed and inoffensively handsome, dismissed reports from Süddeutsche Zeitung about his past ties to the neo-Nazi scene as youthful folly, saying he now condemns all extremism. “I was a seeker, I saw a lot of things,” he said.

Growing Influence on Government

What the party would do in a coalition would partly depend on what it is able to extract during negotiations. Aside from pushing for a crackdown on immigration and Islam, the party has strong views on Austria’s policy toward the EU. It is strongly Euroskeptic and is opposed to deeper EU integration.

It would also like Austria to align itself more closely with the Visegrad Group—an alliance of central European countries whose intolerant line on refugees sets it apart from some more liberal Western European states.

Alternatively, Kurz could choose to reignite his party’s previous coalition with the center-left Social Democrats, albeit with a shift in the balance of power. (Before the election, the Social Democrats were the largest party.)

Even if that’s the case, the Freedom Party will wield influence and will be listened to some of the time when it shouts from the sidelines.

It has already helped to shift the debate in Austria on immigration and integration firmly to the right. Kurz achieved electoral success partly by adopting some of the Freedom Party’s positioning on the issue, and his proposals include new funding and rules designed to regulate mosques.

As Cas Mudde, a political scientist who studies right-wing populism, put it on Twitter: “Copying radical right policies does NOT marginalize radical right parties. It keeps them relevant.”

Source: http://deathrattlesports.com/another-far-right-party-has-won-voters-hearts-in-europe-with-anti-islam-message/120834

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