Sarkozy and Berlusconi want passport-free travel within the EU suspended as north African migrants flee north France and Italy have thrown down the gauntlet over Europe’s system of passport-free travel, saying a crisis of immigration sparked by the Arab spring was calling into question the borderless regime enjoyed by more than 400 million people in 25 countries. Challenging one of the biggest achievements of European integration of recent decades, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi also launched a joint effort to stem immigration and demanded European deportation pacts with the countries of revolutionary north Africa to send new arrivals packing. The French president and the Italian prime minister, at a summit in Rome, opted to pile the pressure on Brussels and the governments of the other 25 EU states, demanding an “in-depth revision” of European law regulating the passport-free travel that takes in almost all of the EU with the exception of Britain and Ireland. Prompted by the influx to Italy of almost 30,000 immigrants, mainly from Tunisia, in recent months, the two leaders warned that the upheavals in north Africa “could swiftly become an out-and-out crisis capable of undermining the trust our fellow citizens place in the free circulation within the Schengen area”. The passport-free travel system known as the Schengen regime was agreed by a handful of countries in 1985 and put into practice in 1995. Since then it has been embraced by 22 EU countries as well as Norway, Switzerland and Iceland, but spurned by Britain and Ireland. It is widely seen, along with the euro single currency, as Europe’s signature unification project of recent decades. But like the euro, fighting its biggest crisis over the past year, the Schengen regime is being tested amid mounting populism and the renationalisation of politics across the EU. In other setbacks to borderless Europe, Germany, France and other countries have been blocking the admission of Bulgaria and Romania to Schengen in recent months, while the arrival of thousands of Middle Eastern migrants in Greece has fed exasperation with Athens’s inability to control the EU’s southern border. The Franco-Italian move, following weeks of bad-tempered exchanges between Paris and Rome over how to deal with the Tunisian influx, is the biggest threat yet to the Schengen regime. “For the treaty to stay alive, it must be reformed,” Sarkozy said. Berlusconi added: “We both believe that in exceptional circumstances there should be variations to the Schengen treaty.” They sent a joint letter to the European commission and European council chiefs, José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy, urging proposals from Brussels and agreement on a new system at an EU summit of government heads in June. The commission said it was drawing up new proposals, tinkering with the current system, to be unveiled next week. But it has resisted, with the support of most EU governments, intense Italian pressure to label the arrivals from north Africa an emergency. Under European law the border-free regime can be suspended only for reasons of national security, routinely invoked in recent years by member states hosting major international sporting events such as the World Cup or the European football championships, where individual countries contend with a huge, one-off influx of foreigners. Sarkozy and Berlusconi insisted the rules be changed to allow more restrictions on freedom of travel. A new deal was “indispensable”, they said. The June summit should “examine the possibility of temporarily re-establishing internal frontier controls in case of exceptional difficulty in the management of the [EU's] common external frontiers”. This, however, would clearly not be in the interests of Italy, which fears an end to the hostilities in Libya could spark an even bigger exodus. In that event, the letter said, the EU should provide “mechanisms of specific solidarity” including the distribution of immigrants among member states. This will prove extremely divisive and will be rejected by countries such as Germany and Sweden, which have much higher numbers of asylum seekers than Italy, less restrictive immigration policies, and little sympathy for Italy’s plight. The concerted Franco-Italian initiative also called for accords between the EU and north African countries on repatriating immigrants, a policy certain to spark outrage among human rights groups, the refugee lobby, and more liberal EU governments. Promising strong support for the democratic revolutions sweeping the Maghreb and the Middle East, Sarkozy and Berlusconi added: “In exchange we have the right to expect from our partner countries a commitment to a rapid and efficacious co-operation with the European Union and its member states in fighting illegal immigration.” Tuesday’s move followed weeks of feuding between Rome and Paris over the Tunisian exodus. Furious at the failure of other EU countries to “share the burden”, the Italians granted visas to the immigrants enabling them to move elsewhere in the EU. The Germans and the Austrians complained. The Belgians accused Rome of “cheating” on the Schengen rulebook. The French government promptly closed a part of the border with Italy briefly, re-erecting passport controls to halt trains. But Berlusconi and Sarkozy, seeking to curry favour with the strong far-right constituencies in both countries, sought to bury their differences by urging the rest of Europe to buy into their anti-immigration agenda. European Union Arab and Middle East unrest Immigration and asylum Libya Egypt Tunisia Middle East John Hooper Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The ruling against California’s controversial Proposition 8 should be set aside, a group argued yesterday, not because the judge who ruled against it is gay—but because he’s in a long-term relationship with his partner. ProtectMarriage, which sponsored the 2008 ballot initiative prohibiting gay marriage, filed a motion asking a…
Continue reading …Lent is a time for Catholics to “give up something they love for 40 days,” so this year, Stephen Colbert gave up Catholicism. He thought he could make it til Easter, but on Good Friday he caught a whiff of his trigger: cathedral incense. “Long story short, I went on…
Continue reading …It’s a counterintuitive idea, but depression could actually be a good thing. The Independent addresses the question by looking at studies and talking to experts and depression sufferers. Though not everyone agrees, a surprising number seem to think the answer is yes: Those who suffer depression and come out the…
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Leeds-based agency Catholic Care told it must consider gay and lesbian couples as prospective parents A Catholic adoption agency has lost a two-year battle to be excluded from laws that ban discrimination against homosexuals. Leeds-based Catholic Care wanted exemption from the 2007 Sexual Orientation Regulations, which require it to consider gay and lesbian couples as prospective parents. But a ruling on Tuesday by the Charity Tribunal upheld an earlier decision from the Charity Commission. The bishop of Leeds, the Right Rev Arthur Roche, said he was disappointed with the tribunal’s ruling. He said: “It is unfortunate that those who will suffer as a consequence of this ruling will be the most vulnerable children, for whom Catholic Care has provided an excellent service for many years.It is an important point of principle that the charity should be able to prepare potential adoptive parents according to the tenets of the Catholic faith.” Roche had told the Charity Tribunal the agency would suffer financially if it was forced to accept applications from homosexual couples because donations would dry up. But the tribunal said it was “impossible” to conclude that Catholic Care’s income would suffer it were to operate an open adoption service. It said: “There was evidence before the tribunal that some Catholics do offer financial support to adoption agencies which provide services to same-sex adopters but no evidence from the charity that it had considered how it might attract alternative financial supporters if it did not discriminate.” It conceded there would be “a loss to society if the charity’s skilled staff were no longer engaged in the task of preparing potential adopters to offer families to children awaiting an adoption placement”, but said it had to balance the risk of closure of the charity’s adoption service against the “detriment to same-sex couples and the detriment to society generally of permitting the discrimination proposed”. Gay rights group Stonewall welcomed the tribunal’s decision, saying there should be “no question” of publicly funded services being allowed to “pick and choose their service users on the basis of individual prejudice”. The row over exemptions for faith-based adoption agencies dates back to 2007, when the regulations were introduced. At the time, the then Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, warned that the 11 Catholic adoption agencies would close rather than place children with gay couples. But the then prime minister, Tony Blair, said there was “no place” for discrimination in British society. The Tory leader David Cameron called for a compromise solution because Catholic adoption agencies did a “fantastic job in placing hard-to-place children”. While some agencies have closed, others have severed their links with the church in order to stay open. Catholicism Adoption Gay rights Children Christianity Religion Riazat Butt guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …With the bloodshed mounting in the streets of Daraa , the Obama administration is preparing sanctions against Syria, including freezing the assets of top Syrian officials, the LA Times reports. That may not have a ton of impact, since Syrian officials don’t own all that many US assets to begin with,…
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Two Scottish men charged over sectarian statements, while in Northern Ireland police react to alleged BNP Facebook post Two men have appeared in court charged with posting bigoted and sectarian statements on the internet relating to Glasgow’s Rangers and Celtic football clubs. David Craig, 23, from Paisley, and Stephen Birrell, 27, from Glasgow, were charged with breach of the peace after being arrested by police at their homes early on Saturday. They made no plea and were released on bail. Their arrests, which led to the seizure of mobile phones and computers, are not connected to a police operation to identify those behind an attempted letter bomb campaign against Celtic manager Neil Lennon, his lawyer Paul McBride, and Celtic fan and former MSP Trish Godman. Four viable devices, which used bottles of explosive liquids wrapped in nails and were capable of causing “real harm”, were posted to Lennon, McBride and Godman over a seven-week period from the Irvine and Kilwinning areas of north Ayrshire. Meanwhile, in an unconnected development, police in Northern Ireland said they would investigate any complaint made about apparent threats against Lennon allegedly made by Steve Moore, the British National party’s candidate in the Stormont assembly election, . On a Facebook page in the name of Moore, the BNP candidate for East Antrim, readers were asked to choose between shooting Lennon and paedophiles. A picture was posted of the former Northern Ireland player beside an anonymous postage stamp image with the word “paedophiles” above it, captioned: “You have TWO bullets only, who dies??” Matthew Collins from the anti-Nazi magazine Searchlight, said the comments “really reflect how stuck in the dark ages the BNP are with regard to Northern Ireland”. Collins added: “A couple of months ago the BNP were backing dissident Republicans, now they’re taking enjoyment in the threats to the life of a football manager. This party is suffering from time warp sickness.” This is the BNP’s first major foray into Ulster politics where the British far right have traditionally failed to make a breakthrough. In the early 1980s the National Front was humiliated in a local government election after their candidate in North Belfast received just 26 votes. The attempted letter bomb attacks stunned Scottish football, and the legal and political establishment, leading to the personal intervention last week of the prime minister, David Cameron, and the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, the head of the Scottish prosecution system. It is understood both were in direct contact with Stephen House, the Strathclyde Police chief constable, last week. Cameron suggested the Scottish authorities had failed to tackle sectarianism. Crime Scotland Football violence Northern Ireland Severin Carrell Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk
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With polls pointing to win for no campaign at AV referendum, mobilising Labour vote seen as yes camp’s last chance Labour voters will be urged to kick Cameron not Clegg in the 5 May referendum on the Commons voting system, as the party’s yes campaign steps up its drive to corral swing Labour voters into backing the alternative vote. As the latest polling shows a strong lead for the no campaign, a swing to yes from undecided Labour voters is seen as the last chance for the yes team. Labour Yes will produce a set of posters showing a happy David Cameron and George Osborne with the caption: “Wipe the smile off their faces. Hit them twice on May 5th. Vote Labour in the council elections and yes.” The poster is an admission that the yes campaign is only likely to win if it turns the referendum into a verdict on the prime minister, and persuades Labour voters not to see it primarily as a chance to punish the Lib Dems’ decision to form the coalition with the Conservatives. It also marks a shift away from the claim that a yes vote will be a blow to the “complacent” culture that led to the MPs expenses scandal. Alan Johnson, the former Labour home secretary, called the no campaign “a Tory campaign almost exclusively funded by Tory donors”. He said: “The no campaign is not a genuine cross-party campaign. If Labour voters and others are fed up with the Tory-led coalition, they should send a clear signal by voting yes to AV.” Johnson will be joined on Wednesday by Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence party, and Tim Farron, the president of the Liberal Democrats. But another former Labour home secretary, David Blunkett, said: “The Labour no campaign now includes over half of Labour’s MPs, four out of five councillors, and thousands of Labour activists.” The renewed efforts to win over the critical undecided Labour supporters came as another poll suggested the no camp is likely to win, mainly due to a hardening of Tory voter opinion against change. An Angus Reid poll published on Tuesday showed the no camp leading 41% to 30%, a 13-point increase in the no vote since its last survey in mid-April. The yes camp has slipped 2 points from the same date. Once the “don’t knows” are removed, the result is 58% to 42%. The pollsters said: “The big jump in support for the no side is coming from people who voted for the Conservative party in the May 2010 general election. In January, 30% of these voters were in the no column. The proportion rose to 43% earlier this month, and has now reached 65 %.” The proportion of respondents who are “very informed” or “moderately informed” about the alternative vote system continues to rise as referendum date draws near, and now stands at 67%, up 10 points since mid-April. The pollsters add: “The drastic shift observed in this survey can be traced back to Cameron’s speech on 18 April, where he described the alternative vote system as ‘obscure, unfair and expensive’.” The yes camp is only ahead in London and Scotland, but there is expected to be a low turnout in the capital. Putting forward the yes camp’s latest argument , Lord Mandelson said: “If there’s not a no vote successfully obtained, the Tory party will never forgive David Cameron. “It will put an instrument, a weapon, in the hands of his critics and detractors in the party and greatly destabilise him and might even cost him his leadership. “What I’m saying to my party is, think strategically. How is it best to collapse the coalition? In my view, you have to pull the rug from under David Cameron much more significantly than any damage you might inflict on Nick Clegg.” One Labour yes campaigner argued: “Clegg is already down and he is going to stay down.” The same campaigner nevertheless vented fury at the way in which Clegg had decided to raise his profile in the campaign, saying: “Every time he pops up, our poll rating goes down.”Clegg’s friends claim privately there has been a breach of trust since Cameron promised he would not take a high-profile role. They say he has instead made the no case a central feature of his local election campaign. The yes and no camps have been struck by the extent to which the campaign has turned into a bout between party politicians, rather than a wider debate about the future of democracy. AV referendum Alternative vote Labour Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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Xan Rice meets rebels in the city, where an uneasy calm has descended since Gaddafi’s forces were kicked out The young men of the Black Car Brigade were sprawled across the living room, chessboard on the table, guitar on the sofa, guns leaning against the wall. For the first time in weeks they had enjoyed a full night’s sleep, a shave and a shower. Coffee had been brewed, and bread rolls delivered. Muammar Gaddafi’s forces had been kicked out of the city centre in Misrata, allowing them a rest – and a chance to act their age. “This is Mr al-Qaida,” said Abdulfatah Shaka, 22, a student of refrigeration engineering, Pink Floyd aficionado, tank destroyer and leader of the small rebel cell, pointing to his cousin and classmate Mohamed, 21. Next he gestured towards Alsallabi, 20, whose university studies have also been interrupted by the revolution in February. “That is the Taliban.” The joke was on Gaddafi, who has blamed the uprising on Islamist terror groups. Everyone laughed: Bashir the seaman, unemployed Ahmed, Abdulmajid the floor tile salesman and Bassam the student. At 23, he was the oldest in the room – until 30-year-old Abdulhamid strolled in after a 10-hour sleep: “My best in two months.” In better times he was a chef. “I swapped my spoon for a Kalashnikov,” he said. The uneasy calm that descended over Misrata on Tuesday – the first such day in more than a month – was a consequence of the resounding defeat suffered by Gaddafi’s forces inside the city. The remaining troops and artillery are now concentrated in the southern outskirts, leaving as much as 90% of the city free. The rain of missiles launched from up to 10 miles outside the city has also slowed, with some rebels saying Nato warplanes had destroyed some of Gaddafi’s armoury overnight. But there have been few celebrations among the people here. A battle has been won, not a war. And the conflict will soon resume, from one side or the other. “We are getting ready, resting, fixing our machines,” said Ibrahim “Grande” Shiniba, 39, a senior rebel who once played football for Libya. “We have our men watching Gaddafi’s forces, seeing what they are doing. Maybe we will attack them later today, or tomorrow.” In defending the city, the rebels have suffered heavy losses. The Black Car Brigade, as Gaddafi’s forces called them because of the colour of their battlewagons, originally had about 200 men. About 30 were killed and 100 injured. Others have taken their places. The rebels say they are still waiting for more weapons and ammunition, but will fight on with what they have, most of it scavenged from Gaddafi’s forces. Mohamed Shaka, “Mr al-Qaida”, examined the 14.5mm machinegun he had welded on to the back of his pickup, complete with a custom-built firing chair made from metal and a hospital mattress. The car was reinforced with thick steel plates in front and back. There was no bonnet. On the dashboard were three books: a biography of Martin Luther King, Oscar’s Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and Thomas Hardy’s Tales from Longpuddle. Shaka shrugged. “When there’s a break in fighting I like to read.” The cell was based near Tripoli Street, the city’s main thoroughfare and the scene of its heaviest gunbattles. For several blocks on either side the houses bear the scars of bullets, grenades or shells. Virtually everyone living here fled when Gaddafi’s forces came in, though some were too late. Abdulfatah Shaka’s father was one of those unlucky people, kidnapped from the living room where his son and the other young rebels were now relaxing. Like hundreds of other abducted civilians in Misrata, he has not been seen for more than a month. Across the road, Salah Sadawi stood outside her house, cradling one of her five-month-old twins. It was the first time in weeks she had been back to her home, and she was surveying the damage. The lock of the gate was riddled with bullet holes where Gaddafi’s soldiers had forced their way in. Sadawi said a Mauritanian soldier – one of Gaddafi’s mercenaries – had ordered her husband, Hana Siddig, an English translator, to shave his beard. “They said he was a terrorist and then they took him away. When they came back they said he had confessed and that I must show them the weapons. But we have no weapons. They said I should forget about my husband, as he would be killed. Just forget about him.” Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Xan Rice guardian.co.uk
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