Category Archives: European Union

European Union, France, Germany, Government, Immigration, Italy, Politics

The desperate migrants’ route across Europe

EU IMMIGRATION

IN the freezing passes of the Italian Alps, migrants march slowly up an icy incline as they head for France.

The mountains have become an unlikely route for Africans looking for a new life across the border.

Thousands are thought to have tried to traverse the range over the last few months alone, wearing clothing that is unlikely to protect them from the extreme conditions.

Faced with the policies of Italy’s Right-wing government, asylum seekers who arrive by boat on the country’s Mediterranean shores have headed north instead to reach France.

From there they can move on to Germany, Spain, Belgium, Holland and – ultimately, for many – Britain.

The latest route used by desperate migrants is increasingly coming to the attention of populist Right-wing political groups that have risen to prominence on the back of Europe’s migrant crisis.

Already, Italy has swung heavily to the right, with interior minister Matteo Salvini turning migrant boats away from harbours. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban has made stopping immigration a cornerstone of his philosophy, and young conservative Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz has called for an “axis of the willing” to strengthen borders. Anti-immigrant MEP Christelle Lechevalier – of the renamed French right-wing National Front, now National Rally – last week tried to make political capital out of African migrants crossing from Italy into France at the ski resort of Montgenevre.

Some 26 European nations are in the supposedly border-free Schengen zone, which makes it possible to cross between member states without border controls. But faced with the prospect of mass immigration, police at several border posts are increasingly turning away new arrivals and sending them back to Italy.

As a result, migrants are turning to mountain passes, ski resorts and hiking trails to avoid official checks.

Snow-free in the summer, the Alps are a far less dangerous hike. And even if migrants are caught and sent back to Italy, they can always try again.

Earlier this year there were reports of migrants using the Col de l’Echelle mountain pass into France through thick snowdrifts. At the end of their eight-mile journey, African migrants would simply knock on the first door they saw.

Up to half a million migrants are thought to be in Italy, despite the fall in the number arriving – usually from lawless Libya – in boats across the Mediterranean.

Widespread public reaction to Europe’s migrant crisis has prompted EU nations to belatedly close off entry points and movement routes (as well as proposed detention centres in the Med to process asylum applications). German chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the migrant summit agreement as a success, with its vague talk of promises of cash for Third World countries to help them control population flows and loosen proposals to tighten border controls within the EU.

But no European country, let alone any African one, has yet agreed to host a migration centre. Mrs Merkel’s firm grip on Germany, which she has led since 2005, has weakened in recent months. Interior minister Horst Seehofer, leader of the Bavarian CSU party, was so incensed with last week’s deal that Mrs Merkel’s governing alliance was in serious jeopardy of collapsing. There were fears he was on the verge of ordering German police to start turning new arrivals away (in direct defiance of Mrs Merkel’s wishes).

Last Friday’s summit agreement failed to nail down any firm agreements on exactly how migrants arriving in EU countries on the Mediterranean coast could be dispersed elsewhere.

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Britain, Economic, European Union, Government, Politics, United States

Britain dismayed at US trade war

US TRADE TARIFFS

THE Prime Minister Theresa May has attacked Donald Trump’s “unjustified” trade tariffs amid fears that Britain’s automotive industry could be hit next.

Mrs May said she was “deeply disappointed” with the US President’s decision to impose higher import taxes on steel and aluminium from Britain and the EU.

The EU has signalled that it is prepared to hit back, making a complaint to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and finalising a list of American products it will target with tariffs of its own.

There are fears, however, that this could spark a spiralling trade war, with Mr Trump responding to any retaliation by imposing additional import levies on cars from the UK and EU.

That possibility will concern the more than 169,000 employees in the UK motor vehicle industry, on top of existing fears for Britain’s 31,000 steel workers.

International Trade Secretary Dr Liam Fox suggested that the UK may not fully support the EU’s retaliatory measures, instead saying Britain only backs the complaint to the WTO.

He said it would “take some time” for EU member states to agree their collective response, and urged the bloc to pursue compromise with the White House in the interim – even though British diplomats have previously offered their support to measures drawn up in Brussels.

Dr Fox said it would be “very, very unfortunate if we get into this tit-for-tat position, especially with one of our closest allies.”

He added: “Nobody wins in a trade war, there are only casualties. We very much regret that these tariffs were put in place.

“We think it’s of dubious legality and we will be with the EU 100 per cent in taking this to a dispute at the WTO.”

The deepening row comes just before a G7 meeting of world leaders in Quebec this week, where European leaders will air their grievances to the US President. French president Emmanuel Macron has already told Mr Trump his new tariffs on EU goods was a “mistake” and “illegal”.

Mrs May’s language was more measured, but she said: “I am deeply disappointed at the unjustified decision by the United States to apply tariffs to EU steel and aluminium imports.

“The US, EU and UK are close allies and have always promoted values of open and fair trade across the world. Our steel and aluminium industries are highly important to the UK, but they also contribute to US industry, including defence projects which bolster US national security.

“The EU and UK should be permanently exempted from tariffs and we will continue to work together to protect and safeguard our workers and industries.”

Although it is said that the Prime Minister has additional concerns over US trade tariffs, it is believed she has not expressed these in public as she hopes to tie up a comprehensive post-Brexit trade deal with the White House and does not want to inflame the situation.

The EU, which handles trade matters on behalf of the UK, has been finalising its response to the US, with measures affecting thousands of US imports to the EU worth £2.5billion, including Levi’s jeans and Jack Daniel’s bourbon, hit with tariffs of up to 25 per cent.

Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU’s trade chief, admitted the bloc was “anxious” that Mr Trump would follow through on earlier threats to impose tariffs on European cars.

She said: “This would create enormous damage, not only to the European economy but also to the US.” The US levies of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium imports follow promises made by Mr Trump under his America First programme.

Earlier this year, he said: “If the EU wants to increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on US companies doing business there, we will apply a tax on their cars, which freely pour into the US.”

EU cars sold in the US face a levy of 2.5 per cent, compared to a 10 per cent tax on US vehicles brought into Europe.

How the US raised the stakes:

. Donald Trump announced in March that the EU and countries including Mexico, Canada and Brazil would be hit by increased steel and aluminium tariffs to protect US firms against imports from China, which has flooded the market with cut-price steel.

. The EU, which negotiates trade on behalf of Britain, was granted a temporary exemption while Theresa May and other leaders lobbied for a permanent reprieve.

. The UK is concerned about the effect of the measures on its resurgent £1.6billion steel industry, which employs some 31,000.

. Britain exported 350,000 tonnes of steel worth £376million to the US last year – 7 per cent of its output.

. If the EU hits back, as it has threatened to do, Britain fears that Mr Trump will retaliate by raising tariffs on cars, in a blow to the UK car industry, which employs around 169,000.

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Economic, European Union, Government, Italy, Politics, Society

A provocation and insult to democracy

ITALY

ITALY has had no fewer than 65 governments since the War – with an average survival rate of just over a year. The country is hardly renowned as a beacon of democratic stability.

Even by the standards of this volatile nation, however, the current political crisis is becoming more troubling and bizarre by the day. It proves yet again the disastrous folly of imposing the one-size-fits-all euro on countries for which it is so obviously unsuitable. Pertinently, it demonstrates that Brussels has no qualms about trampling on democracy to keep the dream of a European superstate alive.

Italy’s national finances are in a dire state. Marooned in a sea of debt, with a stagnant economy and crippling unemployment rate, citizens of that beleaguered land renounced their mainstream Europhile parties in a general election just three months ago. They rightly blamed membership of the single currency for their misery and elected a coalition of unashamedly populist, Eurosceptic parties – led by the maverick Five Star movement and Right-wing Northern League.

Yet, when radical economist Paolo Savona – a passionate opponent of the euro – was named finance minister he was vetoed by Italy’s slavishly pro-Brussels president Sergio Matarella, who then nominated his own man as prime minister and invited him to form a totally unelected government. It has no mandate of course and will soon fall. Mr Matarella could possibly be impeached for overreaching his powers. But what an affront to democracy.

Had this happened in some Third World state, it would have quickly been denounced as tyrannical and corrupt. Not in Europe. In both Paris and Berlin, Mr Matarella is being praised for his courage. There is no better example or illustration of how people across the European continent are being disenfranchised – and just why they are crying out for change.

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