European Politics - Stefan Resigns Again; Poland Fencing-Off Belarus; Schengen Not Working

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‘Everything comes to an end’: Sweden’s PM announces

2nd resignation in 2 months

22 Aug, 2021 12:19

Social Democrat leader Stefan Löfven speaks during a media conference after being re-elected as prime minister in

Swedish Parliament in Stockholm, Sweden July 7, 2021. ©  Christine Olsson/TT News Agency/via REUTERS

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven will resign, again, following a tumultuous summer of political infighting in the Scandinavian country that ended in a no-confidence vote in his leadership.

In a speech on Sunday, Löfven announced that he would step down as the head of the Social Democrats, and would also resign as prime minister, in November. 

“The decision has matured over time. I have been party chairman for ten years, prime minister for seven. These years have been amazing. But everything comes to an end. I want to give my successor the best of conditions,” he said, according to local media. 

A new leader of Löfven’s center-left party will take over ahead of the country’s 2022 general election. 

Center-left party? I thought they are a far-left party.

The decision comes less than two months after Löfven quit as prime minister in late June, a week after he lost a vote of no confidence. The political reprimand – marking the first time in Sweden’s history that a sitting prime minister lost a no-confidence vote – was triggered by a heated clash over housing market policy, costing Löfven the support of his long-time coalition partner, the Left Party. 

At the time, Löfven said that his resignation was preferable to holding a drawn-out snap election, but it turned out that his departure was short-lived. 

He was narrowly reelected as prime minister by parliament on July 7 after the leaders of Sweden’s political factions failed to form a new government. 

Löfven has headed the Swedish government since 2014, but his time in office has been marred by years of shaky support. A close election in 2018 meant that it took four months to form a government after his party won 40.6% of the vote, just barely edging out the country’s center-right party, which secured 40.2%. 

Echoes of Hungary as Poland to build giant barbed-wire border fence

on frontier with Belarus to stem flow of illegal migrants

24 Aug, 2021 11:32

Border signs are pictured at the Polish-Belarusian border near the village of Usnarz Gorny, Poland,

August 23, 2021.© Reuters / Kacper Pempel

Poland intends to build a 2.5-meter-high barbed-wire fence and to double the number of troops on its frontier with Belarus, Warsaw’s defense minister revealed on Monday, following a large spike in illegal border-crossing attempts.

Speaking at a briefing, Mariusz Błaszczak revealed that the country’s frontier would be reinforced with a solid fence “two and a half meters high,” and that work on installing it would begin this week.

He also noted that more soldiers would be moved to the area to assist border guards. About 1,000 soldiers are now involved, and this number is planned to be doubled.

The total length of the Polish-Belarusian border is 418 kilometers.  According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Warsaw, around 2,100 attempts to cross it illegally were made since the start of the year. In the whole of 2020, there were just 120.

The migrant crisis comes off the back of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko saying his country would no longer make any effort to stop illegal immigration. Lithuania, which also shares a border with Belarus, claims that the government in Minsk has flown in migrants from the likes of Syria and Iraq, and is shuttling them to the frontier as a form of warfare.

Like Poland, Lithuania has also opted to reinforce its border and has declared a state of emergency.

“We will begin building an additional physical barrier, which divides Lithuania and Belarus, which would be a certain sign and a certain deterrent to organizers of the illegal migration flows,” Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte told a news conference in July.

Another Baltic country, Latvia, has also noted a mass increase in attempts to cross its frontier from Belarus illegally. Earlier his month, Riga also declared a state of emergency.

The EU, of which Poland, Latvia and Lithuania are members, has backed all three governments in the beefing up of their borders. This is a huge u-turn from the European bloc, which had blasted member state Hungary for doing the exact same thing in 2015, during the refugee crisis, when Budapest was branded as inhumane and immoral.

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Czech PM says Schengen not working, urges inclusion of Balkan states to protect Europe from illegal migrants

28 Aug, 2021 14:58

A migrant boat off the European shores. © AFP / Sameer al-Doumy

The Schengen area will only be able to protect Europe from illegal migrants after such countries as Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Croatia are included in the agreement, the Czech Republic’s prime minister, Andrej Babis, has said.

“Unfortunately, Schengen isn’t functional at the moment,” Babis said in an interview with Pravo newspaper on Saturday. With its current set of members, the 1985 agreement is unable to fulfill its task of providing “consistent protection of the external borders and free movement inside” Europe, he added.

And it was no better in 2015 when the European migrant crisis occurred as hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the continent, fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, the PM pointed out.

“The only one to defend the Schengen borders in 2015 was [Hungarian PM] Viktor Orban, who built a fence against migrants,” said Babis, who is one of the Czech Republic’s richest men and the head of the populist ANO 2011 party.

With most migrants arriving by boat, it was “absurd” that such countries as Bulgaria and Croatia, which control Europe’s Black Sea and Adriatic Sea coastlines, respectively, weren’t part of Schengen, he said. “Let’s accept Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Croatia into the Schengen area; have a clear strategy towards the Western Balkans and defend Europe against illegal migration at its external borders.”

Other steps needed to solve the problem should include “fighting human traffickers and signing agreements with Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya” from where the refugees are setting off for Europe, Babis said.

He justified the need to protect Europe from refugees by claiming that “Denmark, Sweden and Austria, which all welcomed migrants in 2015, now reject them.”

The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland were the only EU member states to refuse to fulfill the Union’s refugee quotas at the height of migrant influx six years ago. Back then, Prague was told to resettle 2,000 asylum seekers, but took in just 12 people, while Budapest and Warsaw didn’t let any in at all. Despite the countries arguing that the migrants posed a security threat, the European Court of Justice found them guilty of breaching EU laws last year. They may face hefty fines.

300 Migrants Storm Spanish Exclave of Ceuta, Attack Police with Acid

And the Spanish government actually wants these people???

African immigrants celebrate as they enter the immigrant center in Ceuta on Wednesday.

© Reuters/Fabian Bimmer

Seven police officers suffered acid and lime burns as more than 100 sub-Saharan migrants jumped the border fence that separates Morocco from Spain's north African exclave of Ceuta.

Approximately 300 people tried to enter European territory by storming the fence on Tuesday night. Press reports state that as many as 200 were successful, however officials in the autonomous city say they have only accounted for 115 new arrivals.

The migrants cut part of the, 8.4km-long (5.2 mile) fence and used battery acid, quicklime and excrement to attack police officers, El Pais reports. The police revealed on Twitter that seven members of the force suffered injuries during the incident.

Do you believe this?

Because of vacations, the border was manned by fewer than 10 agents when the migrants chose to storm the fence. Numbers were also reduced because it was the first day of the Eid al-Adha Muslim festival. The Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC) police representative group has long been critical of the shortage of officers manning the border.

The union should sue the government for leaving those guards in such a predictably vulnerable position.

Once inside the fence the migrants raced through the streets in a bid to reach the Temporary Immigrant Stay Center (CETI). The Red Cross treated the migrants who suffered cuts and bruises when they arrived there.

Local news outlet El Faro de Ceuta published video footage of the migrants running around in the city after breaching the border. They can be heard shouting “Boza! Boza!”, which means “victory” in, the west African language of Fula.

The Ceuta border fence is regularly breached by large groups of migrants looking to get into Europe. In late July, more than 700 people stormed the fence and more than 600 of them managed to cross the barrier in what Spanish police described as one of “the most violent and numerous entries” of migrants in recent months.

In February 2017, more than 500 stormed the fences of Ceuta.

EU Launches Legal Cases Against 3 Member States for not Taking in Refugees

The European Commission has launched legal action against three EU member states, claiming Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic have not “taken the necessary action” in dealing with migrants and refugees.

Infringement proceedings were launched by Brussels on Tuesday.

Warsaw, Budapest, and Prague have been accused of not fulfilling their obligations in dealing with migrants and refugees according to a 2015 plan.

The three EU states have acted “in breach of their legal obligations,” the commission said in a statement, adding that it had previously warned the countries to observe “their commitments to Greece, Italy and other member states.”

The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland “have not yet taken the necessary action,” the statement says, claiming that the three EU members “have not yet relocated a single person.”

“Against this background… the Commission has decided to launch infringement procedures against these three Member States.”

Since January, other countries within the bloc have relocated almost 10,300 people from Italy and Greece, according to the commission. “The pace of relocation has significantly increased,” it added, saying it has witnessed “a fivefold increase” compared to the same period last year.

In total, nearly 21,000 asylum-seekers have been distributed throughout Europe, some 14,000 from Greece and the rest from Italy.

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka slammed Brussels’ decision and called its plan to deal with migrants “dysfunctional,” Reuters reports.

“The European Commission blindly insists on pushing ahead with dysfunctional quotas which decreased citizens’ trust in EU abilities and pushed back working and conceptual solutions to the migration crisis,” the news agency cited Sobotka as saying in an email statement.

Warsaw has also reacted to Brussels’ decision, saying it intends to carry on with its current migration policy and does not intend to accept its quota of refugees. It is ready to defend its right to not take in refugees in an EU court, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymanski told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) on Tuesday.

The initiation of infringement procedures would only further escalate EU divisions, and push the bloc further away from a “necessary political compromise” to solve the migrant crisis on the continent, the Polish official said.

He also called the 2015 plan “erroneous,” and argued that Warsaw contributes to solving the migrant crisis by “engaging in protection of EU’s external borders and systematically strengthening its humanitarian involvement in the region.”

However, in its Tuesday statement, the EU Commission cited its migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, as saying, “When it comes to relocation, let me be crystal clear: the implementation of the Council Decisions on relocation is a legal obligation, not a choice.”

“Relocation works if there is political will,” Brussels claimed.

In September 2015, EU ministers took up a plan to relocate over 100,000 migrants who have already reached the continent, throughout Europe. However, not all EU states have found the measures acceptable, saying that the migrant crisis cannot be solved through obligatory quotas.

The Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary have been staunchly opposing the plan. Despite warnings from Brussels, Budapest is determined to tighten its policy towards asylum seekers and carry on with its own border fence plan.