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.

Germany to Ramp Up Security at Swiss Border After Migrant Pushed 8yo Boy Under Train

FILE PHOTO: A police officer stands guard at the Frankfurt station © REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

Days after a foreigner killed a young boy by pushing him and his mother under a train, the German interior minister has recommended stricter checks at the country’s Swiss border and advanced security measures at all rail stations.

“I will do everything in order to put intelligent controls in place on the border,” Horst Seehofer told Spiegel magazine in a follow-up to the harrowing incident at Frankfurt station, in which a 40-year-old Eritrean man assaulted an eight-year-old boy and his mother.

The immigrant, believed to have lived in Switzerland since 2006, pushed the pair onto the tracks seconds before a high-speed train, the Intercity Express, arrived.

The mother managed to roll out of harm’s way but her child was killed. The attacker then attempted to flee the station but was pursued by a group of passengers and was eventually apprehended by police outside the Frankfurt terminal.

Now, Seehofer wants to introduce “occasional, temporary checks at the border with Switzerland” to screen foreigners. Both Germany and Switzerland are in the visa-free Schengen area, but travelers crossing their border aren’t subjected to any controls.

The issue needs to be dealt with immediately, Seehofer warned, mentioning that a total of 43,000 unauthorized arrivals had been registered in Germany last year. The conservative politician was once at odds with Angela Merkel over imposing limits on incoming immigrants, but this time the Chancellor “is fully on my side on the issues of security.”

Messages of mourning, candles and flowers are placed by people for the boy who died at the main train station in Frankfurt

© REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

Border checks aside, Seehofer also urges ramping up security at railway stations. He didn’t expand on that but said it could involve installing safety barriers or locks on the platforms – similar to those already in use in London and Paris. Such countermeasures could potentially cost billions of Euros, the minister acknowledged

Just another expense for Merkel's Madness.

The Frankfurt tragedy re-ignited a heated migration debate that reached its climax back in 2015 and 2016, when Germany opened its borders to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers – mostly from the Middle East and Africa. The heavy influx of migrants saw the crime rate going up and also led to the resurgence of the far-right extremists ready to use violence against foreigners and “pro-refugee” politicians.

130,000 Refugees Vanished; 400,000 Still Not Identified in Germany

Deportation is having no effect on refugee numbers

130,000 refugees vanished after being registered in Germany – media report

© Michaela Rehle / Reuters

Some 13 percent of all migrants who officially entered Germany in 2015 never turned up at the accommodation provided for them, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported Thursday. The news comes as Berlin tightens laws on asylum seekers.

The newspaper’s report is based on Germany’s Federal Interior Ministry’s official response to a request filed by the Left Party. The ministry provided two explanations for the phenomenon: the refugees either continued their journey to another European country or choose to live illegally within Germany.

Now, what possible reason would they have for doing that? One would think they would want to take advantage of Germany's generous welfare system, but they can't do that unless they are registered.

It is likely that most of them continued on their journey, but they should probably have been documented as leaving the country. That, at least, would give them some idea of who has gone where, and who is still in Germany. But then, they probably can't do that under Schengen.

According to Frank-Jürgen Weise, the head of Germany's Federal Office for Migration (BAMF), there are as many as 400,000 asylum seekers within the country who have no ID documents and German authorities have proven unable to identify them, the head of the BAMF agency said in Berlin on Thursday.

Last year, Berlin was unable to expel all illegal aliens to the country responsible for them, which according to the Dublin Regulation is the EU state a refugee first entered.

Only one in 10 asylum seekers was returned to the country from which they entered Germany, and in 2014 it was one in five refugees.

The reluctance of other European states to take back the refugees is understandable: Greece alone has witnessed a 21-fold growth in immigrants in one year.

Deportation resulted in a net drop in refugees of only 600

Out of the total of 45,000 so-called “takeover requests,” Germany filed to other states in 2015, only about 3,600 have been completed. At the same time, other EU states have “returned” to Germany some 3,000 asylum seekers, thus making the number of refugees that German authorities managed to distribute to other European states to mere 600, a tiny drop in the ocean of migrants that poured into Germany last year.

Germany has welcomed an estimated 1.1 million refugees in 2015, mostly from the Middle East and Northern Africa, of which about a half are either without official documents or have disappeared.

On Thursday, the Bundestag adopted new legislation, tightening asylum regulations. On Friday, German upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, is set to hold a final vote on legislation aimed at making the influx of migrants more manageable.

The new laws would facilitate deportation in the event that Germany does not recognize an asylum claim. The rules for family unification are going to be stricter, too, with asylum seekers now having to live two years in Germany before being given the right to invite their family members to join them.