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beardedmrbean · 1 year

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Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has taken part in a solemn wreath-laying ceremony to mark Italy's National Liberation Day, which commemorates the end of fascism and Nazi occupation in 1945.

Liberation Day normally brings Italians together and it is marked with parades.

But for the first time since World War Two, Italy is led by a party whose origins lie in the country's post-fascist past.

And this year's commemorations have been riddled with controversy.

Among those taking part in Tuesday's Rome ceremony was a collector of fascist memorabilia, Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa, who holds Italy's second-highest office of state.

A few days ago, he was quoted as saying: "There is no reference to anti-fascism in the Italian constitution".

His comments sparked a barrage of criticism from the centre-left, and calls for him to resign. Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein reacted by insisting that "anti-fascism is our constitution".

The furore was not the first time that Mr La Russa's links to Italy's fascist past had caused controversy.

He was filmed in 2018 escorting reporters around his house, showing busts and mini-statues of Benito Mussolini, along with fascist memorabilia.

He recently said he would never get rid of his Mussolini bust, because it was a gift from his father.

The Senate speaker is a founding member of the far-right Brothers of Italy party - and a key ally of Ms Meloni.

She has refused to condemn him, but sought to distance herself from fascism in a letter to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

"For many years, right-wing political parties in Parliament have declared their incompatibility with any nostalgia for fascism," she said.

Calling for the day to be a "celebration of freedom", Meloni wrote that "the fundamental result of 25 April was, and undoubtedly remains, the affirmation of democratic values, which fascism had trampled on and which we find engraved in the republican constitution."

She blamed politicians for using fascism as a "tool for delegitimising political opponents: a sort of weapon of mass exclusion."

But Ms Meloni does lead the most right-wing government since World War Two. Brothers of Italy is a direct political descendant of the Italian Social Movement, which was formed by members of Mussolini's Fascist Party after the war.

When she was 19, Ms Meloni told French TV: "I think Mussolini was a good politician. Everything he did, he did for Italy. And we haven't had any politicians like that in the past 50 years."

She has tried hard to brand herself as a credible leader in Europe, since becoming prime minister six months ago. She has surprised Italians and European allies by displaying a moderate stance on a variety of issues - from the Italian budget to support for Nato and Ukraine.

But she is finding it tricky to keep the more outspoken members of her party in line.

Last week, Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida - one of her closest allies, and her brother-in-law - was accused of white supremacy for saying Italians were at risk of "ethnic replacement."

Liberation Day also marks the victory of the resistance movement of partisans who opposed the fascist regime.

Italy's national partisans association recently criticised Ms Meloni for saying victims of a 1944 Nazi massacre on the outskirts of Rome were murdered "simply because they were Italian". They said those killed were not just Italians but also anti-fascists, resistance fighters, political opponents and Jews.

As the national anthem played on Tuesday, the prime minister and Senate speaker joined President Sergio Mattarella at the Altare della Patria, a national monument in Rome that honours the tens of thousands of lives lost during the war.

The prime minister has said she wants to help make the day a moment of "rediscovered national harmony", but she clearly has some way to go.

#nunyas news #I love the “but” part there #can't just let her words speak for themselves I guess

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mariacallous · 7 months

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The femicide of 22-year-old Giulia Cecchettin, apparently by her former boyfriend Filippo Turetta, has sparked furious reactions from feminists groups, activists and rights organisations towards the media, accused of reiterating patriarchal stereotypes in reporting the case.

Turetta was arrested in Germany by German police on Sunday after going missing from home for more than one week. On Sunday night he consented to be extradited to Italy.

Cecchettin and Turetta disappeared on the night of November 11-12. Turetta came under investigation for attempted murder last Friday, when a video showing his aggression toward Cecchettin surfaced. A European arrest warrant was issued the next day.

Fears that the disappearance of Cecchettin might be another case of femicide were confirmed on Saturday, when her body was found with many knife wounds in a valley between Lake Barcis and Piancavallo in Pordenone province, a one-hour drive from the Slovenian border.

Both were 22-year-old students of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Padua. They had been in a relationship for two years that ended during the summer.

On the fatal night, Turetta came prepared with a knife and several plastic bags, media reported. After concealing her body, he left by car. His car number plate was caught on video by a surveillance camera in Austria a few days before his arrest.

Media coverage of the case was criticised even before the body was found. “While investigations into the disappearance of Giulia Cecchettin and Filippo Turetta […] are ongoing, local media begin their morbid quest for intimate details, aiming to sensationalise the story,” wrote the transfeminist movement Non Una Di Meno, NUDM – Not One Woman Less, in a post on social media on November 15. NUDM organised a protest in Rome on Saturday night. Protests were held in several cities around Italy, organised by local feminists groups and activists.

Since the disappearance of the two, media published several articles in which the parents and friends of Turetta described him as a “nice guy”, incapable of such violence. Media also explored intimate details of the relationship between the two, published their Instagram accounts handles and published old pictures of the couple happily in love under the title “Missing youngsters: found the body of a woman, presumed to be Giulia Cecchin.”

“We label this poor journalism ‘media violence,’ which is one of the many ways patriarchy manifests itself,“ NUDM commented.

According to the Ministry of Interior, Cecchettin was the 83rd victim of femicide in 2023. According to NUDM’s data, she’s the 91st woman killed in Italy this year because of her gender by a person close to her.

Elly Schlein, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, called on Prime Minister Meloni on Saturday to overcome political differences and work together to adopt a comprehensive “Education in emotional development” plan for schools.

“Tomorrow I will send an invitation to all Italian schools to observe a minute of silence on Tuesday in honour of Giulia and all abused women and victims of violence,” said Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara.

He also announced the presentation on Wednesday of the “Educating for Relationships'” plan, consisting of lesson to be held by psychologists during civic education hours in schools, on which the government has been working since September.

In May 2023, MEPs from the governing Lega [League] and Fratelli d’Italia [Brothers of Italy] parties chose to abstain and not support the two resolutions in the European Parliament to join the so-called Istanbul convention, the first legally binding international treaty on preventing and combating gender-based and domestic violence. However, both texts passed with an overwhelming majority of 472 and 464 votes, with only about a hundred against or abstaining.

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noisynutcrusade · 6 months

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Prodi: “Schlein's no to Atreju? The dialogue takes place in Parliament"

«I'm not in Elly's shoes, but I think her reflection is the same as mine, what are you going to do» in Atreju?. When we have a situation in which the place for dialogue no longer exists, that is, Parliament, what should we do with dialogue in Castel Sant'Angelo, in the old Roman prisons? Let's do it in Parliament and then in other places too.” Romano Prodi said this when speaking about Atreju on…

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bopinion · 1 year

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2023 / 12

Aperçu of the Week:

"Don't study me. You won't graduate."

(The Joker)

Bad News of the Week:

"The climate time bomb is ticking". This statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres can be taken as a summary of the current final report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Thus, even in the two most optimistic scenarios, which assume a significant reduction in global emissions, warming will increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Which is generally accepted to already lead to irreversible consequences, such as the melting of glaciers.

According to the UN, however, a value of 2.6 degrees is more realistic. This already assumes that all the pledges made so far by governments and industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions will be kept. Whereby there is apparently still a lack of ambition. Because "public and private financial flows for fossil fuels are still greater than those for climate adaptation and mitigation."

This is downright idiotic. For mankind has the necessary knowledge, the appropriate technologies and also the financial means to change this, says Green politician and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, for example. Whose coalition government has just almost prevented the EU-wide phasing out of internal combustion engines in motor vehicles. Absurd.

Personally, I've lost hope that humanity has enough insight and willingness to give up comfort to halve global emissions in the next seven years. And then that's it. By the end of this decade. Then all that's left is a technological miracle to implement the concept of "carbon capture and storage" CSS effectively and safely and on a large scale.

But we'd rather concentrate on developing e-fuels and going to the moon again. Should the expected breakthrough of artificial intelligence actually come, I am pretty sure what will happen: it will laugh at human intelligence.

Good News of the Week:

Silvio Berlusconi was already bad. Matteo Salvini was worse, because he was also ideologically questionable. With the landslide victory of the Fratelli d'Italia party, classified as post-fascist, in the 2022 parliamentary elections and the appointment of Giorgia Melini as prime minister, Italy seemed stuck for good on the political right. But then came Elly Schlein.

Against all expectations, she won the battle for the party chairmanship of the Democratic Party, the second largest party. Among others, against the ex-prime ministers Enrico Letta and Matteo Renzi. She is fresh in parliament, Swiss-born, young, unconventional, Jewish and avowedly bisexual. And above all, left-wing. A sensation in the motherland of machismo. And anything but establishment.

Since the party congress a week ago, Schlein has officially become the leader of the opposition. Many hopes are pinned on her, and much hatred and aggression is directed at her. It is a tough opposition in every respect. Misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Semitic - in many respects she is the target of hostility. And so far she has shrugged it off with admirable sovereignty.

The foundations of her political positioning are very left-wing and very feminist. As if she wanted to challenge Italy's patriarchal system in the most radical way possible. She "had the strength to free herself from (the) paternalistic shackles that lie in (her) party" says Daniela Prezisosi of the newspaper Domani. And is thus now the antithesis of Meloni's ultraconservative government. A real alternative. Exactly what Italy needs right now.

Personal happy moment of the week:

My personal rediscovery of going out for breakfast on the weekend continues: Today we went with friends to a café in Munich, where I already had breakfast 25 years ago. And it's still just as (good as) I remembered. Nice.

I couldn't care less...

...that the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder suddenly discovers a heart for queer people. "Love and let love." he says all of a sudden. As the head of state of the only German state that does not yet have a plan for sexual and gender diversity. He has no credibility with that. He only listens to the opinion polls. Because there are elections in the fall.

As I write this...

...I am annoyed - as I am every year - about the time change, which cost us an hour of sleep last night. And once again it will take me a whole week to get over this mini-jet lag. And once again I wonder what it's supposed to be good for.

Post Scriptum

The Finns are the happiest people in the world. This is the conclusion of the latest World Happiness Report, which weights factors such as standard of living, health, personal freedom or the absence of corruption. The fact that all Nordic countries make it into the top ten of the ranking allows one to draw a conclusion about the lowest common denominator: societies that focus on solidarity, social balance and public welfare are more profitable for their citizens than those that value competition and capitalism.

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heyscroller · 1 year

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The Woman Shaking Up Italian Politics (No, Not the New Prime Minister)

ROM — Elly Schlein grew up in Switzerland and felt slightly misplaced. “I used to be the black sheep. Because my brother and sister appeared extra positive of what they had been going to do,” the politician recalled. She noticed Italian neo-realist cinema and American comedies, performed Philip Glass on the piano, pet her dwarf rabbit named after Freddie Mercury, listened to cranberries and…

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mastcomm · 4 years

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Salvini Remains at the Eye of Italy’s Political Storm

ROME — Chaos once again reigns over Italian politics. The government is adrift. The political parties are cratering and cracking. But there remains one center of gravity around which everything revolves.

Matteo Salvini, the tough former interior minister and leader of the anti-migrant League party, is that organizing force, despite having lost his powerful position and grip on the government in a dramatic shake-up last summer.

Any semblance of stability comes from coalitions awkwardly forged to prevent him from prompting early elections and taking what he has called “full powers.”

But on Sunday, Mr. Salvini will have an opportunity to apply what he hopes will be unbearable pressure on the tenuous bonds between his enemies in the fragile governing alliance.

Polls show that his hard-right League party is well positioned to win in regional elections in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna, which has for decades been synonymous with the Italian left, and in the region of Calabria — in the country’s south, from which Mr. Salvini not so long ago advocated secession.

If the rabble-rousing nationalist can win in these places, he will solidify his centrality and his case that he can win anywhere.

“That’s the goal,” he said in an interview this month in Emilia-Romagna after a long day of posing for selfies and campaigning in front of a floating Nativity scene, and dictating, quite literally, the day’s news cycle to reporters. “It would be a clear sign on a national level, but also on a European level.”

Sitting under an “Italians First” banner and surrounded by 400 party activists at a dinner in Lugo di Romagna, he ate pasta, sipped local red wine and spoke about how a victory in this traditionally left-leaning region would “absolutely” demonstrate that he should be the one leading the country.

Mr. Salvini predicted his victory would “open an enormous problem” between the governing coalition of his former allies the Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party, and make its collapse, and early elections, more likely.

Some damage had already been done. On Wednesday, it was widely reported in the Italian media that Luigi Di Maio, the embattled political leader of Five Star, would step down from his political role. (Mr. Di Maio’s representatives did not return a call for comment.)

But Mr. Salvini’s problem is that the stronger he gets, the less incentive his opponents have to face him in new national elections. “They can’t delay forever,” Mr. Salvini said.

In the meantime, liberals worry about the national significance of Mr. Salvini winning in Emilia-Romagna, long the Communist buckle of Italy’s Red Belt.

A victory “would mean that society has different values from before and wants an alternative,” said Elly Schlein, a liberal candidate for local office, who took part in a tiny demonstration outside a Bologna theater where Mr. Salvini was warmly greeted at a holiday celebration for the children of police officers. “A nationalist turn.”

A victory in Calabria would also clearly signal the national reach of Mr. Salvini’s League, a party born as a northern secessionist movement that exalted an imaginary region called Padania.

For years, the party denigrated the south as a thieving leech on the resources of the more prosperous north. But as Mr. Salvini has shifted his ire to migrants coming illegally from Africa, he has expanded his base to the south.

“Calabrians and Italians first,” he now says. “Then the rest of the world.”

In Emilia-Romagna, he has tirelessly campaigned for his candidate, the League politician Lucia Borgonzoni, seeking to turn out his base in rural districts with his usual recipe of anti-migrant language and nostalgic appeals to the Italian good old days.

But Mr. Salvini has also sought to convince frustrated workers in the cities that the traditional left had abandoned them for big banking interests and that he was the working man’s choice.

Above all, Mr. Salvini has sought to nationalize the election.

“It’s not a regional election. Because for the first time in 50 years we can win,” he told supporters in front of an enormous bonfire in Terra del Sole, referring to the left’s longtime dominance of the region. “And it’s in your hands.”

Nationalizing the race is a strategy that makes particular sense in Emilia-Romagna, a wealthy region governed by the Democratic Party, where unemployment has shrunk, health care services are admired and the quality of life is high.

“The region has always been governed by the left, also governed well,” said Claudio Casari, a 64-year-old carpenter who cheered Mr. Salvini as his “captain” outside a marine museum in Cesenatico.

But he said that a general Italian malaise had led young people to leave the country and the region, and that Italy needed a strong leader like Mr. Salvini to restore faith. “He brings hope to Italy,” Mr. Casari said.

Mr. Salvini’s many detractors argued that he used his time in government to draw attention to himself and increase his political support with publicity stunts rather than help get Italy out of its slump.

But national leaders of the Democratic Party are loath to make that case on the ground in Emilia-Romagna, and have largely steered clear of the region to keep the race local and play down the consequences if they lose.

Enthusiasm there has largely come from the Sardines, a liberal grass-roots movement created to stop Mr. Salvini.

The Sardines packed Bologna’s main square with tens of thousands of people on Sunday night and plan to close out the race with a rally in the beach club where Mr. Salvini spent most of the summer. They have repeatedly taken credit for infusing the candidacy of the region’s incumbent governor, Stefano Bonaccini, with life.

Mr. Bonaccini has himself urged voters to recall that Mr. Salvini is not on the ballot and that Ms. Borgonzoni, who picked fights with France over Leonardo da Vinci paintings as a Ministry of Culture under secretary and who struggled to name Emilia-Romagna’s bordering regions in a radio interview, was the “ghost candidate.”

“After Jan. 26, Salvini will leave,” Mr. Bonaccini, who has not included his party’s symbol in campaign posters, has repeatedly said. “But Borgonzoni will stay in the region.”

Instead of delving into local issues, Mr. Salvini, who often dressed in the uniforms of Italy’s law enforcement during his time in power, has fully immersed himself in the corduroy pants and jackets, sweaters and suede shoes associated with the liberal intellectuals and Communists who long held sway here.

He sings the folk song “Romagna Mia” at events. He waxes poetic about tortellini and elevated Parmesan cheese to a moral value.

But for Mr. Salvini, the substance of the remarks is often Matteo Salvini. He has developed a knack for victimization, a tactic in Italian politics perfected by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who Mr. Salvini has fully eclipsed as the central player of Italy’s right.

In the interview, Mr. Salvini clearly relished the attacks of his opponents.

“Surely it doesn’t scare me, or do me harm,” he said, adding: “When there are protests against the League and Salvini, it only makes me happy. Because the regular Italian chooses — either Salvini or that other stuff there.”

Most recently, Mr. Salvini has identified Italy’s judicial system as his preferred foil in an effort to motivate voters.

Specifically, Mr. Salvini talks about the efforts of Sicilian magistrates to prosecute him for “abduction,” related to his refusal as interior minister to let a Coast Guard ship full of rescued migrants dock in Italy.

By trying him, he told the cheering crowd in Cesenatico, “they will put the entire Italian people on trial.”

On Tuesday, he kicked off a “FastForSalvini” campaign, in which he urged his supporters to show solidarity with him in a daylong hunger strike. He began it with a cup of ginseng and vitamins.

More broadly, Mr. Salvini has managed to remain the object of obsession for Italy’s varying political parties and media. His Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok posts reliably generate articles in the country’s politically obsessed, and clubby, media.

At the marine museum in Cesenatico, when Italian reporters pleaded with him for a sound bite, he used the moment to decide just what the day’s subject of conversation would be.

“I haven’t even read the papers today,” Mr. Salvini, a little glassy-eyed, said as he popped some mints into his mouth. He opened up Il Corriere Della Sera newspaper on his cellphone and took a minute to scan through while the reporters waited silently.

A reporter of the state broadcaster RAI gave his microphone to a local Salvini supporter who stood next to him.

“Let’s do it on the trial and the road deaths,” Mr. Salvini said, pausing to collect his thoughts. “And go.”

Then, they asked about the trial and the road deaths.

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citizentruth-blog · 6 years

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Reports of Police Abuse in Unsanitary and Overflowing Refugee Camps in Balkans

As refugee numbers swell in Europe and the "Balkan route" explodes, unsanitary and overcrowded camps are forcing migrants into clashes with police. Refugees at the Croatian border clashed with police in the last week of October as they protested reported brutality from authorities and the closed border that holds them in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) under unsanitary and crowded conditions. Both asylum seekers and Croatian policemen sustained minor injuries.

Overcrowded Refugee Camps

For one week following the clash, the migrants and asylum seekers remained at the Maljevac border crossing, blocking passage and refusing to return to their former camp in the nearby town of Velika Kladusa. Their camp, which has had no running water or electricity over the past month and a half, is described as unlivable. Maljevac was reopened on October 30, and Bosnian authorities are working to relocate those who have spent a week or more at the border to a new facility in northwest BiH, the Independent Balkan News Agency reports. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSkfM1dJMqM For the past several weeks, Bosnian authorities have begun deterring migrants from the northwestern region of BiH to the capital city Sarajevo, where there are more resources for the migrants as winter approaches. On October 21, they announced that the municipalities of Bihac and Velika Kladusa near the Croatian border were closed off to additional migrants after numbers had grown to almost 200 arrivals per day. On October 24, the same day that Croatian police used tear gas to diffuse hundreds at the Maljevac crossing, Bosnian authorities intercepted a caravan of 100 individuals traveling north from Sarajevo, and organized their return. According to Snezana Galic, a spokesperson for the regional police, this new approach was taken due to the “deteriorating security situation.” Two new housing facilities were opened earlier this month to improve upon the current lack of accommodations, which has left many families and individuals in makeshift tents and abandoned buildings for months at a time. These two facilities have doubled the number of available beds in the country, which now reaches around 1,700. By winter, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), they hope to provide 2,000 more.

Accusations of Police Abuse

This September, top EU officials called for an investigation into the Croatian police for reports of harsh physical abuse of migrants and asylum seekers in the border regions with BiH. The Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner Dunja Mijatovic wrote a letter to Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on September 20, highlighting those concerns. “According to UNHCR,” Mijatovic wrote, “Croatia has allegedly collectively expelled 2,500 migrants since the beginning of 2018. Among them, 1,500 reported having been denied access to asylum procedures and 700 of those persons reported violence and theft by law enforcement officers during summary expulsions.” The letter, published on September 20, was met with a repose from Croatian Ministry of Interior Davor Bozinovic, who rejected the accusations due to lack of evidence. "Up to this point, no cases of coercive means being applied to migrants by police officers have been confirmed. Likewise, the allegations that police officers have committed acts of theft against third-country nationals have not been confirmed either," Bozinovic wrote. Accumulating media reports and persistent documentation by humanitarian aid groups have insisted of these violations of refugee rights for many months, but have only recently attracted the attention and persuasion of politicians such as Mijatovic. In 2017, a refugee aid organization called Dobrodosli - Croatian for "welcome" - filed two complaints that authorities had been systematically deporting refugees to other Balkan nations such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. Dosodelli argued that in adherence with the EU Directive on Asylum Procedures, migrants were entitled to translation services and information about asylum, as well as the right to present their case to the appropriate authorities. But the detain and deport approach of nations along the migrant route to Northern Europe allowed Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia to establish an agreement, with monetary compensation from the EU as means to assist the former in their migrant and refugee aide provisions. “The Republic of Croatia has an active and successful return agreement with Bosnia-Herzegovina that regulates the return of those who have entered illegally,” authorities said in response to Buzinkic and Dobrodosli’s complaints last year.

The 'Balkan Route' Explodes

However, Bosnia - a nation with economic issues of its own - is struggling to keep up as a major step of the new Balkan Route which leads migrants from a mixture of African, Middle Eastern, and Asian nations to the EU. The numbers of migrants choosing this route to Northern Europe has grown over the last year and more than 13,000 individuals arrived in Bosnia in the first nine months of 2018, compared with only 755 in 2017. But with pushback from Croatia as a through-country on this route, the Northern Bosnian border town of Velika Kladusa exploded into an unmanaged camp with too few resources. “Thousands of migrants are in the cities of Bihac and Velika Kladusa,” Italian MEP Elly Schlein said. “According to Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and other NGOs, they are living in inadequate facilities and lack sufficient basic medical assistance.” In Velika Kladusa, tents and makeshift shelters sprung up in an empty but often flooded field, whereas in Bihac, around 1,000 individuals sleep in a derelict student dorm which lacks windows or a substantial roof. Twenty-two Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), including Schlein, have submitted requests for a parliamentary interrogation into the living conditions of this space. Their attention had been called to the area after NGOs and major news sources began to document and report allegations of brutal abuse by the Croatian border police during the detain and deport process. The Guardian reported from Velika Kladusa in August, photographing lashed shoulders, head wounds, and smashed telephones which victims attributed to their encounters with the Croatian police. In another account, published by No Name Kitchen in July, a woman describes the scene after the group she had attempted to cross the border with was found. “The refugees were in the middle of the circle. The police like a circle, and they were beating them with batons. 5 police men on 5 single. Every police man was beating one single man and kept beating them. One man was crying and other was vomiting, they wanted to go back to Bosnia, but the police kept beating them. After they finished, we walked a bit to the Bosnian land and the police again kept beating them, again 5 policemen were beating 5 men.” In a statement on borderviolence.eu, a 47-year-old Iraqi woman describes how she and her 14-year-old son were beaten, with injuries to the face, arms and legs. They also took her money, a phone and a laptop. “Given the fact that there are so many of these stories, I think it's in everyone's interest to have an independent inquiry to see what is going on, on the other side of the border," Peter Van der Auweraert, the Western Balkans coordinator for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) told Al Jazeera.

Migrants clash with Bosnian police while trying to cross into Croatia. (Image via YouTube)

Response to Refugee Crisis and Abuse Allegations

Croatia's Interior Ministry responded to Al Jazeera by email, saying that it "strongly dismisses" allegations of police brutality, and that their investigations into the reports and complaints had uncovered no evidence of abuse or theft during interactions with asylum seekers at the border. But some EU politicians, such as Mijatovic and Schlein, believe that a more thorough investigation is due, with attention to both Croatian brutality and the state of Bosnian refugee relief. “Bosnia-Herzegovina receives EU funds for migration, including 1.5 million allocated in June and another 6 million in August, with which it should be providing appropriate reception,” Schlein said. “This is why we are asking the Commission to monitor how those funds are used.” With winter swiftly approaching, the urgency of improvements leaves both the authorities and the migrants tense. “We are very lucky that the weather has been mild so far," said Peter Van Der Auweraert from IOM. Read the full article

#Balkans #Bosnia #Croatia #Europe #Europemigrantcrisis #MigrantCrisis #RefugeeCrisis #refugees #TheBalkans

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asylum-ireland-blog · 6 years

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Reform of the Dublin Regulation – Towards another wasted opportunity?

New Post has been published on http://asylumireland.ml/reform-of-the-dublin-regulation-towards-another-wasted-opportunity/

Reform of the Dublin Regulation – Towards another wasted opportunity?

Prolonged discussions and disagreements between governments threaten the necessary reform of European rules on the right of asylum

(Originally published by VoxEurop.eu)

Earlier this year some graffiti appeared on a wall in Grenoble: “Va te faire dubliner” (Go dublin yourself). Of all the legislation enacted by the European Union, the Dublin regulation has this special characteristic: it is so often mentioned and criticised that it has become a verb, and, at least in Grenoble, an insult.

The “dublined” are those asylum seekers who, instead of applying for asylum in the member state determined by the criteria of the regulation (generally the first EU country they entered), or waiting there until the end of the asylum process, move on to another member state in the hope of being recognised as a refugee there.

They have good reasons for doing so (and if there existed legal means to enter the EU, they would reach those countries directly without having to risk their lives to land in Italy or Greece): relatives or friends who await them there, a network of conationals to support them, or simply the knowledge that certain member states have better systems in place for receiving asylum seekers. But in doing so, they run the risk of arrest, detention and deportation to the country responsible for examining their asylum application. For an asylum seeker, to “get dublined” means suffering yet another setback in the long journey towards safety and Europe, right when they thought they had already reached their goal.

Another characteristic of the Dublin regulation is that everyone, supporters and detractors alike, underlines its ineffectiveness. As data recently published by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles shows, the transfer rate (or the ratio of effective outgoing transfers to outgoing requests) in fact remains low, despite a slight increase in 2017. Some of the “dublined” then attempt to return after the transfer, exactly like those who head to Europe once again after being repatriated. “The systems based on mass involuntary transfers cannot work”, argues Francesco Maiani , professor of European law at the University of Lausanne.

Maiani is among the experts consulted by the European Parliament as part of the current reform process, the third such process since the Dublin Regulation was signed in 1990. The outcome of this effort will say a lot about the state of the Union, because through this regulation we get a sense of the level of cohesion among member states, and the value and dignity that the European Union recognises in people who are not its citizens.

The information which has trickled down from the European Council, where member states are examining the Commission’s proposal, is by no means encouraging. And this, as we’ll see, is no surprise. To the astonishment of many observers, cross-party consensus in the European Parliament was reached in November, with the Wikström report (named after the the liberal MEP Cecilia Wikström), which aimed to overturn the logic of the Dublin system, eliminating the first-point-of-entry criteria, adding the possibility for an asylum seeker to demonstrate their ties to a particular member state, and providing, in the absence of such ties, a compulsory mechanism for distributing asylum applicants across the EU.

As Elly Schlein (shadow rapporteur for the Progressive alliance of socialists and democrats) reminds us, MEPs have also “reinforced the fundamental and procedural rights of asylum seekers” and “eliminated the eligibility checks for asylum requests”, which would have created a filter “infringing on international law”. According to Maiani, another point which is “very positive on the conceptual level” is having broken, however gently, the “taboo of choice”, namely the idea that asylum seekers should not be able to decide where they would like their case to be examined. The Wikström report in fact recommends that asylum seekers who cannot demonstrate any connection with a given member state be transferred to a country chosen from among the four member states with the least burdened reception system.

According to the plans of the current Bulgarian presidency of the Council, member states should reach a common position on the reform by the end of June. Schlein deems “very worrying” the drafts which are circulating within the Council (two of which have recently been made public by Statewatch), “because they would represent a step backwards with respect to the already insufficient proposal of the Commission”.

While still in disagreement on various points, member states seem decided on placing the accent on controls and security, reinforcing sanctions against “insubordinate” asylum seekers and trusting entirely in the Council to manage crisis situations. The Dublin regulation would thus become, more than ever, a flexible instrument in the hands of member states, and not “a European structural response geared towards an equitable sharing of responsibility”, argues Schlein.

As shadow rapporteur, Schlein has to participate in negotiations with the Council and the Commission, but admits that such talks are not a foregone conclusion. “Member states continue to waste time, and before long the parliamentary mandate will have run out. The risk is that those governments which don’t want to hear any talk of solidarity or relocation are trying to make the reform slide. And on the other side, governments which want more ambitious changes, facing the risk of a detrimental reform, may not want to give in”. Schlein is also highly critical of Germany (“before the accord with Turkey they wanted an ambitious reform of Dublin, but then it must have slipped their mind”) and Macron (“as pro-European as he may be, on this reform he hasn’t changed France’s position”), and recognises that “there is some profiting from the current state of uncertainty in Italy”.

At the end of May, Wikström, Schlein and other rapporteurs will organise a press conference to urge member states to reach a common position and agree to the initiation of negotiations. “For us it is fundamental to have the support of the citizens, experts and associations that have accompanied us in this long process of reform”, explains Schlein, “so that they push governments to proceed in the direction indicated by the European Parliament”.

Maiani, in his study commissioned by the Parliament, proposes a model called “Dublin minus”, by which he attempts to reconcile pragmatism with respect for the will of asylum seekers. He remains reserved with regard to the practicality of reforms which propose “yet more transfers, for the most part coercive”. And he emphasises that “any system for sharing responsibility, to be sustainable, should be accompanied by another three elements”: the right to free circulation within the entire European Union for those who obtain refugee status; the genuinely effective application of common standards in regard to asylum; and finally, “financial solidarity on a completely new scale”, with spending for asylum policies placed on the European budget. “We can bark at the Dublin regulation all we like”, he concludes, “but until we resolve these fundamental problems we’ll be going nowhere”.

This publication/translation has been produced within the project The Parliament of rights, co-funded by the European Union. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa and its partners and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.

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, https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Balkans/Reform-of-the-Dublin-Regulation-Towards-another-wasted-opportunity-187939

#Asylum Europe #Dublin Regulations

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