Category: EU

France’s next president may be a 39-year-old maverick former economy minister, affiliated with no mainstream political party and with no experience running for office.  Until now.

On Thursday, and with less than two months to go before the first round of voting, independent centrist Emmanuel Macron finally unveiled his full political platform, outlining proposals ranging from downsizing France’s parliament and slashing government bureaucracy, to embracing closer European Union cooperation, fighting nepotism and rewarding businesses that hire from low-income neighborhoods.

The former investment banker also positioned himself as a champion of the middle and working classes, as he described growing up in a midsize French town and being educated in”the schools of the Republic.”

Once dismissed as a passing fad with no tangible proposals, Macron is now in second place behind far-right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen ahead of the first round of voting April 23, but according to many surveys, he could win the May 7 runoff.

Macron’s ‘young but he really listens’

New polls out this week confirm the trend, with the latest by Elabe finding Macron behind far-right front runner Le Pen 24 percent to 27 percent in the first round, with former conservative prime minister Francois Fillon trailing in third place, with 19 percent. It found Macron beating Le Pen in the second-round with 62 percent of the vote.

Wading into a farm fair outside Paris earlier this week, a must-attend event for all presidential wannabes, Macron got a taste of deep voter discontent, as he wiped off the goo from an egg pelted at his head during the visit.

But he gets the vote of 71-year-old Joseph Rolland, whose son is a cattle farmer near Nantes, in western France.

“He’s young but he really listens,” Rolland said.  “People say he has no political experience, but he’ll surround himself with competent people. We need change.”

Hiring scandal hurts Fillon

Fillon, once-considered a shoe-in to become France’s next president, is struggling for survival amid a parliamentary jobs hiring scandal involving his family.

With Fillon’s support base vanishing, some conservatives are calling for another ex-prime minister, Alain Juppe, to step up and take his place. A Harris Interactive poll finds three-quarters of French want Fillon to abandon a race that 80 percent believe he will lose.

Le Pen’s immunity lifted

Le Pen and her party also face a corruption investigation regarding questionable hiring practices, in this case involving European Parliament funds. She refuses to pay a $300,000 parliament fine or to appear before magistrates before the elections, citing her immunity as an European Union lawmaker.

Thursday, the parliament voted to lift Le Pen’s immunity on a separate matter involving tweeting graphic images of Islamic State militant group killings in 2015.

“Emmanuel Macron wants to situate himself in the intersection of the right and left,” French analyst Bruno Cautres told Le Midi Libre newspaper in an overall assessment of his platform. “His program offers economic measures of the center right … and also social dimensions and investments in the future, like training and the environmental transition.”

Favors European Union

Macron also calls for closer ties to the European Union and for shoring up the eurozone, in sharp contrast with Le Pen, who wants to hold a Frexit referendum on leaving the bloc if it doesn’t renegotiate French membership.

“For the European Union, the best candidate is Macron,” said analyst Philippe Moreau Defarges of the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. “But can he be elected? There are a lot of question marks. He’s got no political machine. He’s a young man. He’s inexperienced, he’s never been elected.”

Macron, who speaks fluent English, also drew sharp differences with the U.S. administration on free trade and climate change.

But he also outlined areas of cooperation with the U.S., including intelligence sharing on Iraq and Syria and said he would pursue a strategic relationship with Washington as president.

Make France business friendly

Macron has long rebelled being pigeon-holed, joining the leftist government of President Francois Hollande as economy minister.  His legislation to make France more business friendly, voted in as the Macron law,’ and new labor reform proposals were watered down amid protests and strikes.

Last April, he launched his “En Marche!” or “Forward!” movement, which he describes as neither right nor left.  A few months later, he resigned to prepare for his presidential candidacy, a move critics called a betrayal to Hollande, his former mentor.  The deeply unpopular Hollande ultimately chose not to run for re-election.

Macron is the son of a doctor, who studied philosophy before graduating from the elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration, he is married to his high school French teacher, who is 20 years his senior.

 
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Serbia’s outgoing prime minister, Aleksandar Vucic, reassured European Union officials visiting Belgrade on Wednesday that his country remains committed to joining the European bloc — but he cautioned that Serbs also want to pursue traditional ties with “friends from the East.”

And in recent months, those friends in the Kremlin have been busy, say Western officials and analysts.

From offering help with disaster relief to supplying sophisticated weaponry, including warplanes, the Kremlin is seeking to expand its influence in the Balkans, a region Moscow has viewed historically as in its sphere of influence, they warn.

Moscow’s diplomatic offensive apparently is paying off. A recent Gallup poll suggests a majority of Serbs views Russia as a more dependable ally than NATO, an organization Belgrade officially wants to join.

“Serbia is on its European path, because we think that we belong to this type of society; we would like to join the countries who believe in democracy, entrepreneurship, human rights,” Vucic told the European officials.

He warned, though, that ordinary Serbs “often see the EU as a machine for pressure over Kosovo,” a reference to the as-yet-unresolved status of the onetime Serbian province, which declared formal independence in 2008.

Serbia has withheld recognition of Kosovo — as has Russia.

Many Serbs frowned on former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and cheered President Donald Trump’s election, a reflection of their residual anger over NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1995 and 1999 during the Balkans War ordered by her husband, then-President Bill Clinton. They had hoped the new U.S. president would change course on U.S.-Balkans policy and favor Belgrade in the unresolved dispute over Kosovo’s status. 

American officials, though, have dashed Serbian hopes with recent statements indicating Washington’s support for Kosovo will remain unwavering during the Trump presidency.

Those statements included a call by the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, for the breakaway province to become a full member of the U.N.

“In Kosovo, while more must be done to strengthen governance and the rule of law, the United States believes that the international community must recognize Kosovo’s great strides since independence,” Haley said February 21 at the U.N. Security Council.

Heightened tensions

Kosovo’s status is just one issue dividing the Balkans. Others include whether to tilt geopolitically to the East or West, and border disputes. Ethnic tensions are on the rise in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro. Bosnia remains split among Serbs, Bosnians and Croats, and the wounds of the vicious three-year-long war of the 1990s have not yet begun to heal.

All the issues are adding to tensions in the Balkans just as the region turns into a political battleground between a revanchist Russia and an uncertain West, say pro-West Balkan politicians.

Last week, neighboring Montenegro’s former prime minister accused Russia of “destructive” politics in the Balkans. His comments came in the wake of startling allegations by Montenegro officials that the Kremlin was behind an attempt in October to overthrow the country’s pro-Western government.

Milo Djukanovic, who resigned after the alleged pro-Russian plot, told Socialist Democratic Party members that Montenegro is now in the firing line of a newly assertive Russia eager to expand its influence in the Balkans. Pro-Russian opposition parties were ready to use “bloodshed and a coup” to install a pro-Kremlin government, he said.

The Kremlin has denied the allegations of Russian involvement in an election day plot that allegedly included plans to kill Djukanovic and take over the country’s parliament. Prosecutors have accused some 20 people — including two Russians — of involvement.

Russian officials have recently said Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro should be seen as in Moscow’s sphere of interest and are opposed to any of them joining NATO. As with other parts of Europe, the Kremlin has been supporting openly anti-EU nationalist parties in the Balkans.

Russian ‘autocracy’

In Serbia, analysts say a clear illustration of the Kremlin’s efforts to expand its clout can be seen in the growing role Russian media are playing in the country.

In May, a report by the Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies, a pro-Western Belgrade-based policy research organization, found that 109 registered non-governmental organizations, associations and media outlets can be linked to pro-Russian lobbying efforts.

The increase in Russian media activity, according to the research group, started in 2008 in Serb areas of northern Kosovo, and increased dramatically in 2012, coinciding with pro-Serb demonstrations and the start of negotiations on the normalization of relations between Serb and Kosovo authorities under the auspices of the EU.

Pro-Russian advocacy “increased drastically in 2015 when it became clear that Serbia would begin formal negotiations with the EU, and when the intention of stronger cooperation with NATO within the Individual Partnership Action Plan [IPAP] was disclosed,” according to the authors of the study, Eyes Wide Shut.

“The replacement of democracy with autocracy, under the current Russian model, is the main goal of Russian soft power in Serbia and in the region. Other goals are the reduction of support for European integration and the discrediting of the very concept of [EU] enlargement,” the research group’s authors assert.

There also has been a noticeable increase in the influx of content sponsored by state-run Russia media outlets, such as Russia Today and Sputnik, offered for free to cash-strapped Serbian media outlets.

With elections due this year in Serbia, and the first indictments expected from an international court established in The Hague for trials of alleged historical war crimes committed during the 1990s by the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, tensions are likely only to increase in the Balkans.
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Serbia will hold a presidential election on April 2 that is seen as a litmus test

of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s popularity, the parliamentary speaker said on Thursday.

The vote will pit Vucic, whose Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is the largest in the ruling coalition, against the candidates of a fragmented opposition.

It will be a test of his economic reforms, which have been backed by the International Monetary Fund, as well as of efforts to bring the Balkan country of 7.3 million people closer to the European Union.

“I would like to use this opportunity to call all citizens to come out and vote and decide who will be the new president of Serbia,” speaker Maja Gojkovic said after announcing the date.

Vucic said last month he would resign several days ahead of the presidential vote. It is unclear who would be new prime minister once Vucic steps down.

The coalition, which has a comfortable majority in the 250-seat parliament, will be able to secure parliamentary approval for its candidate without calling a new election.

While the president’s role is largely ceremonial, if Vucic wins and effectively controls the parliamentary majority as party leader, he could wield huge sway over the government and a new prime minister who needs to implement restructuring reforms that could lead to job losses.

Faced with the need to cut borrowing costs and keep the deficit low, the country must sell, or make more efficient, big public companies, such as utility firms, and sell state-owned loss-making companies such as the RTB Bor copper mine.

Vucic urged Serbs to vote for a president from the same party as the government for the good of the country.

“If you have two captains each taking his side, that airplane is going straight down to abyss, and that would be a catastrophe for Serbia,” Vucic told daily Kurir on Thursday.

The SNS board decided on last month to nominate Vucic instead of incumbent Tomislav Nikolic, a former party leader who wants closer ties with Serbia’s powerful ally Russia.

The departure of Nikolic could mean quicker moves towards EU accession and a further improvement of Serbia’s ties with NATO, despite its military neutrality.
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A leading presidential candidate vowed Wednesday to press on with his campaign, despite a formal inquiry into a fake jobs scandal tainting his family and amid growing protests against political corruption in France.

Reversing an earlier promise that he would end his campaign if placed under formal investigation, conservative ex-prime minister Francois Fillon said at a press conference he would not give up despite a summons to appear before a judge March 15. He lambasted the judiciary and the media, likening the allegations against him to a political assassination.

“I won’t give up, I won’t surrender, I won’t pull out,” Fillon said, adding he counted on French voters to decide his fate rather than a biased legal procedure.”

Once considered a near shoo-in for president, the 62-year-old Fillon is now seeing his support vanish, a process that gathered tempo Wednesday as a key member of his campaign team stepped down and the center-right Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) party allied with his campaign announced it was suspending its participation.

Shortly after Fillon’s remarks, Bruno Le Maire quit his campaign team as foreign affairs adviser, citing Fillon’s failure to keep his promise and withdraw should a formal investigation be opened.

Fillon was also booed during an afternoon visit to an agricultural fair outside Paris that is considered a must-attend event for presidential candidates.

Fillon “is losing his nerves” and “his sense of reality,” independent candidate Emmanuel Macron told French TV. Macron is running neck-and-neck with Fillon in second place, and his presidential bid will likely be boosted by his rival’s struggles.

Fillon’s announcement caps a campaign rocked by stunning upsets, with establishment favorites ousted from the race and the far-right eyeing its first real chance to capture the presidency during the April-May voting.

Fillon not alone

A French judge is investigating allegations that Fillon’s wife and two children were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for work they did not do. He is hardly the only politician mired in scandal. Far-right frontrunner Marine Le Pen and her National Front party also face allegations of misusing European Union funds to pay member of her staff for non-existent party jobs.

But the allegations targeting Fillon are particularly rankling, given his “Mr. Clean” image and his calls for public sacrifice and spending cuts – even as his family allegedly enriched itself on taxpayers’ money.

By contrast, French do not view Le Pen and her party as having personally enriching themselves from the allegedly fictitious jobs – and analysts suggest Le Pen’s anti-EU credentials may be burnished by the perceptions she has cheated the bloc.

Le Pen has also refused to be questioned by police, citing her immunity as a member of the EU parliament — although she lost that immunity this week over another matter.

Scandals have long entwined French political life, touching a slew of politicians, including former presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy was ordered to stand trial last month on charges of illegally financing his failed 2012 re-election bid. Chirac was given a suspended sentence six years ago after being convicted of graft when he was mayor of Paris.

But voter tolerance appears to be fading. Thousands joined recent anti-corruption protests across the country, including a small march to the National Assembly in Paris Wednesday afternoon. Those numbers pale compared with those of recent anti-corruption protests in Romania.

‘At all levels’

“The problem with corruption is [it’s] at all levels and concerns many more politicians than people think,” Greens Party lawmaker Isabelle Attard told local newspaper 20 Minutes of French corruption.  

Those sentiments are echoed by some French voters.

“He talks about equality for everyone, but according to the allegations he’s hired his wife and children for jobs they’re not necessarily qualified to do,” says 18-year-old student Solene Papegauy of Fillon. “That kind of injustice disgusts me.”

But 62-year-old Christian Humeau said he could tolerate a bit of graft.

“I’d rather have a politician who’s intelligent and good for the country, even if he robs a bit, than a stupid saint,” Humeau said, adding he would probably vote for Fillon.

But Fillon’s criticism of the judiciary drew a swift rebuttal by leftist President Francois Hollande, who is not running for re-election.

“I solemnly stand against all questioning of magistrates as they investigate and study cases in the respect of the rule of law,” Hollande said in a statement in which he described Fillon’s remarks as “extremely serious.”

Beyond questioning the impartiality of the judiciary, Fillon has also attacked the media, accusing it of having lynched and assassinated him politically.

The fake jobs allegations were first reported by satirical French newspaper Le Canard Enchaine. The scandal quickly earned the nickname “Penelopegate” in reference to Fillon’s wife, Penelope, who allegedly earned nearly $1 million as a parliamentary assistant and for editorial work that she may not have done.

Since then, new reports revealed his son and daughter also earned parliamentary salaries for questionable jobs.
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It was his eighth failed attempt at getting into the European Union and Tahir claims that, just like half of his previous efforts, it ended in violence.

Tahir, who requested his entire name not be disclosed to protect his identity, is from Pakistan. He is among an estimated few hundred migrants and refugees camped out in scattered locations on the Serbian border with Hungary.

Unwilling to play the waiting game at the 17 official camps scattered across Serbia, he and others are trying to make their way across the heavily guarded fence.

“We were walking in Hungary for 12 hours, near to a motorway,” he told VOA from his current home, the crumbing remains of what was once a brick factory on the Serbian side of the border.

“But they must have traced us and when they caught us, they gave us a harsh punishment — they beat us,” he said.”

Tahir’s account is impossible to verify, but as Hungary takes ever more strident measures to keep refugees from crossing illegally, concerns are mounting that violent and degrading treatment is increasingly being meted out to those who take their chances.

Beaten with batons

A volunteer organization named Fresh Response, which provides water, clothing and other necessities to refugees living along the Serbian border, has been collecting testimony from refugees and migrants, who say they experienced mistreatment before being returned to Serbia.

“What we know from reading the testimonies is that phases of abuse include pepper spray into the eyes, dogs being released on people — they’re muzzled, so using their claws — and people being beaten with batons,” Dan Song, of Fresh Response, said.

“In other testimonies people claim they have been forced to remove their clothes and lay down in the snow for 20 or 30 minutes,” Song added.

He said the alleged violence was not new. After a drop during autumn, incidents of alleged abuse were seen rising again, he added.

Song estimated that refugees and migrants now caught illegally trying to cross the border faced a 50 percent chance of experiencing similar treatment if caught on the Hungarian side of the border.

Other groups have documented such incidents, too.

A report titled Pushed Back at the Door, released last month by nongovernmental organizations from five eastern European EU member states, looked at the methods used to repel migrants and refugees.

The report claimed legalization last year in Hungary legitimizing “push-backs,” which allow refugees caught within 8 kilometers of the border to be returned to the country they had just left, contravened EU obligations to those seeking protection.

Furthermore, it called the “widespread nature of reports on violence” inflicted on refugees trying to get into Hungry, as well as Bulgaria, a “serious concern.”

Slim chances

Meanwhile, the chances of crossing legally continue to decrease.

There are about 7,500 refugees and migrants in Serbia, and roughly 6,000 places in the country’s official camps.

Nearly everyone wants to move on to either Croatia or Hungary; as European nations, the refugees and migrants see them as a gateway to the rest of the EU.

Yet with the Hungarian border recently reducing the number of refugees and migrants allowed through daily down to 10, many are eschewing a formal process that by some estimates now may take years rather than months — and not even allow them to cross once they have waited.

“There is a lack of trust towards going into camps,” said Andrea Contenta of Medicins San Frontieres [Doctors Without Borders], before adding that many also feared being expelled from Serbia once they had entered camps.

“The whole system is jammed,” Contenta said.

Facing that reality, many take their chances with smugglers or by going it alone into Hungary, where the reception seems ever more hostile.​

Protecting the borders

“If we want Europe to stay the way as we know it, we must protect its outer borders, including the sea borders — with military forces, if needed,” Laszlo Toroczkai, the mayor of Assothalom, a Hungarian village near the border with Serbia that has reportedly sought to ban public practice of the Muslim faith, as well as “homosexual propaganda.”

Hungary completed the erection of a barbed-wire fence separating it from Serbia in September 2015, and, since then, has ramped up efforts to keep refugees and migrants out, including the ongoing effort to recruit 3,000 so-called “border hunters.”

Toroczkai is head of his own, strongly anti-refugee government. He set up the village’s five-person patrol team in early 2014, which works alongside national and international authorities patrolling the border.

But when it comes to charges of disproportionate use of force — something he says he only “hears about from journalists” — Toroczkai is adamant.

Emphasizing that people are crossing illegally, he says force is only used as a response to provocation.

“If one behaves violently and doesn’t obey the police order, doesn’t stop when he’s instructed to, and assaults the police officers, in the U.S. he would probably be shot,” Toroczkai said. “Here in Hungary the worst thing that can happen to him is getting sprayed with tear gas or having dogs set on them.”

Unprovoked

A former computer sciences student, Tahir claims he did nothing to provoke a beating.

As a relief from the harshness of his surroundings, Tahir scrolls through pictures of his home — Swat, the mountainous Pakistani district once controlled by the Taliban.

After three months living near the border, though, there are only so many times he is willing to endure these conditions, and risk more violence.

“This is not a life I have here. I feel like no one can help us,” Tahir said. “I feel hopeless.”
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Vladimir Jehlicka and his business partners spent 25 years building up their Czech machinery firm before deciding to call it a day.

However, they faced a problem that is growing as the first generation of post-communist entrepreneurs nears retirement.

Their children weren’t interested in running the shop but equally Jehlicka and his three partners didn’t want to sell their life’s work simply to the highest bidder: securing a future for the firm was as important as the sale price.

In the end they found a suitable buyer for STS Olbramovice, which employs 90 people making cattle feeders and other farm machinery. The sale went through in January, part of a business that is long-established in western Europe but new and rapidly expanding in former communist countries such as the Czech Republic: managing ownership succession at family firms.

“We decided to sell after a long hesitation,” 63-year-old Jehlicka said. “Our children’s focus is very varied, there was no interest to take over running the firm.”

“Our main criterion for picking a future owner was a pledge to maintain production and jobs,” he told Reuters.

Four decades of communism largely eliminated legal private enterprise in the country and its neighbors such as Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. But after 1989, managers or employees often clubbed together to buy frequently decrepit state enterprises, while other entrepreneurs started businesses from scratch.

A quarter century later, many of these owners now need to hand over what have become valuable firms. Some find successors in the family; most look for other options including management buy-ins or a sale, creating an opportunity for investors.

Sales of family firms are in vogue. Consultants KPMG said they accounted for 30-40 percent of the Czech transactions it took part in over the last two years in the 20 million-60 million euro range.

The country’s small bourse and cheap acquisition financing mean direct sales are preferred to stock market floats.

The trend is likely to accelerate in Slovakia as well.

“This is a transition from the first founder generation to the second. In several firms it is already happening, in most it will happen in the upcoming period,” said Mario Fondati, a Bratislava-based partner at Amrop consultancy.

A good match

Jehlicka’s firm, based in the village of Olbramovice about 50 km (30 miles) south of Prague, has annual sales of 5 million euros ($5.3 million) and EBITDA operating profits nearing half a million euros. In SkyLimit Industry it believes it has found a buyer that is a good match.

SkyLimit is a new Czech investment fund that targets machinery-making firms facing generational change, with up to 500 million crowns ($20 million) in annual sales. It took on another fund, RSJ Investments SICAV, as a junior partner in buying STS Olbramovice.

SkyLimit says it wants to keep its holdings for the long term, acting more like a strategic investor, and help company managements in making major decisions.

STS was its first transaction — it says only that the price was in the single millions of euros — and plans about two to three purchases a year to build a group of manufacturing firms.

The fund’s board member Michal Bakajsa told Reuters that smaller industrial companies in the sector can be found at lower multiples of their operating earnings than bigger firms. It aims to assure sellers of their businesses’ future and make sure there are managers who will stay on under the new ownership.

“Many companies reject classic financial investors, they fear what would happen with them. Many are in smaller towns, the people know each other, the owners employ people for many years, they are often friends,” Bakajsa said. “We look at companies that have in some way an independently functioning management, where the company does not stand and fall with the owner.”

Petr Kriz, head of mergers and acquisitions at consultancy EY in Prague, said there were 310 M&A transactions in the Czech market last year, up from 185 in 2015. A few dozen were related to succession, with the market in general lifted by a surplus of liquid capital.

A survey by the Czech Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises among 400 family-type companies last year showed 60 percent would consider a sale if an attractive offer comes.

A fund run by Genesis Capital bought 75 percent last year in Quinta-Analytica, a firm supplying analysis and clinical studies for drug makers. Genesis bought the stake from three out of five owners who wanted to exit after 20 years in the business.

“[Generation shift] is an important and large share of deal origination for us,” said Genesis Capital’s managing partner Jan Tauber. “What we can offer is creating structures allowing owners to depart gradually.”

Last year Genesis sold AZ Klima, an air conditioning and cooling systems supplier, along with the firm’s founder Jiri Cizek who still held a 30 percent stake. AZ Klima’s purchase by Czech energy firm CEZ completed a five-year ownership transition: from Cizek and his partner, who together built up the firm in the early 1990s, through the financial investor Genesis to the strategic buyer CEZ.

Money-printing contest

Some entrepreneurs are reluctant to invest their wealth outside the companies they founded at a time when the loose monetary policies of the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Czech National Bank make good returns hard to achieve.

Zbynek Frolik, 63, founded Linet in 1990 and now employs 900 people making hospital beds for customers in over 100 countries.

He has handed over daily business to an executive director and is considering what to do next, but is not selling his 33 percent stake for now.

One reason is that the best way he knows to manage his money is to invest it back into his own business. In his experience, putting it elsewhere doesn’t work.

“You’d have to be solving the problem of what to do with money at a time when the Czech National Bank, the ECB and the Fed are all printing money like it was a contest, and everyone is looking where to invest,” he said.

Still others are looking at a philanthropic exit, such as Dalibor Dedek, 59, who founded the Jablotron group in 1990. He sold a 40 percent stake in the firm, which employs 600 making house alarms and other electronics, to its executive manager Miroslav Jarolim last year. Dedek plans to hand the rest to a charitable body and not his children.

“I want my share to be put into some foundation or an institution that will not die with me,” he told Reuters. “I did not build the firm for the family. I do not want to punish my children by forcing them to deal with money problems.”
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Austria’s centrist coalition government on Tuesday agreed on a draft law that would allow authorities to stop providing accommodation and food to rejected asylum seekers who refuse to leave the country.

The bill, which parliament must still approve, is part of a wider reform of laws dealing with foreigners in Austria, which includes fines or prison sentences for migrants who lie about their identity.

The Austrian government is preparing a package of policies aimed at countering the rise of the far-right Freedom Party, whose candidate came close to winning the presidential election in December.

Migrants who are denied asylum and refuse to leave will have to face the consequences, Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said.

“The first thing is basically that they don’t get anything from the Austrian state if they don’t have the right to stay here. Is that so hard to understand?” Sobotka told reporters.

He said the draft law was designed to encourage rejected asylum seekers to leave voluntarily.

Migration crisis

Austria took in roughly 90,000 asylum seekers in 2015, more than 1 percent of its population, as it was swept up in Europe’s migration crisis when hundreds of thousands of people crossed its borders, most on their way to Germany.

It has since tightened immigration restrictions and helped shut down the route through the Balkans by which almost all those people — many of them fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere — arrived. Asylum applications fell by more than half last year.

Asylum seekers in Austria get so-called basic services, including free accommodation, food, access to medical treatment and 40 euros ($42.41) of pocket money a month.

Sobotka said that of about 4,000 people who receive basic services but should have left the country, 2,000 could be affected if the law is passed, because they are healthy enough to travel to their home countries.

The Austrian office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said the bill was “highly questionable” and urged lawmakers to think hard about agreeing to it.

The bill would make asylum applicants who lie about their identities face fines of up to 5,000 euros or three weeks in jail.

Rejected asylum seekers in 2016 were most often from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria, Interior Ministry data showed.
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Greece and its lenders resumed a long-stalled review of its bailout Tuesday, with the government in Athens braced to commit to yet more austerity in exchange for the funds the country needs to remain solvent.

The review has dragged on for months, partly because of a rift between the European Union and the International Monetary Fund over Greece’s fiscal goals and prospects next year — when the current rescue program expires — and beyond.

To help break the impasse, the leftist-led government last week agreed to pre-legislate economic reforms, including cuts in income tax breaks and pensions, to come into effect from the start of 2019, the year the next parliamentary elections are due.

The lenders are asking Greece to make extra savings worth 2 percent of gross domestic product in order to meet a target of a 3.5 percent primary surplus — which excludes debt servicing costs — that they have set for 2018 and the post-bailout period.

“The lenders’ representatives will ask for measures of 1 percent from lowering the tax-free threshold and another 1 percent from pension cuts,” an official with knowledge of the negotiations in Athens told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The government estimates the 2016 primary surplus will exceed 2 percent of GDP, well above the lenders’ 0.5 percent target, after the economy unexpectedly returned to growth last year.

“Without publicly saying it, Athens wants the total [additional] measures to be worth around 1.5 percent of GDP, after the better-than-expected surplus and better economic performance,” a second source close to the talks said.

“The institutions could discuss a gradual implementation of the pension cuts,” the second official said.

More debt relief, belt tightening

The IMF, still undecided on whether to participate in what is Greece’s third rescue package, says Athens cannot meet its targets unless it is granted further debt relief and adopts extra belt-tightening measures.

Greece’s European lenders, notably Germany, oppose debt relief.

The uncertainty has fueled fears of a new financial crisis among investors already nervous about how a populist revival in the eurozone will affect close-fought election races in the Netherlands, France and Germany between now and the autumn.

Greece does not need more loans until the third quarter, but if bailout funds are not paid in time it will face an elevated risk of defaulting on debt repayments worth about 7.5 billion euros ($7.95 billion) in July.
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U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has introduced legislation to rename the area in front of the Russian embassy in Washington “Boris Nemtsov Plaza,” after the Russian opposition leader who was murdered in Moscow two years ago.

Rubio’s proposed bill would rename a broad stretch of Wisconsin Avenue, the main entrance to the large embassy complex in northwest Washington, to “help raise awareness among the American people about the ongoing abuses” in Russia under President Vladimir Putin.

“The creation of ‘Boris Nemtsov Plaza’ would permanently remind Putin’s regime and the Russian people that these dissidents’ voices live on, and that defenders of liberty will not be silenced,” Rubio said in a statement.

“Whether it is looking at a street sign or [at] thousands of pieces of correspondence addressed ‘1 Boris Nemtsov Plaza,’ it will be abundantly clear to the Kremlin that the intimidation and murder of opposition figures does not go unnoticed,” Rubio added. “In honor of Nemtsov’s memory and all Russians fighting for their democratic rights, I will continue working to ensure that those responsible for his murder are held accountable.”

Rubio, a Republican who made an unsuccessful bid for his party’s presidential nomination, issued his statement Monday.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, another prominent figure in the Russian opposition movement, also played a role in Rubio’s initiative. In 2015, Kara-Murza was hospitalized after becoming critically ill, and he and others believe his illness was the result of poisoning. He was hospitalized again with the same symptoms this month, but has regained his health.

Kara-Murza thanked Rubio via Facebook this week for the initiative to rename the avenue in front of the embassy — and the Russian compound’s official address — in Nemtsov’s honor.

“This initiative has a precedent: In 1984, it was precisely such a Senate resolution that renamed the square in front of the then-USSR Embassy in Washington Andrei Sakharov Plaza,” Kara-Murza wrote.

Sakharov, perhaps the best-known dissident in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and ’80s, was condemned to internal exile in Gorky, then a closed city, in December 1979; that triggered an international outburst that culminated in the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 by the United States and dozens of other nations, a low point in the Cold War between Russia and the West.

“Needless to say, the Soviet Foreign Ministry was furious” when the street outside its embassy was renamed in 1984. However, he noted, “the authorities of the new [post-Soviet] Russia put up a bust of Sakharov in the Embassy building.” The former Soviet embassy, on 16th Street in northwest Washington, a 10-minute walk from the White House, became the Russian ambassador’s when the much larger embassy complex was erected in its present commanding location, near a high point overlooking most of the U.S. capital.

On Monday, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Tefft visited the spot on Moscow’s Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge where Nemtsov was shot to death on Feb. 27, 2015, and laid a wreath in memory of the slain opposition leader. 

“We call once more on the Russian government to ensure that those responsible for Boris Nemtsov’s killing are brought to justice,” Tefft said in a statement. 

Gatherings in memory of Nemtsov were held Sunday in several U.S. cities, including Washington, New York and San Francisco.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Russian Service.
…

European Union member states on Monday agreed to grant Georgian citizens visa-free travel within the 26 countries of Europe’s Schengen Area.

Visa liberalization for the central Caucasus nation enables biometric passport holders to travel throughout the European bloc for 90 days within any 180-day period.

Dimitris Avramopoulos, EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, issued a congratulatory statement alongside Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili in Tblisi.

Georgians “must be very proud of this great achievement, which is the result of the common efforts of the Georgian people and the Georgian authorities,” said Avramopoulos, calling final adoption of the policy further proof that the former Soviet republic has completed “far-reaching and difficult reforms in the area of the rule of law and the justice system.”

“These reforms also bring Georgia closer to the EU standards, facilitating cooperation with the European Union and bringing the country a step forward on its European path.”

Georgia, which has been seeking European integration since becoming the 41st Member State of the Council of Europe in April 1999, has drafted EU-style legislation to abolish the death penalty, comply with European conventions and battle corruption and organized crime.

European Union praised

Kvirikashvili praised the EU on delivering on its promises.

“This result proves that the EU has not reneged on its promise,” he said. “Today the European spirit is stronger in Georgia than anywhere else … [and] European ideology triumphs in Georgia more than ever.”

Monday’s move to ratify Georgia’s visa liberalization is viewed as a significant geopolitical achievement among officials and civil society activists who have been strong voices for European integration.

Russia, however, has openly expressed concern over Georgia’s EU and NATO aspirations, describing the country as part of its backyard. Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters at the Munich Security Conference that security officials from both countries plan to initiate talks on easing visa restrictions soon.

A recent public opinion poll by Caucasus Research and Resources Center showed that 56 percent of Georgians identify as European.

Easier to travel

Monday’s decisions allows all Georgians to travel freely through all EU member and non-member countries, along with Schengen candidate countries.

EU member nations include Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.

Non-member countries are Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Schengen candidates are Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia and Romania.

The law does not apply to the Britain or Ireland.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Georgian Service.
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European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker will propose to national leaders next month a handful of options for shoring up unity once Britain launches a withdrawal that some fear could trigger a further unraveling of the bloc.

The European Commission president wants some states to be able to deepen cooperation further and faster without the whole bloc having to follow suit, but this idea has raised concerns, especially among poorer eastern countries, that their richer neighbors may use Brexit to cut EU subsidies to them.

Juncker has said he will argue for what is commonly called a “multi-speed Europe” in a White Paper policy document.

Juncker will chair a special meeting of his commissioners on Tuesday but a spokesman said on Monday it was not yet clear when exactly the paper would be published.

Officials will not detail what the proposals are likely to be, though say they would probably not mean major institutional changes or treaty amendments for which most governments, beset by challenges from eurosceptic nationalists, have no appetite.

Some options are not mutually exclusive and could be combined, all with the aim of persuading voters disillusioned by years of economic malaise that the EU is worth preserving.

By setting out four or five practical “pathways to unity” or “alternative avenues for cooperation at 27”, EU officials say Juncker aims to give the 27 leaders of the post-Brexit Union some broad choices to start considering at a summit in Rome on March 25, where they will mark 60 years of the bloc’s founding.

As the 27 also try to hold to a common line in the two-year negotiating period with Britain which they expect London to launch before the Rome summit, the main aim of the Juncker proposals is to overcome internal divisions, EU officials said.

He wants to see responses by the autumn – by which time the Netherlands, France and Germany will have held elections marked by challenges from anti-EU movements that have been inspired by last year’s votes for Brexit and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Friction

“This is no longer a time when we can imagine everyone doing the same thing together,” Juncker said last week, echoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, who called on Feb. 3 for an EU of “varying speeds.”

Their remarks, however, have perplexed other states whose envoys note that existing rules already allow for “enhanced cooperation” in various fields, such as the 19-nation eurozone.

“A multi-speed Europe is a fact. No one has a problem with it,” said one senior EU diplomat. “So why are they talking like this now? They are irritated with the east … It is divisive.”

Noting that a key obstacle to deeper integration of, for example, the eurozone was disagreement between Berlin and Paris on how to do it, the diplomat said talk of a two-speed approach sounded like an attempt to penalize the post-communist east.

Hungary and Poland in particular have irritated the EU by challenging its rules on democracy and resisting calls to take in asylum-seekers, while Germany has taken in over a million.

Hollande accused easterners of treating the Union “like a cash box”. With Brexit leaving a hole in the EU budget, some diplomats see a push by Paris and Berlin to cut their subsidies.

German officials say Merkel does not see one specific set of countries going for deeper cooperation but imagines varying groups moving ahead in different fields. For example, defense integration is a priority for Germany.

“Some see this as a risk to unity,” one senior official said of Juncker’s multi-speed idea. “Others see a risk if we don’t do it and we fail to aspire.”
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Several thousand people protested in Skopje against an agreement that would ensure the wider use of the Albanian language in the  ethnically divided state.

Last Thursday, the leader of the Social Democrats, Zoran Zaev, said he expected to be able to form a government in March after he had secured support from ethnic Albanian parties in the 120-seat parliament.

Those parties had made their support for any potential coalition conditional on the passage of a law backing broader use of their language in Macedonia.

But on Monday, a movement that called itself “For Joint Macedonia” called on social media for people to come out on the street and protest the deal Zaev had made with the Albanian parties.

Protesters marched from the government building to the state parliament in Skopje shouting “This will not pass” and sang Macedonian national songs.

“With one symbolic gesture we want to show how you should love Macedonia,” said Bogdan Ilievski, a member of the movement.

The Balkan nation’s two-year-old political crisis was triggered by a surveillance scandal that forced veteran leader of the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE, Nikola Gruevski, to resign a year ago.

The crisis was the worst since Western diplomacy helped drag the country of 2.1 million people back from the brink of civil war during an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001, promising it a path to membership of the European Union and of NATO.

In a snap vote in December, VMRO-DPMNE won 51 seats to the Social Democrats’ 49, and neither was able to form the government without parties representing ethnic Albanians who make up one third of the population.

The conservative VMRO-DPMNE party had tried but failed to form a coalition.

On Monday Zaev asked President Gjorge Ivanov to give him the mandate to form a government and had presented him with the signatures of 18 deputies from ethnic Albanian parties.

On Sunday evening former prime minister Gruevski called on Social Democrats to revoke the deal, saying it was unconstitutional and jeopardised state interests.

Albanian is currently an official language only in municipalities where Albanians account for more than 20 percent of the population.       
…

German officials have released data that shows refugees and asylum seekers suffered nearly 10 attacks a day there in 2016, the interior ministry said.

Citing police statistics, officials said more than 3,500 anti-migrant attacks were carried out last year, resulting in 560 people injured, including 43 children.

The numbers were published as a response to parliamentary questions by Ulla Jelpke, a member of the left-wing party Die Linke.

The German government said it “strongly condemns” the violence.

“People who have fled their homeland and are seeking protection in Germany have the right to expect that they will be accommodated safely,” said a letter issued by the interior ministry.

“Everyone in our society and politics has the common responsibility to position themselves clearly against the quiet support of, or even the quiet tolerance of, such attacks by a minority of our society,” it added.

Rising xenophobia has emerged as a key concern in German as the influx of migrants in the last two years has been accompanied by anger and attacks on asylum seekers in many eastern states such as Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

In 2015, Germany recorded 1,408 violent acts carried out by right-wing supporters last year, a rise of more than 42 percent, and 75 arson attacks on refugee shelters, up from five a year earlier.

Germany’s acceptance of more than 1 million refugees in 2015 boosted popular support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is now represented in all of the eastern federal states, and mounted criticism and resentment for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy towards refugees.
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Olympic gold medal-winning distance runner Mo Farah said on Sunday that he is “a clean athlete” after a leaked report suggested his American coach may have broken anti-doping rules when he gave Farah and other athletes performance-enhancing drugs.

The Somali-born Farah won gold medals in the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters for Britain at the last two Olympics.

“I am a clean athlete who never broke any rules in regards to substances.” Farah said in a statement.

Britain’s Sunday Times said it has obtained a leaked report by U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that said Farah’s coach Alberto Salazar gave him and others who trained with him at a Nike facility drugs including an infusion of the chemical L-carnitine. It is not a banned substance for athletes, but infusions of more than 50 milliliters over a span of six hours are prohibited.

“It is upsetting that some parts of the media, despite the clear facts, continue to try to associate me with allegations of drug misuse,” Farrah said in response to the report. “If USADA or any other anti-doping body has evidence of wrongdoing they should publish it and take action rather than allow the media to be judge and jury.”
…

British anti-EU campaigner Nigel Farage posted a picture of him having “dinner with The Donald” on Twitter, the latest meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and the critic of Prime Minister Theresa May.

Farage, who helped secure victory for the Brexit campaign at a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union in June, is keen to cement ties with Trump after stepping down as leader of his anti-EU UK Independence Party last year.

Finding common ground with some of Trump’s criticism of the political establishment, Farage met the president in November and has offered his services as Britain’s ambassador to the United States – something that has been rejected by May’s government.

Entitled “Dinner with The Donald”, Farage posted a picture of himself smiling at a camera, with Trump and four other people around a table in a photo which gave the location as the Trump International Hotel.

May also wants to bolster ties with the United States to strengthen her hand before launching divorce talks with the European Union, and at a visit in January, she secured a promise from Trump for a trade deal after Brexit.

She sent her two most senior aides to the United States in December and foreign minister Boris Johnson a month later to boost ties after the U.S. leader irritated officials by suggesting Farage was a good choice for ambassador.

Farage has since become a political analyst on Fox News and Fox Business Network and has a show on a London-based radio station.
…

Police in Heidelberg, Germany, shot and seriously injured a man Saturday after the man hit three people with a car.

The man drove his car into the people in a central square while they were standing in a pedestrian area. A brief stand-off ensued before police shot the man, who was believed to have been armed with a knife.

Police said that at the moment they are unclear about the man’s motives but added they don’t suspect the attack to be terrorism-related.

The man appears to have acted alone, police said, refusing to confirm local media reports he is mentally disturbed.

The incident renewed fears in Germany of an attempted repeat of a terrorist truck attack last December at a crowded Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people and injuring 50 more.
…

Angela Merkel’s conservatives have formally nominated the German chancellor as her party’s top candidate for the September parliamentary election in the region where she has her political base.

The dpa news agency reported that Merkel won the support of 95 percent of delegates at a convention of the Christian Democrats’ branch in northeastern Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state Saturday. Merkel has held her parliamentary constituency in Stralsund since 1990.

Polls show Merkel facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from the center-left Social Democrats, who have been boosted by their choice of former European Parliament President Martin Schulz to challenge her.

Merkel didn’t mention Schulz in her speech Saturday. But she did make a point of praising the economic reforms enacted by her center-left predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, some of which Schulz has suggested he might amend.
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Turkey’s prime minister has officially launched his ruling party’s campaign for a “yes” vote in a referendum on ushering a presidential system, which critics fear will concentrate too many powers in the hands of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Binali Yildirim formally got campaigning going on Saturday telling supporters in a sports arena that the proposed new system would build a strong Turkey capable of surmounting terror threats and make its economy more robust.

Yildirim said: “We are taking the first steps on the path of a future strong Turkey.”

The proposed reforms – to be voted on April 16 – will give the largely ceremonial presidency executive powers and abolish the office of the prime minister.

Opponents say the proposed system foresees too few checks and balances on Erdogan’s rule.
…

Poland faces the possibility of losing its voting rights in the European Union over issues related to democracy and the rule of law. The EU is trying to determine whether to apply Article 7 — a measure intended to punish countries seen as violating fundamental rights.

In its 60-year history, the European Union has never had to trigger Article 7.

When the regional grouping gave Poland until the end of February to implement several reforms to its judicial independence and democratic institutions, it seemed that Article 7 might be the next step if the EU determined that Poland was not putting enough reforms in place. Even though the deadline passed this week, it is not clear what steps the commission can take next.

Much has changed in Poland since the 2015 win of the conservative right wing PiS, Law and Justice Party. The party blocked the initial picks for the Polish constitutional court and presented its own candidates. That was followed by a crackdown on media outlets and journalists, mass demonstrations against proposed extremely conservative laws and political appointments on all levels. That led the European Commission to warn Poland.

Situation described at ‘dramatic’

Katarzyna Morton is an active member of KOD, the Polish Committee for the Defense of Democracy. She describes the situation under the current government as “dramatic” and fears the country is heading toward becoming a modern authoritarian state. Morton says she hopes the EU keeps following up on current Polish developments, adding the tone of the EU will matter.

“The EU really has to work on the way they say things to be sure that some Polish people who are in favor of the government or just perhaps do not understand EU so well, won’t take it as a threat but will understand that the EU is working in their favor and wants them to succeed in their citizenship.”

Triggering Article 7 could lead to another crisis within the EU while the bloc is already dealing with growing anti-EU sentiment, along with Brexit — Britain’s decision to leave the EU — and an ongoing migrant crisis.

Little room to maneuver

Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska of the Center for European Reform says the European Commission has little room to maneuver and might lose this battle with Poland.

“If the commission does not respond, it would face criticism from liberals in the European Parliament and it looks weak in the eyes of external actors; but, by interfering in this political conflict, the risks of antagonizing the Polish public is the last thing the commission would like to have because of growing euroscepticism.”

Gostynska-Jakubowska also points out that it’s questionable whether the commission has sufficient democratic legitimacy to push through something so politically sensitive as Article 7.

Poland feels it has complied

The request for reforms was made after previous recommendations were sent to Warsaw, but no real progress was recorded.

Poland feels its parliament has adopted enough reforms that “comply with European standards regarding the functioning of constitutional courts” and says there is no systematic threat to the rule of law in Poland. Activists such as Morton disagree, saying she does not notice any reforms being implemented.

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski told local media earlier this week that he expects “the matter will be closed.”

Waszczykowski had a public exchange of words during a conference in Germany last week with EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans on Polish constitutional reforms. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement earlier this week accusing Timmermans’ actions and words of being politically motivated.

Unanimous vote triggers Article 7

While the commission searches for a way forward, diplomatic tensions between Warsaw and Brussels remained unresolved as the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the head of the European Commission’s representation to Poland on Thursday over language used by an EU document that Poland called unacceptable.

The commission is to discuss the matter with member states on what steps to take on the Polish issue.

Gostynska-Jakubowska says shifting the responsibility to member states will not solve the issue: “There won’t be political will among member states to take further action. EU treaties are pretty clear about this; it is the decision of member states on whether to activate Article 7 or not.”

Triggering Article 7 needs unanimity among all member states, and Hungary has already said it would veto any such a decision. The current president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, happens to be a former Polish president.

The next meeting of EU leaders is to take place after the first week of March in Brussels. The issue with Poland is expected to be discussed, but it’s unlikely the process for triggering Article 7 will start.
…

Russia says it will veto a draft U.N. resolution blaming the Syrian government for some chemical weapons attacks in Syria if it is brought to a vote.

“The resolution prejudges the results of the investigation, it is one-sided [and] based on insufficient evidence,” Russian Deputy U.N. Envoy Vladimir Safronkov told reporters after a closed meeting of the council to discuss the issue.

The Security Council created a special OPCW-U.N. (The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) Joint Investigative Mechanism — known as JIM — in August 2015 to study several chemical weapons attacks that took place in Syria since 2011 and identify “to the greatest extent feasible” individuals, entities, groups, or governments who were perpetrators, organizers, sponsors or otherwise involved in the use of chemicals as weapons in Syria.

Three chemical attacks confirmed

In October, the joint investigation concluded that the Syrian military had carried out at least three chemical attacks in 2014 and 2015.

“There is tremendous pressure over JIM to get to sort of one-sided results of investigation,” Safronkov said. “When we created JIM we said that investigation should be impartial, objective, independent — it’s not the case right now because of that pressure.”

Russia has deployed six vetoes in the past six years to protect Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from Security Council action.

Haley frustrated with Russia

“It is ridiculous. How much longer is Russia going to continue to babysit and make excuses for the Syrian regime?” U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley asked. “People died because of this and the United States isn’t going to be quiet about it.”

Britain, France and the United States have been working for months on a draft security council resolution that would sanction the Syrian regime for its use of chemical weapons and say they plan to bring it to a vote in coming days.

Delattre says evidence is clear

“We now have the clear evidence that chemical weapons have been used in Syria against civilian populations, and we also have converging indications that such weapons continue to be used in this country,” France’s envoy Francois Delattre told reporters. “If you think about it, on a scale of threats to peace and security, we are at 10 here.”

“You had an overwhelming vote to say we need an investigative mechanism that would prove that these chemical weapons were being done by the Syrian regime, now … the results have come out and people don’t like what the results are,” Haley said in reference to Russian objections.
…

Former president Barack Obama can not run again for president in the U.S., but that isn’t stopping a group of French fans who are trying to get him to run in their upcoming election.

Paris has been canvassed with “Obama17” signs, which urge people to visit a website to sign a petition for the former U.S. president to run.

According to the website, Obama is their choice “because he has the best resume in the world for the job.”

The site also alludes to the rising popularity of right-wing parties in France.

“At a time when France is about to vote massively for the extreme right, we can still give a lesson of democracy to the planet by electing a French president, a foreigner,” according to the website, which is in French.

According to ABC News, a spokesman for the group behind the website said, “We started dreaming about this idea two months before the end of Obama’s presidency. We dreamed about this possibility to vote for someone we really admire, someone who could lead us to project ourselves in a bright future.”

There’s just one catch to their plan: To be president of France, you have to be French.

The latest French polls show Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Front party in the lead. The election will be held in April.
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Georgia lacks judicial independence and concerns persist over selective justice in the ex-Soviet state, rights watchdog Amnesty International said Thursday in its annual country report for 2016.

It listed several court cases, including an ownership dispute over Georgia’s biggest independent television station Rustavi 2 and detention of ex-premier Vano Merabishvili, as attempts to silence critical voices in the country.

Thousands of Georgians rallied Sunday in the capital Tbilisi in support of Rustavi 2. Government officials have denied involvement in the case.

“Concerns over the lack of judicial independence and selective justice were raised, by both local and international observers,” Amnesty said in the report.

Amnesty said the trial took place after the statute of limitations had expired and it was “widely believed to have been supported by the current government with a view to depriving” the opposition UNM of its “main mouthpiece” ahead of the parliamentary elections in October 2016.

The report said freedom of peaceful assembly remained largely unrestricted in Georgia, but noted that the country failed to establish an independent investigation mechanism for human rights violations committed by law enforcement bodies.

Dozens of former state officials have been convicted in Georgia on various charges, including misspending funds, since a government led by former president Mikheil Saakashvili lost an election in October 2012.

Western countries have aired concerns that the new government has used selective justice and political persecution against opponents in the mountainous country, which is a pivot of geopolitical rivalry between Russia and the West.

Georgia is seeking closer links with both NATO and the European Union.
…

Pope Francis told his followers Thursday that it was better to be an atheist than one of “many” Catholics who he said led hypocritical double lives.

“So many Catholics are like this,” he said during morning Mass at his residence at the Vatican. “There are those who say, ‘I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this and that association,’ ” the head of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church said, according to a Vatican Radio transcript.

But, he suggested, those people should also say, ” ‘My life is not Christian, I don’t pay my employees proper salaries, I exploit people, I do dirty business, I launder money, [I lead] a double life.’ ”

He then quoted a sentiment he said he had heard often: “But to be a Catholic like that, it’s better to be an atheist.”

Francis has surprised the church before with his stance toward atheists. Less than two months after his election in 2013, he said Christians should see atheists as good people if they do good.

He has also taken other unorthodox positions. He condemned sexual abuse of children by priests as being tantamount to a “Satanic Mass” and said Catholics in the Mafia excommunicate themselves. He also told his own cardinals to not act as if they were “princes.”
…

The commander of U.S. forces in Africa has told VOA the only way to restore peace in Libya is to bring rival factions together, and that will require cooperative efforts by many parties, including Russia.

General Thomas Waldhauser, who heads the U.S. Africa Command, discussed the continuing political chaos in Libya while in Germany for the recent Munich Security Conference.

Libya is a checkerboard of separate, divided power centers: The internationally backed Government of National Accord controls only part of Tripoli, while rival power bases vie for control over the rest of the capital and other cities. Along the North African coast, the head of the Libyan National Army, General Khalifa Haftar, holds sway over much of eastern Libya through his House of Representatives.

Waldhauser says Haftar’s influence “is something to be dealt with,” and that eastern Libya “is where a political solution … has to take place,” in large part because the army chief controls most of Libya’s oilfields.

“This is where it all begins,” the American commander says, and also where Russia comes in.

Russia invests in Libya’s oil

Waldhauser noted it is apparent Russia wants to become actively involved in trying to resolve Libya’s political unrest — not least for its own economic interests — and said he welcomes that. 

Russia’s state-owned oil giant Rosneft has offered billions of dollars in investments to Libya’s National Oil Company (NOC), and officials of the two companies announced Tuesday in London that they have a preliminary agreement to pursue a development program. Russia also committed itself to buying an undisclosed share of Libya’s future crude oil output.

The AFRICOM chief said the key to political progress in Libya, which would enable the country to get the greatest benefit from such international deals, is cooperation between the Government of National Accord (GNA) in the capital and Haftar and the Libyan National Army in the east.

“The goal is to get those two together,” Waldhauser said. “The goal is to get those two to talk, and the goal is to make some accommodation in that regard.”

Kremlin’s broader influence

Russia has been trying to gain a larger grip on oil supplies in the Mediterranean and extend its influence in the Middle East and North Africa more broadly. Rosneft’s agreement with NOC, announced at an international oil conference in the British capital, was in addition to a separate deal for Russia to prefinance crude exports from Kurdistan, making Rosneft the first major oil company to take an active role in the semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq. Rosneft also recently acquired a stake in the Zohr gas field in Egypt.

The Libyan oil company estimates it needs $20 billion to reach its production goal of 2.1 million barrels per day within five years.

Turning again to Libya’s political situation and rivalries, Waldhauser said many parties are trying to assist.

“The Egyptians and Russians are also involved in trying to get this all together, because at the end of day a political solution is going to require” the participation of both General Haftar and Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of the GNA, the U.S. commander said.

U.S. supports Tripoli faction

U.S. forces also have been actively fighting against the Islamic State group in Libya — most notably last month, when American B-2 bombers flew a 9,400-kilometer mission from their base in the central U.S. to strike IS training camps in Libya — and Waldhauser says the extremists’ efforts to expand in the north African nation have taken a significant setback.

“It has been very complicated and it continues to remain very complicated. Perhaps, if it’s possible, even getting more complicated,” Waldhauer added. “Our official government position is to support the GNA. And at AFRICOM, we’ve had a very good and close relationship not only with our State Department personnel, but with Prime Minister Surraj as well.”

The AFRICOM chief, who oversees U.S. military operations throughout Africa, was speaking in Munich last week about American participation in Operation Flintlock, a joint military exercise hosted by seven African nations.

American forces in Africa are eager to build partnerships in the sub-Saharan region to tackle terrorists — particularly Islamic State extremists, but also other dangerous groups. Waldhauser said the U.S. works to strengthen its regional partnerships by helping African nations develop their infrastructure, with training and also with crisis response.

U.S. can help in crises

“Many times we think of [crisis response] as a military operation,” the American commander said. “But crisis response is something we would be very, very involved in if there was a humanitarian disaster — famine in Somalia, for example; the Ebola breakout is another example. We do pay close attention to that.”

Nigeria is a key regional partner, and the United States is providing intelligence support and other assistance in the country’s fight against the Islamic State-affiliated terror group Boko Haram. A Nigerian representative to the Munich Security Conference, Major-General Babagana Monguno, said the increasing expansion of terror groups across national borders means international cooperation is vital.

“The uprising in Libya and the eventual capitulation of the Gadhafi government resulted in a southward flow of arms and human beings,” Monguno said. “The most natural place in sub-Saharan Africa for this flow was Nigeria.”

Importance of ‘battlefield ethics’

In the course of their efforts to suppress Boko Haram, Nigerian military forces have been accused of human-rights abuses by Amnesty International and others. Waldhauser said the United States takes such allegations against its partners seriously.

“We understand the requirement for battlefield ethics,” he told VOA. “We make it part of our training, and we try to continue to emphasize that … in the legal system [of the partner nations] and in our discussions with key leaders, as well.”

Operation Flintlock 2017, which is just getting underway, will bring together 2,000 service personnel from more than 20 African, European and North African nations.
…

A few thousand Ukrainians rallied Wednesday to demand a change of political leadership in a demonstration that coincided with the third anniversary of the ousting of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych amid mass street protests.

The rally was organized by three right-wing parties who accuse the government of being too weak and conciliatory in the face of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and its support for pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.

The crowd chanted “Glory to Ukraine!” and carried banners with slogans such as “The government should fight [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, not Ukrainians.”

Kyiv resident Vasyl Volskiy said he was taking part in the demonstration because he believed the authorities had failed to deliver on promises to reform the economy.

“There has been no improvement, it has even become worse compared to what it used to be. The army still has no resources, just like before. People have become three times poorer and the authorities are not doing anything,” he said.

None of the three groups behind the rally — the nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party, the far-right Right Sector and the newly formed National Corps party founded by members of the Azov battalion — are currently represented in parliament.

Yanukovych has lived in exile in Russia since fleeing Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014. His successor, Petro Poroshenko, has tried to move Ukraine toward the European Union but the country is still dogged by poverty and corruption, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine remains unresolved.

Ukrainians are also now concerned that U.S. President Donald Trump may roll back sanctions imposed on Russia over its actions in Ukraine.
…

Budapest will withdraw its bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, leaving only Los Angeles and Paris in the race.

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs confirmed the withdrawal to The Associated Press on Wednesday. The joint decision by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Budapest Mayor Istvan Tarlos and the Hungarian Olympic Committee will be formally voted on by the Budapest City Assembly.

Fidesz, the governing party, said the decision was made to avoid “a loss of international prestige” for Hungary, saying the bid had a very small chance of success.

The bid was expected to face a city-wide referendum promoted by a new political party, which gathered more than 266,000 signatures in favor of holding the vote.

The International Olympic Committee will choose the host city in September.
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