Tag: European Union

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European Union Faces Severe Challenges

The European Union (EU) suffered a major setback as the British Parliament defeated, by a vote of 432 to 202, a “Brexit” deal which sought to negate the actual effect of the June 2016 vote by the British people to leave the organization which many believe has caused extraordinary harm to its member nations.

A British conservative web site notes “That’s a margin of 63 votes more than the largest rebellion of modern British politics – over Iraq in 2003 – which was larger than any rebellion of any party since the Corn Laws, [of 1846.]” It was also, according to the site, “the biggest Conservative revolt of modern times

Under the plan by Prime Minister Theresa May, the U.K. would technically leave the EU but still be bound by most of its regulations.

The Prime Minister, as well as much of the upper leadership of both major British political parties, disagreed with their constituents and have, since the 2016 vote, sought ways to negate it. They have failed, and barring any further last-minute moves to ignore the democratic process, the UK will officially be out of the European Union March 29.

The disdain for the 2016 vote among the United Kingdom’s elitists has been vehement. David Lammy, a Labour Party Member of Parliament, previously called for a “second vote” on Brexit since he, and other key political figures, didn’t agree with the public’s decision to drop out of the European Union.  Attempting to overturn the will of the voters by repeated ballots, often influenced by leading media figures who are more in tune with elitist than the general citizenry, has been an attempt to use Democracy’s own tools against it.

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EU policies have resulted in astounding increases in crime and civil disorder (resulting from open borders policies,) excessive regulations on businesses and misguided national economic practices.

The problem arises from the elitist attitude of the EU’s leadership in Brussels.  An Oxford study   noted that  process of European integration is primarily “the result of conscious and often controversial decisions made by its domestic (or national) elites.” 

Dissatisfaction with the EU has been growing for some time, and not just among the British. A 2016 Pew survey   reported that A median of just 51% across 10 EU countries surveyed had a favorable view of the European Union. A median of 42% in these 10 nations want more power returned to their national capitals, while only 19% favor giving Brussels more power and 27% favor the status quo.

In addition to a rising tide of popular opinion against the EU, several governments are moving against it. Britain’s Daily Mail reports that the Italian and Polish governments are seeking to form an “an anti-EU alliance and lead a ‘European spring’ to replace the ‘French-German axis.’” Anger over the EU’s immigration policies and its budgetary mandates have led to exceptional dissatisfaction by the two governments. The publication quoted Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Salvini As saying “Someone has betrayed the European dream…’We will provide the blood for a new European community based on respect, work, growth and equality.” 

A Gatestone analysis also quotes Salvini’s goal, announced on January 12,to begin “a journey that will continue in the coming months for a different Europe, for a change of the European Commission, of European policies, which puts at the center the right to life, work, health, safety, all that the European elites, financed by [billionaire Hungarian philanthropist George] Soros and represented by Macron…”

Salvini’s distrust comes from both the results of the EU’s policies, and the Brussels leadership. He perceives that leadership as largely responding to the interests of Germany and France, while running roughshod over the interests of the citizenry of the other European nations.

Illustration: European Union flag

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Europe’s Separatist Movements

Catalonia’s independence movement may be the focus of this month’s news about separatist movements, but Europe has a number of regions that are considering going it alone. These movements tend to feed off of each other, supporting independence claims.

Even within Spain, Catalonia is not alone in seeking a split.  The Basque region has, for over half a century, been active in seeking some form of independence.  The main group leading the effort, the ETA, had in the past resorted to significant amounts of violence.

It is not coincidental that these movements appear to be gaining steam as elections for the European Parliament looms. Rather than unify the continent, the EU’s role in diminishing the status of its nation-state members has fostered fragmentation within its constituent member-states.

Among the most prominent of Europe’s separatist movements  are:

Scotland: In a 2014 vote, those in favor of remaining within the United Kingdom only won by a 5% margin, even though the region already enjoys considerable autonomy. There are significant defense-related implications for NATO if independence comes about, since those favoring secession have stated they would force Britain’s nuclear facilities out of the area. Leaders of the movement are now seeking a new referendum.

Lombardy and Veneto: There has long been tension between Italy’s wealthier, more industrialized north and the less affluent, more agricultural south. The underlying issue concerns a demand by these northern areas to keep more of the wealth they produce, which amounts to almost a third of the national economy. A nonbinding ballot is scheduled for the 22nd of this month. It should also be noted that in one ballot, 89% of voters from Venice opted for independence, also based largely on economic grounds. Italy’s regions of Sicily and Sardinia region have also had significant political discussions about breaking away from Rome.

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Corsica: In 2015, a French regionalist party won in local elections. The separatist The National Liberation Front of Corsica had engaged in violence, although it traded force for politics three years ago.  France also has another, more low key independence movement within its Brittany region, an area that speaks a distinct language, Breton.

Faroe Islands:  This portion of Denmark has elections scheduled for next year on the question of self-determination.  The area currently has considerable autonomy.

The list above is by no means complete. Other movements (with varying degrees of seriousness)  include those in Albania’s Northern Epirus, Azerbaijan’s Artsakh region, The Srpska and Croatian sections of Bosnia, The Czech Republic’s Moravian and Silesian sections, the Bornholm section of Denmark, Aland in Finland, Bavaria in Germany, upper Silesia in Poland, Russia’s North Caucasus and Tartar areas, the Jura Canton of Switzerland, and numerous other movements.

None of is should be particularly surprising to those with a passing knowledge of history.  Until the establishment of strong nation-states, Europe was a fragmented continent containing numerous small kingdoms, city-states, and autonomous regions.  Two of the most significant European nations, Italy and Germany, only became unified states in the 19th century.

The European Union, long advertised as a step forward, essentially if inadvertently has turned the clock back to a time when identification with a large nation-state was far less prevalent than that currently.  The EU’s predilection towards stringent centralized rules also echoes the past in that its bureaucracy tends to run roughshod over the concept of citizen rights over largely unresponsive government officials.

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Unassimilated Immigrants Cause Disruption in Europe

In the aftermath of the horrific incident in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve, in which approximately 1,000 men, described in many sources as recent asylum seekers from the Middle East, sexually attacked and robbed in excess of 200 women, some German politicians chose instead to criticize the action of those who brought the crimes to the public’s attention as “right wing rhetoric,” as noted in the Daily Mail.  Politically, that mindset is reminiscent of President Obama’s comments following the San Bernardino terrorist shooting, which he used to concentrate more on his gun control proposals and on his belief, often stated but with little provided evidence, that there is a significant anti-Muslim backlash threat in the U.S., rather than on the growing threat of violent terrorists’ assaults.

The New Year’s Eve attack was another recent European event calling into question the European Union’s  open-borders policy, known as the Schengen Agreement. Originally designed to promote the passport-free flow of people within nations participating in the agreement, it now faces substantial revision or elimination as a result of attacks by Islamic extremists, such as the November 13 attacks in Paris which killed 130 people.

As noted by the BBC “in 2015 the influx of more than a million migrants – many of them Syrian refugees – greatly increased the pressure on Schengen. One after another, EU states re-imposed temporary border controls. In December the European Commission proposed a major amendment to Schengen, expected to become law soon.”

The Council on Foreign Relations reports that “Political upheaval in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia is reshaping migration trends in Europe. The number of illegal border-crossing detections in the EU started to surge in 2011, as thousands of Tunisians started to arrive at the Italian island of Lampedusa following the onset of the Arab Spring. Sub-Saharan Africans who had previously migrated to Libya followed in 2011–2012, fleeing unrest in the post-Qaddafi era. The most recent surge in detections along the EU’s maritime borders has been attributed to the growing numbers of Syrian, Afghan, and Eritrean migrants and refugees. [There are]… estimates that more than 464,000 migrants have crossed into Europe by sea for the first nine months of 2015. Syrians fleeing their country’s four-and-a-half-year-old civil war made up the largest group (39 percent). Afghans looking to escape the ongoing war with Taliban rebels (11 percent), and Eritreans fleeing forced labor (7 percent) made up the second and third largest groups of migrants, respectively. Deteriorating security and grinding poverty in Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Sudan have also contributed to the migrant influx.

The questioning of immigration policy concerned more than just several recent incidents that were the actions of Islamic extremists. Sweden has become a major case study in the results of allowing entry to a substantial number of immigrants that do not assimilate readily into local cultural norms and standards.

Sweden made a specific political decision to allow an unprecedented and vast increase in immigration. Since that decision was made, reports The Gatestone Institute:

“Violent crime has increased by 300%. If one looks at the number of rapes, however, the increase is even worse. In 1975, 421 rapes were reported to the police; in 2014, it was 6,620. That is an increase of 1,472%. Sweden is now number two on the global list of rape countries. According to a survey from 2010, Sweden, with 53.2 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants, is surpassed only by tiny Lesotho in Southern Africa, with 91.6 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants.

“Over the past 10-15 years, immigrants have mainly come from Muslim countries such as Iraq, Syria and Somalia. Michael Hess, a local politician from Sweden Democrat Party, encouraged Swedish journalists to get acquainted with Islam’s view of women, in connection with the many rapes that took place in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the “Arab Spring”…Hess notes that “There is a strong connection between rapes in Sweden and the number of immigrants from MENA-countries [Middle East and North Africa].”This remark led to Michael Hess being charged with “denigration of ethnic groups” [hets mot folkgrupp], a crime in Sweden. In May last year, he was handed a suspended jail sentence and a fine — the suspension was due to the fact that he had no prior convictions. The verdict has been appealed to a higher court.

“Whether or not they measured by the number of convicted rapists or men suspected of rape, men of foreign extraction were represented far more than Swedes… A new trend reached Sweden with full force over the past few decades: gang rape — virtually unknown before in Swedish criminal history. The number of gang rapes increased spectacularly between 1995 and 2006. Since then no studies of them have been undertaken.
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The Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR) is a conservative and euro-sceptic European political party, defending broader conservative and economically liberal principles. It has twenty-two member parties, as well as four independent members, spread across twenty countries.

The AECR believes that the dramatic influx of people from the Middle East into German has presented vast problems.

“When Angela Merkel announced that Germany would welcome all that sought refuge at its border in September 2015, the move was celebrated as a sign of Germany’s progressive leadership. Today, the reality of inciting rather than discouraging large scale migration via treacherous and criminal channels has been tragically well documented.

“A second reality now hitting home is that large-scale uncontrolled migration inevitably leads to host communities feeling some strain as more and more people settle in those areas….

“Following the Paris terror attacks in November, France re-introduced border controls. Germany also, embarrassingly, has had to introduced border controls in 2015 while Austria is going as far as putting up a barbed wire fence along its border with Schengen EU-member Slovenia. The repercussions are also being felt further afield as the migration pushes on northwards.

“Sweden – traditionally one of the most welcoming of EU countries – [has] began carrying out ID-checks on its border with Denmark. Denmark, responded by introducing checks at its borders with Germany.”

Although expressing confidence that the threat could be overcome, Pope Francis has warned that the massive wave of Islamic immigrants could pose a threat to the human-centered culture of Europe.