Tuesday
18th Jun 2019
Juan Branco is a lawyer and co-author of a legal document submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusing EU officials and member states of crimes against humanity for their migration policies. "Some people should have to go to prison."
Member states that are still willing to save lives in the Mediterranean should set up a new Mare Nostrum rescue mission.
The EU commission, in a novel approach back in 2015, linked EU agriculture policy to humanitarian aid. Did it work?
Europe's far-right is set to rise in the next European Parliament election. This vote will not yet allow the populists to build a majority. But it may become another milestone in their process of changing European politics.
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has pledged to put up new anti-migrant posters - despite hopes in his centre-right EU family that he might "apologise and put an end" to the campaign.
The right-wing Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD), Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), and European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) groups hold 151 out of 751 seats - even large gains are unlikely to give them a majority.
In 2013, the European Commission declared ships that help migrants in distress would not face sanctions. Now - six years later - Italy's government endorses a decree to impose fines up to €50,000 for rescue boats docking in Italian ports.
Home affairs ministers are set to endorse reforms for tougher EU return laws to send unwanted migrants home. But an absent lead MEP on the file and a wary EU parliament means their agreement may not amount to much.
EU states' efforts to "deter" migrants from Libya have helped kill more than 14,000 people and exposed 40,000 others to "crimes against humanity", according to a lawsuit filed in The Hague on Monday.
An Austrian criminal intelligence service persuaded Italy's interior minister Matteo Salvini to set up a unit in Sicily against migrant smuggling, while in Senegal EU development money is financing an European-police led reform of Dakar's defence and interior ministries.
Budapest tried and failed last week to deport three families to Afghanistan, and is accused of denying food to others stuck in its transit zone. The European Commission says it is taking the allegations "quite seriously."
Eurosceptic parties are nothing new. They also had a large presence in the first directly elected European Parliament back in 1979, when the EU was known as the European Economic Community (EEC) and consisted of only nine member states.
In a speech aimed at quelling yellow vest unrest, French president did not come with radical new European proposals.
Romanian EU presidency set to publish operational guidelines next month on how to share refugees who get stuck on NGO rescue boats in Mediterranean Sea.
The cornerstone the EU's asylum reforms referred to by the shorthand as 'Dublin' could end up in the scrapheap following the European elections in May.
The EU has appealed to Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar to stop fighting, amid concern that a civil war could prompt more people to flee to Europe.
Italy's far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, has tried to make friends with the French establishment, amid a possible "flop" in his plan to create an anti-EU league.
The EU's border agency Frontex may end up being used by western Balkan states to send people back to their home countries - where they could face death or persecution.
Almost 1,000 Romanian nationals were caught trying to sneak into the United States in 2017, of which around half attempted to cross via Mexico. Nationals from countries like Hungary and the UK were also intercepted.
Public space in Hungary to carry out open debates on migration and refugees is increasingly restricted, as the Fidesz-led government smear campaign targets the European Commission.
The coming EU elections pose "a real risk" of a spike in xenophobic violence, Italy's security services have said, but Italy's prime minister ignored the warning.
The overall number of migrant arrivals to Europe has dropped for a third consecutive year. But Frontex, also known as the European Border and Coast Guard agency, warns against complacency.
MEPs are set to rubber-stamp a trade deal with Morocco to fish off the disputed coastline of the Western Sahara. Human Rights Watch have stepped in to point out the deal could be in breach of international law.
While the formation of a new government ends Sweden's fourth-month paralysis, it doesn't resolve the challenge from radical-right populists in Sweden. A key question remains: will treating populists like pariahs undercut the appeal of their, often anti-rights, politics?
The European Commission says the fate of EU's naval operation Sophia has yet to be determined - amid a row on where to disembark rescued migrants.
Though we would never admit it, the only difference between Trump and the EU is we don't need a wall - because we're 'fortunate' enough to have the Mediterranean.
France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Romania have agreed to relocate the 49 migrants stuck on two NGO boats moored, for almost three weeks, off Malta's coast.
The European Commission says EU states have yet to help the 49 people stranded on the Sea-Watch and Sea Eye rescue boats - because solutions have not yet been found for the 249 people already rescued by Malta.
If misinformation in the field of migration can bring a government down, as in the recent case of Belgium following the country's adoption of the UN migration pact, then it can doubtless produce a populist majority in the European parliament.
Conditions on the Dutch flagged Sea-Watch 3, an NGO boat with 32 rescued migrants onboard, continue to deteriorate - as EU states refuse to take them in. The youngest on board is a one-year old infant.
Some 20 percent of respondents to a Eurobarometer poll mentioned terrorism - down from 44 percent in early 2017.
When Austria took over the EU presidency, chancellor Sebastian Kurz declared that his government - in a coalition with the far-right FPO - would use its six-months tenure to promote what he called "a Europe that protects".
Ninety people were arrested and six are to face criminal charges following rowdy anti-immigrant protests outside the EU institutions in Brussels.
