Europe

Emmanuel Macron refused to accept the resignation of his interior minister on Monday evening after the government’s immigration bill was thrown out of parliament. It was a crushing humiliation for Gerald Darmanin, as well as Macron, and a moment of exquisite pleasure for their many political opponents.  In an unprecedented show of unity, right and left came together to adopt by just five votes a motion proposed by the Green Party to reject the bill without even debating it. They did so, however, for different reasons. In the eyes of the left, the bill is ‘racist and xenophobic: they particularly object to the proposal to cut welfare benefits and expel

You can tell that French elections are in the air because legal proceedings are being taken against a leading figure of the French right. So it was with François Fillon of the Républicain party, a key contender in the 2017 presidential elections, whose hopes of winning were dashed during the campaign by legal investigation into alleged misuse of parliamentary funds, subsequently ending his political career. So it is now with Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National, as France gears up for the 9 June 2024 European parliament elections, for which her party is the clear front-runner. This week, French investigating magistrates scheduled a hearing for 27 March 2024 to determine whether Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement

In 2019, France’s president Emmanuel Macron famously called Nato ‘braindead’. Think what you will about the health of the defence alliance, but it is increasingly the European Union, not Nato, that seems paralysed, unable to think more than just a step ahead.  The EU has been trundling along in this state for some time now. On the European Commission’s recommendation, EU leaders are due to make a decision next week about opening accession negotiations with Ukraine. Yet, little groundwork has been laid to turn even this initial step into a success. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has already fired his opening salvo, refusing to even discuss the issue and threatening to derail

There was more bloodshed in Paris this weekend, this time involving a man who, prosecutors claim, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS). A German tourist was killed as he strolled close to the Eiffel Tower with his wife during the attack on Saturday evening. Two other passers-by, including a Briton, were wounded by the assailant, who French interior minister Gerald Darmanin said shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ranted about Muslims dying in Afghanistan and Palestine as he launched his deadly assault. Police used a stun gun to stop the man who is being questioned by anti-terror police. France is supposed to be on high alert following the outbreak of war in

This weekend, demonstrations took place in major Italian cities to mark the UN’s international day for the elimination of violence against women. Many on the Italian left used the opportunity to suggest Giorgia Meloni is aiding and abetting the murder of Italian women – even though she is Italy’s first female Prime Minister.    The largest protest was in Rome where demonstrators, mainly women – 500,000 according to the organisers – brandished placards saying ‘The Patriarchy Kills’, ‘We Support Female Fury Against The Fascist Meloni Government’ and ‘Meloni Fascist Zionist Collaborator’. Palestinian flags fluttered surreally alongside LGBTQIA2-S rainbow flags, as I think they are now called. Elly Schlein, leader of the main left-wing opposition Partito Democratico, was there and told journalists: the only way to stop ‘the

On Monday, the spokesman for Emmanuel Macron’s government, Olivier Véran, visited the village of Crépol in south-eastern France. A fortnight ago few people had heard of Crépol, but on the evening of Saturday 18 November a gang of youths from an inner city a few miles away gatecrashed the village dance.   In the maelstrom of violence that ensued, a 16-year-old local called Thomas was fatally stabbed. Several other young partygoers were wounded and one eye-witness told reporters their attackers had stormed the venue vowing to ‘kill a white’.   The bitter truth is that few people in France have any confidence left in Macron and his government For 24

At 1.30 p.m. last Thursday, a horrific knife attack was perpetrated outside a school on Parnell Street in Dublin’s north inner city. Three children and an adult female were viciously stabbed by the attacker who has now been confirmed to be an Algerian male who acquired Irish citizenship and has been living in the country for the last 20 years. Both the attacker and his four victims have been hospitalised. One of those victims, a 5 year old girl, remains in a critical condition, while her female carer, who tried to stop the knifeman, remains in the Mater hospital. If it wasn’t the horrifying knife attack on Thursday that set

They don’t believe the German state exists, they make their own passports and they want the German monarchy restored. It’s tempting to dismiss the so-called Reichsbürger movement as a bunch of deranged conspiracy theorists. But the movement is growing, increasingly well-connected and willing to use violence to overthrow the state. In their latest crackdown on extremist Reichsbürger circles, the German authorities on Thursday conducted a coordinated raid involving around 280 police officers in eight of the country’s 16 states. They targeted 20 residences, involving people aged between 25 and 74 who are suspected of having formed a group around a 58-year-old Bavarian man. He had been arrested before, in November

Muslims in the Netherlands have reacted with an understandable mixture of trepidation and anger to the electoral triumph of the far-right, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders. Should they be afraid? ‘I don’t know if Muslims are still safe in the Netherlands,’ Habib El Kaddouri, a spokesman for Dutch Moroccans, dramatically informed the news agency ANP. On the face of it, who can blame Muslims for worrying about what Wilders’ unexpected — and frankly stunning — victory might mean for their future prospects. After all, Wilders is no friend of Muslims or Islam. No mosques, Korans or headscarves is the political clarion call of his Freedom Party (PVV). It is unashamedly anti-Islam: ‘We

Far right, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders has won a historic victory for his Freedom party (PVV) in shock Dutch elections on Wednesday. As the final votes are counted, Wilders appears to have more than doubled his 17 MPs in 2021 elections, winning 37 of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament and almost a quarter of the 13 million votes. ‘The PVV can no longer be ignored,’ vowed Wilders following his success overnight. ‘We will govern’. Wilders, who campaigned on the idea of ‘stopping’ immigration, appears to have benefitted from widespread mistrust of the government after a series of scandals under ex prime minister Mark Rutte. For years, Wilders has tried to

Against the background of the war in Ukraine, a diplomatic row is brewing between Russia and Finland. Last week, Finland announced that it would imminently be closing four of its eight border crossings into Russia, promptly doing so on 18 November. The reason? An unexpected increase in the number of illegal migrants coming over the border from Russia in recent weeks. Finnish minister of internal affairs Marie Rantanen put the blame for this squarely on Russia. ‘The activities of the Russian authorities have changed in such a way,’ she said, ‘that it has become possible to get from Russia to Finland, despite the lack of necessary documents.’ At midnight on Saturday,

Dutch politics got a blast from the past on Monday when a right-wing politician was assaulted. The country goes to the polls tomorrow and the hospitalisation of Thierry Baudet, attacked with a bottle in a bar in the northern city of Groningen, is a reminder of what happened to Pim Fortuyn in 2002.  After being assaulted in the weeks leading up to the Dutch elections, the flamboyant right-wing Fortuyn was then shot dead nine days before voters went to the polls. His assassin was an animal rights extremist who told a court he didn’t like the way Fortuyn talked about Muslims.  Many people on the left long ago gave up protecting free speech and

If the European Union created its own version of Mount Rushmore, who would it place in its pantheon? Horst Köhler, Helmut Kohl, and Francois Mitterrand – the architects of the Maastricht Treaty – perhaps? Or maybe Alcide De Gasperi, Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet, and Konrad Adenauer, who set in motion the long and winding process of European integration in the 1950s?  Almost certain to be overlooked is the man who founded the modern movement for European unity in the first place. That is, the eccentric, cosmopolitan Austro-Hungarian aristocrat Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coundehove-Kalergi.   Kalergi had an unusual background. He was born in Tokyo in 1894 to an Austrian

Completely innocent men, women and children have been slaughtered. ‘Terrorism’ hardly suffices to describe the savage rampage beyond the Gaza Wall undertaken by men from Hamas on 7 October. In the aftermath of the Second World War, when knowledge emerged of the crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germans and their collaborators, humanity vowed ‘Never Again’. Yet the world has descended once more into ever lower levels of depravity. What is more, thousands of innocents are now being killed as collateral in the on-going counterattacks. The kibbutz of Kfar Aza and kibbutz Be’eri, where some of the most barbaric crimes were carried out by Hamas, joins the long list of places of infamy where

It has been a bruising few days for Emmanuel Macron. It began last Friday when he gave an interview to the BBC at the Élysée palace at the conclusion of a peace forum in Paris. In unusually forthright rhetoric, the president said there was ‘no justification’ for Israel’s bombing of Gaza, which was killing ‘these babies, these ladies, these old people’. He added: ‘There is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop.’ He also reiterated a call for a ceasefire in Gaza.   Macron’s words drew a swift and sharp response from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the president’s focus should be on

Italy has become the first European Union country to bite the bullet and set up a scheme to off-shore migrant asylum seekers to a country outside the bloc. Italy’s right-wing prime minister Giorgia Meloni says she hopes the scheme, signed off in Rome last week with Albania’s left-wing prime minister, Edi Rama, will become a model copied across the EU.  It is similar to the Tory government’s troubled Rwanda scheme, but more practical and less vulnerable to legal challenge. Italy will process asylum requests in Albania where it plans to send tens of thousands of migrants a year. Britain, meanwhile, plans to hand the task of deciding who gets asylum to Rwanda

Over 100,000 French citizens marched peacefully through their cities on Sunday. They did so to show their support for the country’s 500,000 Jews, a growing number of whom have been harassed physically and verbally since Hamas attacked Israel last month.  In the Mediterranean city of Nice many of the 3,000 demonstrators chanted ‘we’re all Jews’, a facile and frankly offensive refrain. It’s become a habit in recent years to virtue signal one’s solidarity with victims of terrorism or religious persecution: not only do we share your pain but also your identity. One suspects that had those non-Jewish demonstrators in Nice been confronted on their way home by a group of Hamas