Europe

Earlier this month I spent a week in Sicily, driving south from Palermo to Agrigento and then east to Syracuse and Messina. It was my first visit to Sicily in 17 years and, given the media reports, I had expected to find the island crowded with migrants from Africa. In fact, I saw none, other than those I glimpsed in a fenced-off processing centre at the quayside in Agrigento, the first port of call for many migrants who arrive in Sicily. Last week the local paper in Agrigento drew on official government figures to reveal that so far in 2022, 45,664 migrants have landed on Italian territory, an increase of 40 per cent on the same period last year.

Is Amnesty International victim-blaming? The Ukrainian military has been endangering civilians, it said, by establishing military bases and putting weapons systems in residential areas. Agnès Callamard, the organisation's secretary-general, remarked that ‘being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law’. It was a bizarre statement. Russian forces are attacking villages and large cities with dense populations. The Ukrainian armed forces can’t sit in a field, or put their weapons on a boat and sail away from coastal cities. As well as the morality of shifting the blame on to the aggressor, Amnesty’s statement doesn’t recognise the realities of the war situation.

Say what you want about Viktor Orbán, but he gives a good speech. His address on Thursday in Dallas on the opening day of CPAC, the annual jamboree of the American right wing, was wide-ranging, hard-hitting and quite funny. One of his best jokes – paraphrasing Pope Francis – was ‘that Hungary was the official language of heaven because it takes an eternity to learn’. It also happens to be nonsense. Hungarian is recognised as considerably easier to learn than Arabic or Mandarin, but Orbán doesn’t do nuance.

Serbia and Kosovo are close to conflict. Of all things, a dispute over car number plates is threatening the fragile peace won 23 years ago, after a Nato bombing campaign against then-Yugoslavia. For that, Serbs have never truly forgiven the West. On Sunday night, roads were blockaded by Serbs in northern Kosovo. Their anger was directed at an edict from the Kosovan government requiring Serbs to re-register their cars with Kosovar number plates. Serbs currently use number plates with acronyms of Kosovar cities, just one example of Serbia’s ongoing refusal to accept Kosovan independence. New documentation requirements were also to be imposed on Serbs entering and leaving Kosovo. Some have claimed that tensions have calmed, but they are only on hold.

Westminster is understandably obsessed with the question of who makes the final two of the Tory leadership race, but today has also brought a reminder of the crises that the new Prime Minister will have to deal with from day one.  The European Commission is calling on all EU member states to cut gas use by 15 per cent to prepare for supply cuts from Russia through Nord Stream 1, which reopens tomorrow. With the pipeline only flowing at limited levels, and the heatwave leading to higher energy use than usual, Germany will not be able to lay in stores for the winter. This means that Vladimir Putin will constantly try and use energy as a weapon in the coming months, threatening to cut off supplies completely if the West does this or that in support of Ukraine.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West was certain that its sanctions were worth the pain. But there always was a question as to whether this resolve would last once the domestic difficulties actually started. This week, western countries moved closer to admitting it might be too much to bear. At the time of the invasion in February, a massive Russian turbine was being repaired in Montreal. It was one of many turbines used to send gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia to Germany. When the Russians moved into Ukraine, it was kept in Canada as punishment. Over the next few weeks and months Russia replied, cutting off gas supplies to the continent.

In the past few months, relations between the UK and the EU have been the best they have been since Brexit. Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine reminded the two sides of the need for the world’s democracies to co-operate. Disputes over fishing rights could wait. It is tempting to hope that relations could continue to improve, especially now that the French presidential election is out of the way. But this is unlikely to happen. This week Bruno Le Maire, France’s economy minister, dismissed the suggestion that fixing relations with Britain will be a priority for Emmanuel Macron’s second term.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has changed Europe forever. That was the argument that Boris Johnson made on Friday when he held a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. One of the changes Johnson was keen to emphasise was that European leaders are united in their support of Ukraine and against Putin. This, he argued, was one of the ways in which the Russian President had failed: he had sought to create divisions in Europe, but had 'demonstrably failed'. 'The Europe we knew just six weeks ago no longer exists: Putin's invasion strikes at the very foundations of the security of our continent,' he said, adding: 'Putin has steeled our resolve, sharpened our focus, and he has forced Europe to begin to rearm to guarantee our shared security.