European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU would provide Greece with “all the support needed” as it struggles with an influx of migrants allowed to cross from neighbouring Turkey after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that “millions” of migrants would soon head for Europe.

EU chiefs on Tuesday pledged millions of euros of financial assistance to Greece to help tackle the migration surge from neighbouring Turkey, warning against those wishing to “test Europe’s unity”.

Flying by helicopter over the Greek-Turkish border, where thousands of desperate asylum-seekers have tried to break through for days, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc would provide Greece “all the support needed”.

“Those who seek to test Europe’s unity will be disappointed,” von der Leyen said, standing alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the chiefs of the European Council and European Parliament.

“We will hold the line and our unity will prevail.”

The European Commission president said the bloc would provide 700 million euros ($777 million), half of it immediately, to help manage the migrant situation.

In addition, the EU border agency Frontex will deploy a rapid intervention team including an additional 100 guards backed by coastal patrol vessels, helicopters and vehicles, she said.

“Our first priority is making sure that order is maintained at the Greek external border, which is also the European border,” von der Leyen told journalists.

“I am fully committed to mobilising all the necessary operational support to the Greek authorities,” she said, adding that Greece was acting as a “shield” for Europe.

Over 500 Frontex guards were currently deployed, and Greece could also receive assistance in medical teams, mobile shelters, tents and blankets, she said.

Von der Leyen insisted that “Turkey is not an enemy” but added: “people are not just means to reach a goal.”

‘Wake-up call’ for Europe

Earlier, Mitsotakis announced that Greek border forces had averted “over 24,000 attempts at illegal entry” by land and sea, making dozens of arrests.

“Europe has not been up to the task of dealing with the migration crisis,” he said.

“I hope this crisis will serve as a wake-up call for everyone to assume their responsibilities.”

The UN refugee agency has roughly estimated that there are now some 20,000 migrants massed across the 200-kilometre (125-mile) border with Turkey.

“This is a very rough assessment because the movement is continuous towards different sides,” said Stella Nanou, the UNHCR Representative in Greece.

Amid claims on the Turkish side that Greek security forces are shooting near migrants, European Council President Charles Michel said it was “crucial to act in a proportionate manner and to show respect for human dignity and international law”.

Greece has vehemently denied the allegations.

“No shots have been fired by Greek border forces against any individuals attempting to enter Greece illegally,” said government spokesman Stelios Petsas.

Some aid groups suspending work

Several aid groups on the Aegean island of Lesbos said Tuesday they were suspending work with refugees and evacuating personnel after attacks on staff.

“Once night falls, there are non-stop attacks on NGOs, on workers, on people who are here as volunteers,” said Douglas Herman, co-founder of the organisation Refocus.

“Most of those organisations right now have started to suspend their operations, some indefinitely,” he told AFP.

At the Greek border crossing of Kastanies, AFP reporters saw soldiers boarding migrants onto military vehicles. Other unmarked vans were also picking up migrants wandering on the streets.

Thousands have arrived at the frontier since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced last week that it would no longer stop them trying to enter Europe.

Athens has suspended asylum applications, and Mitsotakis on Tuesday said it was “painfully clear” that Turkey “has systematically encouraged and assisted tens of thousands of refugees and migrants to illegally enter Greece.”

“This is no longer a refugee problem. It is a blatant attempt by Turkey to use desperate people to promote its geopolitical agenda,” the Greek PM said.

European leaders have insisted Turkey abide by a 2016 deal to stop migrant departures in exchange for six billion euros in assistance.

Some Syrians have accused Turkish troops of pushing them across the frontier.

Von der Leyen said she had “compassion for the migrants that have been lured through false promises into this desperate situation.”

Turkey already hosts some four million refugees and faces another huge influx from Syria where the regime, backed by Russian air power, is pressing a violent offensive to retake the last rebel-held province of Idlib.

(AFP)

Tens of thousands of Catalan independence supporters gathered in Perpignan, southern France, on Saturday at a rally in support of exiled former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who called on the crowd to prepare for the “definitive struggle” for independence.

At around 30km from the Spanish border, it is the closest Puigdemont has been to Spain since he fled the country in October 2017 after calling a referendum on independence.

The referendum, which was declared illegal by Spanish courts, led to a short-lived declaration of independence by leaders in the restive northeastern region, plunging Spain into its biggest political crisis in decades.

Puigdemont, who is now a member of the European Parliament and lives in exile in Belgium, urged supporters waving Catalan flags not to give up on the fight for an independent Catalonia.

“We know that we won’t stop and they won’t stop us. We don’t have to wait for better times because they are here,” he said, to cheers from the crowd, which numbered around 70,000 according to local police, though organizers put the number closer to 150,000.

“Today we have stepped on Catalan soil as free people,” he said.

Perpignan, where Catalan is spoken, is a symbolic location for many Catalans, who call the region Northern Catalonia.

Supporters poured into the city, many crossing the border from Spain.

“Movements like this, with this magnitude, are always a positive thing,” said entrepreneur Joan Candoll, 50. “I see this as an act of unity, not a political campaign”.

Puigdemont made no mention of talks on the Catalan political crisis, which began this week between Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Catalan regional President Quim Torra, who was due to attend the Perpignan rally.

Puigdemont has been unable to return to Spain, where he is wanted on charges of sedition and misuse of public funds for his role in the failed independence bid. All extradition attempts by Spain have so-far failed, and he cannot be detained in France because of his MEP immunity.

By Haggai Fung Achuo

French state-owned energy giant EDF on Saturday began shutting down the country’s oldest nuclear power plant after 43 years in operation.

EDF said it had disconnected one of two reactors at Fessenheim, along the Rhine near France’s eastern border with Germany and Switzerland, at 2:00 am (0100 GMT) in the first stage of the complete closure of the plant.

The second reactor is to be taken off line on June 30 but it will be several months before the two have cooled enough and the used fuel can start to be removed.

The removal of the fuel is expected to be completed by the summer of 2023 but the plant will only be fully decommissioned by 2040 at the earliest.

Shutting down Fessenheim became a key goal of anti-nuclear campaigners after the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.

Experts have noted that construction and safety standards at Fessenheim, brought online in 1977, fall far short of those at Fukushima, with some warning that seismic and flooding risks in the Alsace region had been underestimated.

Despite a pledge by ex-president Francois Hollande just months after Fukushima to close the plant, it was not until 2018 that President Emmanuel Macron’s government gave the final green light.

“This marks a first step in France’s energy strategy to gradually re-balance nuclear and renewable electricity sources, while cutting carbon emissions by closing coal-fired plants by 2022,” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said earlier this week.

France will still be left with 56 pressurised water reactors at 18 nuclear power plants — only the United States has more reactors, at 98 — generating an unmatched 70 percent of its electricity needs.

The government confirmed in January that it aims to shut down 12 more reactors nearing or exceeding their original 40-year age limit by 2035, when nuclear power should represent just 50 percent of France’s energy mix.

But at the same time, EDF is racing to get its first next-generation reactor running at its Flamanville plant in 2022 — 10 years behind schedule — and more may be in the pipeline.

Source:  AFP

A man suspected of fatally shooting nine people in the southwestern German city of Hanau was found dead at his home hours after the attacks in and outside two shisha bars, police said on Thursday.

Another body was discovered at the home of the man in Hanau, a city east of the German financial hub of Frankfurt, where the shootings happened.

Police gave no details of the suspected gunman but said: “there are currently no indications of further perpetrators.” They did not give details of his possible motive or how he died, or specify why they believe “with a high degree of probability” that he was the assailant.

The number of dead in the shootings Wednesday evening rose to nine, a police statement said.

Officers sealed off and searched the apartment in Hanau’s Kesselstadt district, near the scene of one of the shootings, after following up witness statements on a getaway car. Police said work to confirm the identities of the two bodies at the home was still under way, and they couldn’t immediately give details either on them or the identities of the victims of the earlier shootings.

Earlier Thursday, police said that eight people were killed and around five wounded. They said a dark vehicle was seen leaving the location of the first attack and another shooting was reported at a scene about 2.5 kilometres (or 1.5 miles) away.

‘A terrible evening’

Police officers swarmed central Hanau, cordoning off the area of one of the shootings as a helicopter hovered overhead. A car covered in thermal foil also could be seen, with shattered glass next to it. Forensic experts in white overalls collected evidence.

Shisha bars are places where people gather to smoke flavored tobacco from Middle Eastern water pipes.

“This was a terrible evening that will certainly occupy us for a long, long time and we will remember with sadness,” Hanau Mayor Claus Kaminsky told the Bild newspaper. Lawmaker Katja Leikert, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right party who represents Hanau in the German parliament, tweeted that it was “a real horror scenario for us all.”

The mass-selling newspaper also reported that the suspect was a German citizen and that ammunition and gun magazines were found in his car. He had a firearms hunting licence, it added.

Hanau is in Hesse state and has about 100,000 inhabitants.

(FRANCE 24 with AP and REUTERS)

A Russian dissident artist who published screenshots of sexual images that forced President Emmanuel Macron’s candidate for Paris City Hall to pull out of the race was arrested in the French capital on Saturday, the prosecutor’s office said.

Benjamin Griveaux, one of Macron’s closest lieutenants, abandoned his bid to become mayor of Paris on Friday after it was alleged he sent sexual images of his genitals to a woman who is not his wife. Griveaux has not disputed that he sent the messages.

Pyotr Pavlensky, who has lived in exile in France, said he had posted the sex video to expose Griveaux’s « hypocrisy ».

The Russian artist is best known for works of performance art including nailing his scrotum to the ground in Moscow’s Red Square and setting fire to a door at the headquarters of Russia’s state security agency or the Bank of France.

Complaint for privacy violation

The prosecutor’s office said Pavlensky had been arrested and held for questioning at a police station in central Paris in connection with another case about violence perpetrated on New Year’s Eve.

It added that Griveaux had filed a complaint on Saturday afternoon for privacy violation and that an investigation had been opened.

Under French law, so-called « revenge porn », or the publishing of pornographic material without a person’s content, can be punished by up to two years in prison and a 60,000-euro ($65,000) fine.

Officials at Macron’s party on Saturday were still discussing who should replace Griveaux and run under the party’s banner in next month’s mayoral elections, and expected to have a name early next week, the party said in a statement.

(REUTERS)

Italian senators voted on Wednesday to lift immunity for far-right leader Matteo Salvini, opening the way for a potentially career-ending trial over accusations he illegally detained migrants at sea last year.

The decision gives magistrates in Sicily the go-ahead to press charges over his decision to keep 131 rescued migrants blocked aboard a coastguard ship for six days last July as he waited for other European Union states to agree to take them in.

Salvini, the head of Italy’s League party who was serving as interior minister at the time, could eventually face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty at the end of Italy’s tortuous legal process. Conviction could also bar him from political office, dashing his ambitions to lead a future government.

‘Head held high’

Salvini had refused to allow rescued migrants off the Gregoretti coast guard boat – where they had been languishing for about a week in insalubrious conditions – until a deal was reached with other European states to host them.

A Catania court accused him of “abuse of power” in blocking them on board from July 27 to July 31 last year, and of illegally detaining them.

Salvini insists the decision had the backing of the government and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

Before the debate began, Salvini took to Facebook to say he had his “head held high, with the calm conscience of those who have defended their land and people”.

“If a man is not ready to fight for his ideas, either his ideas are worthless, or he is,” Salvini wrote, quoting Ezra Pound, a 20th-century American poet known for his fascist sympathies.

Political ambitions at stake

Last month, fellow senators from Salvini’s right-wing League party, granting their leader’s wishes, voted in a Senate commission in favor of lifting the immunity. That paved the way for Wednesday’s vote in the entire Senate.

Any criminal case against Salvini could derail his ambitions to soon become Italy’s premier and return his euro-skeptic populist party back to power.

Prosecutors in Sicily had investigated Salvini for the Gregoretti vessel case in July 2019. Several such standoffs played out in the Mediterranean Sea while Salvini was interior minister.

Eventually, the prosecutors shelved the case. But another judicial body, the Tribunal of Ministers, decided to proceed.

Salvini’s League is now in the opposition after he pulled his party out of Conte’s government in August in a failed bid for an early election.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)

Two rail workers are killed and about 30 people injured on Thursday when a high-speed train derailed before dawn near Milan in northern Italy, authorities say.

The crash occurred just after 5:30 a.m. (4:30 GMT) near the town of Lodi, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Milan. 

“It was a serious accident that had a tragic end with the death of two rail workers” aboard the train, Lodi Prefect Marcello Cardona told reporters, who added that an investigation was underway.

Cardona said none of the injuries suffered were life-threatening and all casualties had been taken to hospital. The Lombardy region’s health department put the number of injured at 31.

“It could have been a lot worse,” Cardona said, adding that there were only 33 people on board the train. Only one person was in the first car and two people in the second when the accident occurred, he said.

“I thought I was dead,” a survivor told local newspaper Liberta from hospital in Piacenza where he was being treated for minor injuries. “I closed my eyes and prayed.”

“The train was going very fast, perhaps 300 kilometers per hour (around 200 miles per hour),” said the unnamed man in his 20s.

“Suddenly, I felt a violent blow. A really loud roar,” said the man who was traveling with a friend in the second carriage.

“We held hands tightly to avoid falling. The wagon overturned and while waiting for help we went out through a hole to save ourselves,” he said, adding that they were stuck on the crashed train for 15 minutes.

The interior minister has been informed and the prosecutor was already at the scene of the accident, the cause of which was unknown, he said.

Two helicopters, hundreds of firemen, police and other authorities descended on the open farmland area outside of Lodi.

“We are greatly saddened by the two deaths, the two rail workers, and we express our solidarity with the families,” said Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

“We can’t yet say anything” about the cause of the crash, he told journalists in Rome.

Ripped metal 

The Milan-Salerno train was en route to Bologna when it came off the tracks before dawn. 

Video images showed ripped metal at the front of the first car, where the engine separated from the train. The first car was flipped on its side and appeared to be still attached to the rest of the train. 

The engine car could be seen resting on its side on the other side of a nearby railway building several dozen meters away.

According to initial findings reported by the media, the engine went off the rails and struck a freight wagon on a parallel track before hitting the building.

Italian media reported that work had been done on the track on Wednesday night, but Cardona said it was premature to jump to conclusions on a link between that work and the accident.

“Line maintenance is done continually and it’s much too early to associate the accident to maintenance,” he said.

Dozens of high-speed trains on the north-south route were canceled following the derailment, while other trains were rerouted, adding an hour to the journey, operator Trenitalia said.

Italy’s last serious train accident occurred in January 2018, when three women died and about 100 passengers were injured when a packed train derailed near Milan due to poor track maintenance. 

Managers and employees of Italy’s state railway, RFI, as well as two former members of the national railway safety agency were charged with negligent homicide and other crimes.

(Source: AFP) 

Britain’s departure from the European Union was set in law Wednesday as, amid emotional scenes, the bloc’s parliament voted to ratify the divorce papers.

After half a century of sometimes awkward membership and three years of tense withdrawal talks, the UK will leave the EU at midnight Brussels time (2300 GMT) on Friday.

MEPs voted by 621 votes to 49 to pass the withdrawal agreement, which sees Britain leave the EU institutions but remain under most EU rules during a transition until the end of the year.

Following the vote, MEPs burst into a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne”, a traditional Scottish song of farewell.

The transition will see Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government try to negotiate an ambitious—unprecedented in the timeframe—free trade agreement with his 27 former partners remaining in the bloc.

“Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depth of love,” EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told the chamber, quoting British author George Eliot.

“We will always love you and we will never be far. Long live Europe.”

In other words, as French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said: “The hardest part lies ahead… we’re going to get down to brass tacks now.”

In the Brussels parliament, many MEPs made it clear that they were voting for the withdrawal deal not out of any support for Brexit, but to avoid the disruption of a chaotic no deal divorce.

Some expressed real anguish and regret, and pointed to Britain’s role not only in the development of the European unification project but also to its historic battles against tyranny on the continent.

“If we could stop Brexit by voting ‘no’ today I would be the first to recommend it,” former Belgian premier and chairman of the parliament’s Brexit steering group Guy Verhofstadt said.

“It is indeed a sad issue,” he said, turning to the World Wars of the first half of he last century. “We’re sad to see a country leaving that twice liberated us, twice has given its blood to liberate Europe.”

The day began with Britain’s permanent representative to the EU Tim Barrow—from Saturday to be its ambassador—handing back the withdrawal agreement signed by Johnson, to be stored in Brussels.

“This step ensures that the UK has fulfilled its legal obligations regarding our exit from the EU,” the British mission said.

Leaving the church

But it was still an emotional day in the European Parliament in Brussels, steeped in a mixture of nostalgia, political carnival and historical metaphor.

Nigel Farage, veteran MEP and leader of Britain’s Brexit Party, was in triumphant mood after two decades as a thorn in Brussels’ side.

After his final speech in parliament, in which he described Brexit as a victory for populism over “globalism”, Farage and his MEPs brandished British flags, in contravention of the rules, then left.

“We’re going to wave you goodbye,” he declared, as deputy speaker Mairead McGuinness cut his microphone.

“If you disobey the rules, you’ll get cut off,” she retorted.

At an earlier news conference, Farage said he had loved playing the “pantomime villain” in the Strasbourg assembly, feeding opposition to Europe at home with theatrical YouTube clips.

But he insisted on the seriousness of Brexit, comparing its significance to king Henry VIII taking Britain out of the Catholic church in 1534.

“He took us out of the Church of Rome, and we are leaving the Treaty of Rome,” he said, referring to the EU’s 1957 founding document.

Later in the day, Farage’s fellow MEPs gathered for the historic vote to incorporate the withdrawal agreement into EU law.

This was the last legislative act of the 73 remaining British MEPs, and departure was hard for some.

Bagpipe serenade

Iratxe Garcia Perez, the Spanish leader of the Socialist group, choked back tears as she said farewell to her British Labour Party comrades.

After Brexit the United Kingdom will be what the EU calls a “third country”, outside the union, but the political and economic drama will continue.

Britain and Europe will apply EU rules on trade and free movement of citizens until the end of the year, while negotiating a free trade agreement.

In the face of scepticism in EU capitals, Johnson insists he is optimistic that a comprehensive free trade deal can be done before the next cliff-edge.

But negotiations between the world’s sixth biggest economy and a 27-nation single market with a population of 450 million will be tricky

Fishing rights, residency and working rights for citizens, tariff free trade, access to Europe for Britain’s huge services sector: all will be on the table.

“We are considering a free trade agreement with zero tariffs and zero quotas. This would be unique. No other free trade agreement offers such access to our single market,” von der Leyen said.

“But the pre-condition is that European and British businesses continue to compete on a level playing field. We will not expose our companies to unfair competition,” she warned, to applause.

UK goes solo

Johnson’s government hopes more trade with the United States and Asian powers can help offset the costs of Brexit.

But the British premier was facing difficult talks on Wednesday with President Donald Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

Trump backed Brexit, but Washington opposed Johnson’s decision to allow Chinese telecoms giant to work on Britain’s 5G telecoms network despite security fears.

(AFP)

French police have evacuated President Emmanuel Macron from a theater in Paris after some protesters managed to enter the building, while many more were trying to enter.

Protesters chanting “Macron, resign” gathered outside the Les Bouffes du Nord theatre on Friday evening, after people shared on social media that the president was at the venue.

They were trying to enter the venue but the president was rushed out of the building, reportedly in a black car.

On the other side of capital, protesters blocked the entrance to the Louvre museum and forced the building to close Friday.

The museum’s Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, which was marking the 500th anniversary of the Italian master’s death, was also closed.

The incident occurred on the 44th day of strikes, which started in early December, against Macron‘s plan to overhaul the pension system that would see workers retiring later or facing reduced payouts.

This was the first time since then that the Louvre and its Leonardo exhibit were fully shut down.

The museum is visited by 30,000 people every day.

The weeks of protests and strikes have affected public transportation, disrupted schools, hospitals, courthouses and even opera houses and the Eiffel tower.

This is while unions have called for a seventh round of street rallies next Friday, when the pension plan is due to be presented to the Cabinet.

The government of Macron has already ruled out any possibility of abandoning the plan.

The president is already faced with a major challenge to his rule from the “Yellow Vest” protesters, who have been holding weekly demonstrations for more than a year.

According to a poll, published on Thursday, almost two- thirds of French people ‘don’t trust’ Macron.

The survey, conducted by Elabe for the Les Echos newspaper and Radio Classique, indicated that 63 percent of respondents “don’t trust” the president, down two points in one month. 

His government intends to present the pension reform bill on Friday so that it can be debated in parliament starting in mid February, with the aim of passing a law before the summer break.

Source: Presstv

French hardline CGT union leader Philippe Martinez said on Thursday unions had decided to hold further strikes and demonstrations on January 9 after a meeting with prime minister Édouard Philippe on pension reform plans during which “nothing changed”, Martinez said.

Unions oppose Macron’s plans to streamline France’s state pension system and push people to work until 64, instead of the legal retirement age of 62.

Five out of the eight unions leading the 15-day strike called on further actions and demonstrations on January 9, Martinez announced on Thurday.

“The prime minister is committed to the financial balance” of the pension system.“On this matter, there has been no change”, the union leader regretted. “CGT obviously does not share this view, so on behalf of the (CGT CGT, FO, CFE-CGC, Solidaires and FSU) unions, I can announce that a new day of actions will take place on January 9”, he added, saying that “The prime minister hasn’t heard what the street is saying”.

Prime minister Philippe said progress had been made on Thursday and announced he will hold roundtable discussions with union leaders again “on the first days of January”.

After the meeting, Philippe reaffirmed that the government remained fully committed to end special pension regimes. He also said at a press conference he hoped the pension reform law to be voted on before the summer.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)