German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called for stronger ties with France in order to ensure the European Union’s future a day after Britain triggered the formal process of leaving the bloc. Steinmeier visited Paris on Thursday on his first foreign trip as president since he was elected last month. He met French President Francois Hollande to discuss the path forward after the Brexit vote.

“I’m glad that the Germans and the French are ready to keep moving forward side by side,” he said in a joint statement with Hollande. “Whether we want it or not, Germany and France will have to assume a greater responsibility … to build Europeans’ hopes,” Steinmeier added.  For his part, Hollande said the two countries needed to move forward “arm in arm” to create “the Europe of tomorrow”.

Hollande warned against “the trap of nationalism” that EU counties faced, adding that the members needed to show greater commitment to EU solidarity. The two European heavyweights are encountering new challenges after Britain’s exit from the European Union.  On Thursday, Hollande told UK Prime Minister Theresa May on behalf of the 27 remaining EU member states that the conditions of the Brexit must be settled.

“First, we must begin discussions on the modalities of the withdrawal, especially on the rights of citizens and the obligations arising from the commitments that the United Kingdom has made,” Hollande told May on phone. After the conditions is settled, “we could then open discussions on the framework of the future relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union,” he said, according to a statement released by the Elysée Palace.

Downing Street, however, said it believed negotiations between London and Brussels regarding the Brexit and the conditions for future cooperation between Britain and the EU bloc “should take place in parallel.” May wrote in articles published in several European newspapers on Thursday morning that she wanted the UK’s new relationship with the EU to ensure the region’s security remained intact.

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UK Prime Minister Theresa May has triggered the formal, two-year process of withdrawing Britain from the European Union (EU), likely to be the most complex London has held since World War Two. Launching the process of Britain’s exit from the EU, popularly known as Brexit, was announced by the prime minister on Wednesday at the UK Parliament, after more than 40 years of membership in the bloc.

On behalf of May, British Ambassador to the EU Tim Barrow hand-delivered a letter to European Council President Donald Tusk in Brussels to officially notify the EU of Britain’s decision to withdraw from the bloc. The six page letter invoked Article 50 of the EU Treaty, the mechanism for starting Britain’s divorce process.  In her speech to Parliament, which was planned to coincide with the letter’s delivery, May urged the country to come together as it embarks on a “momentous journey.” “The Article 50 process is now under way and in accordance with the wishes of the British people, the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union,” she said. “This is a historic moment from which there can be no turning back.”

Brussels is expected to deliver its first response to London on Friday, followed by a summit of EU leaders on April 29 to adopt their own guidelines, possibly taking weeks before formal talks start. The United Kingdom held a referendum last June in which Britons voted by a 52-48 percent margin to leave the EU, the first member state ever to do so. However, there is a chance that the Brexit negotiations will break down and the UK will be forced to exit the EU without any deal in place. The EU is determined to preserve its own unity and has said that any Brexit agreement must not encourage other member states to leave the bloc.

Although Britain as whole voted to leave the EU, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay in the bloc. The Brexit referendum has prompted nationalists in Scotland and Northern Ireland to call for a referendum on independence from the United Kingdom. There is broad consensus among economists that Brexit will have a prolonged effect of the British economy and will ultimately diminish output, jobs and wealth to some degree. Many business leaders are also concerned about May’s decision to leave the EU single market, a free trade area of 500 million people, fearing its impact on jobs and economic growth.

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Scotland’s parliament has announced that it will resume its independence referendum debate next week, Tuesday. The session was suspended following Wednesday’s deadly attack in the British Parliament at Westminster in London, an incident which left four people, including a policeman and the assailant, dead and more than a dozen people injured.

Scotland’s first minister has urged lawmakers to support her plans to leave Britain. Nicola Sturgeon says remaining in the UK would jeopardize Edinburgh’s stance in Europe. Also the parliament announced that it would increase security measures with immediate effect following the attack.

“While there is no intelligence to suggest there is a specific threat to Scotland, Edinburgh or Holyrood (the devolved parliament), we have increased security with immediate effect at the Scottish Parliament as a precaution,” parliament’s chief executive office said in a statement. “We are aware of a developing situation at Westminster this afternoon and are monitoring matters very closely,” it added.

British Prime Minister Theresa May last week said she will not allow another independence vote before the Brexit negotiations as she has vowed to fight for what she has called the “precious union” of the United Kingdom. London’s permission for a new Scottish referendum is required since any legally binding vote on United Kingdom constitutional matters has to be authorized by the UK parliament. The call for a second referendum in Scotland came after Britons decided to exit the EU in last year’s vote.

Sturgeon, who argues that Scotland’s vote to keep its EU membership in last June’s referendum has been ignored in May’s Brexit arrangements so far, is seeking authority for a second referendum from the Scottish parliament, to be held in late 2018 or early 2019.

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The former president of the French National Assembly, Henri Emmanuelli has died. The news was made public on Tuesday in France. French media reports say if there is a man who will be affected by the departure of the celebrated French Socialist; it will be the former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo currently being detained at the International Criminal Court.

The former Ivorian leader constantly referred to him as my white twin and for good reason.  The two men seen here share the same date of birth. To be sure, both men were born on the 31^st of May 1945. Other affinities, more ideological ones contributed to bring the two leaders closer together.  A statement by the former Ivorian head of state through his spokesman Justin Katinan Koné is expected soonest.

By Chi Prudence Asong

The 84 year old Cameroonian dictator, Paul Biya and wife Chantal Biya shall on Monday 20^th of March 2017 begin a state visit to Italy. The visit comes at the invitation of his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella.

The Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, made public a press release stating that the visit will end on 22nd March 2017 but did not say if the CPDM Chairman will return home or jet to his second home in Swiss. President Paul Biya and his wife will be hosted in Rome – the political capital of Italy.

State radio and television reported that the visit will provide an opportunity to strengthen cooperation ties between Italy and Cameroon which came into focus a year ago when President Sergio Mattarella made a four day marathon trip to Cameroon. An agreement on visa exemption for holders of service and diplomatic passport was signed on the 17th March 2016.

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British Prime Minister Theresa May has blasted Scotland’s “obsession” with independence from the UK, saying the country needs to stay united as it withdraws from the European Union. Speaking to the Scottish Tory conference in Glasgow on Friday, May said it was a “personal priority” for her to keep all devolved UK states united. “We are four nations, but at heart one people,” she said. “The Union I am determined to strengthen and sustain is one that works for working people across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.”

The premier lashed out at the Scottish National Party (SNP)’s attempts to launch a new independence bid amid the Scottish Labour’s inaction. In a 2014 referendum, 55 percent of Scots voted against independence, but the discussions about the issue gained steam again following the Brexit vote.

“For too long a feeble and incompetent Scottish Labour opposition did nothing to scrutinize the SNP for their failures,” she said. “An SNP government interested only in stoking-up endless constitutional grievance and furthering their obsession with independence, at the expense of Scottish public services like the NHS and education, was given a free pass by Labour,” the PM added.

Earlier this week, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon warned May that she was pushing Scotland towards a new independence bid, noting that last year’s vote by 52 percent of Britons to end the UK’s membership in the European Union had changed the landscape.

This is while, Scottish voters overwhelmingly voted in last year’s EU referendum to remain a part of the 28-member bloc. Sturgeon has repeatedly asked for a “key role” for Scotland in the Brexit process, a request May has strongly turned down.

The problem grew bigger when May announced her plans for a “clean exit” from the EU, where the UK would lose its access to the EU single market against Scotland’s desire. British Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell said on February 22 that Scotland was leaving the EU whether or not it becomes an independent state.

May said in her speech that Scotland “makes a huge contribution to the UK’s global role” and should stay part of the country in today’s “changing world.”

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A new opinion survey in Germany suggests the country’s left-wing political parties can now gather enough votes to oust the ruling government of Chancellor Angela Merkel in September’s polls. The survey, conducted by the INSA institute and due to be published in the Bild newspaper on Tuesday, found that for the first instance “in a long time” a left-of-center coalition would gain sufficient support to force Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) out of office.

According to a report by the German daily prior to the release of the survey results, the country’s three left-leaning parties are now shown to have enough votes since the last election in 2013 to defeat rightist CDU and its sister Bavarian sister party in the next election.

In the 2013 electoral race, the leftist parties failed to form a coalition to defeat Merkel’s CDU party due to lingering opposition by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to alliances with the hard-left Linke Party. Support for all three leftist parties then dropped drastically following the 2013 poll and never recovered until this new survey.

The poll found that the SPD would win 31 percent of the vote, along with 10 percent support for the far-left Linke Party as well as seven percent of votes for the pro-environment Greens Party, adding up to a total of 48 percent and giving the edge to a leftist coalition in the September poll.

The right-wing parties, led by CDU’s 30-percent support, would then be left with 47 percent of the vote, the survey of 2,028 voters found. The remaining five percent would represent much smaller parties. Merkel, however, remains optimistic for a revival of support for her party before the fall election later in the year.

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Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been summoned to stand trial over allegations of illegally financing his doomed 2012 re-election campaign. The prosecution case against Sarkozy claims that the former president extensively exceeded a spending limit of $24 million by using false billing from a public relations company named Bygmalion, an informed source told AFP on Tuesday.

On February 3, Serge Tournaire, one of two judges in charge of the case, referred the case to the court after Sarkozy’s legal efforts to refute the allegations failed in December, the source said. Instead of billing Sarkozy himself, Bygmalion is said to have charged $19.7 to the former president’s right wing Republican Party – called UMP at the time. The trial will focus on whether Sarkozy himself was aware of the fraud, as Bygmalion’s executives have already acknowledged the existence of fraud and false accounting.

During a questioning session by the police in September 2015, Sarkozy passed the entire blame on Bygmalion and the UMP and slammed the allegations against himself as a “farce.” He claims that he did not remember ever being warned about the accounting. Apart from the Bygmalion case, Sarkozy has been fighting several other legal challenges since losing the 2012 polls to President Francois Hollande.

After a period of retirement, Sarkozy returned to politics to take the helm of the Republicans and sought the nomination to run for president in the upcoming elections in April and May 2017. However, he lost the nomination to his rivals in the Republican Party, former Prime Minister Alain Juppe and ultimate winner Francois Fillon, in November.

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UK lawmakers have gathered in Parliament to debate whether the British government can trigger Britain’s formal exit from the European Union. A bill authorizing UK Prime Minister Theresa May to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty starts its route through Parliament on Tuesday and is expected to pass overwhelmingly.

Although most lawmakers campaigned before the referendum to stay in the EU, most, including the leader of the opposition Labour Party, say they will vote to uphold the referendum’s result. Opening the debate, David Davis, secretary of state for exiting the EU, told parliamentarians they could not block the Brexit process.

The decision to leave the block is “a point of return already passed,” he said. “At the core of this bill lies a very simple question — do we trust the people or not?” Members of Parliament have been given until Wednesday to discuss the proposed legislation that would allow May to trigger the Brexit process.

The British government was forced to bring legislation to Parliament after the UK Supreme Court ruled it could not trigger Article 50 without approval from the Parliament.  In a landmark referendum held on June 23, nearly 52 percent of British voters, amounting to more than 17 million citizens, opted to leave the EU, a decision that sent shock waves throughout the world.

Those in favor of a British withdrawal from the EU argued that outside the bloc, London would be better positioned to conduct its own trade negotiations, better able to control immigration and free from what they believe to be excessive EU regulations and bureaucracy.

Those in favor of remaining in the bloc believed that leaving it would risk the UK’s prosperity, diminish its influence over world affairs, and result in trade barriers between the UK and the EU. Retaining access to the single market has been one of the major worries for UK businesses ever since the referendum.

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Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) has nominated Martin Schulz as its candidate to compete against conservative Angela Merkel for the post of chancellor in this year’s federal election. SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel announced on Tuesday at a press conference at the party headquarters in Berlin that the SPD committee had unanimously made the decision.

“Martin Schulz will be the SPD chancellor candidate for the 2017 federal elections. That is our unanimous party committee decision,” said Gabriel. Gabriel said Schulz “will also be the party chairman,” adding that the SPD is expected to confirm both his candidacy as well as his party leadership at a meeting on Sunday.

Following the announcement, Schulz said “it is an extraordinary honor that I, with pride and also with a natural humbleness, accept it and I will try and make the best out of it for our country.” Schulz also slammed Merkel austerity policies, which he said “have no doubt contributed to the deep crises in the EU since 2008, to the isolation of a dominant German government.”

Schulz, 61, a former president of the European Parliament, will run against Chancellor Merkel, 62, from the rival Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who will be running for a fourth term in the federal election slated for September 24.

The SPD and the CDU are the two main parties in the German parliament, known as the Bundestag.The SPD’s decision comes as opinion polls indicate Schulz is far more popular than Gabriel; however, other surveys suggest he still faces an extremely tough race against Merkel.

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