Tag Archives: EU

Pressure growing in EU to halt Turkish membership talks but no decision yet

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during a congress in Istanbul, Turkey,

By Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union foreign ministers will on Monday consider shelving membership talks with Turkey over what they see as its disturbing lurch away from democracy after a botched coup there, though there is no consensus for such a tough step yet.

Despite EU alarm at the scale of Ankara’s post-coup security crackdown, EU diplomats say they must keep talking to President Tayyip Erdogan to retain his crucial help in curbing migration to Europe and fighting Islamist militants in the Middle East.

But the fact that Austria, Luxembourg and some European lawmakers now openly call for suspending the Turkey talks marks a sea change in tone just eight months after the bloc promised Ankara the process would be sped up in exchange for its collaboration in reducing migration from its territory.

“Suspending membership talks with Turkey is not formally on the agenda but we expect some ministers to bring this up,” one EU official said of the 28 foreign ministers’ meeting scheduled in Brussels on Monday.

“It is true some deeply troubling things are happening in Turkey. But you have to ask yourself the question what exactly would we achieve by suspending the process now? How would that help? We need to keep communication channels open.”

An EU report this week accused Turkey of backsliding on its road to membership since the July coup attempt, since which Ankara has suspended, dismissed or arrested over 110,000 people including soldiers, judges, teachers, journalists and Kurdish leaders over alleged support of the putsch.

The EU’s top enlargement official said Turkey’s EU candidacy was now hanging in the balance.

“This is something that could happen,” one diplomat in Brussels said. “But not just yet, definitely not until EU leaders meet in December.”

Berlin, as well as several other EU capitals, have so far poured cold water on talk of aborting Turkey membership talks.

“COOL HEADS” NEEDED

“Yes, we have to be critical about developments in Turkey. But we also have to be cool-headed about it and not just jump in and get too much involved in criticizing Turkey’s domestic affairs,” another diplomat said.

“There is Turkey’s role in the region. But if we push too far we also risk being back to where we were last year on migration and it was tearing us apart.”

An EU-Turkey deal reached in March has cut to a trickle the number of refugees and migrants reaching Europe via Greece from Turkish shores after more than a million arrivals last year.

It has been sharply criticized by rights groups for undercutting international humanitarian standards. But it has also given breathing space to EU leaders under increasing popular pressure at home for failing to control the influx and embroiled in rows among themselves over how to handle it.

Turkey has told the EU it will have to “live with the consequences” if it halts membership talks.

Ankara’s EU membership has always been a long shot. Growing public unease about immigration and Islam in Europe, together with the post-coup clampdown in Turkey, make a Turkish entry into the EU even less likely in the forseeable future.

Turkey has set its sights on getting visa-free travel for its citizens to the EU by the end of the year in return for making sure migrants do not leave its shores for Europe. That prospect, however, is also looking increasingly dim.

Turkey reinstating death penalty would mark crossing a red line for EU leaders. “If Turkey pushes through death penalty legislation, then the halt of the accession process will be automatic,” a senior EU diplomat said.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald; writing by Gabriela Baczynska; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Europe gets Trump ‘wake-up call’, but can it step up?

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump greets his running mate Mike Pence during his election night rally in Manhattan, New York

By Alastair Macdonald and Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – For Europe, already reeling from Britain’s decision to leave its 28-member club, Donald Trump’s election introduces a host of new uncertainties it is ill-equipped to tackle.

Preoccupied by a growing anti-establishment mood across the continent, the European Union’s leaders gave little thought to the idea a man dubbed “the pioneer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement” by Germany’s deputy chancellor could take power in the United States.

The day before, one of the EU’s leaders had confided a contingency plan of “crossing ourselves and praying”. The day after, as they pledged to work with Trump, a senior EU diplomat summed up their dilemma.

“Since we have refused to really think through this scenario, we have a list of questions that need to be answered, but almost everything is a big unknown,” the envoy told Reuters.

For some, Europe must now step up and take more responsibility, both for its own security and the wider world, if the entrepreneur makes good on campaign talk of limiting U.S. defense commitments and other engagements abroad.

Trade relations, climate change, Russia and tackling Islamic State are all areas where Europe may have to forge its own path if a Trump-led Washington pulls back from the global stage.

“This is another wake-up call,” said Manfred Weber, a German ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel who leads conservatives in the European Parliament. “It is now up to Europe. We must be more self-confident and assume more responsibility.

“We do not know what to expect from the USA.”

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders told Reuters a Trump White House “may help some people in Europe understand that we need to reinforce defense cooperation among Europeans”.

But EU leaders know that euroskeptic radicals, inspired by Trump and Britain’s vote to leave the bloc in June, could exploit any attempt to tighten cooperation to condemn them to the same ignominious electoral fate as Hillary Clinton.

East Europeans fret President Vladimir Putin may use Trump’s vow to improve ties with sanctions-hit Moscow to extend Russian influence, as in Ukraine. The Norwegian head of NATO felt obliged to spell out that Trump could not renege on security guarantees.

“PUTTING ON A BRAVE FACE”

“Europe cannot blink after Brexit, after the election of Donald Trump,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said of the political earthquake in Washington, which, 27 years to the day since the fall of the Berlin Wall, continues to provide the lion’s share of military muscle to defending the continent.

“Europe must stand together more, be more active and go more on the offensive,” Ayrault said. “Even just to protect itself.”

Privately, senior officials question its ability to do that.

“Europe will need to do more to take care of its own – but are we capable?” a senior European diplomat asked. The EU has been riven with tensions over economic policy, the Syrian refugee crisis and Britain’s exit, and remains very divided.

Another senior EU diplomat told Reuters: “This changes the business model of the EU. But we have no idea how.”

He dismissed suggestions a U.S. withdrawal from some engagements could offer benefits by obliging Europeans to invest more in their cooperation and spend more on their own defense: “That’s not a silver lining. That’s putting on a brave face.”

EU foreign ministers called a special meeting over dinner on Sunday to discuss what Trump’s America will mean for Europe.

Giles Merritt of pro-EU Brussels think-tank Friends of Europe said leaders had no time to lose to “head off trouble” and could revive their own Union by helping defend global stability. They “must … fashion a common European response … before President Trump sets foot in the Oval Office”, he said.

CHANGE THE WHOLE SYSTEM?

It was a result few in Europe had wanted, barring Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orban. European leaders — and Obama Administration envoys — were reduced to highlighting the lowest common denominators of shared history and ideals in giving assurances of continued cooperation.

After a U.S. campaign marked by accusations of racism and sexism, Merkel, preparing for her own election battle next year, said she would work with Trump on the basis of shared values that included “respecting … people’s dignity regardless of their origin, the color of their skin, religion (or) gender”.

Donald Tusk, the former Polish premier who chairs EU summits, responded to what he called “new challenges” and “uncertainty over the future of our Transatlantic relations” by stressing centuries of blood ties across the ocean.

French President Francois Hollande stressed a need for even stronger Transatlantic cooperation to tackle climate change, Islamist security threats and the global economy.

Washington’s ambassador to NATO could offer no detail on the incoming administration’s policy but reassured European peers in Brussels that NATO had always been a “bipartisan venture”.

Anthony Gardner, outgoing President Barack Obama’s envoy to the EU, said change was possible in areas including sanctions on Russia, support for Ukraine, nuclear proliferation, trade, NATO and the Middle East, but added: “Let’s wait to see who appoints as his key advisers.”

He did not see Washington abandoning a key partner for the past 50 years, but his reassurance did not quell a sense of near panic among some senior officials in Brussels.

One said grimly: “This is bad. Brexit was a stupid and damaging mistake but the people running it are not complete lunatics. Now we have a populist in power who can change the whole system as we know it.”

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

At odds over Brexit, UK nations hold ‘frustrating’ talks on common stance

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa

By Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May tried to persuade the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on Monday to work with her government on a common Brexit negotiating position, but the Scottish leader dismissed the meeting as “deeply frustrating”.

May says that while the devolved governments of the UK’s three smaller nations should give their views on what the terms of Brexit should be, they must not undermine the UK’s strategy by seeking separate settlements with the EU.

“I don’t know what the UK’s negotiating position is because they can’t tell us,” Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said after talks at May’s Downing Street office.

“I can’t undermine something that doesn’t exist, it doesn’t appear to me at the moment that there is a UK negotiating strategy,” she told Sky News television.

While England and Wales voted for Brexit in a June referendum, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU, setting the devolved governments in Edinburgh and Belfast on a collision course with the UK’s central government in London.

This could lead to a constitutional crisis, and potentially to Scottish independence and renewed political tensions in Northern Ireland.

At the meeting with Sturgeon and the Welsh and Northern Irish leaders, May proposed setting up a new body to give the three devolved governments, which have varying degrees of autonomy from London, a formal avenue to express their views.

“Working together, the nations of the United Kingdom will make a success of leaving the European Union — and we will further strengthen our unique and enduring union as we do so,” May said in a statement after the talks.

But Sturgeon struck a very different tone as she emerged.

“What I’m not prepared to do … is stand back and watch Scotland driven off a hard Brexit cliff edge because the consequences in lost jobs, lost investment and lower living standards are too serious,” she said.

CONFLICTING PRIORITIES

The British government, which has promised to kick off formal divorce talks with the EU before the end of March, has said it will negotiate a bespoke deal on behalf of the whole United Kingdom with the bloc’s other 27 members.

Sturgeon said she would make specific proposals over the next few weeks to keep Scotland in the single market even if the rest of the UK left, and that May had said she was prepared to listen to options.

“So far those words are not matched by substance or actions and that is what has got to change,” Sturgeon said.

Sturgeon, head of the Scottish National Party, has said her government is preparing for all possibilities, including independence from the UK, after Britain leaves the EU. She wants each of the UK’s four assemblies to get a vote on the proposed negotiating package.

In Northern Ireland, there are fears that Brexit could undermine a 1998 peace deal and lead to the reintroduction of unpopular and cumbersome controls on the border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member.

Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster said the devolved nations had to be at “the heart of the process” so that issues relevant to them could be tackled as they arose.

Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones said it was difficult for the devolved administrations to influence the process when there was so much uncertainty over what the government was seeking.

Jones said he had argued very strongly for “full and unfettered access” to the EU’s single market, which is in doubt because EU leaders say it would require Britain to continue to accept EU freedom of movement rules.

One of the central planks of the pro-Brexit campaign was that exiting the EU would give Britain greater control over immigration and help reduce the numbers arriving in the country.

(Additional reporting by Elisabeth O’Leary, William James and Kate Holton; Editing by Estelle Shirbon and Robin Pomeroy)

France confirms Calais migrant camp shutdown

Migrants pass by a road sign as they leave the northern area of the camp called the "Jungle" in Calais, France,

By Elizabeth Pineau

CALAIS, France (Reuters) – President Francois Hollande said on Monday that France will completely shut down “the Jungle” migrant camp in Calais by year-end and called on London to help deal with the plight of thousands of people whose dream is ultimately to get to Britain.

“The situation is unacceptable and everyone here knows it,” Hollande said on a visit to the northern port city where as many as 10,000 migrants from war-torn countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan live in squalor.

“We must dismantle the camp completely and definitively,” he said.

France plans to relocate the migrants in small groups around the country but right-wing opponents of the Socialist leader are raising the heat ahead of the election in April, accusing him of mismanaging a problem that is ultimately a British one.

The migrants want to enter Britain, but the government in London argues that migrants seeking asylum need to do so under European Union law in the country where they enter.

Immigration was one of the main drivers of Britain’s vote this year to leave the EU. It is also likely to be major factor in France’s presidential election.

If France stopped trying to prevent migrants from entering Britain, Britain would ultimately find itself obliged to deal with the matter when asylum-seekers land on its shores a short distance by ferry or subsea train from France’s Calais coast.

Hollande bluntly reminded Britain of that, saying that he expected London to fully honor agreements on managing a flow of migrants.

“I also want to restate my determination that the British authorities play their part in the humanitarian effort that France is undertaking and that they continue to do that in the future,” Hollande said.

London and Paris have struck agreements on issues such as the recently begun construction of a giant wall on the approach road to Calais port in an attempt to try to stop migrants who attempt daily to board cargo trucks bound for Britain.

“What happens in the Jungle is ultimately a matter for the French authorities, what they choose to do with it,” a British government spokesman said.

“Our position is very clear: we remain committed to protecting the shared border that we have in Calais,” the spokesman said. He added: “The work that we do with France to maintain the security of that border goes on and will go on, irrespective of what happens to the Jungle camp.”

(Additional reporting by Paul Sandle; Writing by Brian Love; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Brexit not the end of European Union, Juncker says

EC President Jean-Claude Juncker

By Alastair Macdonald and Robin Emmott

STRASBOURG (Reuters) – The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, sought on Wednesday to rally support for the European Union, saying the bloc battered by the UK Brexit referendum was not about to break up despite its existential crisis.

In setting out the Commission’s plans for the first time since the UK voted to exit the EU on June 23, Juncker highlighted the British referendum as a warning that the EU faces a battle for survival against nationalism in Europe.

“The European Union doesn’t have enough union,” Juncker told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, noting his own executive was limited in its response to problems by division among states that was the worst he had seen in three decades in EU politics.

“There are splits out there and often fragmentation exists,” he said. “That is leaving scope for galloping populism.”

But he underlined he believed the world’s biggest trade bloc was still an important force. “The EU as such is not at risk.”

Proof of that, Juncker said, was the success of a new European investment fund that the former Luxembourg premier proposed to double to 630 billion euros ($707 billion) by 2022 to help with a sharp fall in spending since the global financial crisis, helping projects from airports to broadband networks.

The 48-minute speech drew a standing ovation from the main parties in an assembly dominated by supporters of closer European integration, but there was scorn from eurosceptics, including Marine Le Pen, the French National Front leader, and Nigel Farage, the triumphant Brexit campaigner from UKIP.

The pro-Brexit British Conservative leader, Syed Kamall was also dismissive: “Today was billed as a relaunch, but sadly it’s fundamentally the same mantra we’ve heard year after year,” he said, criticizing plans for more EU military cooperation — something long blocked by Britain, whose voice no longer counts.

AFRICA FUND

Juncker also wanted to extend the fund to the private sector in Africa to help curb emigration to Europe, starting with a pot of 44 million euros that could also be doubled later on.

An Africa fund was part of Juncker’s efforts to stress a more positive agenda, particularly over the migration crisis that has deeply divided the European Union. He also had veiled criticism of eastern European countries unwilling to take in refugees from North Africa and the Middle East.

“Solidarity must come from the heart. It cannot be forced,” Juncker said.

But the Juncker address offered few clues to the talks with London that the EU insists cannot start until Prime Minister Theresa May formally sets starts a two-year countdown to British departure. Juncker urged that to be done quickly and reiterated the EU negotiating position that Britain could not retain its full EU market access if it blocks free immigration from the EU.

“There can be no a la carte access to the single market,” he said of British hopes to cut immigration and keep free trade.

A summit of the 27 EU leaders in Bratislava on Friday is also unlikely to shed much light on the Brexit issue. Juncker will travel there to urge national leaders to remember the big picture and stop their “bickering”.

“What are we instilling in terms of values in our children. Is this a union that has forgotten its past, has no vision for the future? Our children deserve better,” Juncker said, speaking of his own father, a war veteran who died last month.

BORDER GUARDS

With Germany and France both facing major elections in the coming year, major changes in the Union are unlikely, but EU officials are concerned that left-right political tensions over fiscal policy in the euro zone or divisions over taking in refugees will jeopardize the cohesion of the bloc.

Juncker also urged states to complete the setting up of a European Border and Coast Guard, a project driven by last year’s chaotic arrival of over a million migrants and refugees, and proposed new cooperation among EU armies, as well as pushing for an acceleration of capital markets union.

Claiming success in fostering investment by the application of seed capital and guarantees from the EU and national governments, the Commission has put the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI) at the heart of its economic policy.

Set up last year to run for three years until 2018 with a target of mobilizing 315 billion euros of investment, the current EFSI target is based on 21 billion euros of EU money being leveraged 15 times by other investors.

However, as the EU’s current, seven-year budget program ends in 2020, the total target will rise to 500 billion euros for five years and the Commission will call on member states to add to their contributions.

Brussels says the fund could also serve to bolster Internet connectivity across the bloc.

“We propose today to equip every European city with wireless internet,” Juncker said, revealing the kind of project he hopes can help build some love for the EU among ordinary voters.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, Alissa de Carbonnel, Jan Strupczewski, Marilyn Haigh, Francesco Guarascio, Foo Yun Chee and Robin Emmott in Brussels; Writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

North Korea conducts fifth and largest nuclear test, drawing broad condemnation

South Korean emergency meeting

* Test seen as North’s most powerful yet

* Japan protests, sends jets to monitor for radiation

* China begins emergency radiation testing

* South accuses North of “maniacal recklessness”

* UN Security Council to hold closed-door meeting Friday –
dips

(Adds UN, CTBTO estimate, further condemnations)

By Ju-min Park and Jack Kim

SEOUL, Sept 9 (Reuters) – North Korea conducted its fifth
and biggest nuclear test on Friday and said it had mastered the
ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up
a threat that its rivals and the United Nations have been
powerless to contain.

The blast, on the 68th anniversary of North Korea’s
founding, was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima,
according to some estimates, and drew condemnation from the
United States as well as China, Pyongyang’s main ally.

Diplomats said the United Nations Security Council would
discuss the test at a closed-door meeting on Friday, at the
request of the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Under 32-year-old dictator Kim Jong Un, North Korea has
accelerated the development of its nuclear and missile
programmes, despite U.N. sanctions that were tightened in March
and have further isolated the impoverished country.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, in Laos after a summit
of Asian leaders, said Kim was showing “maniacal recklessness”
in completely ignoring the world’s call to abandon his pursuit
of nuclear weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama, aboard Air Force One on his way
home from Laos, said the test would be met with “serious
consequences”, and held talks with Park and with Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe, the White House said.

China said it was resolutely opposed to the test and urged
Pyongyang to stop taking any actions that would worsen the
situation. It said it would lodge a protest with the North
Korean embassy in Beijing.

There were further robust condemnations from Russia, the
European Union, NATO, Germany and Britain.

North Korea, which labels the South and the United States as
its main enemies, said its “scientists and technicians carried
out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a
nuclear warhead,” according to its official KCNA news agency.

It said the test proved North Korea was capable of mounting
a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, which it
last tested on Monday when Obama and other world leaders were
gathered in China for a G20 summit.

Pyongyang’s claims of being able to miniaturise a nuclear
warhead have never been independently verified.

Its continued testing in defiance of sanctions presents a
challenge to Obama in the final months of his presidency and
could become a factor in the U.S. presidential election in
November, and a headache to be inherited by whoever wins.

“Sanctions have already been imposed on almost everything
possible, so the policy is at an impasse,” said Tadashi Kimiya,
a University of Tokyo professor specialising in Korean issues.

“In reality, the means by which the United States, South
Korea and Japan can put pressure on North Korea have reached
their limits,” he said.

UNPRECEDENTED RATE

North Korea has been testing different types of missiles at
an unprecedented rate this year, and the capability to mount a
nuclear warhead on a missile is especially worrisome for its
neighbours South Korea and Japan.

“The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable the
DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of
smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher
strike power,” KCNA said, referring to the country’s formal
name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

It was not clear whether Pyongyang had notified Beijing or
Moscow of its planned nuclear test. Senior officials from
Pyongyang were in both capitals this week.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she
had no information to provide when asked if China had advance
warning of the test, and would not be drawn on whether China
would support tougher sanctions against its neighbour.

Although Beijing has criticised North Korea’s nuclear and
missile tests, it has repeatedly expressed anger since the
United States and South Korea decided in July to deploy the
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system
in the South.

China calls THAAD a threat to its own security and will do
nothing to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table on
its nuclear programme.

Preliminary data collected by the Vienna-based Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), which monitors
nuclear tests around the world, indicates the magnitude – around
5 – of the seismic event detected in North Korea on Friday was
greater than a previous one in January.

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute
of International Studies said the highest estimates of seismic
magnitude suggested this was North Korea’s most powerful nuclear
test so far.

He said the seismic magnitude and surface level indicated a
blast with a 20- to 30-kilotonne yield. Such a yield would make
this test larger than the nuclear bomb dropped by the United
States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two.

“That’s the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30kt, at least.
Not a happy day,” Lewis told Reuters.

South Korea’s military put the force of the blast at 10
kilotonnes, which would still be the North’s most powerful
nuclear blast to date.

“The important thing is, that five tests in, they now have a
lot of nuclear test experience. They aren’t a backwards state
any more,” Lewis said.

(Reporting by Jack Kim, Ju-min Park, James Pearson, Se Young
Lee, Nataly Pak, and Yun Hwan Chae in SEOUL; Additional
reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, Kaori Kaneko and Linda
Sieg in TOKYO, Kirsti Knolle in VIENNA and Eric Beech and
Michelle Nichols in WASHINGTON; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing
by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Ian Geoghegan)

EU ministers seek to ease tensions with Turkey

EU and Turkey flags

By Gabriela Baczynska

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) – The European Union must mend ties with Turkey, Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak said on Friday, as the bloc’s 28 ministers met to discuss a fraught relationship that has soured further following a failed coup in Ankara.

Turkey has accused the EU of being slow and half-hearted in its condemnation of the failed coup, while hurrying to criticize President Tayyip Erdogan for a purge of officials from police and army to journalists and academics that followed.

Lajcak, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, is hosting his 27 fellow ministers in Bratislava, where they will also meet Turkish EU minister Omer Celik on Saturday. The bloc is seeking to retain Turkish co-operation in slowing a flow of refugees from war zones including Syria into EU states.

“It’s not normal that after the failed coup when we expressed the strong solidarity with the elected leaders of Turkey, instead of getting closer to each other, there is mutual frustration,” Lajcak told reporters.

“Turkey is an important partner, we need to clarify what it is that what we want from Turkey and with Turkey and then I expect that after tomorrow’s meeting we will help to improve, normalize the atmosphere between the EU and Turkey.”

MIGRANT DEAL

Turkey blamed the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen for the attempted coup, in which more than 200 people were killed, and went on to detain or dismiss tens of thousands of people for allegedly sympathizing with him.

Some in the EU were skeptical and believed Ankara was using the failed coup as a pretext to go after Erdogan critics.

The worsening atmosphere in EU-Turkey ties triggered worry that Ankara could walk away from a migration deal, which sharply cut the number of migrants and refugees reaching Europe, giving a much-needed breathing space to EU leaders after the mass influx of 2015.

But there are signals the EU’s tone on Turkey is softening after the summer break. One indication is that a senior lawmaker with the European Parliament — a body often very critical of Turkey’s track-record on human rights and rule of law — said this week that the EU might have “underestimated” the gravity of the failed coup and urged dialogue with Ankara.

In Brussels, a senior EU official said many have grown to believe the situation in Turkey would be way worse had the coup succeeded.

But for all the conciliatory signals coming from the EU side, many ministers arriving in Bratislava still stressed the need to combine cooperation with Turkey with pressuring Ankara to raise democratic standards.

“Part of this tensions are coming from misunderstandings and we have to slow down these,” Italy’s Paolo Gentiloni said.

“Other issues are very serious and so the support to Turkish authorities cannot be separated from our commitment to the human rights and the rule of law. We have to balance the two.”

(Additional reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova in Bratislava and Alastair Macdonald in Brussels; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Swiss tell EU: Hands off veterans’ assault rifles

Participants fire their infantry and assault rifles during the traditional 'Ruetlischiessen' (Ruetli shooting) competition at the Ruetli meadow in central Switzerland

By John Miller

ZURICH (Reuters) – Friction between Switzerland and the European Union over the bloc’s plans to tighten gun control following a rise in militant attacks could turn into another serious snag in ties already tested by Swiss efforts to curb immigration.

The proposed directive, which applies to non-EU member Switzerland only because it is part of Europe’s Schengen open border system, has raised hackles among the Swiss, who resent intervention from Brussels.

Christoph Blocher, a leading voice of the Swiss right and a eurosceptic, says Switzerland should consider abandoning Europe’s Schengen system of passport-free travel if the Swiss people rejected the proposed measures in a referendum.

Drafted after militants killed scores in attacks in Paris last year, the EU plans on gun control aimed to curb online weapons sales and impose more restrictions on assault weapons.

But the initial proposal provoked an outcry in Switzerland because it meant a ban on the long Swiss tradition of ex-soldiers keeping their assault rifles.

Participants use an umbrella to protect their infantry and assault rifles against rain during the traditional 'Ruetlischiessen' (Ruetli shooting) competition at the Ruetli meadow in central Switzerland

Participants use an umbrella to protect their infantry and assault rifles against rain during the traditional ‘Ruetlischiessen’ (Ruetli shooting) competition at the Ruetli meadow in central Switzerland November 6, 2013. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo

Then, two months ago, Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga returned from meetings in Brussels saying she had successfully negotiated against such a ban. But the fine print was more complicated: EU members demanded concessions including psychological tests and club membership.

Swiss gun rights proponents are now complaining this could disarm thousands of law-abiding citizens and that it would encroach on Switzerland’s heritage and national identity that includes a well-armed citizenry.

“When conflicts arise, Switzerland must put its sovereignty first,” said Blocher, a businessman and vice president of the SVP, which is the country’s biggest party. “In an emergency, Switzerland should be ready to exit Schengen.”

Switzerland has one of the highest rates of private gun ownership in Europe, with nearly 48 percent of households owning a gun. In France, there are about 30 weapons per 100 people, while the figure in the Great Britain is far lower, at 6.7 guns per 100 civilians, according to the Australian-based think tank GunPolicy.org.

However, Swiss gun-related crime is low and the high number of privately owned guns harks back to a long tradition of self-defence and to the Swiss policy of near-universal conscription.

In 2015, 11 percent of the 20,600 soldiers who left the Swiss Army opted to keep their assault rifles which upon departure are modified to fire single shots. The number of soldiers choosing to keep their weapons has been declining for several years.

Switzerland’s grassroots gun lobby ProTELL, named after the 14th-century folk hero William Tell, said it will take the matter to voters if the European gun restrictions result in stricter ownership standards on Swiss soil.

Under Switzerland’s system of direct democracy, groups like ProTELL can gather signatures and put such matters before voters.

“With our direct democracy, Swiss people are accustomed to having the last word,” said ProTell’s Dominik Riner. “We’re opposed to any and all efforts to make current weapons laws more restrictive.”

The gun control issue comes as Switzerland’s EU ties are strained on multiple fronts.

The two sides are negotiating immigration curbs after Swiss voters in 2014 backed quotas on European workers. A failure to agree could mean the collapse of bilateral accords with Swiss’ main trading partner.

Outlines of any deal may emerge when European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker visits on Sept. 19, but the clock is ticking: Switzerland has said it may enact unilateral curbs by February 2017.

Europe plans to finalize its gun directive later this year.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Bacynska in Brussels; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Migrant relocation plan must be bigger and move faster according to U.N.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi meets with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at the Maximos Mansion in Athens

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS (Reuters) – A European Union scheme to relocate migrants and refugees from frontline countries Greece and Italy to other member states must be bigger and move faster, the U.N. refugee chief said in Athens on Wednesday.

The program, devised last year, was intended to relocate 160,000 from Greece and Italy to other European countries over two years but fewer than 4,000 people have moved so far.

Some central European member had fought the scheme, with Hungary and Slovakia challenging the decision in EU courts.

“I will certainly continue to advocate on behalf of the refugees, on behalf of the states hosting them – Italy and Greece principally – for this program to be bigger and to be accelerated,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told reporters.

“It is one example of European solidarity and cooperation that can and must work so we need to put all our energy in trying to make it work.”

Italy’s interior minister said on Tuesday that Germany had agreed to take in hundreds of migrants who are blocked in Italy.

Asked if the program could still work, Grandi said: “I hope that it will. Because in fact it must work.”

Grandi was speaking after a visit to a Syrian family from Aleppo, living in an Athens apartment under a scheme launched by the UNHCR and EU Commission.

The family of seven – a mother, two grandparents and four children – were displaced for years inside Syria before fleeing to Europe this summer. They are all relocation candidates.

“They left behind a good life to come here and to escape from the war,” said Sofia, whose family owns the apartment and who lives with her own family in the flat above, urging other Greeks to open their homes to refugees and migrants.

“We could have be in their shoes,” she said. She declined to give her family name.

The family are among more than 58,000 refugees and migrants, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, who have arrived in Greece since March hoping to move further north through Europe but who ended up stranded by border closures in the Balkans.

Most live in difficult, unsanitary camps across the country. Greece is also seeking new facilities to alleviate overcrowding at centres on five islands.

During his three-day visit to Athens, the second this year, Grandi said the UNHCR would keep pushing the EU for more support.

But he also underlined that efforts to end the conflict in Syria and other war-torn countries should be stepped up.

“Refugees are mostly the result of unresolved conflict and until and unless we solve those conflicts the risk of new influxes and new emergencies cannot be excluded,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Gina Kalovyrna; Editing by Alison Williams)

Give us EU visa freedom in October or abandon migrant deal, Turkey says

urkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks during a news conference with the Adviser to Pakistan's Prime Minister on National Security and Foreign Affairs,

By Michelle Martin and Humeyra Pamuk

BERLIN/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey could walk away from its promise to stem the flow of illegal migrants to Europe if the European Union fails to grant Turks visa-free travel to the bloc in October, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a German newspaper.

His comments in Bild’s Monday edition coincide with rising tension between Ankara and the West following the July 15 failed coup attempt. Turkey is incensed by what it sees as an insensitive response from Western allies to the failed putsch in which 240 people, many of them civilians, were killed.

Europe and the United States have been worried by the crackdown following the coup. Some Western governments are concerned this could affect stability in the NATO member and suspect that President Tayyip Erdogan is using the purges as an excuse to quash dissent.

Asked whether hundreds of thousands of refugees in Turkey would head to Europe if the EU did not grant Turks visa freedom from October, Cavusoglu told Bild: “I don’t want to talk about the worst case scenario – talks with the EU are continuing but it’s clear that we either apply all treaties at the same time or we put them all aside.”

Visa-free access to the EU – the main reward for Ankara’s collaboration in choking off an influx of migrants into Europe – has been subject to delays due to a dispute over Turkish anti-terrorism legislation, as well as Ankara’s crackdown.

Brussels wants Turkey to soften the anti-terrorism law, which Ankara says it cannot change, given multiple security threats which include Islamic State militants in neighboring Syria and Kurdish militants in its mainly Kurdish southeast.

European Commissioner Guenther Oettinger has said he does not see the EU granting Turks visa-free travel this year due to Ankara’s crackdown after the failed military coup.

Cavusoglu said treaties laid out that all Turks would get visa freedom in October, adding: “It can’t be that we implement everything that is good for the EU but that Turkey gets nothing in return.”

A spokesman for the European Commission declined to comment on the interview directly but said the EU continued to work together with Turkey in all areas of cooperation.

THOUSANDS DETAINED

Selim Yenel, Turkey’s ambassador to the EU, said last week that efforts were continuing to find a compromise with the EU on visa liberalization and he thought it would be possible to handle this in 2016.

Since the coup, more than 35,000 people have been detained, of whom 17,000 have been placed under formal arrest, and tens of thousands more suspended. Turkish authorities blame the failed putsch on U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers.

Amid rising tension with the West, Turkey has sought to normalize relations with Russia, sparking fears in the West that Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin might use a rapprochement to exert pressure on Washington and the EU and stir tensions within NATO.

Asked if Turkey would leave NATO, Cavusoglu told Bild that while Turkey remained one of the biggest supporters of the 28-nation Western alliance, it was also looking at other options.

“But it’s clear that we also need to cooperate with other partners on buying and selling weapon systems because some NATO partners refuse to allow us to sell air defense systems for example or to exchange information,” he said.

Over the weekend, Turkey summoned Austria’s charge d’affaires in Ankara over what it said it was an “indecent report” about Turkey on a news ticker at Vienna airport.

“Turkey allows sex with children under the age of 15,” read a headline on an electronic news ticker at the airport, images circulated on social media showed.

In a statement, Turkey’s foreign ministry said it was “regrettable” that an international airport at the heart of Europe was used as “a tool … in spreading such irresponsible, twisted and inaccurate messages”.

It said the publication of such “slandering” news reports were encouraged by recent comments from Austrian politicians.

Cavusoglu this month referred to Austria as the “capital of radical racism” after Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern suggested ending EU accession talks with Turkey.

(Additional reporting by Julia Fioretti in Brussels; writing by David Dolan; Editing by Paul Carrel and Richard Balmforth)