Tag Archives: EU

Germany must lift border controls, EU executive says

FILE PHOTO: Syrian refugees arrive at the camp for refugees and migrants in Friedland, Germany April 4, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Germany, Austria, Denmark and Norway should lift border controls within six months, the European Commission said on Tuesday, hours after Sweden said it was also planning to end frontier checks.

Part of the European Union’s response to a surge of refugees and migrants in 2015, the bloc allowed controls in its passport-free area, despite concerns about the impact on trade, but EU home affairs commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said they should now end.

“The time has come to take the last concrete steps to gradually return to a normal functioning of the Schengen area,” he said of the passport-free area named after a town in Luxembourg and meant to be a symbol of free movement in the bloc.

“Schengen is one of the greatest achievements of the European project. We must do everything to … protect it,” Avramopoulos said in a speech.

More than a million people sought asylum in Europe’s rich north in 2015, mostly in Germany but also in large numbers in Sweden, straining the capacity of countries to cope.

A contentious deal with Turkey to stop Syrian refugees from reaching Greece and the overland route to Germany, in return for EU funds, has reduced flows to a trickle, although thousands of migrants still try to reach Europe from Libya via sea routes.

The Swedish government said on Tuesday it would remove ID checks on journeys from Denmark into Sweden. However, its policy was not immediately clear after it said it would also maintain surveillance cameras and x-raying vehicles passing over the border.

Germany has argued it needs the controls despite the fall in migrants coming through Greece and the Western Balkans to combat the threat of Islamic militancy in Europe.

Under EU rules, the countries were allowed to impose the emergency controls for up to two years in September 2015.

The EU executive approved six-month extensions of controls at the German-Austrian border, at Austria’s frontiers with Slovenia and Hungary and at Danish, Swedish and Norwegian borders. Norway is a member of Schengen but not the EU.

EU governments must now agree to the recommendations.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by Francesco Guarascio)

EU leaders united on Brexit demands – for now

European Heads of State meet during a EU summit in Brussels, Belgium April 29, 2017. REUTERS/Virginia Mayo/Pool

By Farah Salhi and Jan Strupczewski

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union leaders endorsed a stiff set of divorce terms for Britain at a summit on Saturday, rejoicing in a rare show of unity in adversity but well aware that may start to fray once negotiations begin.

Meeting for the first time since British Prime Minister Theresa May formally triggered a two-year countdown to Brexit in late March, the 27 other EU leaders took just a minute as they sat down to lunch in Brussels to approve 8 pages of negotiating guidelines hammered out by their diplomats over the past month.

“Guidelines adopted unanimously. EU27 firm and fair political mandate for the Brexit talks is ready,” summit chair Donald Tusk tweeted. Leaders applauded, officials said, after formally adopting unmodified the text drafted by their aides.

The guidelines were published here: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2017/04/29-euco-brexit-guidelines/

Those will bind Michel Barnier, their chief negotiator, to seek a deal that secures the rights of 3 million EU expats living in Britain, ensure London pays tens of billions of euros Brussels thinks it will be owed and avoids destabilizing peace by creating a hard EU-UK border across the island of Ireland.

“We are ready,” Barnier said. “We are together.”

They also rule out discussing the free trade deal May wants until they see progress on agreeing those key withdrawal terms.

“Before discussing the future, we have to sort out our past,” Tusk said in comments echoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said “substantive issues” must first be settled.

In a mark of how last year’s Brexit vote has called into question the unity of the United Kingdom itself, leaders will also offer Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny a pledge that if Northern Ireland, which voted against Brexit, ever unites with his country, it will automatically be in the EU.

The leaders may spend more time in discussions, including with Barnier, on what criteria they may use to judge, come the autumn, whether he has made sufficient progress to warrant a start on trade talks. They may also talk about how to manage a transition, after Britain leaves in 2019, to a new relationship likely to take many more years to finalize.

That decision on what is “sufficient” is the kind of debate that can poison relations as the 27 seek to protect national interests. Also contentious will be which countries scoop the prizes of hosting two EU agencies set to be moved from London.

With most of the 27 offering to house the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and several wanting the European Banking Authority (EBA), Tusk and EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker will propose criteria for making the choices to avoid unseemly rows.

“We are remarkably united,” one national leader who will be at the table told Reuters. “But then it’s always easy to be united on what you want before you start negotiating.”

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel warned against falling into a “trap” where Britain divided the bloc to its advantage.

DIFFERENCES

Among possible differences, the priorities of poor, eastern states are to secure residency rights for their many workers in Britain and British money for the EU budget; Germany and others set store by a smooth transition to a new free trade agreement.

Unwonted unity has been forged by the shock of Brexit; it breaks a taboo and raises fears of further break-up at the hands of nationalists like French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. She will contest her country’s presidential election run-off on May 7, though few expect her to beat centrist Emmanuel Macron.

The EU sees it as vital that Britain not be seen to profit from Brexit to dissuade others from following suit.

However, some officials are also voicing concern that the process of weaving maximalist demands into the negotiating text could risk souring the atmosphere with May, who expects to start talks shortly after the UK election she has called for June 8.

Senior officials in Brussels believe the risk of a breakdown in talks that could see Britain simply walking out into chaotic legal limbo in March 2019 has diminished since May wrote to Tusk on March 29 in terms recognizing a need to compromise.

Merkel, facing her own election in September, warned Britain last week against lingering “illusions” of how much access it can get to EU markets. And some diplomats fear the tone of EU demands sounds too aggressive and may create a popular backlash in Britain that might make it hard for May to strike a deal.

“These are legally solid arguments,” one said, noting for example a demand Britain not only lose the EMA and EBA but also pay the moving costs. “But we don’t want to sound too punitive.”

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said: “They are maybe not any more in our family but they are still our neighbors so we should have respect for each other.”

(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop, Foo Yun Chee, Alastair Macdonald, Farah Salhi, Andreas Rinke and Jan Strupczewski; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

EU Ankara negotiator calls for suspension of Turkey accession talks

European Union (L) and Turkish flags fly outside a hotel in Istanbul, Turkey May 4, 2016. REUTERS/Murad Sezer/File Photo

By Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union should formally suspend Turkey’s long-stalled talks on membership if it adopts constitutional changes backed at a referendum last week, a leading member of the EU parliament responsible for dealings with Ankara said on Wednesday.

Kati Piri said ahead of a plenary debate on the matter that if President Tayyip Erdogan implemented his new charter, giving him even more powers, Turkey would close the door on membership.

Erdogan said on Tuesday that Turkey would not wait forever to join the bloc, just a day after the EU executive’s top official for membership talks asked Europe’s foreign ministers to consider other types of ties with Turkey when they meet on Friday.

Ties between EU states and their NATO ally Turkey soured in the aftermath of a failed coup last July as the bloc was taken aback by Erdogan’s sweeping security crackdown that followed.

Austria has long called for aborting Turkey’s EU bid altogether but other EU states have been more cautious, highlighting that the bloc depends on Ankara to keep a lid on the flow of refugees from the Middle East.

Erdogan’s accusations around this month’s constitutional vote that Germany and the Netherlands act like Nazis have taken the relationship to new lows.

Piri, a Dutch center-left European lawmaker, said, “As Turkey with such a constitution cannot become a member of the EU, it also doesn’t make sense to continue the discussion on integration with the current government,”

“The EU should officially suspend the accession talks if the constitutional changes are implemented unchanged,” she told reporters, after the legislature last year passed a non-binding resolution calling for such a move.

Piri said any suspension should only come if and when the “authoritarian constitution” is enacted, which would happen after Turkey holds the next election, now due in late 2019.

She said Erdogan could bring them forward to swiftly assume more powers, though the Turkish leader said that was not on the agenda now.

Piri stressed, however, the process should be suspended rather than ended altogether: “I don’t want to take that perspective away from the Turkish population.”

“Turkey should remain a candidate country but we’re negotiating with the government. It’s become clear over the last two years that this government doesn’t want to meet criteria.”

She said she expected the EU’s foreign ministers this Friday would ask the bloc’s executive for a formal assessment of where Turkey stands on fulfilling these. Based on that, EU leaders could make further decisions when they next meet in June.

One tangible effect of suspending the process would be freezing the annual payments of some 600 million euros ($650 million) of EU pre-accession funds to Turkey.

Like Hahn, Piri said Brussels could instead step up talks on enhancing the customs union which Turkey already has with the EU, a process she said could take the next two to three years.

“Clear political benchmarks” on the rule of law and human rights should be part of the process, she said, hoping it would give Europeans leverage to persuade Turkey to reverse policies which the bloc says are undermining democracy there.

Piri said, however, that while the process could be launched, it cannot be finalised without a deal in separate talks on reuniting Cyprus, an island long split between an EU state backed by Greece, and their rivals supported by Ankara.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Erdogan says Turkey could reconsider its position on Europe

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends an interview with Reuters at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

By Samia Nakhoul, Nick Tattersall and Orhan Coskun

ANKARA (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan told Reuters on Tuesday that Turkey would reconsider its position on joining the European Union if it was kept waiting much longer and if the current hostile mentality of some member states persists.

Erdogan said a decision on Tuesday by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a leading human rights body, to put Turkey on a watch list was “entirely political” and Ankara did not recognize the move.

He said he was ready to take the question of EU accession to a referendum and that Turkey could not wait indefinitely after 54 years at the door.

“In Europe, things have become very serious in terms of the extent of Islamophobia. The EU is closing its doors on Turkey and Turkey is not closing its doors on anybody,” Erdogan said in an interview at the presidential palace in Ankara.

“If they are not acting sincerely we have to find a way out. Why should we wait any longer? We are talking about 54 years,” he said.

“The UK asked her people and they voted for Brexit … They have peace of mind, they are walking towards a new future, and the same thing was conducted by Norway … and the same thing can be applied for Turkey too.”

It is a critical week for Turkish-EU relations. EU lawmakers will debate ties on Wednesday, while the bloc’s foreign ministers will discuss the issue on Friday and EU leaders are expected to exchange views at a meeting on Brexit on Saturday.

Erdogan said he would be closely watching.

“I am very curious as to how the EU is going to act vis-a-vis this last (PACE) resolution,” he said, criticizing EU member states that have called for an end to accession talks.

He said Turkey was still committed to negotiations.

“There is not a single thing that we are not ready to do, the minute they ask for it. Whatever they wish, we do. But still they are keeping us at the door,” he said.

Erdogan pointed to the French presidential election, in which far-right leader Marine Le Pen has threatened to take France out of the European Union, and said the bloc was “on the verge of dissolution, of breaking up.”

“One or two countries cannot keep the EU alive. You need a country like Turkey, a different country symbolizing a different faith, this would make them very strong,” he said.

“But the EU member states don’t seem to realize this fact. They are finding it very difficult to absorb a Muslim country like Turkey.”

(Reporting by Samia Nakhoul, Nick Tattersall and Orhan Coskun; Writing by Nick Tattersall and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by David Dolan and Dominic Evans)

Brexit to dominate as May sets out stall for UK re-election

FILE PHOTO: Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks to the media outside 10 Downing Street in London, Britain April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth/File Photo

By Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) – Whatever Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives promise in their manifesto before a June election, managing Britain’s exit from the European Union will limit her opportunity to push wide-ranging radical domestic change.

Brexit is already diverting government attention from other, often pressing, issues – the number of laws coming into force has dived to a 20-year low – and parliament will be occupied for a long time in deciding the fate of EU legislation introduced during Britain’s four-decade membership of the bloc.

May, who was appointed prime minister shortly after Britain voted last year to leave the EU, has framed the election on June 8 as an opportunity to bolster support for her Brexit plan, while saying it will help her put her own stamp on government.

She will rip up several of the pledges made by predecessor David Cameron and hope a bigger majority will secure parliamentary backing for some more contentious measures, such as opening new selective schools and capping energy prices.

But beyond a few flagship policies she is most passionate about, Brexit will dominate.

The complexity of delivering Brexit will sap government and parliamentary time, possibly requiring as many as 15 pieces of major legislation, and leave little room for domestic policy promises.

“The reality is that Brexit eclipses so many other legislative priorities, and will do for years to come,” said Daniel Greenberg, a legal adviser on domestic legislation to the lower House of Commons.

The manifesto, expected to be published early next month, will set out the promises May has made on Brexit, including plans to leave the EU’s single market, end free movement of people from the remaining member states and pull out of the European Court of Justice, which rules on EU law.

But it is unlikely to go into detail on her negotiating stance after months of keeping her cards close to her chest.

DIVERTING ATTENTION

Analysis by Thomson Reuters legal business shows 1,642 pieces of legislation were introduced in 2016, down 29 percent from the previous year and the lowest level since 1997.

“The last government slowed down on legislative activity ahead of the vote, and now the decision has been taken to leave the EU, only the more favored non-Brexit related issues are going to see significant legislative attention,” said Greenberg.

The government proposes to convert all EU laws into domestic legislation, after which further parliamentary time will be spent deciding which should then be amended, replaced or repealed.

On top of this, the Institute for Government (IFG) think tank predicts 10 to 15 new bills and thousands of pages of secondary legislation will need to be passed by parliament to put in place arrangements in areas such as immigration and customs before Britain’s expected EU departure in March 2019.

On average the Queen’s Speech, which sets out the government’s legislative programme for the year, contains around 20 flagship bills, leaving little room for non-Brexit measures.

The government, which is cutting spending to reduce the budget deficit, also does not have the capacity to focus on major new policies unrelated to Britain’s EU exit.

Some of the ministries set to be heavily involved in Brexit preparations, such as the Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, have faced the biggest cuts to their budgets and staffing levels, according to the IFG.

“Brexit is going to take so much public policy time, political time and cabinet time that I am not sure how this country can address all of the other things it needs to address,” said Brigid Laffan, director of the European University Institute’s Robert Schuman Centre.

BREXIT-OBSESSED

Beyond leaving the EU, voters cite healthcare as the next biggest issue facing the country, followed by immigration, the economy, housing and education, according to pollsters YouGov.

The government has been under pressure on many of these issues, with housebuilding falling well short of its promised level, immigration running at nearly three times its target, and schools complaining of cuts to funding.

The Conservative manifesto for the last election in 2015 included a pledge to spend at least an additional 8 billion pounds ($10 billion) on the National Health Service (NHS) by 2020, but the chief executive of NHS England has said it needs as much as 21 billion pounds.

That manifesto also promised to cap residential social care charges for the elderly from 2016, but shortly after the election the government announced this would be delayed to 2020.

“Having such a Brexit-obsessed government means that they are not doing their day job. They are not providing the decent public services that people want,” former Liberal Democrat leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg told the BBC.

Yet with the opposition Labour Party divided and accused of lacking a clear message on Brexit, polls suggest May’s Conservatives will be returned to power with a bigger majority.

That gives her the freedom to focus on Brexit and a handful of other measures which she might otherwise have struggled to get past even her own party, such as new selective grammar schools, or those which are less traditionally associated with the Conservatives’ laissez-faire economic policy.

May’s “modern industrial strategy” – a interventionist approach to rebalance Britain’s heavily services-based economy – will feature, while ministers have said there will also be a pledge to act in the energy market, possibly through a cap on prices for domestic customers.

The Conservatives have also raised the prospect of scrapping a 2015 promise not to raise three taxes which are the state’s biggest revenue raisers and to protect pension increases.

Last month finance minister Philip Hammond was forced to reverse plans to raise payroll taxes for the self-employed amid accusations that it broke that manifesto pledge.

“It’s self-evidently clear that the commitments that were made in the 2015 manifesto did, and do today, strain the ability of the government to manage the economy flexibly,” Hammond said during a trip to Washington last week.

($1 = 0.7802 pounds)

(editing by David Stamp)

Let’s minimize the damage of Brexit, Eurogroup chief says

BERLIN (Reuters) - Britain and the remaining 27 members of the European Union should stay away from the cliff edge of Britain falling back on World Trade Organization terms at the end of Brexit negotiations, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said. "Let's try to minimize the damage," he said of Brexit, speaking at a banking conference in Berlin on Thursday. Dijsselbloem, who said he would discuss Greece with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble while in Berlin, said the more he thought about Brexit, the more worried he became. He singled out financial stability as one area of particular risk. Asked about "passporting" rights for Britain-based institutions to sell financial services in the EU single market after Brexit, Dijsselbloem replied: "I think, also talking to financial players from the City, that passporting won't be the answer. There will be different regimes for different sub-sectors of the financial sector." "Equivalence will be part of the solution," he added of a system whereby Brussels grants access to non-EU firms that comply with rules similar to those in the bloc. "But here again, declaring the rules and regulations and the supervision of the UK equivalent to that of the EU at the outset is quite easy, but over time our standards and the way of supervision will start to diverge," Dijsselbloem said. "So if you want to maintain equivalence over time you will have to commit, also in the long-run, to staying close to the European standards," he added. "Looking to the future, we will have to find to ways to regularly assess whether we are still equivalent." (Writing by Paul Carrel Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

BERLIN (Reuters) – Britain and the remaining 27 members of the European Union should stay away from the cliff edge of Britain falling back on World Trade Organization terms at the end of Brexit negotiations, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said.

“Let’s try to minimize the damage,” he said of Brexit, speaking at a banking conference in Berlin on Thursday.

Dijsselbloem, who said he would discuss Greece with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble while in Berlin, said the more he thought about Brexit, the more worried he became. He singled out financial stability as one area of particular risk.

Asked about “passporting” rights for Britain-based institutions to sell financial services in the EU single market after Brexit, Dijsselbloem replied: “I think, also talking to financial players from the City, that passporting won’t be the answer. There will be different regimes for different sub-sectors of the financial sector.”

“Equivalence will be part of the solution,” he added of a system whereby Brussels grants access to non-EU firms that comply with rules similar to those in the bloc.

“But here again, declaring the rules and regulations and the supervision of the UK equivalent to that of the EU at the outset is quite easy, but over time our standards and the way of supervision will start to diverge,” Dijsselbloem said.

“So if you want to maintain equivalence over time you will have to commit, also in the long-run, to staying close to the European standards,” he added. “Looking to the future, we will have to find to ways to regularly assess whether we are still equivalent.”

(Writing by Paul Carrel Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

EU lawmakers adopt Brexit resolution, reject pro-Gibraltar hint

The Union Jack (L), the Gibraltarian flag (C) and the European Union flag are seen flying, at the border of Gibraltar with Spain, in front of the Rock in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, historically claimed by Spain April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jon Nazca

By Francesco Guarascio

STRASBOURG (Reuters) – European Union lawmakers adopted a resolution on Wednesday setting their red lines for the two-year divorce talks with Britain and rejected attempts by British MEPs to recognize Gibraltar’s pro-EU stance in the Brexit referendum.

In a display of EU unity, the legislature’ text repeated the same priorities set by the EU summits’ chair Donald Tusk in his draft negotiating guidelines released last week.

The European Parliament wants talks on Britain’s future relations with the EU to start only after “substantial progress” is made on the bill for Brexit bill, on the Irish border, and on the rights of the 3 million EU citizens in Britain and the one million British residents in EU countries.

The text was backed by more than two-thirds of the deputies in the parliament, which will have to approve any deal with the United Kingdom.

Britain’s Under Secretary for Brexit Robin Walker said this was “a positive move” although Britain would prefer to start trade talks as soon as possible. He told reporters at the session in Strasbourg that Britain will also put citizens’ rights first in the Brexit process.

In a minor departure from Tusk’s text, the parliament’s resolution hinted at the possibility for Britain to reverse the Brexit process, stressing however that this would be possible only with the approval of all the remaining 27 member states.

“The door is open if Britain changes its mind,” Gianni Pittella, head of the center-left grouping, the second largest in the parliament, told reporters. The Greens expressed a similar wish.

The move was aimed at strengthening the hand of the 48 percent of Britons who voted against Brexit in last year’s referendum, but was opposed by the EU chief negotiator on Brexit, Michel Barnier, parliament officials said.

The conservative grouping, the largest in the legislature, tried to distance itself from such a statement, although they backed the resolution. “Leave means leave,” the conservatives’ leader Manfred Weber said.

The resolution also allowed transitional arrangements to smooth the UK’s departure, but they should not last more than three years. MEPs also insisted that at the end of the process Britain cannot expect better conditions than when it was an EU member.

GIBRALTAR

Lawmakers rejected two nearly identical amendments that would have added to the text a reference to Gibraltar’s pro-EU vote in last year’s Brexit referendum, a move meant to recall its residents back the EU but also prefer to remain in Britain.

The rocky British enclave on the southern Spain coast caused a harsh controversy after Tusk’s guidelines gave Madrid a say in the future relationship between Gibraltar and the EU after Britain leaves the bloc.

Gibraltar rejected the idea of Britain sharing sovereignty with Spain by 99 percent to 1 percent in a 2002 referendum, but voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the EU in last June’s Brexit vote.

The changes proposed by British Conservative lawmakers in the EU parliament and by a cross-party group of MEPs wanted to highlight that Gibraltar voted against Brexit.

They also wanted to add a reference to the enclave in a paragraph saying that a majority of electors in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU.

The main groupings in the parliament opposed this change because “we do not agree to give to the Gibraltar issue the same importance as Scotland’s and Northern Ireland’s”, a parliament official said.

Other amendments proposed by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) euroskeptic grouping, deploring Tusk’s guidelines on Gibraltar, were also widely rejected.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

EU ambassador denounces Israel’s West Bank demolitions policy

FILE PHOTO: Dwellings belongings to Bedouin are seen in al-Khan al-Ahmar village near the West Bank city of Jericho February 23, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The European Union has expressed frustration with Israel over its demolition of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank, with the EU ambassador taking the unusual step of reading out a joint statement denouncing the practice.

At a meeting last week with the Israeli foreign ministry’s newly appointed director-general, the ambassador delivered a stern diplomatic message, saying Israel was failing in its international legal obligations and needed to change policy.

The issue came to a head after Israel issued demolition orders last month against 42 homes in the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, east of Jerusalem, where EU member states Belgium and Italy have funded a school and helped build structures for the local population of around 150.

“The practice of enforcement measures such as forced transfers, evictions, demolitions and confiscations of homes and humanitarian assets (including EU-funded) and the obstruction of delivery of humanitarian assistance are contrary to Israel’s obligations under international law,” ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen said, with envoys from all EU member states present.

“We therefore call on Israel, as the occupying power, to meet its obligations vis-à-vis the Palestinian population…, completely stop these demolitions and confiscations and allow full access of humanitarian assistance.”

Faaborg-Andersen’s intervention was first reported by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry declined to comment on the substance of the statement, known in diplomatic parlance as a demarche, but said it was delivered at a “get to know you” meeting with the ministry’s director-general.

The clampdown against Khan al-Ahmar, located in a sensitive area of the West Bank that Israel has earmarked for settlement expansion, is the latest in a series of demolitions that have been roundly condemned by the EU and the United Nations.

Israel says the demolitions are necessary because the building was carried out without a permit in an area of the West Bank, known as Area C, where Israel retains full control. Area C makes up 60 percent of the West Bank, which the Palestinians want for their own state together with Gaza and East Jerusalem.

The EU says Israel rarely issues permits in Area C and is concerned that by blocking Palestinian development there, and demolishing structures that are built, it is actively undermining the viability of any future Palestinian state.

Figures from the United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs show that Israel has sharply stepped up demolitions in Area C over the past year.

While between 450 and 560 Palestinian structures were demolished each year from 2012-2015, the number jumped to 876 in 2016, and in January this year alone there were 121 demolitions. More than 1,200 people were displaced last year.

To underscore concern about the threat to Khan al-Ahmar, delegations from EU embassies have been visiting the site regularly. Officials hope public diplomacy might help secure an Israeli Supreme Court injunction against the demolitions.

That worked with an earlier demolition order targeting the Palestinian village of Susiya, in the southern West Bank.

“We’re not giving up,” said one EU diplomat, while acknowledging that it was an uphill battle to stop the demolitions. “We have to be realistic.”

(Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Called ‘dictator’, Venezuela leader tries to defuse court protests

Opposition supporters shout slogans as they block a highway during a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas, Venezuela March 31, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Girish Gupta and Andrew Cawthorne

CARACAS (Reuters) – Seeking to cool protests and international outrage, Venezuela’s socialist president said on Saturday the Supreme Court would review its move to annul the opposition-led congress, which critics decried as a lurch toward dictatorship.

“This controversy is over … the constitution has won,” Maduro said in a televised speech just after midnight.

He was flanked by senior officials on a specially-convened state security committee which ordered the top court to reconsider its rulings.

While Maduro, 54, sought to cast the move as the achievement of a statesman resolving a power conflict, his foes said it was a row-back by an unpopular government that overplayed its hand.

“You can’t pretend to just normalize the nation after carrying out a ‘coup’,” Julio Borges, leader of the National Assembly legislature, said. He publicly tore up the court rulings this week and refused to attend the security committee, which includes the heads of major institutions.

Having already shot down most congress measures since the opposition won control in 2015, the pro-Maduro Supreme Court went further on Wednesday with a ruling it was taking over the legislature’s functions because it was in “contempt” of the law.

That galvanized Venezuela’s demoralized and divided opposition coalition and brought a torrent of international condemnation and concern ranging from the United Nations and European Union to most major Latin American countries.

The decision to review the Supreme Court’s move – and presumably revoke the controversial ruling – may take the edge off protests, but Maduro’s opponents at home and abroad will seek to maintain the pressure.

They are furious that authorities thwarted a push for a referendum to recall Maduro last year and also postponed local elections scheduled for 2016.

Now they are calling for next year’s presidential election to be brought forward and the delayed local polls to be held, confident the ruling Socialist Party would lose.

“It’s time to mobilize!” student David Pernia, 29, said in western San Cristobal city, adding Venezuelans were fed up with autocratic rule and economic hardship. “Women don’t have food for their children, people don’t have medicines.”

FOREIGN PRESSURE

On Saturday, the National Assembly planned an open-air meeting in Caracas, while South America’s UNASUR bloc was to meet in Argentina with most of its members unhappy at Venezuela.

The hemispheric Organization of American States (OAS) had a special session slated for Monday in Washington.

Even before this week’s events, OAS head Luis Almagro had been pushing for Venezuela’s suspension, but he is unlikely to garner the two-thirds support needed in the 34-nation block despite hardening sentiment toward Maduro round the region.

Venezuela can still count on support from fellow leftist allies and other small nations grateful for subsidized oil dating from the 1999-2013 rule of late leader Hugo Chavez.

Maduro accuses the United States of orchestrating a campaign to oust him and said he had been subject this week to a “political, media and diplomatic lynching.”

Some criticism even came from within government, with Venezuela’s attorney general Luisa Ortega rebuking the court in an extremely rare show of dissent from a senior official.

“It constitutes a rupture of the constitutional order,” the 59-year-old said in a speech on state television on Friday.

Pockets of protesters had blocked roads, chanted slogans and waved banners saying “No To Dictatorship” around Venezuela on Friday, leading to some clashes with security forces.

Given past failures of opposition street protests, however, it is unlikely there will be mass support for a new wave. Rather, the opposition will be hoping ramped-up foreign pressure or a nudge from the powerful military may force Maduro into calling an early election.

He will be hoping to have ridden this week’s storm, and indeed there is no immediate threat to his grip on power.

The former bus driver, foreign minister and self-declared “son” of Chavez, was narrowly elected president in 2013.

But his ratings have plummeted as Venezuelans struggle with an unprecedented economic crisis including food and medicine shortages plus the world’s highest inflation.

Critics blame a failing socialist system, whereas the government says its enemies are waging an “economic war”. The fall in oil prices since mid-2014 has exacerbated the crisis.

The Supreme Court’s move this week may have been partly motivated by financial reasons. The wording about taking over Assembly functions came in a ruling allowing Maduro to create joint oil ventures without congress’ approval.

That may have its genesis in the urgent need to raise money from oil partners to pay $3 billion in bond maturities due this month, analysts and sources say.

The government, though, was probably also seeking to further disempower the opposition as it made headroads turning international opinion against Maduro.

During Chavez’s rule, the socialists were proud of their electoral legitimacy after winning votes over-and-over, so the increased questioning of their democratic credentials now stings and they have sought to stop some opposition leaders traveling.

(Additional reporting by Diego Ore, Eyanir Chinea and Deisy Buitrago in Caracas; Anggy Polanco in San Cristobal; editing by Alexander Smith)

In a letter to UK PM May, Scotland’s leader demands independence vote

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon attends Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland, Britain March 29, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne

LONDON (Reuters) – Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wrote to Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday formally demanding that she allow a second referendum to be held on Scottish independence ahead of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union.

The results of the June Brexit referendum called the country’s future into question because England and Wales voted to leave the EU but Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay.

On Tuesday, Scotland’s devolved parliament voted to hold a referendum on secession in 2018 or 2019, but the UK government in Westminster must give its approval before any such poll can he held.

May has already said it is not the right time for another referendum, having only just formally begun the complex two-year divorce talks between the UK and its 27 EU partners.

Scots rejected independence in a 2014 vote by 55 to 45 percent, but Sturgeon says the situation has changed because of Brexit.

In her letter, Sturgeon said she wished May well in negotiations with the EU, but added it seemed inevitable the outcome would leave the UK outside the European single market

“In these very changed circumstances, the people of Scotland must have the right to choose our own future – in short, to exercise our right of self determination,” she wrote.

“I am therefore writing to begin early discussions between our governments to agree an Order under section 30 of the Scotland Act 1998 that would enable a referendum to be legislated for by the Scottish Parliament.”

Sturgeon said she agreed with May that it would be wrong to hold a referendum immediately but that it should take place after the terms of Brexit were agreed and a future trade deal with the EU was struck, something May envisages before March 2019.

“There appears to be no rational reason for you to stand in the way of the will of the Scottish Parliament and I hope you will not do so,” Sturgeon said.

A spokesman for May said the UK government would respond in due course but ruled out discussions on a second secession vote.

“At this point, all our focus should be on our negotiations with the European Union, making sure we get the right deal for the whole of the UK,” the spokesman said.

(Reporting by Michael Holden and Kylie MacLellan; editing by Stephen Addison)