Tag Archives: Europe

Founding members say European Union is in bad shape

ROME (Reuters) – The European Union faces “critical times” and all its members should set aside selfish interests to tackle problems such as immigration and terrorism, the bloc’s six founding nations said on Tuesday.

A week after the EU accepted that some members may never go further in sharing sovereignty, as part of the price for keeping Britain in the club, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg pledged to pursue “ever closer union” at a meeting in Rome, where they founded the bloc in 1957.

“We are concerned about the state of the European project,” the foreign ministers of the Six said in a statement after their talks. “Indeed, it appears to be facing very challenging times. It is in these critical times that we, as founding members, feel particularly called upon.”

The meeting was held against the backdrop of deep division in the 28-nation bloc over how to handle the flows of hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving in Europe fleeing war and failing states in the Middle East and North Africa.

It also came a week after Brussels agreed a draft deal with Britain Prime Minister David Cameron that, among other things, reaffirmed the limitations of a treaty commitment to pursue the “ever closer union” of the peoples of Europe, part of a package to help Cameron campaign before a referendum that the EU’s second biggest economy should continue its 43-year membership.

While acknowledging that the Union “allows for different paths of integration”, the original signatories of the Treaty of Rome declared: “We remain resolved to continue the process of creating an ever closer union among the people of Europe.”

Meeting in Italy, which has been in the frontline of a wave of migration to Europe across the Mediterranean, the ministers also stressed the need to overcome divisions on the EU response.

Hungary and Austria this week called for fences on the Macedonian and Bulgarian borders with Greece and between Austria and Slovenia, and several states have called into question the Schengen accord on free circulation inside the EU.

The statement called for better management of the Union’s external borders in order to make them more secure while preserving Schengen and not hampering freedom of movement.

It contained no concrete policy proposals, but said Europe “is successful when we overcome narrow self-interest in the spirit of solidarity”.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer Writing by Gavin Jones; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and James Dalgleish)

Mediterranean deaths soar as people-smugglers get crueler

GENEVA (Reuters) – More people died crossing the eastern Mediterranean in January than in the first eight months of last year, the International Organization for Migration said on Friday, blaming increased ruthlessness by people-traffickers.

As of Jan. 28, 218 had died in the Aegean Sea – a tally not reached on the Greek route until mid-September in 2015. Another 26 died in the central Mediterranean trying to reach Italy. Smugglers were using smaller, less seaworthy boats, and packing them with even more people than before, the IOM said.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman said the more reckless methods might be due to “panic in the market that this is not going to last much longer” as traffickers fear European governments may find ways to stem the unprecedented flow of migrants and refugees.

There also appeared to be new gangs controlling the trafficking trade in North Africa, he said.

“There was a very pronounced period at the end of the year when boats were not leaving Libya and we heard from our sources in North Africa that it was because of inter-tribal or inter-gang fighting for control of the market,” Millman said.

“And now that it’s picking up again and it seems to be more lethal, we wonder: what is the character of these groups that have taken over the trade?”

The switch to smaller, more packed boats had also happened on the route from Turkey to Greece, the IOM said, but was unable to explain why.

The increase in deaths in January was not due to more traffic overall. The number of arrivals in Greece and Italy was the lowest for any month since June 2015, with a total of 55,528 people landing there between Jan. 1 and Jan. 28, the IOM said.

Last year a record 1 million people made the Mediterranean Sea crossing, five times more than in 2014. During the year, the IOM estimates that 805 died in the eastern Mediterranean and 2,892 died in the central Mediterranean.

In the past few months the proportion of children among those making the journey has risen from about a quarter to more than a third, and Millman said children often made up more than half of the occupants of the boats.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Dutch suggest EU return migrants to Turkey as more arrive without case for asylum

BRUSSELS/THE HAGUE (Reuters) – The Netherlands floated an idea on Thursday to ferry migrants reaching Greece straight back to Turkey to stop a relentless influx into the European Union as EU officials cited a rise in the numbers of those who would not qualify for asylum.

The 28-nation bloc has all but failed to curb or control the influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, more than one million of whom arrived in Europe last year, mainly via Greece and heading towards the EU’s biggest economy, Germany.

More than 54,500 people have already reached Europe by sea this year, including 50,668 through Greece, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

They keep flowing in despite stormy winter weather making the journey ever more perilous, a fact highlighted by a UNHCR report that 235 migrants were dead or missing already in 2016. On Thursday, 24 drowned when their boat sank off a Greek island close to the Turkish coast.

Much of the EU debate on how to handle the influx has focused on distinguishing people fleeing war, and thus eligible for international protection, from “economic” migrants seeking better lives without being under immediate threat.

“Indeed we have seen that the numbers of people arriving in Europe who don’t have a genuine claim to asylum have been rising slightly,” a spokeswoman for the European Commission told a regular news briefing on Thursday.

EU nations have grown unnerved by the continent’s worst migration crisis since World War Two, one that has jeopardised the bloc’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel over national borders that has contributed greatly to its vaunted prosperity.

In the latest idea for discouraging migrants from flooding into Europe, the head of a party in the Dutch ruling coalition said it was drafting a plan under which those arriving in Greece by sea could be dispatched straight back to Turkey.

Diederik Samsom said European countries would have to agree in exchange to take several hundred thousand refugees each year out of nearly 2 million currently in Turkey. The Netherlands now holds the EU’s rotating presidency and Samsom said it would seek to push for Europe-wide agreement on the plan.

Samsom also said improving conditions for Syrian refugees in Turkey meant it could soon be regarded as a safe country to which asylum-seekers could be returned.

Amnesty International quickly denounced the idea as “fundamentally flawed”, saying it would deny those arriving the right to have their asylum claims properly considered.

“Any resettlement proposal that is conditional on effectively sealing off borders and illegally pushing back tens of thousands of people while denying them access to asylum procedures is morally bankrupt,” said Amnesty’s John Dalhuisen.

“There is no excuse for breaking the law and flouting international obligations in the process.”

GERMANY, SWEDEN, DENMARK

The government of Germany, where more than a million migrants arrived last year alone, on Thursday agreed tighter asylum rules, while Sweden and Finland said they would deport tens of thousands of last year’s asylum seekers.

In another example of how wealthy European states are seeking to deter migrants, Denmark’s parliament on Tuesday passed measures allowing the confiscation of asylum seekers’ valuables to pay for their stay, despite protests from international human rights organisations.

The European Commission said on Thursday it was looking into whether Denmark’s move was undermining fundamental EU values.

While the overall number of arrivals is relatively low compared to the EU’s 500 million population, the uneven distribution among member states has put heavy pressure on public and security services in some, as well as fuelled support for anti-foreigner nationalists and populists across the bloc.

The EU border agency Frontex said on Thursday the number of Syrians arriving on Greek islands had declined in recent months, while Iraqi arrivals had risen.

“The percentage of declared Syrians among all of the migrants landing on the Greek islands has fallen considerably in the last several months,” Frontex said, adding that some 39 percent of those arriving in Greece in December were Syrians, compared to 43 percent in November and 51 percent in October.

The shifting numbers partly reflect how registration and identification of migrants has improved in Greece over the last quarter, meaning fewer people pass under false nationality.

Syrian nationality has been a common answer to the question of origin as people fleeing the devastating civil war in the Middle East country are seen as standing the greatest chance of successful asylum applications in the EU.

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

EU warns Greece to fix border ‘neglect’

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The EU executive concluded on Wednesday that Greece could face more border controls with other states of the free-travel Schengen zone in May if it does not fix “serious deficiencies” in its management of the area’s external frontier.

EU countries have been increasingly critical of Athens’ handling of the continent’s worst migration crisis since World War Two, with more than a million migrants reaching Europe last year, mainly through Greece.

“If the necessary action is not being taken and deficiencies persist, there is a possibility to … allow member states to temporarily close their borders,” European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told a news briefing.

He was speaking after the executive accepted a report saying cash-strapped Athens had “seriously neglected” its obligations to fellow Schengen states.

The use of that phrase could pave the way for EU governments to exercise the option of reinstalling controls on their national borders for up to two years once short-term measures currently in place expire in May.

Several EU member states have instituted emergency controls on their borders and warned they may effectively suspend Athens from the passport-free zone. Most of the irregular migrants arriving in the EU have come from Turkey via Greece and trekked northward to Germany.

Dombrovskis said Greece was not identifying or registering people arriving effectively, not uploading fingerprinting data to relevant bases systematically, and not checking travel documents properly and against key databases.

EU border agency Frontex says its latest mission to the Greek island of Lesbos in January showed improvements in registration procedures.

But EU officials carried out an assessment in Greece in November that lead to Wednesday’s conclusion that there were “serious deficiencies” in Greek frontier control.

SEALING GREECE OFF

The step of imposing border controls, under the as yet unused Article 26 of the Schengen code, can be taken for up to six months and can be renewed up to three times for a total of two years.

Dombrovskis said the Commission was intent on preserving Schengen, one of the EU’s key achievements, and said Greece had improved its border controls since November – but not enough.

The next step in the process would be for Schengen member states – 26 countries, most of which are also in the EU – to confirm the Commission’s conclusions in a majority vote. The executive would then recommend remedial measures and assess by May whether Athens had complied.

Greece has no land borders with the rest of the Schengen zone, so installing new frontier checks would affect only air and sea ports.

Diplomats and officials described the move to penalize tourism-dependent Greece as a way to raise pressure on Athens, which is already mired in a financial crisis, to better implement EU measures intended to identify and register all those arriving from Turkey.

The EU is also looking into using Frontex more to help guard the border between Greece and Macedonia, which is not a member of the EU or Schengen. Some Frontex personnel are already at Greece’s northern border, but the agency’s mandate does not allow for interventions in third countries.

Some diplomats said countries could send more police or border guards to Macedonia on the basis of bilateral agreements.

Frontex has a precedent from 2006, when it ran a naval mission in territorial waters off Senegal and Mauritania to prevent African migrants reaching Spain’s Canary Islands. That operation was carried out on the basis of bilateral agreements between Spain, Dakar and Nouakchott.

“Details would need to be worked out but there seems to be very little opposition to this idea, apart, of course, from Greece,” said one EU diplomat involved.

Athens says the influx is impossible to control and its migration minister, Yannis Mouzalas, warned this week that sealing his country off from Schengen would create a humanitarian crisis with thousands of people trapped in Greece.

(Editing by Hugh Lawson)

‘Running out of time’, EU puts Greece, passport-free region on notice

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The European Union edged closer on Monday to accepting that its Schengen open-borders area may be suspended for up to two years if it fails in the next few weeks to curb the influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa.

After chairing a meeting of EU counterparts in Amsterdam, the Dutch migration minister said they expected an unprecedented prolongation of the time governments can impose border checks because the migrant crisis would not be under control before current, short-term dispensations expire in May.

Some ministers made clear such a — theoretically temporary — move would cut off Greece, where more than 40,000 people have already arrived by sea from Turkey this year despite a deal with Ankara two months ago to hold back an exodus of Syrian refugees. More than 60 have drowned on the crossing since Jan. 1 alone.

Greek officials noted that closing routes northward, even if physically possible, would not solve the problem. But electoral pressure on governments, including in the EU’s leading power Germany, to stem the flow and resist efforts to spread asylum seekers across the bloc are making free travel rules untenable.

“We are running out of time,” said EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos as he urged states to implement agreed measures for reducing and controlling movements of migrants across the continent — or else face the collapse of the 30-year-old Schengen zone, a major EU achievement.

But Dutch minister Klaas Dijkhoff said time has effectively already run out to preserve all of the passport-free regime that has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to trek from Greece and Italy to Germany and Sweden over the past year.

“The ‘or else’ is already happening,” he said. “A year ago, we all warned that if we don’t come up with a solution, then Schengen will be under pressure. It already is.”

The piecemeal reintroduction of controls by several governments under pressure from domestic opinion at national borders with fellow EU states should be better coordinated, said Dijkhoff, whose government last year floated the idea of a “mini-Schengen” that critics saw as a way for Germany and its northern neighbors to bar the influx from the Mediterranean.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opened her country’s borders to Syrians fleeing civil war last summer, is under mounting pressure to halt the inflow after more than a million migrants entered Germany last year.

Without a clear drop in the numbers arriving before she meets fellow EU leaders at a summit in mid-February, some form of border closer by the bloc’s leading power, which would have a knock-on effect across Europe, would be increasingly likely — not least as Germans vote in key regional elections in March.

The Commission, the EU executive, is already conducting a review of whether Greece’s difficulty in processing constitute “persistent serious deficiencies” on the external EU frontier that would justify a historic move to allow states to reimpose controls on those arriving from Greece.

It is due to make recommendations next month and Athens would have three months to respond. Existing measures taken by some states under a different rule expire in mid-May. Minister Dijkhoff made clear that few expect the situation to be under control by then, so the longer-term suspension should be ready.

Under that measure, Article 26 of the Schengen code, states could reimpose controls on documents for six months, renewable three times, until May 2018. EU officials acknowledged, however, that no one knows what would happen after that if governments were not prepared to return to the status quo before last year.

“Everyone understands that the Schengen zone is on the brink,” Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said.

“If we cannot protect the external EU border, the Greek-Turkish border, then the Schengen external border will move towards central Europe … Greece must increase its resources as soon as possible and accept help.”

The Schengen zone comprises 26 states, most of which are also EU members. Germany, France, Austria and Sweden are among several countries that have introduced temporary border checks as they struggle to control the flow of people.

“Speaking about timetables, it’s already too late. We have seven countries with border controls,” Sweden’s interior minister Anders Ygeman told Reuters.

He said migrant registration centers need to start functioning in Greece and Italy as planned: “In the end, if a country doesn’t live up to its obligations, we will have to restrict its connections to the Schengen area.”

Appearing anxious to calm a confrontation with the radical leftist government in Athens that already clashed with Berlin last year over its demands of bailout loans to keep Greece in the euro zone, his German counterpart was more reserved.

“Blaming people in public doesn’t help,” Thomas de Maiziere said.

The EU has taken various steps to give cash-strapped Athens financial assistance to deal with the crisis, but many member states believe Athens is not using that enough. Of five registration “hotspot” centers due to be set up for migrants arriving in Greece, only one is running so far.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Austria to slash asylum claims, strengthen border checks

VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria declared on Wednesday it would cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year’s total, and its chancellor said border controls would have to be stepped up “massively”- but how that would be done was unclear.

Germany said on Wednesday Austria’s decision was “not helpful” to German efforts to negotiate a European Union-wide solution with the support of Turkey, from which most migrants reach the European continent.

Hundreds of thousands of people have streamed into Austria, a small Alpine republic of 8.5 million since September, when it and Germany threw open their borders to a wave of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The vast majority of arrivals simply crossed the country on their way to Germany, but a fraction have stayed. Roughly 90,000 people, or more than 1 percent of Austria’s population, applied for asylum last year.

Public fears about immigration have fueled support for the far right, and calls for a ceiling on the number of migrants by members of the centre-right People’s Party within the coalition government have grown.

“We cannot take in all asylum seekers in Austria, or in Germany or in Sweden,” Werner Faymann, a Social Democrat who has resisted calls to cap immigration, told a joint news conference, referring to the countries that have taken in the most migrants.

The government plan announced on Wednesday provides for the number of asylum claims to be restricted to 1.5 percent of Austria’s population, spread over the next four years.

Breaking down the four-year cap, the statement said the number of asylum claims would be limited to 37,500 this year, falling annually to 25,000 in 2019.

Asked what would happen if the number of people who wanted to apply for asylum exceeded that figure, Faymann said only that experts were due to examine the issue.

“We must also step up controls at our borders massively,” Faymann told the joint news conference with Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner and other officials, without explaining what that would involve.

Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said one option would be to accept asylum requests without processing them.

“The (other) option of not having to accept asylum requests at the Austrian border is now being checked, and to send these people back, to deport them back to our safe neighbor states,” she told public broadcaster ORF.

Slovenian police said later on Wednesday that Slovenia planned “the same action” as Austria on its southern border with Croatia if Austria, which lies north of Slovenia, took further steps to limit the inflow of migrants.

The Dutch prime minister, whose government currently chairs EU ministerial councils, said Austria’s move illustrated the kind of national action likely to multiply if the 28-nation EU did not start implementing a commonly agreed strategy on asylum before a likely “spike” in arrivals with spring weather.

Saying the EU had six to eight weeks to end division and inaction on managing immigration, Mark Rutte told reporters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg that if that failed “we have to think about a plan B”.

As Germany has firmed up border controls in recent months, Austria has often followed. Austria’s interior minister said last week it would start turning away people who were no longer being let into Germany, prompting a knock-on effect further down the main route into Europe.

Faymann said he had discussed his government’s plans in principle with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and their Slovenian counterpart.

Faymann referred to the measures as a second-best option while awaiting a European solution involving securing the EU’s external borders, setting up centers there for people to apply for asylum, and spreading them around the bloc.

(Additional reporting by Matt Robinson in Belgrade, Marja Novak in Ljubljana and by the Brussels bureau; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

EU official warns Europe has two months to tackle migration crisis

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) – European Council President Donald Tusk issued a stark warning on Tuesday that the European Union had “no more than two months” to tackle the migration crisis engulfing the 28-nation bloc or else face the collapse of its passport-free Schengen zone.

Tusk was speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg amid growing frustration in Brussels and Germany – the bloc’s biggest economy and main destination for migrants arriving in Europe – that the EU seems unable to get its act together on its worst migration crisis since World War Two.

“We have no more than two months to get things under control,” Tusk, who chairs the summits of EU leaders, said.

“The March European Council (summit) will be the last moment to see if our strategy works. If it doesn’t, we will face grave consequences such as the collapse of Schengen.”

The European Council summit on March 17-18 will focus mainly on the migrant crisis. The Schengen system has already been suspended in some countries like Denmark, Germany and Sweden, which have introduced controls at their borders in order to stem the flow of migrant and refugee arrivals.

Tusk said that EU governments have failed to deliver on commitments to curb the flow of refugees and migrants reaching Europe, with more than 1 million arrivals last year and figures showing little sign of decreasing over the winter months.

A landmark deal with Turkey, which is meant to keep more people on its soil in exchange for funding for migrants and reviving its long-stalled EU membership talks, “was still to bear fruit”, Tusk said.

On creating the bloc’s joint border guard – another measure to address the migration crisis – Tusk said he expected a political agreement between EU leaders when they meet for a summit in June.

He said the EU would “fail as a political project” if it could not control its external borders properly.

The crisis has exposed bitter disputes among EU countries, with some blaming Greece and Italy for letting too many people in. Athens and Rome say Germany’s initial open-door policy encouraged more arrivals than anyone could cope with.

DEAL WITH BRITAIN

Tusk also said he would present his detailed proposal on talks with Britain ahead of a summit next month over its demands for changes to the bloc that London says are necessary for the country to stay in.

The most contentious demand is to allow London to curb benefit payments to EU migrants for four years after they arrive in Britain.

“There will be no compromise on fundamental values on non-discrimination and free movement,” Tusk said. “At the same time, I will do everything in my power to find a satisfactory solution also for the British side.”

He said time he would try to obtain a deal in February.

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska and Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Number of European Migrants, Refugees Now Officially Tops 1 Million

More than 1 million migrants and refugees traveled to Europe in 2015, according to data released Tuesday by the International Office of Migration (IOM).

The office placed the approximate total of refugee and migrant arrivals in Europe at 1,005,504 through Monday. The office said it was the highest flow of displaced people since World War II.

The overwhelming majority of the migrants and refugees arrived by sea, according to the IOM. Approximately 97 percent (971,289) traveled that way, while only 34,215 journeyed by land.
Most of the new arrivals were from South Asia, Africa and Syria, where an ongoing civil war has forced millions of people to flee their homes and travel to other countries in search of new lives.

The data was announced days after a United Nations Refugee Agency report indicated the number of displaced people around the globe likely “far surpassed” 60 million, a record total. That U.N. report covers refugees, asylum seekers and so-called internally displaced people, or those who have been forced to flee their homes but were still currently living in their countries.

The surge in migrant and refugee arrivals has become a contested political issue in Europe, with widespread debate about policies and security. In a joint statement with the IOM, the United Nations Refugee Agency described Europe’s initial reaction to the arrivals as “chaotic,” with thousands of refugees traveling through Greece only to be unable to cross certain borders, but noted “a more coordinated European response is beginning to take shape.”

Still, there remain some concerns about the arrival of refugees — particularly from Syria, the most common place of origin for refugees — as one of the men behind the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris had a forged Syrian passport, fueling concerns that he was posing as a refugee.

“As anti-foreigner sentiments escalate in some quarters, it is important to recognize the positive contributions that refugees and migrants make to the societies in which they live and also honor core European values: protecting lives, upholding human rights and promoting tolerance and diversity,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

The United Nations reported that 50 percent of the refugees arriving in Europe were traveling from Syria. Another 20 percent were from Afghanistan and another 7 percent came from Iraq.

The IOM reported 3,692 refugees were killed on their journeys, about 400 more than 2014. The IOM’s director general, William Lacy Swing, called for improvements to the migration process.

“Migration must be legal, safe and secure for all – both for the migrants themselves and the countries that will become their new homes,” Swing said in a statement.

French PM: Europe can’t accept more refugees

It is impossible for European Union nations to accept any more refugees, the French prime minister has been quoted as saying, and the fate of the bloc depends on its border controls.

Manuel Valls reportedly made the comments in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Reuters reported that roughly 1 million refugees were expected to arrive in Europe this year. Germany, which began accepting refugees in September, was originally praised for opening its doors for those fleeing the war-torn Middle East. But the nation’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has faced more and more scrutiny as the number of migrants going to Europe has continued to rise.

Valls, in his comments to the German newspaper, warned that Europe’s external borders needed more stringent regulations.

“If we don’t do that, the people will say: Enough of Europe,” Valls was quoted as saying.

The BBC reported that select European nations have enacted stricter border controls in the wake of the Nov. 13 Paris terrorist attacks that left 130 dead. The attacks have added fuel to the debate over the migrants, particularly because a forged Syrian passport was found near one attacker.

Critics fear terrorist groups could take advantage of the ongoing migrant crisis, which Reuters called the continent’s worst since World War II, and use it to funnel terrorists into Europe.

Economic officials from both France and Germany have proposed setting aside $10.7 billion to improve security, border controls and refugee care, Reuters reported.

The European Union has also voted to devote $3.1 billion for an aid facility in Turkey, which it hopes will help lower the number of migrants headed to Europe, Reuters reported. However, it’s still not finalized and it’s unclear if the member nations will give enough money to fully fund it.

A summit between Turkey and the European Union is scheduled for Sunday. Officials told Reuters there are still major hurdles to clear before any migration pact will be finalized.

ISIS Threatens Paris-style Attack on Washington D.C. and Other Countries

The Islamic State recently posted a video on one of their websites, claiming that more attacks like the one carried out in Paris would be executed in other countries contributing to strikes against ISIS in Syria, including the United States.

In fact, the Washington Post reports that ISIS specifically threatened to carry out an attack on Washington D.C. in the 11 minute video after showing new clips of the carnage in Paris.

“We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day, God willing, like France’s and by God, as we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington,” the man says, according to a translation from Reuters.

Another member of ISIS also threatened other European nations in the video.

“I say to the European countries that we are coming — coming with booby traps and explosives, coming with explosive belts and [gun] silencers and you will be unable to stop us because today we are much stronger than before,” he said.

Reuters added that it was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the video.