Eu politics

There are 960 miles as the crow flies between Paris and Stockholm, but when it comes to dealing with Islam they are separated by light years. In France this week there has been something of a kerfuffle caused by a Gap back-to-school campaign that features a young girl in a hijab. One female MP from Emmanuel Macron’s ruling La République en Marche party said the campaign left her ‘sickened,’ while Marlène Schiappa, the gender equality minister, has demanded an explanation from Gap, saying: ‘You don’t choose to wear the veil at nine to ten years old.’ Incidentally, France has looked on in bemusement at Boris Johnson and his comments about

How utterly predictable. As I wrote here on 5 July, Michel Barnier’s ‘considered’ judgement has been to pour a very large bucket of eau onto Theresa May’s carefully-crafted proposals to try to reach a compromise with the EU. Her time, her officials’ time and the time her cabinet spent at Chequers was utterly wasted. Barnier was always going to turn his nose up at whatever Britain proposed. It has been clear for months that that is his strategy: to stonewall all proposals put to him by Britain in the hope that he will be able to bounce Britain into a bad deal (for us) at the last moment. Just read his statement:

When European leaders met earlier this month to thrash out an agreement on  migration, they succeeded in rescuing German Chancellor Angela Merkel from the precipice. But it is already becoming clear that the deal they struck was more a temporary papering over of ideological differences on migration than a permanent solution. While the EU agreed on the possible establishment of migrant transit centres on European soil, disembarkation platforms in north Africa, and a general statement that illegal migration was a European problem, the detail of how all this would work in practice was ignored. Not a single European country volunteered to host a reception centre, and attempts to persuade governments in north

When Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, refused to let the rescue ship Aquarius – which was carrying 629 men, women, and children – land, the European Union was presented with yet another migration emergency. The vessel was stranded for days in the Mediterranean looking for a place to dock, with an EU-wide solution nowhere to be found. Eventually, Spain’s newly-installed socialist government stepped up and allowed the boat to dock. Madrid’s act of statesmanship was a win for everybody: it allowed Salvini to claim that his tough immigrant policy was working; Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, could burnish his credentials as a humanitarian; and it solved a problem for the EU,

Spaniards didn’t ask for their new prime minister, but it seems that they’re starting to like him. The most recent polls reveal that Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists, who now make up Spain’s minority government, are the most popular party in the country. Less than a month ago, the PSOE slumbered in third place, behind the then-ruling Conservative Popular Party (PP) and centrist Ciudadanos. The Socialists have leapt two places up the rankings, even though their seizure of power was seen as illegitimate by many Spaniards. What’s gone so right for Spain’s Socialists?   Sánchez’s surge in popularity can perhaps be partly explained by the diversity of his cabinet; made up of eleven

German conservatives are in disarray. Caught between the migrant crisis and Merkel’s looming departure, they are fighting over their own political future. On the surface, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their smaller sister-party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), argue over whether German police forces should be allowed to reject certain asylum seekers at the border. But the actual conflict runs deeper: it is not simply about whether or not to reject a few thousands refugees at the border; this is about the very future of German conservative politics. Merkel has now led German conservatives for thirteen years. And although she has brought them continuous electoral success during that