European Union

Latvia's president has signed an education law allowing schools to dismiss teachers who are disloyal to the country and its constitution. The government hopes this will curb Russian influence in the country's Russian-language schools. Is Latvia making a laughing stock of itself or is this the right way to combat Russian propaganda?

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This series of stockshots contains images of the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions of the European Union, the European Central Bank, the European External Action Service, the European Court of Justice.

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Plenary session in Strasbourg

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Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

will take place on 25-26 January 2017 in Brussels.

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Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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The EU Agency for Asylum must coordinate information exchange among member states and ensure they protect fundamental rights, said Civil Liberties Committee MEPs on Thursday.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

The EU Agency for Asylum must coordinate information exchange among member states and ensure they protect fundamental rights, said Civil Liberties Committee MEPs on Thursday.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Once again, European arms exports are contributing to crisis in the Middle East, and war in the Middle East is creating a crisis of European public policy. In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait using weapons supplied by all five permanent members of the UN Security Council as well as a host of other weapons producers. Today, European-supplied weapons are playing an important role alongside those of the US and Russia, not only in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, but also in Syria.

One of the outcomes of the 1990 scandal over arms to Iraq was the agreement of the 1998 EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports – a multilateral regime that bound European suppliers, politically at least, to respect regional stability and human rights when assessing their arms exports. Since 2008, those rules have been legally binding in the form of a Common Position. EU arms exports are governed by the national implementation of the Common Position, which requires countries to refuse to authorise arms exports if there is a clear risk they may be used to violate international humanitarian law, for internal repression, or be diverted to unauthorised end-users. Institutional mechanisms to promote information-sharing and circulate notifications of denials of arms exports are meant to prevent a race to the bottom, as seen in the 1990s. But there is now a significant body of thought that sees these commitments as having more rhetorical power than regulatory purchase. EU member states regularly violate the spirit, if not the letter, of their commitments. Nonetheless, common EU rules have created a yardstick by which member states can seek to improve and harmonise their practices, and parliamentarians and activists can attempt to hold states to account.

The EU’s common rules have been thrown into crisis by controversy and disagreement over the supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states. Although they lag a considerable way behind the United States as the most ardent supporter of the Saudi regime, Britain and France have increased arms exports exponentially during the war in Yemen, despite widespread allegations of war crimes committed by the Saudi-led coalition. Taking a more restrictive approach are the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Flanders, which licences its own arms exports from inside Belgium. The strongest position has come from the Netherlands, whose Parliament passed a bill in March calling for the government to halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia, citing violations of international humanitarian law in the war in Yemen. This move gives practical effect to the European Parliament’s call for an embargo, made in February.

“The EU’s common rules have been thrown into crisis by controversy and disagreement over the supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states”

Arms exports to Saudi Arabia are playing a role in another Middle Eastern crisis as well, causing a split between EU member states and a problem for common European controls. Arms supplies to
Saudi Arabia – as well as to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey – are being “re-transferred” to armed groups fighting in Syria. This not only includes the Free Syrian Army units, whom
Western states support, but groups fighting for the Assad regime and Islamist groups such as Ansar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra. Between May 2011 and May 2013, there was an EU embargo
on arms exports to Syria, including both the regime and rebel groups, but France and the UK pushed to lift it. Their aim was to supply rebels – in line with their support, alongside the US, of
groups fighting both the Assad regime and, more recently, against Daesh. Other EU countries such as Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands were reluctant to lift the embargo, in part because of the risk of escalation, and in part due to the potential for diversion that arms supplies to rebel groups could cause.

The divisions in the EU have now been exacerbated by revelations of a significant increase in arms exports from Balkan and Central European states – themselves EU members or candidate countries, and thus bound by the EU Common Position. Research by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has found that weapons worth almost €1.2bn have been licensed by states such as Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia to the Middle East since winter 2012. Almost 70% of them went to Saudi Arabia. There is considerable evidence that these weapons have been re-transferred to armed groups operating in Syria and Yemen, and are contributing to human rights violations in the course of the wars in those countries. The common European controls, designed to prevent another race to the bottom and human catastrophe, are in disarray.

“The impact of Brexit on European arms export controls will depend on the level and type of British access to the single market”

The impact of Brexit on European arms export controls will depend on the level and type of British access to the single market. Institutionally, some things will be more challenging once the UK
withdraws from the EU and is no longer party to the harmonisation and information-sharing mechanisms that have been painstakingly built. And there are a host of technical regulations at the EU level – such as the Dual-Use Regulation, Firearms Directive, regulation on torture goods, and the Intra-Community Transfer Directive – that will be very difficult to unpick and rework from outside the EU. On the other hand, the UK is already party to the Arms Trade Treaty, a legally-binding treaty that sets common international standards for the regulation of arms exports and contains many similar restrictions to the EU Common Position. In this sense, there is no reason why UK standards should suddenly drop, especially given the UK’s vocal leadership in the negotiation of both the EU regime and the Arms Trade Treaty, and its claim that its national standards exceed them.

But the UK, while a prominent proponent of supposedly progressive standards, is also a violator of said standards. Its sales to Saudi Arabia since the war in Yemen began are the most recent and notable example of the way arms exports repeatedly make cracks in the façade of a European public policy based on values of liberal democracy and human rights. While over-inflated economic arguments about the benefits of arms exports to the UK economy could encourage even greater sales, such a move would need to be accompanied by the abandonment of the rhetoric of restraint or common European policy.

IMAGE CREDIT: Homeros/Bigstock.com

The post Arms sales rules working on paper – just not in practice appeared first on Europe’s World.

The last few weeks have seen military and paramilitary operations intensify in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. But is this liberation or a land-grab?

Daesh – the self-styled ‘Islamic State’ terror group – has kept a tight grip on Iraq’s second city for more than two years now, and it is clear they have been able to entrench themselves and prepare for the current assault.

Fortunately, Iraqi government forces have been able keep the perilous Mosul Dam from the clutches of Daesh. If the dam were to be destroyed, it would unleash devastation throughout Iraq, potentially killing more than a million people in a short space of time.

Since emerging from al-Qaeda and other terror groups around 2012, Daesh has led a campaign of torture, murder and subjugation across Iraq and Syria. It has enslaved thousands, created an unprecedented refugee crisis, and brutally killed anyone who disagrees with its retrograde ideology. They have inspired terror attacks all over the world and pushed policymakers into unprecedented international cooperation and action.

Over the last year Iraqi forces, assisted by international support, have been able to push Daesh back from the gates of Baghdad. Now they are ready to push Daesh out of Mosul.

“This assault should not be called liberation – it is a seizure of land and the imposition of Iranian hegemony”

While these simple facts should be welcome news in Western capitals, it is deeply concerning how these feats have been achieved, and what they mean for Iraq in particular and the region in general.

Iraq weaves together tribes, cultures, ethnicities and religions. Since 2003 the political structure has been based on cementing these differences rather than uniting disparate factions of Iraq under a truly national umbrella. It is this socio-political fact that has allowed Daesh to grow and expand its foothold in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the international community has allowed this problem to get worse in the pursuit of a quick so-called victory against Daesh.

The rejection of political compromise, devolution and power-sharing from Baghdad to Sunni Muslims in particular has left this community isolated, repressed and vulnerable to a Daesh takeover.

On many occasions Sunni leaders and other tribal chiefs pleaded with Baghdad to help them defeat Daesh. They called for military support and weapons, and for work on an inclusive non-sectarian political settlement. These Sunni groups know the area, know the people, and could gain wide support for a complete defeat of Daesh and its ideology.

Baghdad rejected this approach and rejected political inclusion. The Iraqi government, composed of Iranian-backed ethnic parties, instead sent in the heavily artillery of the Iraqi army and summoned airstrikes by the international coalition. More worryingly, they called on paramilitary groups supported by, staffed by and directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its leader, Qasem Soleimani.

Over the last year, many human rights groups have reported on and complained about the actions of these paramilitary groups. The Tehran-sponsored groups are causing destruction and starvation; they are displacing and terrorising local communities. News organizations have recently reported that tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians are fleeing Tal Afar, a city on the outskirts of Mosul, as a result of the onslaught of Iranian-backed groups.

“Without concerted efforts to tackle the underlying causes of Daesh, we will only displace the problem – the threat will remain”

Daesh will be pushed out of Iraq, probably at the cost of thousands of ‘human shields’. Iraqi government and Iranian-back forces will take Mosul and the rest of Iraq.

All of this means that this assault should not be called liberation. The Baghdad government will call it that; so will the voices from Tehran. But it is not.

Instead it is a seizure of land and the imposition of Iranian hegemony. Groups like Daesh will be defeated, but their ideology and their inspiration will be displaced and survive. Their threat will go on.

Western cities and interests will not be safe until that ideology and inspiration is defeated and we are able to stop recruitment and eliminate the core threat.

The challenge for all leaders in 2017 will be to understand two key elements about the true nature of the threat and how to work to rid the world of it.

First, we may think that Daesh survives only because it controls and occupies actually territory. In reality, we know groups such as Daesh survive because of ingrained resentment and ideological support.

Second, while many governments and organisations around the world support countering Daesh, their very actions feed and nurture the resentment and ideology of such groups.

Western policymakers face the huge challenge of pushing for and creating political inclusion in both Iraq and Syria. This would greatly help the region economically and support the resettlement of the millions of refugees locally and in Europe. But the West will also have to counter Iranian support of terror and destabilisation.

2017 will see Daesh pushed from Iraq. It will probably also be destroyed in Syria. But without concerted and real efforts to tackle the underlying causes of the growth of such groups, we will only displace the problem – the threat will remain.

IMAGE CREDIT: Homeros/Bigstock.com

The post Are we displacing or defeating Daesh in Iraq? appeared first on Europe’s World.

General : Malta is set to take over the Presidency of the European Council in January for the first time since joining the EU in 2004. Parliament's Conference of Presidents, which is composed of Parliament President Martin Schulz and the political group leaders, visited the island on Thursday 8 December to find out how the country was preparing for it.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : Malta is set to take over the Presidency of the European Council in January for the first time since joining the EU in 2004. Parliament's Conference of Presidents, which is composed of Parliament President Martin Schulz and the political group leaders, visited the island on Thursday 8 December to find out how the country was preparing for it.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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Ministerial meetings between the EU and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

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A proposal to grant Spain €856,800 in EU aid to help find new jobs for 250 former car workers who were made redundant by 29 firms making motor vehicle parts in the Valencia region was approved by the Budgets Committee on Thursday. The European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) aid still needs to be approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 December, and by a plenary vote in Parliament planned for 14 December.
Committee on Budgets

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

A proposal to grant Spain €856,800 in EU aid to help find new jobs for 250 former car workers who were made redundant by 29 firms making motor vehicle parts in the Valencia region was approved by the Budgets Committee on Thursday. The European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) aid still needs to be approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 December, and by a plenary vote in Parliament planned for 14 December.
Committee on Budgets

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP