Spain: Catalonia prepares for rule by Skype- by Andrew Rettman

The two biggest parties in Catalonia have vowed to put Carles Puigdemont back in office despite Madrid's threat to maintain direct rule if they go ahead.

The Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) and ERC parties told El Nacional, a Spanish newspaper, on Tuesday (16 January), that Puigdemont was preparing to be invested as president of the region on 31 January and to carry out his future duties via videolink on online platforms such as Skype from his self-imposed exile in Brussels.

They said he would do it "due to legal imperative".

"I promise to act with complete fidelity to the will of the people of Catalonia," Puigdemont, whose JxCat party came second in regional elections in December, added.

The statement of intent came after the Catalan parliament's own lawyers said on Tuesday that a videolink investiture would have no legal basis.

Note EU-Digest: When is Mr. Piedemont going to "grow-up" and return to Spain to face the Judge in Madrid? It is also high time Belgium stops sitting on their hands and extradites Mr. Piedemont back to Spain. The Catalan voters should also start questioning the Catalan local government at which point they are ending this charade and stop financing Mr. Piedemont's non-productive activities in Belgium with tax payers money.  

Read more: Catalonia prepares for rule by Skype

The Netherlands: Britons in Netherlands take fight for their EU rights to Dutch court - by Daniel Boffey and Lisa O'Carroll

A group of UK nationals living in the Netherlands are going to court to challenge the right of the British government and the European commission to negotiate away their rights as EU citizens in the Brexit talks.

The claimants will argue that the rights of UK citizens are independent of the country’s EU membership, according to legal documents seen by the Guardian.

The case will be heard in Amsterdam on Wednesday, where a referral to the European court of justice will be sought, in what could be a major test of the treatment of UK nationals by the EU and UK in the Brexit talks, with potentially huge ramifications.

While the ECJ could find that only citizens who have exploited their right to free movement to live in the EU are being unlawfully treated, everyone in the UK could potentially benefit.

Five UK nationals along with the Commercial Anglo Dutch Society (Cads) and the lobby group Brexpats – Hear Our Voice are the named claimants. They are being assisted by Jolyon Maugham, the QC behind a series of recent Brexit legal challenges.

The group argue in their action against the Dutch government that after Brexit on 29 March 2019, anyone who had UK citizenship before that date should legally retain EU rights including freedom of movement and the right of residence.

They say the EU’s treaties are silent on what happens to citizens of a member state that leaves the union. But they claim the Lisbon treaty gives “real weight” to the rights of EU nationals, and that these are not coupled to the political fate of their home country.

The group’s lawyer, Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, said he expected the court to take six weeks at most to decide whether to refer the case to the ECJ. “We are in a rush,” he said. “I’m convinced that the ECJ should assess these questions. Theresa May famously said ‘Brexit means Brexit’ but no one knows what that means.”

One of the claimants, Stephen Huyton, a director of a US firm headquartered in the Netherlands who has lived in the country for 23 years, said he was concerned about the right of his children, who have British passports and are studying in the UK, to return to the Netherlands to live and work.

“There are a number of points to this and one is emotional,” he said. “We have lived outside the UK for more than 15 years and so we were not allowed to vote in the referendum. That is the rule. So a lot of us really feel disenfranchised by the whole process. It was a raw nerve, and it remains a raw nerve.

“I did not make a lifestyle choice by moving here, I moved here for work. And when I came out I came out on a set of terms and conditions. The whole issue of the UK being able to leave the EU [through article 50 of the Lisbon treaty] wasn’t in the treaties at that point.

“In UK common law, we generally have a rule that we don’t apply law retrospectively, and in some ways that is what they are doing.”

Maugham, who is financially backing the legal action, said he was hopeful the case could have profound implications for UK citizens who want to retain their rights.

“Article 20 gives EU citizenship rights to nationals of member states but it is silent on the issue of what happens to those rights if a member state ceases to be a member state,” he said. “Previous ECJ cases have suggested that EU citizenship rights have an independent reality, not just as an adjunct to national citizenship rights.

“The question is: would anyone who is a citizen of the UK on 29 March 2019 benefit from EU citizenship rights after that date? Of course, we cannot know what the [ECJ] might say. But I can see it taking the opportunity to give meaning and resonance to those rights.”

Maugham conceded that a favourable ruling by the ECJ could throw up an “awkward asymmetry” between the way UK and EU citizens are treated on either side of the Channel.

“The question whether UK citizens can assert EU citizenship rights in the EU after Brexit is a question of EU law,” he said. “But the question whether non-UK EU citizens can assert EU citizenship rights in the UK after Brexit is a question of UK law.

“It may turn out that there is an awkward asymmetry: UK citizens enjoying generous EU rights but EU citizens suffering meagre UK rights.”

Debra Williams, 55, founder of Brexpats, one of the claimants, who has spent a decade moving between Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium for her husband’s work, said: “EU citizenship means the world to me.

“It’s not that I’m not proud to be Welsh and British; I am, but I’m also proud to be European. I’m doing this for the kids, and the grandkids, they should have what we have, to be able to travel and work freely in Europe. Otherwise it’s going to be work permits and visa, that will be a tragedy for them.”

Read more Britons in Netherlands take fight for their EU rights to Dutch court | Politics | The Guardian

EU: Four Predictions on the Future of Europe by US Think Tank Carnegie Europe - by Jan Techau

At the end of all this madness, what is the EU going to look like? This is a question heard a lot these days, in one form or another. Most observers sense that these are extraordinary times for Europe, and that political realities might look very different rather soon. And while it is impossible to predict how the greatest political project in history will transform under existential pressures from both within and outside, all of these pressures point in a certain direction when it comes to Europe’s future.

Let’s start by saying that there will never be an end to all this madness. Human affairs never reach an end point, some sort of magic equilibrium of all driving forces at which those affairs can be frozen and preserved. In European integration parlance, this means that there is no such thing as finalité politique, that old canard.

The EU serves a purpose, and its workings and its setup will be adapted as this purpose changes. Again and again. So instead of looking at some imaginary final outcome that will be outdated the moment it is reached, let’s look at the forces that shape the union.

Ultimately, it is the needs of Europeans that build the EU. Yes, political leadership and a good helping of civic boldness on behalf of the European citizenry are necessary as well, neither of which is in ample supply these days. But fundamentally, the EU either serves the needs of the day or it gets into crisis. Such a moment has been reached today. And the current crisis that Europeans are both observing and undergoing is nothing but the readjustment of a project that no longer serves the needs of the day properly, and therefore needs renovation.

What makes this moment different from earlier existential crises is that the direction of integration is more diffuse now than in the past. Some needs point toward more integration, but others perhaps point toward less. I am convinced that in the long term, the net result will be more integration. But it will not be wholesale “ever closer union,” the aim enshrined in the EU’s treaties. It will be something a little more diffuse.

The biggest overwhelming need is that Europeans will have to react to the harsh winds of political globalization in the future. Political globalization is more than just the economic globalization that has been talked about endlessly in the last decade. It is a quest for political order on a planet that has outgrown its merely regional structure. It will drag the Europeans out of their cozy, U.S.-subsidized corner of comfort, in which liberal order, pluralism, political stability, and the absence of major conflict were somehow taken for granted.

Read more: Four Predictions on the Future of Europe - Carnegie Europe - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Christianity under threat: ‘Worst Year Yet’: The Top 50 Countries Where It’s Hardest to Be a Christian: by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra

For decades, North Korea has clearly been the world’s worst persecutor of Christians. But now, another nation nearly matches it.

Open Doors recently released its 2018 World Watch List (WWL), an annual ranking of the 50 countries where it is most dangerous to follow Jesus. Approximately 215 million Christians now experience high, very high, or extreme levels of persecution; that means 1 in 12 Christians live where Christianity is “illegal, forbidden, or punished,” according to Open Doors researchers.

Kim Jung-un’s country hasn’t moved from the No. 1 spot on the list for 16 years in a row. “With more than 50,000 in prison or labor camps, such a ranking is little surprise for the totalitarian regime that controls every aspect of life in the country and forces worship of the Kim family,” Open Doors reported.

But rivaling it this year is Afghanistan, which ranked No. 2 by less than a point. North Korea’s total score was 94 (on a 100-point scale), pushed above Afghanistan’s 93 by a 0.6 difference in their 

Open Doors recently released its latest World Watch List (WWL). The annual list ranks the top 50 countries "where Christians face the most persecution," aiming to create "effective anger" on believers' behalf.

“This year, the threshold was higher for a country to make the list, indicating that worldwide levels of persecution have increased,” stated Open Doors in announcing its analysis of the "significant trends" in 2014 that drove persecution higher worldwide, "even in places where it has not been reported in the past."

So while countries such as Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) fell significantly in rank on this year's watch list (Sri Lanka dropped 15 spots to No. 44, and the UAE dropped 14 spots to No. 49), their level of persecution dropped only slightly from last year's list (by four points and two points, respectively, on a 100-point scale). 

Bahrain, Morocco, and Niger—were removed from the list this year, the level of persecution in each remained virtually the same from 2013 to 2014.

Overall in 2014, pressure on Christians increased in 29 countries, decreased in 11, and remained stable in 7. Three countries—Mexico, Turkey, and Azerbaijan—were added to the watch list this year. 

To get the complete report click go to: https://www.opendoorsusa.org/2018-world-watch-list-report/

Read more: ‘Worst Year Yet’: The Top 50 Countries Where It’s Hardest to Be a Christian | News & Reporting | Christianity Today

Germany: German coalition talks reach breakthrough: A look at what comes next

The all-nighter appears to have focused minds: Germany's two biggest political parties — the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) — announced on Friday morning that they had made a breakthrough in their exploratory talks, paving the way to formal coalition negotiations and, if all goes to plan, another iteration of the grand coalition.

The new agreement represents an important stage victory in the marathon negotiations for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who would certainly prefer a grand coalition to the other two options currently on the table: heading an unstable minority government, or a new election.

Should the negotiations with the SPD fail, a new election could well usher in the end of Merkel's time in office, as her CDU attempts to revive its fortunes following its worst election results ever. Her party took 32.9 percent in September's election, a drop of 8.6 percentage points on the 2013 result. This has resulted in much self-reflection in the party, along with speculation that Merkel's era was drawing to a close — and even debate about potential successors.

Read more: German coalition talks reach breakthrough: A look at what comes next | Germany| News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond | DW | 12.01.2018

USA - Shithole: Trump’s 'Shithole Countries' Comments: What He Meant - by Ryan Teague Beckwith and Maya Rhodan

President Donald Trump’s “shithole countries” comments ricocheted around the world, spurring criticism from U.S. allies, rebuttals from Americans with roots in those countries and condemnation from some in his own party.

Lost in the furor over his “shithole” comment is the argument that Trump was making at the time.

The White House held the meeting to discuss a bipartisan immigration deal that would help undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children who got relief under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program, foreign nationals who fled manmade and natural disasters and received temporary protected status (TPS) in the U.S. and immigrants seeking to come to the U.S. through a diversity lottery.

That’s a lot to unpack, so we’ll walk through these one at a time. But here’s the short version: If you are upset about Trump calling African nations “shithole countries” and disparaging Haitians, you probably won’t like what he was proposing either.

Note EU-Digest: The new Yorker wrote: "President Trump’s credibility as a world leader has been, to borrow his vulgarity, shot to shit. With one word—just the latest in a string of slurs about other nations and peoples—he has demolished his ability to be taken seriously on the global stage. “There is no other word one can use but ‘racist,’ ” the spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, Rupert Colville, said at a briefing in Geneva. “You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘shitholes,’ whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome.”

We can not agree more: Donald Trump is a disgrace for America. 

Read more: Trump’s 'Shithole Countries' Comments: What He Meant | Time

Sharia Law - Islam: Greece limits Islamic Sharia law courts for Muslim minority

Greek lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly backed legislation to limit the purview of Islamic religious courts over the nearly 120,000-strong Muslim minority in the region of Western Thrace.

Islamic religious courts will only be able to rule in family law matters such as divorce, child custody and inheritance if all parties agree, under the new law supported by major parties.

Regular Greek law will apply in cases where all parties do not agree to a religious court settling a dispute.

Greece is the only EU country that has Islamic religious courts.

State-appointed clerics, known as muftis, have resolved family law matters among Muslims in Western Thrace under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne between Turkey and Greece following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Among other things, the treaty involved a population exchange of some 2 million people between Turkey and Greece, except for on some Aegean islands, the Greek Orthodox community in Istanbul and the largely Turkish-speaking Muslim community in Western Thrace.

The Greek Orthodox and Muslim minorities were given certain minority language, cultural and religious rights under the treaty.

But in a strange twist of history, the Muslims of Greece fell under Islamic law while Turkey moved to a secular legal system in the Turkish Republic.

The Muslims in the northeastern corner of Greece near the border with Turkey are mostly ethnic Turks, although there is also a Bulgarian-speaking Pomak community.

Turkey has long taken an interest in what it deems Turkish-ethnic brothers in Western Thrace, drawing accusations from Greece that Ankara is interfering in its affairs.

Greece has been reluctant to change the law around Muslim family matters, fearful that it could prompt Turkey to request changes to the Lausanne Treaty.

Note EU-Digest: To allow Sharia, or any other religious law to function on a parallel status with local and national laws in EU member States is ridiculous and creates more problems than it solves.   

Read  more: Greece limits Islamic Sharia law courts for Muslim minority | News | DW | 10.01.2018