Netherlands Pauses Decisions on Ukrainians’ Asylum Applications for Next Six Months

As a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, its nationals will be able to live in the Netherlands without having to apply for asylum for up to six months.

Read more at: Netherlands Pauses Decisions on Ukrainians’ Asylum Applications for Next Six Months - SchengenVisaInfo.com

Hungary says it blocked EU budget over migration 'blackmail' - "which is total nonsense by Orban who destroyed Democracy in his country" said a European parliamentarian

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Wednesday his country vetoed the EU's budget over plans to tie funding to respect for the rule of law, as it amounted to "blackmailing" countries that oppose migration.

Read more at: Hungary says it blocked EU budget over migration 'blackmail'

World Day for Migrants and Refugees: 'We cannot remain insensitive': Pope decries world's indifference to migrants, refugees

Pope Francis on Sunday decried "the culture of comfort" that leads to indifference in the face of a global migration and refugee crisis.

The Pope, who has made caring for migrants a major objective of his papacy, spoke during a mass at the Vatican in Rome for the World Day for Migrants and Refugees.

"We cannot be indifferent to the tragedy of old and new forms of poverty, to the bleak isolation, contempt and discrimination experienced by those who do not belong to 'our group,"' Francis said.

 "We cannot remain insensitive,our hearts deadened, before the misery of so many innocent people. We must not fail to weep. We must not fail to respond.

The pontiff has often spoken of the need to be welcoming to migrants, travelling to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2013 on his first trip as Pope to comfort refugees.

His message found political resistance in Italy's previous populist government, during which the former hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, campaigned to prevent the arrival in Italy of migrants rescued at sea by humanitarian groups.

The Pope also noted the weapons that fuel wars are often produced and sold in other regions, "which are then unwilling to take in the refugees generated buy these conflicts."

Read more at: 'We cannot remain insensitive': Pope decries world's indifference to migrants, refugees | CBC News

USA. Christians Donald Trump's refugees legislation also creates problems for his Christian supporters

Number of Christian refugees admitted to U.S. plummets under Trump.

Read more at
http://flip.it/r-O8EB

'EU Turkish Relations: Turkey needs Europe, Europe needs Turkey'

Turkey's not exactly the flavour of the month in the EU right now, but - as the two sides meet at a summit in Bulgaria - President Erdogan says it's time for the bloc to "keep to its promises."

Ankara kicked off formal membership negotiations in 2005 and, all these years on, they have effectively collapsed.

But there's a reluctance to walk away from each other.

"Europe should take its share of the refugees, so that we don't have to depend on people like Erdogan to manage the issue," said Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian Green MEP.

"That obviously requires a little bit of political courage, but at the end of the day, it's our strategic independence from Turkey."

Erdogan's alarmed the West with a massive purge following a failed coup attempt.

But Turkey remains the destination for many Syrians fleeing war - and an important ally in the NATO alliance. So is it really curtains for the membership bid?

"If Turkey cannot relaunch the reform process and is not anymore in a position to meet EU accession criteria, relations will evolve into a kind of partnership and will be shaped more and more around common interests and strategic priorities," commented political analyst Seda Gurkan.

"And Turkey is considered in Brussels actually as an important strategic neighbour or a key partner rather a candidate."

Three billion euros of fresh cash is expected to be pledged to Turkey to lengthen a deal on it taking in Syrian refugees. And for Ankara, the EU is its biggest foreign investor and trading partner.

"Turkey is not doing very well economically, it needs outlets" said Lamberts, "and it is very clear that bad relations with Europe are harmful to Turkey, so somewhere on the economic level Erdogan needs Europe and Europe in fairness needs Turkey."

With Syria, France has been one of the biggest critics of the Turkish military operation in Afrin - saying border security concerns did not justify it.

Read more: 'Turkey needs Europe, Europe needs Turkey' | Euronews

Harvey and Irma remind us, all displaced persons around the globe share common problems and deserve common solutions - by R.M.

Irma : Floridians fleeing the State from natural disaster

As more than 5.4 million Floridians evacuate from the upcoming onslaught of Irma, while Texans are still recovering from the devastating damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, it might be a good moment to take a second, step out of our comfort zone, and realize the Floridians and Texans are not the only humans facing these problems around the world.

The only difference being that for one the calamity came as part of a natural disaster, from which they eventually can return home safely, and for the other, as a result of “man-made “ disasters, commonly known as wars and religious persecutions..

We as humans, morally,  can not show compassion for one human being and withhold it from the other. Certainly not for those displaced persons, who were forced to flee from their home countries against their will and become refugees in foreign lands, and considered second rate citizens there.

A "master race" does not exist. Humans are all equal in the eyes of our Creator. There is no difference if you are a man or a woman, black, white, brown, yellow, African, American, Arab, Asian , European, Eskimo, or Indian.

People fleeing from "man-made"disasters reaching EU coasts

People fleeing from their homes and cities, either for religious persecution, or because they have been bombed to oblivion by either their own governments or others, and who fled seeking safety and economic prosperity in countries other than their own, should not be barred by any country. At least not by those who proclaim they hold human rights and other values dear to their heart.

Bottom line: Yes, we need to help and pray for all the stricken people in Florida and Texas, but must also include in our prayers all those other displaced persons around the world.

Displaced persons from Myanmar,,Syria, Afghanistan,Sudan,  and many other “disaster” areas, to mention just a few, deserve the same helping hand and prayers we usually reserve for our own.

© This article can be copied,translated,distributed by request to:

freeplanet@prontonmail.com

 

EU-Digest

EU Refugee Crises: EU needs a lasting solution to the refugee crisis- by Gianni Pittella

In the summer of 2015, images of the hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving on Europe’s shores dominated the front pages of European newspapers.

Journalists from every major publication were themselves migrating daily to new flashpoints, border fences or makeshift camps – chasing the latest scoop or story. Alongside this blanket media coverage came political urgency.

Heads of state and government met on an almost monthly basis to discuss the issue. However, as soon as the stories began disappearing from the front pages so did the political will to do something.

Despite the receding media coverage, the issue has not gone way.

While the numbers arriving in Greece have declined since the middle of 2015, the numbers arriving across the Mediterranean to Italy have increased markedly in the last two to three years.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants that have been rescued by the Italian navy and are now waiting in reception centres or being housed by local authorities, many of which are stretched to their limits.

Despite warnings from the Italian government, most EU member state continue to ignore the situation.

The newly elected president in France, Emmanuel Macron, has refused to open French ports to migrants and, in Austria, the foreign minister and defence minister even threatened to send the army to the Italian border to stop migrants crossing.

We are reaching another tipping point. Earlier this month we called for an extraordinary European Council summit to discuss migration before the summer break. National governments replied that this could wait till the autumn. This is simply not acceptable.

The most frustrating issue is that it does not need to be this way.

We are a continent of 500 million people and one of the richest regions of the planet – the arrival of a few hundred thousand refugees and migrants is manageable if we organize ourselves effectively.

Read more: EU needs a lasting solution to the refugee crisis

Refugees in the Netherlands: 'The Netherlands has accepted only 2,100 refugees under EU quota scheme'

The Netherlands has so far taken in 2,100 refugees under the European quota plan drawn up in 2015 when some 160,000 refugees were forecast to arrive in Italy and Greece, broadcaster NOS reports.

The Netherlands had been set to accept some 9,000 people under the quota plan, but the actual numbers of people claiming refugee status in the two countries is far below expectations. In total, 25,000 people have been allocated help in another European country.

In June, judges in The Hague said the Netherlands does not have to take in any more refugees from camps in Italy and Greece than it has already has.

A foundation called We Gaan Ze Halen (we are going to fetch them) had taken the Dutch state to court, arguing that the Netherlands had not taken in enough asylum seekers under the terms of the EU resettlement deal.

The Netherlands has accepted only 2,100 refugees under EU quota scheme' - DutchNews.nl

NATO: President Trump makes 180 degrees turn on NATO:, says 'It's no longer obsolete' - by Ryan Struyk

Results of 16 years of Disastrous Middle East Foreign Policy

 When somebody says one thing, does another, and possibly thinks something else, all that you’re going to wind up with is problems.

President Donald Trump reversed course on his view of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Wednesday, saying the organization is "no longer obsolete" after months of bashing the defense alliance as no longer relevant during his campaign. 

"I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete," Trump said in a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House. 

"The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism," Trump said. "I complained about that a long time ago, and they made a change and now they do fight terrorism. 

"... Every generation strives to adopt the NATO alliance to meet the challenges of their times, and on my visit to Brussels this spring, which I look very much forward to, we will work together to do the same," Trump continued, calling for NATO to support Iraq to fight ISIS. "We must not be trapped by the tired thinking that so many have, but apply new solutions to face new circumstances." 

Trump also reiterated that countries in NATO ought to allocate 2 percent of their GDP of military spending, a frequent rallying cry during his presidential campaign last year. Only five of the 28 member states currently do so, including the U.S. 

Trump said that NATO was obsolete as recently as this January in an interview with The Times of London. “I said a long time ago that NATO had problems. No. 1, it was obsolete because it was designed many, many years ago. No. 2, the countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to pay," Trump said in January. "I took such heat when I said NATO was obsolete. It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror. I took a lot of heat for two days. And then they started saying Trump is right." 

Note EU-Digest:  - When somebody says one thing, does another, and possibly thinks something else, all that you’re going to wind up with is problems. 

Let us be honest these problems are the direct result of how President Trump's Administration has been conducting its day to day business on just about every given issue during Trump's Presidency so far.

Hopefully the EU does not fall for this self-serving nonsense of the Trump Administration. 

It should make clear to the US Administration, that as a result of US failed Middle East Policies during the past two decades, which included NATO EU nations involvement in the equation, the EU is now saddled up with millions of refugees and ISIS terrorism. 

Business can not be conducted as usual because it has not worked. 

The reality is that the EU needs a more effective and mature relationship with the US, which includes having an independent foreign policy and military defense force. It is as simple as that. 

Read more: President Trump on NATO: 'It's no longer obsolete' - ABC News

EU -Turkish Relations: Ending the migrant deal with Turkey may save the EU

Erdogan: The abusive Turkish dictator

It has been one year since Turkey and the European Union signed a migrant deal on Syrian refugees.

The controversial agreement has been effective in reducing the flow of Syrian and other refugees through Turkey, who aim to reach Europe.

However, this particular deal has come at an incredibly huge political price for the EU and its member states, notably Germany.

From the agreement's inception, Turkey has been trying to use it as a card to exert political pressure against the EU, and has more than once threatened to call it off if it did not get visa-free travel for Turkish citizens in return.

However, this goes beyond the visa-free aspect.

In fact, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, feeling in a strong position, has been engaging in increasingly harsh rhetoric towards the EU and its member states.

In contrast, the EU and national officials from its member states have largely refrained from engaging in a verbal confrontation with Erdogan.

While European leaders do their utmost to save the migrant deal, the European public has increasingly come to perceive the deal as a lost case.

It is the inability of the EU institutions and European leaders to develop a workable alternative that has aggravated the public and has reduced the chances of the re-election of the current ruling governments.

In Germany and France, where elections will be held soon, far-right anti-EU parties have emerged - posing a serious threat to the political establishment.

With strong anti-EU agendas, the success of these parties is tied to the very future of the European Union.

French and German establishment parties may find at least two strong reasons to risk such confrontations with Turkey.

First of all, in light of the widespread public displeasure in Europe over Erdogan’s rhetoric, any diplomatic row and subsequent steps by Turkey to end the migrant deal will be easily defendable.

Secondly, should Turkey decide to end the deal, the EU has established physical barriers and has put mechanisms in place that would prevent another mass flow of refugees similar to that of 2015.

With the Dutch elections still fresh in mind, establishment parties in France and Germany may very well be tempted to copy the example of Rutte’s and, in doing so, may win the battle against the anti-EU parties.

If they manage to play their cards right - the end of the migrant deal may very well be the saviour of the European Union.

Note EU-Digest:  It is high time the EU tells Erdogan to go to hell and stuff the migrant/immigrant deal where it belongs ...... No more chantage and abusive insults from this power hungry dictator can, or must be accepted. As a point of interest for those who might not know - the Turkish government has been giving Syrian refugees, who request it, instant Turkish citizenship - no questions asked . The obvious reason being that the Erdogan government knows these new citizens will be voting yes in the April 16 Turkish Referendum to give Erdogan absolute power.  Also, please take note dear Turkish European citizens and obviously also every Dutch immigrants from wherever you might have come, that if this upsets you - "nothing stops you to go and live in Turkey or in your country of origin, and voice whatever negative opinion you might have of the Netherlands or any other EU nation. All we can say is "good riddance ! " .

Read more: Ending the migrant deal with Turkey may save t

Terrorism and Refugees: Records show that no refugees carried out in the United States

Trump’s executive order bans travel from seven countries — Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iraq and Iran — but it does not ban travel from residents of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. In addition, the K-1 fiancee program remains in place.

New York and New Jersey explosions

Ahmad Khan Rahimi faces an array of bombing, weapons and attempted murder charges in two on September 17, 2016, incidents. He is accused of detonating bombs in New Jersey and in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. The explosion in Chelsea injured 29 people.

Rahimi was born in Afghanistan and first came to the United States in 1995, following several years after his father arrived seeking asylum. Rahimi became a naturalized US citizen in 2011. He had recently spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said.

Neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan is on Trump’s list of banned countries.

Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting

Omar Mateen, the man who shot and killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, was an American citizen living in Fort Pierce, Florida. He was born in New York, and his parents were from Afghanistan.

His widow, Noor Salman, was arrested earlier this month on charges of obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting her husband’s material support to ISIS. She grew up in Rodeo, California, and her parents immigrated to the United States from the West Bank in 1985, according to The New York Times.

Neither Afghanistan nor the West Bank is included on the list of banned countries.

Boston Marathon bombings

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, were born in Kyrgyzstan to parents originally from war-torn Chechnya.

The Tsarnaev family arrived in the United States when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was 8 years old, and they applied for and were granted political asylum. The process for applying for political asylum is different from the process of arriving as a refugee.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger brother, became a naturalized citizen in September 2012.

Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan are not included on the list of banned countries.

World Trade Center, September 11, 2001

Read more: How many terror attacks have refugees carried out in the United States? | fox13now.com

Refugees - USA:- EU: Trump Blocks Syrian Refugees and Orders Mexican Border Wall to Be Built- by J.H. Davis

President Trump on Wednesday began a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, ordering the immediate construction of a border wall with Mexico and aggressive efforts to find and deport unauthorized immigrants. He planned additional actions to cut back on legal immigration, including barring Syrian refugees from entering the United States.

At the headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Trump signed a pair of executive orders that paved the way for a border wall and called for a newly expanded force to sweep up immigrants who are in the country illegally. He revived programs that allow the federal government to work with local and state law enforcement agencies to arrest and detain unauthorized immigrants with criminal records and to share information to help track and deport them.

He also planned to clamp down on legal immigration in another action expected as early as Thursday. An eight-page draft of that executive order, obtained by The New York Times, would indefinitely block Syrian refugees from entering the United States.

Also bar all refugees from the rest of the world for at least 120 days.

When the refugee program resumes, it would be much smaller, with the total number of refugees resettled in the United States this year more than halved, to 50,000 from 110,000.

t would also suspend any immigration for at least 30 days from a number of predominantly Muslim countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — while the government toughened its already stringent screening procedures to weed out potential terrorists.

White House officials declined to comment on the coming plan, but in a wide-ranging interview that aired Wednesday on ABC, Mr. Trump acknowledged that it aimed to erect formidable barriers for those seeking refuge in the United States.

He also said his administration would “absolutely do safe zones in Syria” to discourage refugees from seeking safety in other countries, and chided Europe and Germany in particular for accepting millions of immigrants. “It’s a disaster, what’s happening there,” Mr. Trump said.

Taken together, the moves would turn the full weight of the federal government to fortifying the United States border, rounding up some of the 11 million people who are in the country illegally and targeting refugees, who are often among the world’s most vulnerable people. It is an aggressive use of presidential power that follows through on the nationalistic vision Mr. Trump presented during his presidential campaign.

“A nation without borders is not a nation,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday at the Department of Homeland Security, where he signed the orders alongside the newly sworn-in secretary, John F. Kelly. “Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders.”

The plans are a sharp break with former President Barack Obama’s approach and what was once a bipartisan consensus to devise a path to citizenship for some of the nation’s illegal immigrants. Mr. Obama, however, angered many immigrant groups by deporting millions of unauthorized workers, largely during his first term.

“It’s going to be very hard to come in,” Mr. Trump said. “Right now, it’s very easy to come in.”

Note E-Digest:  Since Mr. Trump brought up his thoughts on refugees and immigrants entering the US it might also be appropriate, in that same context, to bring up Europe's refugee problems. 

So here we go again in bringing the Refugee Crises in Europe and its causes to the attention of the Public at Large, the EU Commission, the EU Parliament, EU member states government, and last but not least President Trump, who even admitted during his presidential campaign that the US. should never have started the war against Iraq, because it did so under under a false pretext. 

Fact is that the large number of Refugees we are dealing with in the EU and Turkey today, are the direct result of the US invasion of Iraq some 14 years ago. 

This war had a 'snowball' effect  on the Middle East and North Africa and turned the whole area  into a war-zone.  The result of all this today, millions of refugees fleeing to the EU and Turkey..

Hopefully Mr. Trump  will not only apologize to the victims of thye war crimes committed by his fellow Republican President  George Bush, but also compensate the EU for the costs they are incurring as a result of the large inflow of refugees from the Middle East into the EU. 

As the saying goes "if you do the crime you have to do the time." or in this case - please pay up for those costs incurred by the EU on behalf of your country's failed Middle East policies Mr. Trump..  

 Read mor4e: Trump Blocks Syrian Refugees and Orders Mexican Border Wall to Be Built - The New York Times

Religious Tensions: US Turned Its Back on Anne Frank, Will Trump Do the Same with Muslim Refugees? - by Robert Fisk

I’ve just visited the hiding place of some troublesome refugees who should make Donald Trump very angry. It’s not the first time I’ve called at the little house on the old canal, but you only have to glance at the family’s papers to see how they fall under Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. They fled a dangerous country full of extremists – a nation which threatened its own neighbours – and they sought their first new home for “economic reasons”.

Worse still, they even tried to enter the United States. They were turned away – on the grounds that even if they had good reason to flee their persecutors, they didn’t have good enough reason to choose America as their place of refuge.

No, they’re not Syrians or Turkmens or Yazidis or Afghans, although the younger daughter of the family was reading a book about “Palestine” and was very much a member of a persecuted race. She was, of course, Anne Frank, the German Jewish girl who with her family fled the Nazis in 1933 and was given sanctuary in Holland – until Germany invaded the Low Countries in 1940 and she found herself under the rule of her own vicious country all over again. By 1941, her father Otto – realizing that the Nazis had in store for Jews in Holland the very same fate that was already being perpetrated against the Jews of Germany – sought visas to the United States. And the door was slammed in their face.

Yup, I do wonder what the Trump administration would have done.

Anne Frank’s diary was the first book my mother wanted me to read “on my own” (without having it read to me) and this wonderful narrative of childhood-growing-into-adulthood, of fear and love and joy and fury – especially at the other refugees crowded into the family hiding-place behind Otto’s office on the Prinsengracht Canal in Amsterdam – has stayed with me all my life. With other people too. It has been translated into 70 languages. It’s even been translated into Arabic. Officials at the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam tell me, sadly, that – despite its awful relevance – they sell only about one copy a month in the Arabic language.

No matter. So powerful, so tragic and so relevant is Anne’s story to us today – and that of her mother Edith and her elder sister Margot and the others squeezed into the secret annex in Prinsegracht – one of them a boy called Peter van Pels with whom Anne is slowly falling in love – that queues stand round the block in the cold Amsterdam rain to take their turn to walk up the stairs behind the false bookcase to see where these frightened Jewish men, women and children lived until, two years after they first hid here, the Gestapo arrived. You can still see – it’s so genuine, it allows of no clichés – the newspaper photographs of 1930s film stars (Ray Milland, Diana Durbin, Ginger Rogers) and of a very young Princess Elizabeth of England (plus sister Margaret and corgis) and of the Dutch royal family in exile whose nationality Anne wished to adopt after the war and whose pictures she glued to the wall of her room.

The Dutch nation would certainly have been more loyal to her than the Americans. Otto sought help for US visas from friends who were relatives of those who owned Macey’s department store. He had two brothers-in-law in the States. He wrote of the plight of his wife and two daughters. The State Department was not interested. Otto even pleaded for Cuban visas. He got one – on 1st December 1941 – but it was cancelled a week later when Germany declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbour. Thus did Japan as well as Hitler and the Americans join hands to doom the refugees on the Prinsengracht Canal. Roosevelt’s US – and Democratic – administration did a “Trump” on the Frank family.

To add to the travails of refugeedom, Nazi Germany had already deprived German Jews of their own citizenship – so the Franks, originally – and legally – in exile in Holland, also became stateless under their own country’s occupiers. Stateless? Economic migrants? Illegal migrants in Holland now that their German passports were invalid? What earthly chance did they have?

Each time I read Anne Frank’s diary – and reader, if you haven’t read it, make up for lost time, as they say, and do so – I find something new which I missed on my previous journey through her pages. She wanted to be a writer. She wanted to turn her diary into a novel called The Secret Annex. And she wrote, on May 11th 1944, “my greatest wish is to become a journalist one day.” You can’t beat that.

I find that one day she is about to read a book called Palestine at the Crossroads. Although she does not say so, it was published in 1937 by a Jewish writer called Ladislas Farago – an author I read many years later when he wrote a best-selling biography of General Patton – which is a rather plodding pro-Zionist book, put together after Farago visited, rather indifferently, the old British Mandate. I’ve read bits of it. I doubt if it would have persuaded Anne to help found the state of Israel, had she lived long enough to do so, for she was wedded to European culture and wanted to live among the Dutch and return to school with their children. She waited with childish excitement for her liberation, recording in her diary the joy of learning about the Allied landings at D-Day, writing movingly of the plight of the crew of an RAF bomber which she sees – through the secret office skylight – shot down over Amsterdam.

But then – and her story sometimes seems to have the inevitability of Greek tragedy about it – her family was betrayed and three members of the Dutch Nazi Party and an Austrian (and therefore Reich) SS officer came storming up the staircase behind the false bookshelves on 4 August 1944. And that was the end of all of them. Except for Otto. He was eventually freed from Auschwitz by the Soviet army and travelled slowly back to Amsterdam to find that his family were dead. Edith died in Auschwitz, Margot and Anne at Bergen-Belsen, both of typhus. Anne, now 15 years old, died last. An old school friend says she caught sight of Anne in her last days and threw food to her over the camp barbed wire.

Anne’s was one of tens of thousands of corpses piled into the mass graves of Belsen. Even if he can’t find the time to fly his private jet into Schipol airport and visit the little house on the old 17th-century Amsterdam canal, Donald Trump could at least read Anne Frank’s diary. It’s a short book. It’s by a child, and is therefore easy to read. It’s by a Jewish girl, who asks at one point why God has visited such terrors upon her people. Just as refugees today seek to know why God has forsaken them.

Four Dutch citizens helped Anne and her family and friends throughout their two years of solitude, at daily risk of their lives. They said later that it was a natural thing to do. Odd, that. Because today we are supposed to find it “unnatural” to help these people. I guess that’s Trump’s view. Yet in the streets around the Prinsengrach this week – after all the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have arrived in Europe, and just 72 years after the Gestapo came to Anne’s hiding place round the corner, I found small cafes whose Dutch owners had written on their front doors the words: “Refugees welcome”.

Read more: America Turned Its Back on Anne Frank, Will Trump Do the Same with Muslim Refugees?

European Politics & populism: Marine Le Pen, Beppe Grillo, Geert Wilders, Frauke Petry: has their big moment arrived? - by Toby Helm

Populism and the media

Dogged by the migration crisis and the traumatic business of Brexit – to name just two current, existential challenges to their project – those who run the European Union felt they had enough on their plates before Donald Trump seized the White House.

News of his triumph broke on Europe, as had that of the British vote to leave the European Union on 23 June, in defiance of opinion pollsters and the assumptions of political elites that maintained that the world’s most advanced democracy could never deliver such a blow to the established order. Then it did.

In EU capitals, where they had preferred to dismiss Brexit as a one-off revolt by the union’s most difficult member, Trump’s election prompted the same elites to question their easy assumptions and entertain, for the first time, the impossible.

For the European Union such an outcome – Le Pen winning – would be far, far worse than Brexit. Brexit is containable. A France conquered by an anti-EU presidential candidate is not.

Everyone agreed last week that her winning would destroy the EU. “It would be cataclysmic, existential, the end,” said one EU diplomat.

In Berlin, Stephan Mayer, a Christian Social Union (CSU) MP in the Bundestag and his party’s home affairs spokesman, declared that, if Le Pen took France out of the euro and the EU, the European project would be done for.

Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Bundestag, and one not prone to dramatic overstatement, said countries at the heart of the EU integration process could no longer regard themselves as necessarily immune from populist movements. “What we have to take into account is that disruptive things can happen and the unthinkable can happen, so we should not take it for granted that Le Pen cannot win,” he said.

Note EU-Digest: Yes indeed everything is now possible, given the "average stupidity of the voter", who usually votes with his or her emotions rather than their head. 

Yes it will bring change, but eventually also chaos. The perspective is that globalism is at fault here. Initiated and expanded by a tiny group of banking interests, globalism has also been consolidating worldwide power with a group of massive corporations, governments and technocratic leaders. 

The danger is that populism could also be their plan B, giving them even more power, but in a different way. Time will tell , but it is so much resembling the mood of Europe when the Treaty of Versaille was signed on the twenty eighth of June 1919 that set conditions for drastic change throughout Europe. 

Many of the war reperations imposed on the defeated nations of the Central Powers were too much to be ever repaid. The economies of European nations were in turmoil after the war and many nations were politically unstable. This political instability had pathed the way for new reforms in many countries in Europe during this period. The early years of the twentieth century ushered in new radical ideologies that presented new challenges in inter-state relations. Mass uprisings and government reforms were on the main agenda. 

It resulted in the birth of two also populist based ideologies - Fascism and Nazism.

Are we going back to that scenario ?

Read more: Marine Le Pen, Beppe Grillo, Geert Wilders, Frauke Petry: has their big moment arrived? | World news | The Guardian

USA: The Political Rhetoric of Perpetual War - by Robert Crawford

To start with a quick overview of our present situation. Most of you are familiar with this recent history; yet, it bears repeating. For 15 years now, since 2001, the US has been at war.

The longest single battlefield has been the war in Afghanistan and in neighboring Pakistan Tribal Areas. It has spanned two administrations. The Taliban remains undefeated and is gaining ground and war lords pursue their own political and military agendas.

The 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, now almost universally acknowledged to be one of the greatest military mistakes in recent times, has virtually destroyed a country that had been created by the imperial powers during WWI. Warfare between a Shia dominated Iraqi government and the Sunnis—now mostly controlled by ISIS—has become a struggle for territory and cities. This war has been internationalized.

The Syrian civil war, which has become another international war, continues its rising death toll and propels the greatest refugee crisis since WWII.

The U.S., British and French air war on Gadhafi’s Libya in 2011 has resulted in another failed state, ongoing civil war, and more U.S. and allied bombing.

Insurgencies in Yemen, Somalia, northern Nigeria, along with military attempts to suppress them continue to cause huge numbers of civilian casualties and further displacement. These conflicts have also been internationalized.

Since 2006, the Israeli siege of Gaza and the essentially one-sided warfare against Hamas, culminating in the brutal assault of 2014, has caused extraordinary suffering. The government-backed settler land grab in the West Bank makes the prospects of a just peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians more remote. In all these wars, civilians are the primary victims.

As you know, the US is neck deep in this descent into perpetual and proliferating warfare. Historian Andrew Bacevich calls it America’s WWIV. Despite repeated military failures and negative unanticipated consequences, the US still pursues the illusion that it can shape the contemporary Middle East through a combination of drone warfare, bombing, Special Operations and other covert actions. It continues to invest heavily in the militaries of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and other U.S. allies.

American military dominance (which must be distinguished from effectiveness) is the most fundamental fact of today’s international order. The U.S., after all, maintains a projection of global power with hundreds of thousands troops stationed abroad” who occupy or use “some 761 ‘sites’ in 39 countries”—what critic Chalmers Johnson called “an empire of bases.”

Anyone with eyes wide open must come to this topic with more questions than answers—to say nothing about the burden of grief and even despair that many of us carry. I continue to struggle with both the questions and the difficult emotions.

For those of us hoping for a more peaceful world and a more peaceful American foreign policy, the core political question—what is to be done?—is perplexing. As long as American soldiers are not dying in significant numbers, Americans, for the most part, seem uninterested—and certainly uniformed—about US wars and their consequences. The corporate controlled media are no help; instead, they do everything possible to hinder understanding and serious debate. Historical amnesia is a particularly American affliction. Each of these obstacles are serious problems we need to confront.

My topic, here, is the political rhetoric of the 2016 presidential election. Even though it is a small part of the puzzle, the rhetoric of the presidential candidates reveals a great deal about the historical moment and the larger forces that shape this nation’s perpetual wars.

My first contention is that there is an ideology of militarism that dominates our political culture and it is being perpetuated by both the Democratic and Republican nominees for president, despite their significant differences.

We know or should know how militarist ideology exploits our fears of terrorism, and perpetuates the illusion that our safety depends on the worldwide projection and use of military power.

We know or should know that this ideology was developed and honed throughout the Cold War and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the national security establishment had to find a new enemy to justify its continued rule.

We know or should know that militarism is an ideology that denies its own contributions to the continual escalation of violence in the Middle East and to terrorist attacks in the West.

Note EU-Digest: What is probably most amazing, reading the above report, is that the EU member states don't need to be geniuses to figure out that something in the equation related to their US servitude, when it comes to US foreign and military policies, has not only been a complete failure, but also a financial drain on their budgets. Europe, and specially the EU needs to seriously start thinking about developing its own more independent foreign policy and stop supporting US military adventures whereever they may occur.  

Read more: The Political Rhetoric of Perpetual War

REFUGEES : UNICEF Report Finds Half of All Refugees Are Now Children - by Alexander Smith

Children now make up nearly half of the world's refugee population, according to a new report from the United Nations children agency.

The report published Wednesday comes not long after the image of a bloodied 5-year-old named Omran Daqneesh refocused international attention on the conflict in Syria, which has created millions of refugees.

"We must not forget that each child, each picture, represents many millions of children in danger at home — and many millions of children who have left their homes," the UNICEF report noted.

Read more: UNICEF Report Finds Half of All Refugees Are Now Children - NBC News

Syria: There is no method to this tragic madness as the global political establishment "implodes"- by RM

Aleppo, Syria

On 23 April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 470,000 that had died in the war.  

These cold numbers are the first thing that hit you about Syria. Figures telling of a human catastrophe on a scale hard to compute. Suffering on a level to which any rational response seems inadequate – 470,000 people killed, according to the latest estimates; 11.5 percent of the population injured; 45 percent of a country of 22 million made homeless; 4 million refugees and 6.36 million internally displaced persons. Life expectancy is down from 70.5 years in 2010 to an estimated 55.4 years in 2015. Welcome to the Syrian civil war. 

The Syrian conflict has become worse than a nightmare, because after a nightmare you usually wake-up to some kind of normality, instead this is an ongoing nightmare, from which you never wake up.

In the meantime, the global political establishment, our political leaders, representing different so-called "power blocks", blame everything and everyone, except themselves, as they fuel this war with weapons from their weapons industry and that from around the world. 

Worse still, is that these weapons purchases are financed with money from mostly ignorant and misinformed taxpayers. 

Taxpayers usually are more interested in using an App on their smartphone, or in finding out on social media, like Facebook,what a friend is doing, or even why his or her dog prefers a certain type of dog food above another. Being concerned about whatever does not directly affect him or her is the last thing on the agenda. 

In Europe the war in Syria hardly ever is looked at as a human tragedy, or has anyone ask who the real culprits are of this tragedy, but sadly equated to what kind of impact the large number of refugees will have on European living standards.

Former US President Dwight Eisenhouwer once said about the weapons industry: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron ".   

Yes indeed, arms dealers and their government cabinet-level cronies always profit from a war.

On top of that there is now also a perverse logic that pervades restrictions. Military aid and arms sales by the US, but certainly not restricted to them alone, are now approved to formerly off-limits regimes.

Of the 67 countries which have received or are set to receive U.S. military aid, 32 were  previously identified by the State Department as having "poor" or worse human rights records.

Obviously, the central question is: does this make the world a safer place for anyone but arms manufacturers and the politicians who love and have them funded ?

Every academic in the world will tell you, Syria today is the most awful humanitarian catastrophic drama to hit the Levant since World War II. Do politicians realize that and make an effort to remedy it? No, not at all.

Whole families with small children ‒ some people terribly wounded by the bombings ‒ living in  olive groves under the elements, with neither shelter nor provisions.

And the drama continues. Russia used its Security Council veto at the UN to prevent any concerted action against the regime. Moscow also keeps the weapons and bombs coming.

Turkey, a NATO member, whose leader has his own aspirations for the area, supports whoever can help him diminish the Kurdish influence in the area, even ISIS. 

The Iranians use their expertise in crowd control to help Assad control the demonstrations against his regime, and the Americans are funding and supplying a Kurdish proxy army and different rebel groups to fight Assad forces, in addition to also bombing so-called "enemy targets".

Our global political establishment has had chance after chance to remedy the situation, but greed and hypocricy within a defunct political world order has made that impossible.

Syria and the surrounding region is now the epicenter of what is still to come - it is the beginning of cataclysmic developments around the world that will clarify to the world at large, "who was", "who is", and "who will come".

© this report can be copied only if its source is mentioned

EU-Digest 

Europe's Refugee And Political Crises: Will the US Own Up to Its Role In the Destabilization Of The World?

EU  relationship with USA

Until last summer, the refugee crisis in Europe was quietly and intentionally hidden from most Americans' view.

It took 3,771 deaths in the Mediterranean last year - and a photograph of a lifeless, drowned Kurdish child named Aylan Kurdi - for coverage to hit the American press.

By that time, 3,000 people were arriving every day to Lesbos, and many thousands more to the other Greek islands.

The irony of this ignorance should be obvious: the United States stands at the center of this disastrous situations given their military involvement in the Middle East and around the world, which has resulted in refugees being out of their homes, over mountains, around border crossings, through Turkish prison cells and onto crowded, dangerous boats.

From Libya to southern Afghanistan, US interventions and occupations have led to further destabilization, violence and, in almost all cases, civil wars.

A longer trail of complicity that stretches back to the four decades of economic and military support that the United States has given to the Arab dictatorships challenged in the 2011 Arab Spring, and to similar support given in that same time period to a number of insurgencies that dovetailed with US foreign policy objectives.

 One such group, the insurgency of the Afghan Mujahideen, fought a decade-long guerrilla war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

Those who came to fight in Afghanistan from abroad, many of whom received US military and economic support either from Congress or the CIA, hatched a postwar strategy of insurgency across the Arab and Muslim world, which resulted in a civil war in Algeria that took 120,000 lives. Meanwhile, other smaller rebellions caused significant fighting across the Maghreb, in northern Pakistan, Yemen, Chechnya, Albania and beyond.

The group now known to the world as ISIS was created in this period by a Jordanian Mujahideen veteran named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Originally launched in Jordan, the all-but-failed organization was given a second lease on life in post-invasion Iraq, where a destabilized and fractured society made fertile soil for the hyper-sectarian ideology of Zarqawi, who helped turn anger at the US occupation into a civil war against Shiites.

The sectarian state originally put in power in Iraq by the United States escalated divisions in the country, helping fuel the other side of the 2005-2006 civil war while pushing a large, disenfranchised Sunni population further toward the open arms of groups like ISIS.

A focus of the US "surge" in 2007 was working with Sunni militias to turn against this tide, but that strategy only lasted until the Iraqi state took control of the Sahwa program (Awakening Councils, or Sons of Iraq) as US troops withdrew and quickly dismantled them.

Against a backdrop of electricity shortages, water contamination and continued political destabilization, ISIS, which had by then entered into the north of Syria to take advantage of the civil war there, re-entered the picture with its dramatic capturing of Fallujah, Ramadi and other key points in Iraq's Anbar Province.

ISIS may be the most menacing face of Syria's civil war, but the multifaceted war includes a range of other groups, most notable the Assad regime itself, but also groups like the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army, a "moderate" group originally formed by deserters from the regime's military. And while a civil society-based revolutionary movement continues to defend the small spaces it has been able to hold, a pipeline of US, Gulf and European money providing various factions with weapons that have helped prolong the bloodshed has helped shatter the hopes and dreams of those who first took to the streets in 2011. Though the US Congress recently canceled the public program backing such rebels, the much larger CIA program remains in operation.

Alongside the US funding, US allies like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pumped weapons, logistical equipment and soldiers into Syria to support various factions fighting in the civil war, mainly those linked with the Supreme Military Council of Syria, which includes the Free Syrian Army and other anti-ISIS, anti-Assad groups. These groups, as well as the Kurdish peshmerga (from Iraq but often fighting in Syrian Kurdistan) and the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), are often supported by bombings of the US, EU (NATO) countries, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Canada and Turkey.

On the other side of that war, Russia and Iran have sustained financial and political support to the four-decade-old Assad regime, helping defend its authoritarian police state from an array of forces fighting against it. In October 2015, Russian air support joined in the fight to secure Russia a seat at the negotiation table and to bolster Assad's position in power. Though Russia announced in mid-March that it would begin withdrawing forces as a long-needed cease-fire takes effect, fighting targeting Islamist groups unaffected by the cease-fire continues in Aleppo, Syria's largest city and its financial center.

Popular protests have exploded in almost every corner of the world, drawing comparisons to the revolutionary period of 1968. It's hard to analyze this wave of uprisings and protest without crediting the revolutions in the Arab world as the first spark that caught.

Those who inspired the world now face a severe wave of repression, with Syria as one of the most shocking examples. Over 11 percent of the population has been killed or injured since the start of the revolt, and over 20 percent have fled the country. Syria has become the single largest source of refugees in the world. The second largest? Afghanistan.

The Arab allies of the United States, fully involved in the war, have taken in an astoundingly small number of refugees from Syria, with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in last place, with zero. 

The United States, with its massive economy and "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" rhetoric, pledged last year to take in a mere 10,000 refugees for fiscal year 2016 - that's .015 percent. So far, that number has only reached a little over 1000.

Considering the extent to which US money has been spent killing people and destroying infrastructure in these countries -- for each of the 1,700 Syrian refugees accepted into the country last year, the United States spent an estimated $375,000 financing and arming various factions in the civil war -- it's far beyond an oversight that the United States' borders are almost impossible for refugees from the region to enter. Even those who worked as interpreters for US soldiers in Iraq regularly make the dangerous crossing to Greece, unsupported by the governments they risked their lives to assist.

The reality is that the United States is politically unwilling to help. Its wars of political and economic self-interest have always centered on a US perception of success and have always utilized a rhetoric of liberation to achieve long-sought foreign policy objectives. It has left those whose lives have been turned upside down across the Middle East -- the people it claimed to be liberating when it invaded their homes -- to fend for themselves in Europe or drown in the picturesque waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

The message of the US is now crystal clear: "Your liberation only matters when we need to justify our wars."

Unfortunately the EU will pay, as it already is experiencing, a heavy price for blindly following, agreeing and participating in these disastrous US adventures in the Middle East and other places around the world.

This is not anti-Americanism, it is a statement of fact, ehich most cowardly corrupt politicians  and the corporate controlled press don't dare to mention.

Where are the European politicians who dare to speak out? It is high time for a EUXIT out of this destructive US embrace,  before this fragile European Union completely falls apart.

EU-Digest

Terrorism: European Unity: The ‘Trumps’ of Europe hamper cooperation on counter terrorism says Pitella - by Daniela Vincenti

European unity is essential to curb errorism

The blind illusion of some governments that think they can tackle global threats unilaterally must be blamed for the lack of cooperation in Europe to fight terrorism and find a common response to solve the migration crisis, said S&D leader Gianni Pittella, in an interview with EurActiv.

Gianni Pittella is the Socialists & Democrats (S&D) chief in the European Parliament.
Pitella spoke with EurActiv’s Editor-in-Chief Daniela Vincenti.

 Q: EU justice ministers on Thursday (24 March) agreed to set up a team of national counter-terrorism experts to strengthen Europol as a response to the Brussels attacks. Is that enough to deal the threats?

P: It cannot be enough. It is a positive step but there is a lot to do to make up for lost time. Paradoxically, the terrorism threat and the migration crisis could turn out to be an opportunity to finally turn Europe into a fully political Union.

Besides the shameful and clear shortcomings of the Belgium services, we must point the finger at the blind illusion of some national governments that think they can tackle global threats unilaterally. Intelligence services’ information is still jealously guarded and not shared amongst partners.

The sooner we realize that we need greater integration, the better we will protect citizens

This lack of cooperation is as evident as it is unjustified. It stems from the same silly attitude that prevents the setting up of a common European approach to the migration crisis.

The sooner we realize that we all need greater European integration, the better we will be able to protect citizens’ security and freedom.

Q: Some insist that successful counter-terrorism cannot be carried out by security forces, it needs to be carried out by intelligence services. What’s your view?

P: I couldn’t agree more. It is clear that security is a right that has no political colours. It belongs to all citizens. In front of tragedies such as those that took place in Paris and Brussels, European leaders should put aside their national selfishness and be ready to think and act differently.

They must deliver a European Intelligence Agency. Europol already has great potential and its database represents a unique and strong asset for Europe. The cooperation with National intelligence services must be strengthened, starting with data sharing.

 Read more: Pittella: The ‘Trump’ of Europe hamper cooperation on counter terrorism – EurActiv.com

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has his act together: "Unity is what is needed in Europe, not isolatio and nationalism"

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker

Speaking at the 14th Norbert Schmelzer lecture in the Hague, Netherlands on March the 3rd 2016, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker noted.

"Dear Ms Schmelzer, dear Dries, dear Ben and others, dear Sybrand, dear Ruth, senators and members of the House of Representatives and of the European Parliament, ladies and gentlemen,

I am glad to be here with you this afternoon. This is what one is always supposed to say on these occasions, but most people do not mean it. But this afternoon it is true because I really am happy to be here to deliver this Schmelzer lecture. I am especially happy because Ms Schmelzer has done us the honour of being here. This is the second time that I have been invited to give this lecture. If I am not mistaken, I am the only person to deliver it twice. Those who have done it only once must now be hoping that they too will get an opportunity to deliver it a second time. On the last occasion I was here, in 2007, Norbert Schmelzer was still with us. He died one year later. Norbert for me was a role model —someone you could look up to, someone who offered guidance, someone who always knew how to give European integration a deeper meaning in that he saw the European Union and its creation — the integration of a continent – in direct relation to European, and also Christian, values. So that is why I am glad to be here today.

When I was here in 2007, the world was very different to how it is now. We were full of optimism. It did not take much courage to support Europe, even though, after saying ‘No’ in 2005, many Dutch people found it hard to fully back Europe and the European Union. We are living in different times now. When I became President of the European Commission, it was already clear to me that we were living in a time of multiple crises. But I could not have imagined that it would become so serious, even though I raised the issue of refugee flows and migration in my address to the European Parliament at my hearing.

2007 was the year before the outbreak of the economic and financial crisis. Budgets were being brought under control, debt levels were coming down, unemployment was high though it had not reached current levels. That crisis, the financial and economic crisis, kept us on edge for years, particularly me, because I was unlucky enough to be President of the Eurogroup at the time.

We have not yet put that crisis behind us. But we have not been beaten by it because the countries of Europe, the Member States of the eurozone, found the strength to come together.

You will remember the issue of Greece. During the first half of last year we again came under extreme pressure to either prevent a Greek exit from the euro zone or speed it up. Some people were for, others against. I never wanted a Greek exit from the euro zone because slamming doors shut is not the way forward for Europe. And now we are plunged into other crises. The financial crisis did some good in that we were able to do two things: one, to remember the values — you spoke of Gaudium et Spes – that are the truly fundamental values of the European social market economy. One of the factors that brought about the crisis was because those primarily responsible disregarded the cardinal virtues of the social market economy. We know that now. Second, the crisis made us move forward with Economic and Monetary Union – something we had to do – so that today banks and the banking sector and the real economy are better prepared to withstand external shocks than they were in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Banking Union is making progress, though not as much as I would like. Banking supervision works. Everything we have achieved over the years is working well, although more must and will be done to complete Economic and Monetary Union.

It became clear to us in the aftermath of the crisis – and as I just said, the crisis is not yet fully over – that we needed to do more to address Europe's real issues. There is a virtuous triangle in European politics – as I explained to the European Parliament – consisting in the necessary consolidation of public finances. No one should think that public finances can be left to their own devices. Governments need to continue bringing down their deficits. Europe's deficit and debt levels are still too high.

The virtuous triangle is the consolidation of public finances, growth, and jobs and investment. Investment was the issue I pushed at the beginning of this Commission's term of office; if we compare the investment levels of recent years with those of 2007, we see that investment, whether public or private, is still 15 % down compared to 2007. And this applies to every country. Even Europe's biggest economy, Germany, has a level of investment that is 52 % lower than in 1991. There is therefore an investment gap in Europe that we are trying to address with the Investment Plan, which could mobilise €315 billion in public investment. €61 billion have already been mobilised under the Investment Plan in just three months.

It is not enough for Europe to talk about budgetary policy, economic policy, fiscal policy and so on. One must also show people that the European Union is also responsible, together with the Member States, for growth and jobs. Many of our fellow citizens hear only negative news about Europe: cuts, cuts and more cuts - and it was important when the Commission took office to talk about growth and jobs as well. Because Europe's biggest problem remains weak, very weak economic growth and scandalously high unemployment. In the years to come, we will of course also be judged on how we have dealt with the refugee crisis. But we will also have to answer questions as to why we have not been able to get unemployment down. And so this is a major, ongoing issue, alongside everything else we have to do.

The Commission receives an unending stream of criticism from many countries, which is understandable: they need the Commission to be a scapegoat when they are unable to do what they promised their electorate. This I bear patiently but ever less meekly. This Commission has achieved a paradigm shift, something we made clear in the election campaign, including here in the Netherlands, namely that European policies, and therefore the European Commission, deal with the really important issues facing Europe: to be big on big things and small and modest on smaller things

That is what we are doing. When I say this in elections and to the European Parliament, I get a lot of applause. But when it comes to the nitty-gritty, I get a rather different reaction. Because everyone sitting in the European Parliament, every national minister, everyone involved in politics has a very precise idea of what Europe ought to be doing. And if you ask what Europe ought not to do, again everyone has their own point of view. If it is then carried out, however, what an outcry there is. Led by Frans Timmermans, the first Vice-President of the Commission, we have emblazoned ‘better regulation’ on our banner because we think that Europe cannot go on dealing with everyone and everything; it gets on people's nerves. We prescribe, we demand, we sanction, things that no one is interested in.

We have taken yet another decision – one I knew nothing about because the decision was taken by the Member States but the Commission will be blamed anyway – this time to lay down how fast Christmas candles should burn. With a perfect sense of timing, we published it in the Official Journal of the European Union in time for the third Sunday of Advent. I was very surprised and wondered 'Who was responsible for that?'. It is said it was a Commission decision. But in fact it was the 28 Member States, acting at the behest of the candle industry. Only the United Kingdom and the Netherlands abstained; the UK and the Netherlands are often in the same boat, which is sometimes a good thing, though not always.

Consequently, we painstakingly examined all the draft legislation before the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers and withdrew over 80 drafts so that now only around 400 still have to be dealt with. We have announced 23 new initiatives. This is significant in that previous Commissions launched an average of 130 initiatives a year. And not all initiatives ended where they were supposed to. It is important to show that 'being big on the big things and small on the smaller things' is not just a slogan but what we genuinely do it. 'Better regulation' is of course also a very popular subject in the Netherlands, and we take it seriously in Europe too. I had and still have the impression that the more we interfere in people's everyday lives, the greater the already very considerable distance becomes between European citizens and European policies, and thus also the European Commission. Big ideas require big plans.

I am not talking about the Juncker Plan, though it’s a great thing (and it’s not called the Juncker plan just because I named it so but because many people thought that nothing would become of it and then it would be good if it bore the name of someone who could be blamed, so that is why the Investment Plan is called the Juncker Plan); I am talking about other things. We are taking European Energy Union very seriously. Energy is a continental matter, which makes such heavy demands on solidarity as do other matters. Energy union will come about. The digital internal market is being vigorously promoted, because, in digital terms, Europe lags behind other parts of the world and we have to reduce this digital gap. Banking Union and Capital Markets Union is another matter. Capital markets union is of key importance and is also being tackled in a very focused fashion. We have submitted all these plans and I am very glad that the European Parliament has endorsed all the projects, just as I am overall very pleased that the Commission and the European Parliament have found a new way of engaging with one another. It has always surprised me how it is that the Commission and Parliament always manage to argue in public over every little thing, even though they are the two Community institutions that should be working hand-in-hand to fashion the future of Europe.

I am the first Commission President to have been elected by the European Parliament, after we came up with the idea of choosing a leading candidate for the party lists. I have to believe that I was put into office by the people of Europe. I know so. Only the people themselves don’t know this; so we need to ensure that this method of selecting the Commission President – top candidate in a continent-wide election, Parliament approval – that this method does not disappear again. Because the European Council, shocked by the result of the first election, decided in June 2014 that for 2019 the way in which the European Commission President is appointed had to be reconsidered. And when 28 governments put their thinking caps on, the virtue of the outcome is not a God-given certainty and therefore every democrat needs to make sure that things remain as they are. There are quite a few former ministers here. And though it used not to be the case, sound common sense now follows what governments are doing, except that governments are far quicker. Thus sound common sense (which is not evenly spread across Europe anyway), does not fully succeed in getting through to the centres of government.

I am therefore very glad about the effective cooperation which the Parliament and the Commission have managed to achieve in the first twelve months of the new Commission, and I am very much of the view that the European Parliament wrongly comes in for criticism (often in the Netherlands too). People do not really understand the role of the European Parliament: it is a European legislator comparable with national parliaments and deserves the same degree of respect as national parliaments.

I said, in a moment of autobiographical weakness, that the new Commission (people only refer to the new Commission although it is already old and already has its first wrinkles) would be a political Commission because I had the impression, and still do, that the European project is increasingly seen as a problem rather than a solution. And that is precisely because we very often approach the continent's problems in a bureaucratic and technocratic manner. I have tried to change this by reinventing the Vice-Presidents of the European Commission and by giving them specific remits: for example, Frans Timmermans in the field of 'better regulation'.

These Vice-Presidents all come from small countries just as the Commission President comes from a small country - a Grand Duchy but a small country nonetheless. This is important because Commissioners and Vice-Presidents from smaller countries have different views on what needs to be done in Europe from the 'know-it-all's who arrive in Brussels from larger countries. And this really works very well.

I took care to ensure that fully mature and experienced professional politicians became Commissioners (not the way it once used to be, when the people sent to Brussels were those for whom no place could be found at home), but former Prime Ministers, four in all, and former Foreign and Finance Ministers so that in the Commission too, there is an overall understanding for the state of affairs and constraints facing the Member States. Many of those here today have, for their sins, attended Council meetings as national ministers. Now they are Commissioners, they understand better what they can propose and what they had better not propose because some governments would promptly object. To this extent, we are a political Commission in terms of our composition but also in the way we conduct political business in the Commission.

I said earlier that the Commission often comes in for a lot of criticism – we all used to be keen critics, though I am not quite so keen now; but that’s the way things are. What is not acceptable, though, is constantly seeking to take the Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, down a peg or two. Brussels does this, Brussels does that – Brussels is always doing something. And Brussels is always to blame for the dreadful state of the world. Brussels is to blame for a lot of things. But Brussels is not just 28 Commissioners. Brussels is also 28 governments. And it is quite impossible to dictate Europe’s direction against the will of the national governments and Member States. So when people say Brussels, they in fact mean themselves. The finger pointed at Brussels actually points to those who are always going on about Brussels, Brussels, Brussels. Yes, Brussels gets a lot of things wrong. But Brussels also does a lot of things right that governments would get wrong if Brussels weren’t there. So it does not help at all when people hurl criticisms of all sorts at the Commission, as the Italian Prime Minister has been doing these last few months; as the Polish government is doing; as the Finnish Foreign Minister did, when he said the Commission should not busy itself with the observance of fundamental rights in Poland, that was not Europe’s business but purely a matter for the Poles themselves – although the Treaty clearly calls on the Commission to watch over this kind of thing.

We now face a crisis – the refugee crisis – that we never thought would beset us. On taking office, the Commission devoted considerable space to the issue of migration, because we already sensed – sensed rather than knew – that something was coming. Anyone who has kept a careful eye on the world situation, anyone with a real concern for Africa rather than just talking about Africa, anyone who has observed the veritable exodus under way there over the years – there are 60 million refugees in Africa, 60 million of them – must have known something was coming. That it would happen on such a scale, in such concentration – that we never imagined. But that something was coming, quite literally – that we did know. As early as May last year, the Commission therefore put forward proposals – European proposals: namely that the refugees should be shared out – relocated – across all the Member States of the Union. The Council of Ministers approved the scheme last autumn. And the Member States – though not all of them – are refusing to implement their own decisions. It is the first time this kind of thing has happened in the European Union, for the Council to adopt legislation and then decide a few days later not to apply it. Here, we, the Commission will not back down from calling on the Member States to do what they have themselves decided. I know that it will not be easy. Because what is needed is not just for the Member States to be prepared to take in refugees – which they are increasingly willing to do, though not yet to the extent required. The refugees themselves must also be prepared to accept the invitation. What bothers me in particular – and we see it every day – is when refugees in Greece and Italy, especially Greece, simply choose where they want to go themselves. The refugees in Greece all say: Germany, Germany, Germany. That cannot go on. As a result, some countries have to bear a very heavy burden: Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands too – last year the Netherlands took in 57,000 refugees. That is twice as many as the year before. And this year the number will not be any lower unless we frame our policy to prevent it from happening. So we will have to focus hard on this issue all the time, making it clear to refugees – above all the genuine ones, not the economic migrants but the genuine asylum seekers who make their way to Europe to escape from war and violence – that it is not up to them to decide where to go, that it is up to the governments to decide where to assign them a home. Luxembourg was the first country to start implementing the decision. The Luxembourg government publicly announced in Greece that 30 refugees could come to Luxembourg. But no one wanted to go. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack to find 30 who were prepared to board a plane to Luxembourg – as if Luxembourg were the poorhouse of Europe. It is a very real problem and the message needs to be brought home again and again. It makes me weep to see the images that assail us. But it also has to be realised that the broad picture is not just black and white – yes, governments must do more, but refugees must also be cooperative.

We urgently need to strengthen the protection of our external borders, as is currently being done. On 15 December, the Commission tabled a comprehensive proposal for protecting the EU's external borders and coastlines, which governments approved in principle, although they are now having trouble implementing the decision. Council Working Groups, some 20 in total, are being held in which national representatives are saying precisely the opposite of what was backed by their heads of government at the European Council, which is holding up any real progress. However, if we fail to better protect our external borders, especially the border between Greece and Turkey, we will never manage to overcome the crisis. This is why, in Turkey and at its border with Greece, we have to bring the flow of refugees heading from Turkey to Greece, and then onwards to northern Europe under contIn the waters between Greece and Turkey, we now have NATO ships, although the exact demarcation is a subject of heated debate between the two NATO countries. NATO is helping, a fact which is proving difficult given Turkey’s reluctance to allow these ships into its waters. Nevertheless, we are managing to resolve the issue. Yesterday, Greece also began sending back refugees to Turkey – a fact which many are unaware of. Just yesterday, 308 refugees were returned. Although only a small number, this is the first time the readmission agreement between Greece and Turkey has actually been implemented.

With Turkey, we have agreed a Joint Action Plan, at a cost of €3 billion to Europeans. This is not €3 billion which will be handed over to Turkey, but €3 billion which will fund projects to help Syrian refugees in Turkey. We will be building schools and hospitals. There are hundreds of thousands of Syrian children currently living in Turkey who are not going to school despite being of school age. If we fail to manage the issue of helping children, in particular orphaned children, a lost generation will emerge. We cannot allow that. We must remain active on this front, as we currently are. Next week will see projects worth a total of €300 million getting under way, and over the coming years we will see more of the same if the need is still there.

Yesterday, the Commission agreed a €700 million emergency aid programme for Greece and other countries. However, the focus will be predominantly on Greece, given the large-scale humanitarian crisis beginning to unfold there – indeed, for many, it already exists. That is because Europe is not acting like it should. It is because there is not enough Union in the European Union and not enough Europe in the European Union, with Member States thinking that the refugee crisis can be solved by working alone, as nations. But only a European response can solve a Europe-wide problem that has been imported to Europe from other parts of the globe. Isolated national action, although sometimes understandable, in not welcome because when one country secures its own borders, this (a) does not solve the refugee problem and (b) will destroy the internal market completely.

People need to know that there are 1.7 million cross-border commuters in Europe. People need to know that 52.4 million cross-border freight transport operations occur each year in Europe. People need to know that it costs €53 when a lorry has to wait at a border for 30 minutes. Knowing how many lorries in the Netherlands travel between Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands every day, you can soon work out how much this costs. The internal market will not survive the refugee crisis if we do not manage to secure our external borders jointly and if we do not move away from this senseless policy of countries doing whatever they want, without any thought for the impact of their actions on the neighbouring Member States.

It is regrettable that border access has been restricted by Austria, as this basically closes the border between two Schengen countries. Doing so has nothing to do with protecting our external borders. When, much to my disliking, Hungary built a fence along its border with Serbia and Croatia, this could be called external border protection given that those countries are not part of Schengen. It is not the ideal form of protection, but so be it. However, by closing the border once more between two Schengen countries, we are slowly but surely destroying the European internal market and everything associated with it. Consequently, we must resist this kind of thing vigorously.

We could talk for hours about the refugee crisis. That is indeed what our heads of government have been doing for the last six months and will be doing again next Monday, when talks will finally be held with Turkey. I would like to thank you, Léon, for saying that without Turkey, there is no solution to the crisis. Turkey is certainly a difficult partner. I could also talk for hours about human rights, press freedom and similar issues in Turkey. However, on the matter of stemming the flow of refugees, Turkey is the European Union’s most important partner – although in principle I am not in favour of pushing back the flow since it is my view, based on the Christian values adhered to in the European Union, that we are duty-bound to offer a new home to those fleeing war and violence.

What has become of us? The richest continent in the world, with 500 million inhabitants, and yet to say from the outset that we would be unable to accept one or two million refugees. Talking to the King of Jordan and the Lebanese Prime Minister, as I do on a regular basis, leaves me feeling ashamed. Jordan, a country with 8-9 million inhabitants, has taken over 630 000 refugees from Syria, a figure which excludes the 500 000 Palestinian refugees. In Lebanon, 25 % of the population are refugees, newly arrived from Syria. And we, as Europeans, say we can’t manage. What must the others think of us? This is ‘reputation damage’ we are inflicting on ourselves: people around the world who have always looked at Europe with great hope are suddenly discovering that we are mired in our own egoism, unable to agree with one another in order to tackle the refugee crisis decently.

I am therefore urging Member State governments to resist those ideas which are springing up everywhere: for example, the idea of taking national measures after the end of an EU Presidency. This is not the road we should be going down in Europe. Likewise, we must not trivialise the refugee crisis. This is why I have said that there are also obligations for refugees. We need to see the overall picture, look at everything that is happening, with a sense of solidarity. And given that the mass migration will continue, we need a permanent distribution mechanism between the 28 Member States of the European Union.

We are currently living in a time of referenda. Mr Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister, is holding a referendum on the basis for distributing refugees between all 28 countries. And these referenda seem to be contagious. The United Kingdom will be holding its referendum on 23 June – although that cannot possibly go badly because it is also Luxembourg’s National Holiday. All will be fine. The Hungarians will be holding their referendum, and then the Dutch, with the good experience of referenda which there is here, will be holding theirs on 6 April. I will not be interfering. I once said it would be a bad idea to vote ‘no’ and was, in turn, savaged by the Dutch press, as if to say no one ever has the right to talk about matters concerning the Dutch people. Seen the other way round, this would mean that the Dutch no longer have the right to talk about matters affecting other people, which, if it were the case, would leave the Dutch newspapers half-empty. In this respect, I'll say it loud and clear: having one’s say without coming across like a schoolmaster is pointless. I have not come to the Netherlands to say: listen here; you should do this and that. This is not how things are done, most certainly not in the Netherlands.

It is no laughing matter, however. If the Dutch vote ‘no’, Europe will have a problem. That problem is destabilisation. We need to bear this in mind, because Ukraine expects Europe to stick to what was agreed. We should not fall into the trap of thinking that this is about Ukraine joining the EU. Many Dutch people I talk to in Brussels – ordinary people, not Commission officials – make that mistake. In reality, it is about trade and trade agreements. I can hardly imagine an old, successful trading nation like the Netherlands rejecting a trade agreement with a country, like Ukraine, that is so important for European stability. So let me repeat: we need to explain to people that it is not about EU accession. Ukraine will not join the EU during my term of office. In any case, I have said – rather bluntly – that there will be no new members over the next five years, because I do not believe any of the countries in waiting will fulfil the conditions in that time frame.

We have rushed things in the past when it comes to enlargement. I am also guilty, because I thought it was an historic event and that we had to reunite European history and geography. Hence the accession of the ‘new’ Member States (in 2004). In some cases, though, we jumped the gun, and we will not make the same mistake again. Ukraine will certainly not join the EU in the next 20 to 25 years. Nor will it join NATO, Secretary-General. I actually wanted to talk about the Dutch referendum, not lecture the Ukrainians, but I know many Dutch people are very worried that this will be the first step to Ukraine joining the EU. But we can definitely say that is not the case. I would therefore be happy if the Dutch voted ‘yes’, because it is about the Dutch, Europe and the other parts of Europe. Everybody who goes to the polls will be a statesman and should ask themselves what the final outcome would be if everybody else voted like them. I know the Dutch are practical people, and I expect them to vote ‘yes’ rather than ‘no’, because the last ‘no’ caused a lot of headaches in Europe. Luxembourg held the Council Presidency at the time, and now a Luxembourger is in the Commission President’s chair, and I do not want to have to go through that again.

Just a word on ‘Brexit’ – though without really saying anything, as I have resolved never to say much on the frequent occasions when I talk about it, since it would not be fitting for a Commission President to interfere in the British referendum campaign. The Commission is even more unpopular in the UK than in other countries, and it is quite an achievement to be unpopular in the UK. Everything a Commission President or the Commission says to the UK has unintended consequences. I would only say that the Prime Minister obtained as much as he could and the other 27 leaders gave as much as they could. It is a fair deal for the UK and for the other Member States. I would be very happy if we could consign the issue to confines of history as quickly as possible, because if it drags on for years, everything will go wrong in Europe. That is why there can be no renegotiation with the British, whom I am otherwise very fond of, after a ‘no’ vote. Not just because the Prime Minister voted against me as Commission President, but also because this time he was extremely glad we were able to help him sort out his problem, a problem of his own making.

When talking about Europe, we should not forget why, after the Second World War, the States of Europe decided not to repeat the crass errors of the last century. And the people returning home from the front and the concentration camps at the end of the war did not complain about the tasks that lay ahead as much as we do today. When I compare my life with my father’s it is clear to me that we are very fortunate. We grew up in bright sunshine, while others still have to live in darkness. Our fathers and grandfathers knew nothing but rain, thunderstorms and hail. So what is at stake is still the same. Verdun – 100 years ago. Verdun is a poignant story, because of the terrible things that happened there, but also because, at the end of the 1920s, young people from Germany and France shook hands on its battlefields. Then 10 years later it all started again – peace can never be taken for granted. Anyone who thinks peace is everlasting could not be more wrong. War is again being waged in Europe. When there was talk of war in Europe a couple of years ago, people laughed it off. No one is laughing any more after the events in Ukraine and Crimea. And we had no cause to laugh because 20 years ago war was raging in Bosnia, Kosovo and throughout the Balkans, which remains a highly complicated and sensitive region of Europe. That is why we must not lose sight of the Western Balkans when it comes to the refugee question.

So, I think that Europe will always benefit if we constantly remind people that it is a great project for peace. Those who do not believe in Europe, doubt it, or are exasperated by it should visit the graves of our wars.

Thank you "

Almere-Digest