German Chancellor Angela Merkel says her country’s “historic” coronavirus crisis will extend into 2021 even if the vaccines bring some hope.

As part of her New Year’s greetings on Thursday, Merkel denounced the conspiracy theories advanced by virus sceptics as not just “false and dangerous” but “cynical and cruel” towards those who had suffered during the pandemic.

“These days and these weeks … are difficult times for our country,” Merkel warned. “And that is going to last for a good while yet.”

Speaking in what will be her final New Year’s address as chancellor after four terms in office, Merkel’s message was characteristically sober.

“Winter remains difficult,” she said. “The challenges that the pandemic pose remain immense.”

Merkel thanked what she said was the vast majority of Germans who had abided by the safety restrictions imposed by the authorities to try to check the spread of the virus.

But she had harsh words for the virus sceptics, many of whom have taken their protests to the streets, some of them ignoring safety measures such as wearing masks.

“I can only imagine the bitterness felt by those who are mourning a loved one because of the coronavirus, or those who are still suffering its after-effects, when the existence of the virus is disputed or denied by some,” she said.

“The conspiracy theories are not only false and dangerous, they are also cynical and cruel towards these people,” she added.

There was nevertheless hope for the coming year, she added.

“For some days, hope has a new face: That of the first vaccinated people” in retirement homes and among health workers, said Merkel.

In her 15 years in power, she added, “Never have we, despite the worries, been in such a hurry to enter a new year.”

Germany, praised for its handling of the first wave, has been hit hard by a second wave.

More than 32,000 people have now died from the virus in Germany, and on Wednesday the daily death toll passed 1,000 for the first time – although officials say this was partly due to late reporting of earlier figures.

The country is under a partial lockdown until Jan 10, with most shops closed along with schools, restaurants, cultural and leisure facilities.

New Year’s Eve festivities will be muted, with a ban on the sale of fireworks and tight restrictions on the number of people who can gather in public.

(Source: AFP)

French President Emmanuel Macron’s condition is stable and the results of a medical examination reassuring, the French presidency said on Saturday in an update on his bout of coronavirus.

“The medical condition of the president is stable compared with Friday,” the Élysée Palace statement quoted Jean-Christophe Perrochon, the chief doctor of the presidency.

“[Macron] presents the same symptoms of the Covid-19 illness (fatigue, coughing, stiffness) that do not prevent him from fulfilling his duties,” Perrochon said.

The Élysée statement also said that the results of medical tests on Macron have been “reassuring”.

Macron said on Friday he was doing fine a day after testing positive for Covid-19, but was working at a slower pace than usual outside Paris.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

Britain and the European Union provided sober updates Thursday on the state of post-Brexit trade discussions, with only two weeks to go before a potentially chaotic split.

While Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union’s executive commission, noted “substantial progress on many issues,” she voiced concerns about the discussions taking place around fishing rights. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also warned that a no-deal outcome seemed “very likely.”

The two spoke early Thursday evening, their latest in a series of conversations in the past couple of weeks aimed at unclogging the talks, which have moved at a snail’s pace since Britain left the EU on January 31.

Britain remains within the EU’s tariff-free single market and customs union until December 31. A failure to reach a post-Brexit deal would likely lead to chaos on the borders at the start of 2021 as tariffs and other impediments to trade are enacted by both sides. The talks have gotten bogged down on three main issues — the EU’s access to Britain’s fishing waters, the level playing field to ensure fair competition between businesses, and the governance of any deal.

Following their latest conversation, von der Leyen warned that bridging big differences, in particular on fisheries, “will be very challenging.” Negotiations, she added, would continue Friday.

According to a statement from Johnson’s office, the prime minister stressed that “time was very short” and that it “now looked very likely that agreement would not be reached unless the EU position changed substantially.”

Intractable dispute

Johnson, like von der Leyen, focused on the lack of progress on fisheries. which has proved to be a hugely intractable issue in the talks — even though it accounts for only a very small amount of economic output.

On fisheries, the EU has repeatedly said it wants an agreement that guarantees a reciprocal access to markets and waters. EU fishermen are keen to keep working in British waters and Britain’s seafood industry is extremely dependent on exports to the 27-nation bloc. Johnson has made fisheries and British control over its waters a key demand in the long saga of Britain’s departure from the EU.

According to Downing Street, Johnson stressed that Britain could “not accept a situation where it was the only sovereign country in the world not to be able to control access to its own waters for an extended period and to be faced with fisheries quotas which hugely disadvantaged its own industry.”

The EU’s position, according to Johnson, “was simply not reasonable, and if there was to be an agreement, it needed to shift significantly.”

Earlier, the European Parliament issued a three-day ultimatum to negotiators to strike a trade deal if it is to be in a position to ratify an agreement this year. European lawmakers said they would need to have the terms of any deal in front of them by late Sunday if they were to organize a special gathering before the end of the year.

If a deal comes later, it could only be ratified in 2021, as the Parliament would not have enough time to debate the agreement before that.

An anti-Brexit placard is held in Parliament Square, in London, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020. Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday…

An anti-Brexit placard is held in Parliament Square, in London, Dec. 16, 2020.

‘Intolerable’ uncertainty

“We give until Sunday to Boris Johnson to make a decision,” said Dacian Ciolos, president of the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament. “The uncertainty hanging over citizens and businesses as a result of U.K. choices becomes intolerable.”

A trade deal would ensure there are no tariffs and quotas on trade in goods between the two sides, but there would still be technical costs, partly associated with customs checks and nontariff barriers on services.

Britain’s Parliament must also approve any Brexit deal, and the Christmas break adds to the timing complications. Lawmakers are due to be on vacation from Friday until January 5, but the government has said they can be called back on 48 hours’ notice to approve an agreement if one is struck.

Though both sides would suffer economically from a failure to secure a trade deal, most economists think the British economy would take a greater hit, at least in the near term, as it is relatively more reliant on trade with the EU than vice versa.

Both sides have said they would try to mitigate the impact of a no-deal, but most experts think that whatever short-term measures are put in place, the disruptions to trade will be immense.

“The prime minister repeated that little time was left,” Downing Street said in its statement after the call. “He said that, if no agreement could be reached, the U.K. and the EU would part as friends, with the U.K. trading with the EU on Australian-style terms.”

Australia does not have a free-trade deal with the EU.

(Source: AP)

A record jackpot of 200 million euros ($242 million) was won Friday in France by a ticket holder who has 120 days to claim the prize, the EuroMillions lottery said.

The win is the biggest ever scooped by a player of the EuroMillions lottery with the previous record standing at 190 million euros, won a number of times, most recently in October 2019.

Friday’s staggering prize went up for grabs after the jackpot rolled over twice last week.

Players in France have picked up 110 out of 499 Euromillions jackpots — nearly a quarter — since it began in 2004, followed by Britain which has had 108 winners and Spain with 105.

Apart from France, EuroMillions tickets can be bought in in Austria, Belgium, Britain, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.

Source: AFP

Five people were killed in a helicopter crash in the French Alps on Tuesday and a sixth was injured and fighting for his life, French President Emmanuel Macron said.

The helicopter was carrying an air rescue crew on a training mission when it went down at an altitude of 1,800 meters (5,905 feet), local authorities said.

The pilot of the aircraft, which also had another pilot on board as well as two winch operators and two mountain rescue workers, was able to eject and give the alert.

Three helicopters were dispatched but had been unable to reach the accident site due to fog while rescue teams were also trying to approach by ground, the Savoie prefecture said in a statement.

France’s air accident bureau said separately that it had opened an investigation and would dispatch a team to the site.

Source: REUTERS

Four French police officers caught on camera while brutally beating a black man in Paris earlier this month have been charged, amid public outrage over France’s new controversial security law.

A video footage circulating online became headline news on French television channels on Saturday, which showed the violent arrest of a black man, who was not wearing a face mask — required under coronavirus restrictions.

Three police officers followed the man, identified as music producer Michel Zecler, inside his music studio in Paris and began repeatedly punching him and beating him with a truncheon. They also subjected Zecler to racial abuse.

The officers later left the studio and threw a tear gas grenade into the building to force those inside to come out.

Nine other people, according to reports, who were recording music in the studio basement were also beaten.

The police were unaware they were being filmed by a surveillance camera.

Zecler told reporters that the officers also hurled repeated racist insults at him, and he was taken into custody for 48 hours.

“I was lucky enough, unlike many other people, to have had the video that protects me,” he said

Authorities said Monday that four officers have been suspended in connection with the incident.

The examining magistrate charged three with “willful violence by a person holding public authority” and “forgery.”

The other officer suspected of having thrown a tear gas grenade into the basement was charged with “willful violence.”

According to a French judicial source, two of the officers were being kept in custody, while the other two were put on conditional release.

The prosecution had requested pre-trial detention for the first three, and a judicial review for the fourth.

President Emmanuel Macron described the violent incident as an “unacceptable attack” and asked the government to come up with proposals to “fight against discrimination.”

“France must never allow hate or racism to spread,” he said on Friday.

Source: Presstv

Amid a spike in migrants arriving at Spain’s Canary Islands, hundreds of migrants have been evicted from the camps set up to receive them, forcing them to wander the streets of local villages. Thousands more are said to have been left stranded without food or water.

Military camps have been set up to help overwhelmed reception facilities, but local authorities say the government is not doing enough. The island’s president Antonio Morales has denounced what he calls, the Ministry of the Interior’s continued contempt for migrants and the island, demanding the resignation of those responsible.

Driven by economic hardship around 17,000 migrants have arrived on the Canary Islands this year. According to Spain’s Interior Ministry that’s a 1,000-percent increase from 2019.

In 2019, 1885 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean sea and 2020’s death toll is fast approaching one thousand. Only last week the Spanish OpenArms NGO reported six deaths after releasing a harrowing footage.

Open Arms, the only NGO permitted to carry out search and rescue missions at present, wrote on Twitter:

“Despite the enormous commitment of our medical team, a six-month-old baby has just died. We requested an urgent evacuation for him and other people in serious conditions, but he didn’t make it. How much pain and sorrow!”

The International Criminal Court has sued the European Union saying member states should be prosecuted for the deaths of thousands of migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean. In its 245-page document the ICC says the EU’s deterrence-based migration policy which came into force after 2014 sacrifices the lives of migrants in distress at sea, to dissuade others from seeking a safe haven in Europe.

Source: Presstv

A leading witness retracted allegations on Wednesday that former French president Nicolas Sarkozy took millions in cash from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to finance his 2007 presidential campaign.

Earlier in the case, French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine had claimed he delivered suitcases carrying a total of €5 million from Tripoli to Sarkozy’s chief of staff in 2006 and 2007.

Takieddine, 70, who is in Beirut on the run from French justice related to another shady financing affair, released a video saying the instructing magistrate had twisted his words.

“I am saying loud and clear: the magistrate … really wanted to turn it the way he wanted and make me say things that are totally contradictory to what I said,” Takieddine said.

“There was no financing of Sarkozy’s presidential campaign,” he added.

The former president jumped on the first reports of Takieddine’s reversal from BFM TV and Paris Match, saying: “The truth is out at last.”

“For seven and a half years, the investigation has not discovered the slightest proof of any illegal financing whatsoever,” he posted on Facebook.

“The chief accuser recognises his lies,” Sarkozy added. “He never gave me money, there was never illegal financing of my campaign in 2007.”

Sarkozy said he would be instructing his lawyers to seek to dismiss the case against him and sue Takieddine for defamation.

French prosecutors last month said they had placed Sarkozy under formal investigation for “membership in a criminal conspiracy” after more than 40 hours of questioning over four days, prosecutors told AFP.

He was already facing formal investigations for “accepting bribes,” “benefitting from embezzled public funds” and “illegal campaign financing” from 2018.

The October legal moves were seen to increase the chance of a trial for Sarkozy, who was already poised to become the first former French president in the dock on corruption charges.

Prosecutors suspected that Sarkozy and his associates received tens of millions of euros from Gaddafi’s regime to help finance his first election bid.

Litany of legal woes

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, has always denied any wrongdoing.

He has been under pressure since 2012, when the investigative website Mediapart published a document purporting to show that Gaddafi agreed to give Sarkozy up to €50 million ($59 million at current rates).

But four years later, Sarkozy was a driving force behind the 2011 international military invention that drove Gaddafi from power and plunged Libya into civil war.

A trained lawyer, Sarkozy has fought the claims of Libyan funding by citing presidential immunity and arguing there is no legal basis in France for prosecuting someone for misusing funds from a foreign country.

He has faced a litany of legal woes since leaving office, including the Bygmalion Affair – allegations that executives at the Bygmalion public relations firm created fake invoices to mask overspending on Sarkozy’s failed 2012 re-election bid.

In a third case, Sarkozy faces charges of trying to obtain classified information from a judge on an inquiry into claims that he accepted illicit payments from L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt for his 2007 presidential campaign. Sarkozy was cleared over the Bettencourt allegations in 2013.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

The EU will once again have a cooperative US partner when Joe Biden becomes president, but Europeans should harbour no illusions: Washington will be no globo-cop nor NATO’s big protector, leaders and analysts say.

“Great day for US and Europe, we look forward to working together with new administration to rebuild our partnership,” the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said in a tweet congratulating Biden on his election victory over President Donald Trump.

But Jean-Claude Juncker, former European Commission president, earlier offered a typically blunt assessment: “Joe Biden isn’t going to change Washington’s approach to international issues overnight, because he can’t.”

And Sebastien Maillard, head of the Jacques Delors Institute named after an influential former EU chief, cautioned that “the Europeans need to learn to live without American global leadership.”

“For the foreseeable future, the US will be preoccupied with itself,” agreed German political scientist, Markus Kaim.

The comments spoke to an expectation that there was no going back to seeing America as the West’s sheriff, flexing military muscles across the world in the ways it did in the decades following the Cold War.

While the US still maintains aircraft carrier battle groups in different regions, and bases including in Europe, South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan and Bahrain, it has been withdrawing from conflict zones under a trend accelerated by Trump but started by his predecessor Barack Obama.

More notably, within the past two decades much of its military focus has moved to Asia, away from Europe. 

Nathalie Tocci, head of the Italian think tank the Instituto Affari Internazionali, added: “We are witnessing the end of American imperialism with the United States no longer wanting to be the world’s policeman.”

So what can Europeans expect from the new US president?

“Things are going to get a lot easier, because Joe Biden understands Europe better than Donald Trump,” Juncker said.

Nevertheless, cautioned a diplomat posted to Brussels, “you shouldn’t expect radical change”.

Europeans will “once again have a partner, an ally, but they need to bolster their strategic autonomy in the economic arena and in terms of security, to be able to defend their interests,” he continued.

Jean-Dominique Giuliani, head of the Schuman Foundation, reinforced that point by saying EU leaders must “define what they want to do with America, and not simply wait for it to tell them”.

Trade and climate change

“With Biden as president, the EU could expect and welcome a much more predictable and constructive US-EU relationship on trade, NATO, Iran, the Middle East and above all on climate change, if the US re-enters the Paris climate agreement,” predicted Mujtaba Rahman, director of the Europe office of the Eurasia Group risk analysis firm.

Trade in particular is expected to flow with much less of the friction that marked the Trump years.

Under Trump, Washington flexed trade muscles by slapping higher tariffs on steel and aluminium, prompting Europe to prepare a riposte. A truce was reached on the promise of a mini trade deal, but that has still not been realised.

On climate change, Biden has already stated he wants to return the US to the Paris climate accord.

He has likewise signalled he wants to reverse pullouts Trump ordered for the World Health Organization and the Iran nuclear deal.

But there are some repairs Biden is not likely to carry out, among them the US show of force to China’s assertive policies and the desire to reduce American involvement in conflicts far from its soil.

Those stances are popular domestically, explained Nicole Koenig, a Berlin-based defence specialist for the Jacques Delors Institute.

What will change will be the style.

“Joe Biden will inform and coordinate with his allies,” she said.

‘Division of labour’

Trump’s unilateral decisions and antagonism towards some of leaders of NATO countries created tensions and divisions within the Alliance.

Its chief, Jen Stoltenberg, expended a lot of energy “to appease the beast,” one diplomat said.

NATO can hope for a normalisation with Biden, but analysts believe Washington will stay retrenched in looking out for US interests.

“That will be uncomfortable for the Europeans,” whose NATO members are split between a pro-Europe camp and an Atlanticist one, said Kaim.

“Illusions of European strategic autonomy must come to an end: Europeans will not be able to replace America’s crucial role as a security provider,” warned Germany’s defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, in an opinion piece for the Politico website.

Kaim suggested that Biden’s approach would be to propose to the Europeans “a simple division of labour: you will help us in Europe so that we can become more involved in Asia”.

Source: AFP

Five years after Europe’s migrant crisis, Brussels will propose on Wednesday that member states share the responsibility for asylum seekers under a “compulsory solidarity mechanism”. But it could spark outrage from countries such as Austria, whose Chancellor Sebastian Kurz warned against any attempts to force EU countries to take in migrants.

The New Pact on Migration and Asylum will be unveiled by European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson and Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas.

Johansson wants the 27 member states to commit to sharing the burden of handling asylum claims from migrants arriving on the bloc’s shores. “It’s obvious to everybody that ad hoc solidarity or voluntary solidarity is not enough. That has been proven for many years now,” she said. “It has to be mandatory.”

The plan will make showing solidarity with all EU countries on the front lines – often Greece, Italy or Malta – compulsory when they are “under pressure” from arrivals.

It may mean aid will no longer be limited to EU countries to where asylum seekers are relocated, but will be directed to other nations to return refused asylum seekers back to their country of origin.

Outcry expected

It is hoped that this measure will pacify EU countries like those of the Visegrad group – Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia – who have persistently failed to welcome asylum seekers.

Still, it may prove tough to pass. Speaking to AFP in an exclusive interview, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has already warned the EU against forcing states to take in asylum seekers. “We find that the distribution in Europe (of asylum seekers) has failed and many states reject this. It won’t work like this,” the 34-year-old conservative leader said.

Austria and other smaller countries – some of them, such as Hungary, criticised by Brussels over their anti-immigration stance and on rule-of-law issues – have spoken out in the past against any mandatory asylum-seeker distribution.

European migration policy was again in the headlines earlier this month following a devastating fire at an overcrowded camp for migrants and asylum seekers on the Greek island of Lesbos which left thousands homeless.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said last week that the new proposals would include plans to strengthen border security and return failed asylum seekers, which Kurz and allies are in favour of, while also including “a new strong solidarity mechanism.”

Seeking alliances

Kurz said he welcomed that the European Commission was addressing the topic of asylum and migration.

“We can only solve this topic all together… Better protection of the (EU’s) outer borders, a joined fight against smugglers, but also joined aid where it is needed (in countries where refugees come from), that is the path that is needed,” he said.

Kurz, pushing to make his mark in European politics, has also sought allies on other topics, such as when he worked with the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark – as the so-called “Frugal Four” – to oppose direct EU aid to coronavirus-hit countries as proposed by Germany and France.

“The European Union is more than just Germany and France… As a small or medium-sized state of course one has to always look for alliances, and in an EU with 27 member states one can only assert ideas if there are others that support them,” he told AFP in an office in the chancellery.

Coronavirus ‘challenge’

Kurz became the world’s youngest chancellor when his conservative People’s Party (OeVP) formed a coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) in 2017.

The coalition fell apart in 2019 after a corruption scandal engulfed the far-right FPOe leader, leading to fresh elections in which Kurz’s party again gathered the most votes.

Kurz then formed a new coalition with the Greens and has governed the Alpine country of nearly nine million people since January.

Kurz said fighting the coronavirus pandemic was “a very big challenge”.

“I am still relatively young, but I have been part of the Austrian government for many years and I thought I had already been through a lot politically… The corona crisis now exceeds all previous experiences of course,” he said.

The country has so far been spared the brunt of the crisis, reporting almost 40,000 cases with 771 deaths to date, but infections have surged again in recent weeks.

This has led to the government to extend mandatory mask wearing and re-instate some of the other restrictions imposed earlier this year to stem the spread of the virus.

Source: France 24 and AFP