French President Emmanuel Macron has sparked criticism over comments to an unemployed man deemed insensitive. But is it really possible, as he claimed, to find a job in a Parisian restaurant just by crossing the street?

Welcoming the public to the presidential palace on Saturday as part of an open-doors event, Macron got talking to a 25-year-old who said he was having no luck finding work as a gardener. “I send resumes and cover letters, they don’t lead to anything,” he told Macron, in a clip that quickly went viral.

Macron advised him to head to the bustling Montparnasse neighbourhood of Paris, saying he could find a job as a waiter in the blink of an eye. “If you’re willing and motivated, in hotels, cafes and restaurants, construction, there’s not a single place I go where they don’t say they’re looking for people,” he said.

“If I crossed the street I’d find you one.” The exchange ended with a handshake, but provided instant ammunition for leftist critics of Macron, a former investment banker, accusing him of being patronising and out of touch with ordinary people.

The Liberation daily went so far as to draw a comparison with the supposed suggestion by France’s last queen, Marie-Antoinette, that if the poor had no bread they should eat cake instead.

After several previous headline-grabbing encounters with members of the public, including telling off a teenager for not calling him “Mr President”, the paper advised Macron to stop “lecturing everyone”.

Elected in May 2017 on a promise to reinvigorate a sluggish economy, unemployment has yet to budge much under Macron’s pro-business policies. He is keen to encourage people to move between sectors to bring joblessness down from its current rate of 9.1 percent.

But Liberation accused Macron of “a purely technocratic vision under which if there are vacant jobs all you need to do is stick job-seekers in them, regardless of their training, their situation, or what they want to do with their lives.

“Blaming (job-seekers for their unemployment) in the style of Marie-Antoinette, that’s what is weighing this presidency down,” it concluded.

– ‘Turning customers away’ –

Yet some have sprung to Macron’s defence over his advice to the gardener, pointing out that France does indeed have a surplus of low-skilled jobs in the construction and restaurant industries.

Industry officials say there are up to 100,000 hotel and restaurant jobs that need filling in France, and have even called on Macron to grant legal status to more illegal immigrants to help cover the shortage.

Montparnasse, a commercial district whose bistrots were once favoured hangouts for the likes of Ernest Hemingway, is indeed packed with restaurants.

Many of their managers say they are chronically short-staffed, suffering high turnover due to high pressure and unsociable hours.

“We sometimes have to refuse customers or groups because we don’t have enough workers,” said the maitre d’ at La Rotonde, the upmarket restaurant where Macron celebrated winning the first round of the presidential election. Declining to give his name, he added however that the restaurant was selective in its hiring.

“We’re looking for serious people. They have to want to work,” he said. Jose Vicente, a waiter at the nearby Kibaloma cafe, said “absolutely”, restaurant jobs were available, although contrary to Macron’s words “you can’t just cross the road to find one”.

“Not everyone is cut out for it,” said Vicente, who has been waiting tables for 30 years. Those who turn up looking for work are usually aspiring dish-washers — mostly immigrants who “don’t have qualifications and don’t speak French properly”, Vicente said.

The latest controversy comes as Macron’s ratings have slumped, weighed down by a scandal over a former bodyguard and with economic growth set to come in at a lower-than-expected 1.6 percent this year. A Kantar Sofres Onepoint poll released Monday found only 19 percent had a positive view of the president.

Source: France 24

The European Union will scrap the twice-yearly seasonal clock change across the bloc from October 2019, leaving member states to decide by April whether they will stick permanently to summer or winter time, the European Commission says.

Since 1996, EU law has required all EU countries to move forward by an hour on the last Sunday of March and back by an hour on the final Sunday in October.

“There will be no more seasonal clock changes as of the end of October 2019,” Commissioner Violeta Bulc told a news conference on Friday, acknowledging that this relied on others following the Commission’s “ambitious” schedule.

The proposal follows an EU survey drawing in a record 4.6 million responses and showing 84 percent of them opposed to seasonal clock changes.

The Commission also says seasonal time switches are outdated, implemented during World War One and Two and the 1970s oil crisis to save energy.

“Newer studies confirm that the energy savings are nowadays marginal,” Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic said. “We are clearly heading towards smart cities, smart buildings and smart solutions which will bring much more savings than changes of the clock.”

Critics of the twice-yearly clock changes say it can cause long-term health problems, especially among young children and elderly people. Others argue that making the switch to give extra morning daylight in winter and evening light in summer can help reduce traffic accidents and save energy.

The European Parliament and the 28 national governments will need to find common positions by the end of the year, the Commission said. Both bodies need to back the proposal, a process that can often take up to two years.

The Commission said it was meeting its promise to act on big issues, but leave EU countries to take decisions where they are best placed to do so.

“Either we will stay with summer time or those countries that decide to go to winter time, they will switch to winter time in October (2019) and that will be it,” Bulc said.

Among those to back the proposal to scrap the clock changes are Spain and Finland, which has the most northerly EU national capital.

(Source: Reuters)

Russia last year attempted to intercept transmissions from a Franco-Italian satellite used by both nations’ armies for secure communications, French Defence Minister Florence Parly said on Friday, describing the move as an “act of espionage”.

In a speech outlining France’s space policy for the coming years, Parly said Russian satellite Louch-Olymp had approached the Athena-Fidus satellite in 2017. Parly said it came so close “that anyone would have thought it was attempting to intercept our communications”.

“Attempting to listen to your neighbours is not only unfriendly, it’s an act of espionage,” she said. Parly said officials took the “appropriate measures” and continued to monitor the satellite after it left, and observed it manoeuvring near other targets as well, she said.

Last month Washington accused Moscow of developing anti-satellite weapons and cited “very abnormal behaviour” of a “space object” deployed by Russia last October.

“We are well aware that other major players in space are deploying intriguing objects into orbit, experimenting with potential offensive capabilities, conducting maneuvers which leave no doubt as to their aggressive intent,” Parly said.

Next year, French President Emmanuel Macron plans to lay out plans for a “space defence strategy” for France, with an advisory committee expected to make proposals by November. “We’re at risk, our communications, our military maneuvers and our daily operations are at risk if we don’t react,” Parly said.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)

Thousands of opponents and supporters of Germany’s immigration policy marched Saturday through the eastern city of Chemnitz after a wave of racist violence that followed a knife killing.

Some protesters paraded with large portraits of victims of attacks perpetrated, they claimed, by asylum-seekers, while others brandished banners reading “Chemnitz is neither grey nor brown” and “The heart rather than hate”.

There was a heavy police presence with reinforcements from all over Germany after they were heavily outnumbered by thousands of neo-Nazis, football hooligans and other extremists earlier this week.

Sunday and Monday evenings saw outbreaks of street violence, triggered by the arrest of one Iraqi protester and one Syrian, suspected of stabbing a 35-year-old carpenter to death.

Following the arrests, mobs launched random street attacks against people they took to be foreigners, including an Afghan, a Syrian and a Bulgarian man.

Around 2,500 people marched in support of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s immigration policy which has seen more than one million migrants and refugees allowed into Germany since 2015, according to a police estimate.

The government lent its support to the pro-migrant rally through Foreign Minister Heiko Maas who tweeted: “The Second World War started 79 years ago. Germany caused unimaginable suffering in Europe. If once again people are parading today in the streets making Nazi salutes, our past history forces us to resolutely defend democracy.”

“We will not let right-wing extremists destroy our country and our democracy. Neither in Chemnitz, nor in Saxony nor anywhere in Germany. Our constitution must prevail. We must defend it. Now!” added one of the Greens’ leaders Cem Ozdemir in a tweet accompanied by a picture of him with demonstrators.

In a separate march later, an estimated 6,000 people marched at the call of various movements including the far-right anti-immigration alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the anti-Islam PEGIDA movement.

The violence and heated debate on immigration have brought back to the fore what has become the most challenging political issue for Merkel, especially in the former communist east of Germany where the AfD is the number one party in some towns and regions.

Following criticism of Merkel’s earlier open door policy, her government has increasingly tightened asylum laws as conservative and far-right disquiet has grown.

After an initially jubilant welcome, the migrant influx sparked a strong backlash that saw a spate of hate crimes and swept once-fringe party AfD into parliament.

(REUTERS)

European Union chief negotiator for Brexit Michel Barnier has officially ruled out the possibility that the bloc and the United Kingdom could reach a deal on Brexit during an October summit.

Barneir said after a meeting with Britain’s Brexit minister Dominic Raab on Tuesday that a deal on how the UK will leave the EU would not be completed by the European Council summit in October as previously hoped.

“I’m not going to say October, a few days here, the beginning of November, but not much later than that,” said Barnier during a press conference with Raab in Brussels.

The French diplomat, who has been tough with Britain on the country’s recent proposals for Brexit, said there will be works to do on key issues like the Irish border while the two sides will need time to prepare a political declaration on the future relationship.

Raab was still hopeful a deal would come through during the EU summit although he admitted there remained differences on key issues.

“If we have that ambition, that pragmatism and that energy on both sides, I’m confident we can reach that agreement by October,” said Raab after the meeting with Barnier, adding, “There are still gaps, we’ve had an honest conversation about those.”

The uncertainty about Brexit deepened in July when Barnier rejected key proposals from a plan submitted by British Prime Minister Theresa May earlier that month. May’s so-called white paper also sparked domestic controversies and caused two senior ministers in her cabinet, including Raab’s predecessor David Davis, to resign.

Fears have grown among the public that Britain could face serious shortage of foods and other basic items in case it fails to reach a withdrawal agreement with the EU.

May has said that there are still chances to avoid a no-deal Brexit but she insists that Britain would not accept a bad deal.

Culled from Presstv

A police officer shot dead a man armed with a knife as he tried to attack a police station in the northern Spanish region of Catalonia on Monday, in what authorities are treating as a “terrorist attack”. Police said the man invoked the name of Allah during the assault, which came just days after the first anniversary of a twin attack in Catalonia that killed 16 people.

The man arrived at the closed police station in the town of Cornella de Llobregat near Barcelona at 5:45 am (0345 GMT) and repeatedly pressed the buzzer to be let in, Rafel Comes, a commissioner with the Catalan regional police, told a news conference.

After police allowed him in, the man pulled out a “large knife” and lunged at officers in “a clearly premeditated desire to kill an agent of our force,” Comes said. “The officer used her gun to save her own life,” Comes said, adding the man shouted “Allah” as well as words the police officers did not understand.

“These are enough indication to treat the events being investigated as a terrorist attack.” Anti-terrorism police sources had earlier told AFP the man was a 29-year-old Algerian, but Comes said police still needed to confirm that the Algerian identity papers he carried with him were in fact his.

The police station in Cornella de Llobregat, a working-class town of around 86,000 people, was quickly cordoned off after the attack and the attacker’s body removed, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.

‘It was strange’

Police explosives experts searched the man’s flat, which was located just a few hundred metres (yards) from the site of the attack.

Resident Conchi Garcia, a 50-year-old office worker, said the man came to the neighbourhood two years ago, when he moved in with a woman and her two daughters who had always lived in the area. “It was strange that the woman started wearing the veil shortly after he arrived,” Garcia told AFP.

Security has been reinforced at police stations across Catalonia. The incident occurred just days after the one-year anniversary of a deadly jihadist rampage in Catalonia. Sixteen people were killed on August 17 and 18, 2017 when a van drove into crowds on Barcelona’s popular Las Ramblas boulevard and in a knife attack in the nearby resort of Cambrils.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, Spain’s worst since the Madrid train bombings in 2004 when 191 people died and more than 1,800 were injured. Spain has kept its terrorist alert at the second-highest level since 2015.

‘Centre of jihadist activity’

Catalonia, which is home to a significant number of second-generation North African immigrants, has had a long history of Islamic militant activity. Spain’s first Muslim extremist — a member of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) — was uncovered in Catalonia in 1995.

Mohammed Atta, the pilot who slammed a passenger plane into one of New York’s World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, spent time in Catalonia shortly before the attacks. And in 2008, police foiled a plot targeting Barcelona’s underground trains.

One in four people detained in Spain in relation to extremist Muslim-linked terrorism come from the Catalan province of Barcelona, according to a study published last year by the Real Instituto Elcano, a Spanish think-tank, which called the province the country’s “main centre of jihadist activity”.

The Islamic State group has frequently called on their followers to attack soldiers and police in neighbouring France.

(AFP)

Italy will let its coastguard ship carrying 177 migrants it rescued five days ago dock in Sicily, ending a standoff with Malta, its transport minister said on Monday, though it was not clear when and if the migrants would be allowed to disembark.

The European Commission also said it was working on a solution to share out the migrants aboard the Diciotti with Italy’s EU partners after a request from Italy the previous day. “The Diciotti ship will dock in Catania,” Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said on Twitter without specifying when. “Now Europe must hurry to do its part.”

But shortly afterwards, Interior Ministry sources said Interior Minister Matteo Salvini had not yet given authorisation for the ship to dock. He was awaiting guarantees that the migrants would go elsewhere. The sources said they would not disembark before then.

Since taking office in June, Salvini and Toninelli have toughened the stance on allowing ships to dock in Italian ports at a time of rising anti-immigration sentiment in Italy. The Diciotti picked up 190 migrants on Wednesday from an overcrowded boat on the high seas.

The coastguard quickly evacuated 13 of them to Italy for emergency medical treatment, but instead of bringing the rest to shore, the Diciotti stayed in international waters while Rome insisted that Malta should take them since the migrant boat had first passed through its search-and-rescue area. But Malta said the migrants had refused its aid because they wanted to reach Italy.

On Sunday, Toninelli said the small island nation should be sanctioned for not performing the rescue.

After more than 650,000 arrivals on Italian shores since 2014, Salvini has repeatedly said the country “will no longer be Europe’s refugee camp”, calling on EU partners to share the burden of the arrivals.

Flows across the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy – one of the main routes to Europe – have tapered off as Libyan factions cracked down on people smugglers, and as the EU bolstered its support for the Libyan coast guard.

But people are still dying at sea and summer is peak season for migrants attempting the crossing, often in packed, unseaworthy boats. Brussels said it was in talks with EU states on which of them would take the Diciotti people in, but it declined comment to say which capitals were involved and when help might be on offer.

(REUTERS)

An Afghan asylum-seeker was arrested after launching a drunken and frenzied knife attack in the sleepy southwestern French town of Perigueux, injuring four people including one seriously, police said Tuesday.

The incident began Monday evening with the 19-year-old man, who was known to have psychological problems according to local authorities, lashing out at cars outside his home.

The head of the ambulance service for the area, Jean-Jacques Girard, told the regional Sud-Ouest daily that he was seen “kicking and banging a first vehicle with his feet and fists, then a second” and also “rounding on female motorists.”

Two paramedics who witnessed the incident tried to calm the man down but after disappearing inside his home he returned with a knife and attacked them, leaving them with injuries to the head and neck.

He then turned on two brothers aged 64 and 68 living next door, leaving one with a perforated lung and the other with stab wounds to the back.

The man was eventually overpowered by one of the brothers and a man of Cameroonian origin, who stepped in to help wrestle his knife away.

Police arrested the man and placed him in custody on charges of aggravated violence.

They ruled out any terrorist motive.

(Source: AFP)

Since news surfaced that a top security aide to French President Emmanuel Macron was filmed assaulting protesters on May Day, it has dominated France’s headlines in the most damaging crisis yet for Macron. FRANCE 24 takes a look back.

May 1: Violence mars the traditional May Day labour union rallies in Paris. Alexandre Benalla, a top security aide to President Emmanuel Macron, spends his day off tagging along with law enforcement to observe their operations. Footage posted to Twitter at 8:17pm shows Benalla, wearing a police armband, manhandling a woman and striking a man protesting on the Left Bank’s Place de la Contrescarpe. But the 26-year-old Benalla, his face partially obscured by a protective police helmet with visor, will not be identified publicly until July 18, when Le Monde breaks the story.

May 2: Behind the scenes, the incident is a hot topic. Paris’s police chief learns of the video in the morning from an Élysée Palace staffer and Interior Minister Gérard Collomb learns of it after lunch, they will later say.

May 3: Patrick Strzoda, Macron’s chief of staff, addresses a formal letter to Benalla notifying the aide that he will be suspended for 15 days, from May 4 to May 19, for his “manifestly inappropriate behaviour” on May 1. “Your behaviour causes harm to the exemplary character expected, in all circumstances, of agents of the French presidency,” Strzoda writes, adding a warning that a subsequent lapse in exemplary behaviour would result in Benalla’s termination.

Headline news

July 18:Le Monde identifies Benalla as the helmeted man in the May Day video assaulting two protesters. The newspaper also publishes comment from Macron Chief of Staff Strzoda confirming he had been informed, that he had immediately informed Macron who was travelling in Australia at the time, and that Benalla’s punishment included a 15-day suspension without pay and a demotion to an administrative role.

Le Monde notes that Benalla remains a chargé de mission to the president and, although relegated to an administrative role handling security for events inside the Élysée Palace, worked to secure the July 14 Bastille Day parade and France’s July 16 World Cup victory parade, both held nearby on the Champs-Élysées.

July 19: Élysée spokesman Bruno Roger-Petit in a taped statement calls the punishment “the most serious sanction ever pronounced against a chargé de mission working at the Élysée”. The remark about Benalla’s punishment is roundly mocked, given that past Élysée staffers have been sacked for faux pas when Benalla, controversially, had not.

Roger-Petit also says another man shown alongside Benalla in the video, Vincent Crase, an employee of Macron’s La République en Marche party, was notified that he would no longer collaborate in any way with the president.

Refusing to answer reporters’ questions on the growing Benalla scandal himself, Macron addresses the affair in a single phrase. On a visit to Périgueux – where the French president is inaugurating an updated portrait of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic that graces France’s postage stamps — Macron is asked whether the Benalla affair had sullied the Republic. He replies: “No, no, no, the Republic is unshakeable.”

Also on July 19, the Paris public prosecutor’s office opens a preliminary inquiry into the May Day incident. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Collomb refers the case to the Inspection générale de la police nationale (IGPN), the disciplinary body that looks into police wrongdoing, in a bid to determine how Benalla and Crase wound up in the field alongside law enforcement on May Day.

Three Paris police prefecture staffers are suspended for having passed along videosurveillance footage of the May 1 incident to Benalla.

The lower-house National Assembly’s Law Commission calls a month-long commission of inquiry to shed light on the events of May 1.

Fired and detained

July 20: The Élysée Palace announces it will fire Benalla, saying the decision is based on new information. “In order to prove his innocence, Monsieur Benalla is said to have received a document from the police prefecture that he was not authorised to have in his possession,” it says, in apparent reference to the videosurveillance footage that saw the three police officers suspended.

Minutes after the Élysée’s announcement, news breaks that Benalla has been taken into police custody for questioning. Vincent Crase is also detained.

The Senate’s Law Commission calls a six-month commission of inquiry into the May Day incident.

Changes of plans

July 21: The three suspended police officers are also taken into custody for questioning.

Benalla’s apartment in Issy-les-Moulineaux, a Paris suburb, is searched by police. Still detained by police, the disgraced aide reportedly has to cancel his wedding, planned for Saturday, July 21.

An evening session of the National Assembly debating the government’s controversial constitutional reform bill is cancelled after heated arguments break out over news that Benalla had a badge giving him access to the chamber.

July 22: Benalla, Crase and the three suspended police officers are placed under formal investigation. The Paris prosecutor’s office says Benalla will be investigated on counts of group violence, interference in public service, the illegal wearing of a police badge and complicity in the unauthorised use of surveillance footage.

Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet announces that constitutional reform debate will be suspended, to be taken up again “at a later time in more serene conditions”. (It is ultimately postponed until September, at the earliest.)

Macron meets with his prime minister, interior minister, government spokesman and state secretary for parliament over the Benalla affair. Through an intermediary, the president condemns Benalla’s “shocking and unacceptable behaviour”, says there had been a series of dysfunctions at the Élysée since May 1 and charges the presidency’s secretary general, Alexis Kohler, with working on an internal restructuring “so that it cannot happen again”.

In the hot seat

July 23:Hearings begin in the National Assembly’s inquiry into the Benalla affair with lawmakers questioning Interior Minister Collomb and, later, Paris Police Chief Michel Delpuech. Neither man had known beforehand that Benalla would shadow officers on May Day, they each tell a packed committee room. Both trusted the Élysée to take appropriate measures to sanction Benalla, they tell the inquiring lawmakers.

July 24: Prime Minister Édouard Philippe defends the Élysée’s handling of the May Day incident, telling lawmakers on the floor of the National Assembly, “Nothing was covered up, nothing was omitted.” While accepting there may be questions as to the “proportionality” of the punishment handed down for Benalla, Philippe says the “swiftness” of the response is “not contestable”.

Chief of Staff Patrick Strzoda acknowledges he imposed Benalla’s suspension as well as a “demotion” that involved stripping him of responsibility for some elements of the president’s security. He says that since no complaint was filed against Benalla, and that an analysis by the national police oversight body had not flagged any irregularities, he did not see any need to inform prosecutors.

The first poll released since the scandal broke shows favourable opinions of Macron down four points since June to 32 percent, despite France’s intervening feel-good World Cup win. The Ipsos poll puts the French leader at his lowest approval level since September 2017.

Source: France 24

The German army is reportedly mulling accepting foreigners into its ranks by offering them German citizenship.

According to report published by RT on Saturday, the measure is aimed at coping with shortage of recruits in the country by filling understaffed military positions.

The logic behind the move will be that a person who is willing the endanger his or her life for Germany earns the right to be a citizen.

“The Bundeswehr will grow, therefore we need qualified personnel. To this end, we try every available option,” a military spokesman was quoted by RT as saying.

The Bavarian Christian Social Union party (CSU), the sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU, has proposed the move.

“Within the scope of European free movement, modern models could apply here,” said the party’s defense policy speaker.

Critics of the move claim that it will undermine the basic concept of a citizen’s loyalty to his nation.

Karl-Heinz Brunner, a defense policy speaker with Germany’s Social Democrats argues that if foreigners were permitted into Bundeswehr ranks, even with a prospect of becoming German citizens, it would be turned into “a kind of mercenary army.”

He further argued a person must become a German citizen before he or she enlists in the German army.

“Anyone who obtains the German passport as part of the integration procedure is cordially invited [to enlist],” he said.

The defense ministry was also quoted in the report that the “[the idea of] allowing EU citizens to serve in the Bundeswehr is not new.” Europeans with “specific sought-after qualifications” can be enlisted for civilian service.

Source: Presstv