The government of British Prime Minster Theresa May has suffered a fresh blow as lawmakers voted to force changes in London’s Brexit plans, giving Parliament a legal guarantee of a vote on the final Brexit deal struck with Brussels.

May was narrowly defeated in a key vote on its Brexit bill after a rebellion by 11 Tory MPs on Wednesday. Despite a last-minute attempt to offer minor concessions in the Commons, the amendment to the bill was backed by 309 to 305 as the Conservative rebels said it was too little too late.

Amendment 7 to Clause 9 was tabled by May’s own Conservative MP Dominic Grieve, who leads a faction of “rebels” within the party. The changes call for parliament to have a meaningful vote on any Brexit deal before it is finalized and written into law.

Several lawmakers from the prime minister’s governing Conservative Party sided with the opposition to insist that any withdrawal deal with the EU requires an Act of Parliament to take effect — essentially giving lawmakers a veto on Brexit.

The government argues that the changes could endanger the chances of delivering a smooth departure from the European Union, noting however that the “minor setback” would not prevent the UK leaving the EU in 2019.

Earlier on Wednesday, European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said there will be “no turning back” for Britain on commitments made during an initial divorce deal between the two.

10-Downing Street expressed disappointment with the vote, with opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn calling it “a humiliating loss of authority” for the government.

Stephen Hammond, one of the Conservative MPs who voted against the government, was sacked as Conservative vice chairman in the aftermath of the vote. “Tonight I put country and constituency before party and voted with my principles to give Parliament a meaningful vote,” he tweeted.

The setback comes nearly five months after May’s conservative Party lost its majority in the 650-seat parliament following snap elections.

Sir Desmond Swayne told the Commons that the amendments are simply aimed at delaying Brexit, dismissing them as “sanctimonious guff” and their Conservative backers as “idiots,” and Senior Tory Bernard Jenkin said, “To dress this attempt to reverse Brexit as an argument in favor of parliamentary sovereignty is nothing but cant.”

The European Parliament’s chief Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt tweeted, “British Parliament takes back control. European and British Parliament together will decide on the final agreement. Interests of the citizens will prevail over narrow party politics. A good day for democracy.”

EU leaders will hold a two-day summit as of Thursday during which they are scheduled to agree that there has been “sufficient progress” for the talks to move to the second phase of future relations and trade, a subject London wants to open as soon as possible.

Following the vote, May was on her way to Brussels to push European leaders to begin discussing the EU’s future trade deal with Britain.

A leaked draft of a text to be considered by the EU 27 leaders on Friday suggests that trade talks may not start until after a subsequent summit in March.

Britain is due to leave the bloc in March 2019, but a Brexit deal will have to be agreed by the fall of 2018 to give national parliaments time to approve it.

Source: Presstv

Britain and the EU reached a historic deal on Friday on the terms of the Brexit divorce after Prime Minister Theresa May rushed to Brussels for early morning talks.

The European Commission said it “recommends sufficient progress” had been made by Britain on separation issues including the Irish border, Britain’s divorce bill, and citizens rights.

The agreement paves the way for EU leaders at a summit on December 14-15 to open the second phase of Brexit negotiations, covering trade talks and a transition period.

Britain voted in June 2016 to become the first state to leave the EU, after more than four decades of membership, but the talks have been slow moving and often acrimonious so far.

“The Commission is satisfied that sufficient progress has been achieved in each of the three priority areas,” the European Commission said in a statement.

Negotiators worked through the night to seal an agreement on the terms of Britain’s departure from the bloc.

The EU had set a deadline of Sunday after the last talks on Monday broke down when May’s Northern Irish allies objected to terms for future arrangements for the Irish border.

Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker’s chief of staff Martin Selmayr tweeted a picture of white smoke — the sign used by the Vatican to signify the election of a new pope — shortly after May’s arrival.

Juncker spoke first with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar then with May on Thursday night in a bid to break a deadlock over the wording of a deal on future arrangements for the Irish border.

Border quandary

Britain agreed to pay a divorce settlement amounting to between 45 and 55 billion euros and to protect the rights of some three million European citizens living there after Brexit as part of the deal.

But Ireland’s demands that Brexit should not lead to the return of checkpoints on the border with Northern Ireland, which it said could jeopardise the peace process in the north, proved the biggest stumbling block at the end.

“In Northern Ireland we guarantee there will be no hard border,” May told a press conference with Juncker.

The pro-British DUP party which props up May’s government refused Monday’s draft deal over a phrase suggesting there would be “regulatory alignment” with the EU after Brexit — effectively putting Northern Ireland under EU law.

DUP leader Arlene Foster told Sky News there had now been changes following talks with May.

“We’re pleased to see those changes because for me it means there’s no red line down the Irish Sea and we have the very clear confirmation that the entirety of the United Kingdom is leaving the European union, leaving the single market, leaving the customs union,” she said.

On Thursday, EU Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas had dismissed British newspaper reports that the Sunday deadline could be extended into next week as “not correct”.

‘Totally and utterly incompetent’ 

Scotland’s nationalist leader showed little patience, accusing the British government of being “totally and utterly incompetent” on Brexit.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said “the real lesson” of the past week was that Scotland “will always be at the mercy of reckless decisions taken by Tory governments at Westminster” unless it becomes independent.

“The sooner we are in control over our own future here in Scotland the better, and this week has proved it,” she added.

Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem offered some calming words, saying Britain’s City of London financial hub “will not fall apart” after Brexit even if it loses the right to allow banks to trade freely across the bloc.

Dijsselbloem, the Netherlands finance minister who chairs meetings of his counterparts in the 19-country eurozone, said that some businesses would nevertheless have to relocate.

“I don’t believe that the City will fall apart and that everyone will flee. I don’t think that’s how it’s going to work,” he told a European Parliament committee.

His reassurances come at a time when Britain’s finance sector is anxious about losing the “passporting” rights which allow large international banks to trade throughout the EU while being based in Britain.

(Source: AFP)

A judge in the Spanish Supreme Court has withdrawn European and international arrest warrants issued for leaders of an independence movement in northeastern Catalonia region.

A Supreme Court spokesman said Tuesday that former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four members of his former cabinet will no longer need to fight extradition in Belgium, where they have stayed since a crackdown began in Catalonia against the region’s push for independence late in October.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the five were still subject to domestic warrants and they would be arrested if they return to Spain to contest a fresh regional election slated for December 21.

Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena said that new evidence had been found suggesting that alleged crimes of rebellion by Puigdemont and allies were a group action, leading to the withdrawal of individual warrants issued against them.

Llarena said the domestic warrants stayed because the five had to still face rebellion, sedition and embezzlement among other charges. He added that diminished charges would be a “distortion” for other suspects already facing the probe in Spain.

Puigdemont, the main engineer of a controversial referendum of independence in Catalonia in early October, read an independence declaration on October 27 only to give Madrid the pretext to sack his government and launch a sweeping crackdown on those involved in the secession push.

There has been no indication that he will return to Spain from Belgium, where judges had been reviewing his extradition request.

“For the moment he stays in Belgium,” his lawyer Paul Bekaert said, adding that the new statement by Spain’s Supreme Court could mean that the extradition process against the five would be ended in Belgium.

Belgian prosecutor’s office, which had announced December 14 for a decision on the case, said it was assessing the new situation.

Source: Presstv

The Republic of Ireland has threatened to veto Brexit trade talks unless Britain provides guarantees over Dublin’s border with Northern Ireland.

The Irish EU commissioner, Phil Hogan, said on Sunday that the border problem can easily be solved if British Prime Minister Theresa May drops her plans to take Britain out of the European Union customs union and the single market when it departs the 28-nation bloc in 2019.

 “If the UK or Northern Ireland remained in the EU customs union, or better still the single market, there would be no border issue,” he said. “That’s a very simple fact.”

Britain’s international trade secretary, Liam Fox, quickly rejected Hogan’s solution. He told Sky News that the resolution of the border issue between the two Irelands will have to wait until details about future trade relations with the EU have been worked out.

“We don’t want there to be a hard border, but the UK is going to be leaving the customs union and the single market,” he said.

A hard border would make passport and customs controls mandatory, hampering business ties between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The EU has required sufficient progress on the border issue as a pre-condition to launch the Brexit trade talks next year before officially leaving the bloc in 2019.

In an interview with the Observer, Hogan (pictured above) also warned there was “blind faith” from some UK ministers that Britain would secure a comprehensive Brexit free trade deal. He warned that Ireland would “continue to play tough to the end” over its threat to veto trade talks until it had guarantees over the border.

The Irish government wants a written guarantee that there will be no hard border with Northern Ireland, something Dublin emphasizes can only be achieved, in effect, by keeping the region within the single market and customs union. However, May has repeatedly made clear that Britain will leave the single market and customs union, regardless of the border implications.

Ireland’s approach has also been rejected by Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionists, a Northern Ireland party that is using its votes in the parliament to prop up May’s minority government.

Foster told her party conference Saturday that the party would not back any agreement that “creates barriers” between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, in effect ruling out special status for Northern Ireland in the post-Brexit era.

Source: Presstv

Tens of thousands of people have staged a protest rally in the Spanish city of Valencia, calling on the central government in Madrid to allocate more funding to the autonomous community of the same name.

More than 60,000 demonstrators took to the main streets of the city on Saturday, expressing discontent with what they called the unfair distribution of budget to Valencia.

Waving Valencia’s regional flags, the protesters demanded that the Spanish government revise the country’s financial system in order for a fairer distribution of funding to autonomous communities.

“We came to this demonstration to ask and to demand that the financial distribution to the autonomous communities become fairer and more balanced with the population and with the investments we have,” said Cloti Iborra, a participant at the peaceful rally.

“We are an autonomous region that… [is] underfunded; we pay more than what we receive. We pay as a rich community, when in reality we are poor; we have higher unemployment, lower wages,” she added.

The Saturday demonstration enjoyed the support of all political parties in Spain except the ruling conservative People’s Party (PP) of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

The Spanish prime minister’s government has already had to cope with a secession bid in Catalonia, which is also an autonomous region and which neighbors Valencia in northeastern Spain.

Madrid has had to sack the regional government in Catalonia over its defiant bid to gain independence from Spain following a referendum that was held illegally on October 1.

Anti-government sentiments still run deep in Catalonia as people favoring independence stage back-to-back rallies on the streets and urge Madrid to free jailed leaders and activists.

Source: Presstv

German political factions have failed in their initial efforts to form a three-way coalition because of disagreements over environment, business, and migration policies.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had set Thursday as the deadline for exploratory talks about forming a coalition government following elections on September 24.

Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc won 246 seats; the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), 80 seats; and the left-leaning environment-friendly Green Party, 67 in those elections. There are currently 709 seats in the German legislative body, or the Bundestag.

The coalition government being negotiated is referred to as “Jamaica” because the parties’ colors match those of the Caribbean island country’s flag.

The exploratory talks of the three parties continued into the early hours of Friday. Later in the day, they announced that they had failed to find common ground to begin formal coalition negotiations.

The three parties said further talks would be postponed to Friday noon.

“We’ll continue at noon today,” said Winfried Kretschmann, a Greens negotiator and premier of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, early on Friday.

The main sticking points between the groups are their different perspectives over climate, migration, and finances.

Conservative participants said some of those differences might not be resolved at all.

“I don’t know if we can resolve all the discrepancies, all the disagreements,” said Joachim Herrmann, a senior member of the CSU, the sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU).

Failure to clinch a deal could lead to new elections.

Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), criticized the would-be coalition partners for failing to reach a deal, telling daily Die Welt, “If the (conservative) Union, FDP, and Greens don’t reach an agreement soon, there should be new elections.”

This is a scenario none of the negotiating parties would want, for fear that the far-right AfD could make further gains after already entering the parliament in the September 24 elections.

While Merkel is perceived as a skilled negotiator, the failure to form the coalition government has already been described as her loss.

“A failure of Jamaica would be her failure,” wrote the mass-circulation German daily Bild.

Culled from Presstv

Nearly 40 Conservative MPs have agreed to sign a letter of no confidence in Prime Minister Theresa May, according to The Sunday Times.

A vote of no confidence means that May could be forced from office and replaced by another Conservative.

There is a need for eight more MPs to trigger a party leadership contest. That is not unlikely as the number of parliament members, who want to oust May, has increased in recent weeks.

One minister told the paper, “It’s a horrible thing to say… but we are getting closer and closer to the point whereby we need some time in opposition to regroup.”

Divided over how to pull Britain out of the European Union and hit by several sex scandals involving ministers, May’s government has been getting weaker in asserting control over the country’s chaotic political situation

On Friday, EU Brexit chief Michel Barnier handed Britain a two-week ultimatum to make concessions on a divorce agreement if it wants to unlock the next phase of talks in December.

Frenchman Barnier said it was “vital” for Britain to increase its offer on its exit bill — a figure senior EU officials put at up to 60 billion euros — to open up talks on a future trade deal.

Tory Brexiteers, however, warned May over the ultimatum, advising the premier against giving in to the EU demands.

One Conservative former cabinet minister called the demands “unacceptable,” while another prominent backbencher said any more concessions would be a “sign of weakness.”

May has also come under criticism after two lawmakers from the Labour Party and two from the Conservative Party were accused of harassing and propositioning young women inappropriately.

UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon has also resigned from his position after accepting his misconduct toward a female journalist in the past.

Source: Presstv

Catalonia has been brought to a standstill as hundreds of pro-independence protesters blocked the main roads and halted transportation in the Spanish region.

On Wednesday, crowds blocked roads in the regional capital of Barcelona and caused heavy traffic jams on the highways leading to the regional capital. They also brought to a halt the high-speed train service in the region.

Holding Catalonia’s flags and banners, which read “Free political prisoners,” protesters also broke into police lines and gathered in front of Catalan and local government buildings in Barcelona.

Across the region, schools were closed, roads were blocked, and trains ran on a reduced service.

The general strike was called by pro-independence groups and the CSC trade union to protest the imprisonment of members of Catalonia’s ousted government, which used to be headed by Carles Puigdemont.

The biggest labor unions, CCOO and UGT, said they did not support the strike but would hold protests outside their workplaces.

Pro-independence civil organizations ANC and Omnium as well as students are expected to take to the streets throughout the day.

The Spanish central government sacked Puigdemont and dissolved the regional parliament after legislators passed an independence declaration on October 27. It has called early elections to be held on December 21 to replace the sacked regional government.

Two secessionist parties fail to form coalition

Meanwhile, Catalonia’s two main secessionist parties have so far failed to form an alliance to contest the snap regional elections.

The two main secessionist parties, Puigdemont’s PDeCAT and the ERC Party, could not resolve differences that emerged after a declaration of independence last month.

“It has been impossible to form a joint list and we will therefore have to create a joint front from various candidacies,” said ERC lawmaker Sergi Sabria in a statement.

On Tuesday, Puigdemont called on Catalonia’s political groups to unite against Madrid.

“The ideal would be a broad regional list of parties… that stand for democracy and freedom,” he said.

The ousted leader said that he might be in jail by the time of the elections, “but prison doesn’t deprive anyone of legitimacy.”

On Sunday, Puigdemont turned himself in to Belgian police. Spain had issued an arrest warrant against him on charges of rebellion and sedition. A Belgian judge, however, released him and four of his former ministers on bail.

Source: Presstv

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who was sacked by the Spanish government over the region’s declaration of independence, has called for “democratic opposition” to Madrid.

“It’s very clear that the best form of defending the gains made up until now is democratic opposition to article 155,” Puigdemont said in a brief statement on Saturday.

“We continue persevering in the only attitude that can make us winners. Without violence, without insults, in an inclusive way, respecting people and symbols, opinions, and also respecting the protests of the Catalans who do not agree with what has decided the parliamentary majority,” he said.

The deposed Catalon president further said that he and his team would keep working “to build a free country.”

In a copy of his speech sent to AFP, he signed off as “president of the Catalan government,” implying he still considered himself the head of the autonomous region.

He also called on Catalans to defend the republic proclaimed by the regional parliament.

“We need to keep defending the stage in which we have entered with a tireless sense of civic responsibility and peaceful commitment,” he said, adding that “in a democratic society, only parliaments can pick or dismiss presidents.”

The declaration comes nearly a month after Catalonia held an independence referendum on October 1. The Spanish government dismissed the vote as illegal.

On Saturday, the Spanish government announced its decision to invoke article 155, which can, upon application, strip Catalonia of its key autonomous powers and allow the central government to impose direct rule over the wealthy region.

The move by Madrid came after the Catalan parliament voted to declare independence from Spain on Friday.

Soon after the vote, the upper house of Spain’s parliament, the Senate, made the unprecedented move of authorizing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government to rule Catalonia directly.

Speaking during a televised speech on Friday, Rajoy said his cabinet had dismissed the regional president and parliament and ordered regional elections to be held on December 21.

Apart from removing the Catalan president, the Spanish premier also fired the region’s police chief and ordered central government ministries to take over the Catalan administration.

In reaction to Madrid’s move, the main secessionist group, the Catalan National Assembly, urged civil servants to respond with “peaceful resistance” and disobey the Spanish government’s orders.

Rajoy’s cabinet later convened to adopt the first measures to govern Catalonia directly.

“Exceptional measures should only be adopted when no other remedy is possible,” Rajoy said during his speech to the Senate on Friday morning. “In my opinion there is no alternative. The only thing that can be done and should be done is to accept and comply with the law.”

Separately on Friday, Spain’s constitutional court started a review of the vote held in the Catalan parliament, saying the state prosecutor and other parties had three days to make allegations of wrongdoing.

A spokesman for Spain’s public prosecutor’s office said it would file rebellion charges next week against the Catalan leader. A court will then decide whether to accept the charges against Puigdemont.

Catalonia already enjoys a high degree of autonomy, but its drive for independence has its roots in the cultural and political suppression that the region experienced during the 1939-1975 Franco dictatorship.

Source: Presstv