ARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2017
INTERNATIONAL
12
World News Roundup
Brexit
Labor faces rebellion
‘Accept freedoms for
bloc’s Single Market’
GREIFSWALD, Germany, Jan 27, (Agencies):
German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated on
Friday her stance that Britain will only get access to
the European Union’s Single Market once it leaves
the bloc if it accepts the freedom of movement of
workers.
“We made clear to Britain, which will make a formal application to leave — probably in March - that
only those who really accept the fundamental freedoms of the Single Market — and that is the freedom
of movement of goods, people and services — can get
access to the Single Market,” Merkel said at a meeting
of her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in the
northeastern city of Greifswald.
Britain will continue to obey EU rules on negotiating trade deals as long as it
remains a full-fledged member
of the bloc, finance minister
Philip Hammond said on
Friday.
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Hammond said playing by the
rules was in “our DNA,” just
hours before British Prime
Minister Theresa May was to
sit down with US President
Donald Trump to begin drawing up a free trade deal linking
Merkel
the countries after the UK
leaves the European Union.
May’s visit to Washington has ruffled feathers in
Europe as it would be a violation of European Union
treaties for a member state to negotiate trade deals
independently of the bloc.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II arrives for a visit to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, east England, on Jan 27. The
Queen visited the ‘Fiji: Art & Life in the Pacific’ exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia (UEA). (AFP)
Engaged
“Britain remains a fully engaged member of the
European Union,” Hammond said in response to a
question on May’s visit as he arrived for talks with
EU finance ministers in Brussels.
Britain, which voted to quit the EU in June, is
expected to launch two years of fraught exit negotiations in late March but will remain a bloc member
until the divorce is done.
In the meantime, May’s government is keen to start
talks on a US-UK free trade agreement as soon as
possible, seeing bilateral accords as the best hope of
softening the blow of leaving Europe’s single market
of 500 million consumers.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned
fellow EU leaders on Thursday that they were failing
to address Europe’s problems and risked seeing
Britain gain from its exit from the bloc.
Orban warned that Britain, whose prime minister
will meet US President Donald Trump on Friday, was
very likely to be offered a trade agreement with the
United States, which could make some EU countries
question the benefits of membership.
“We are in the danger that others will follow...
There will be the constant danger in the future in the
European Union, a kind of temptation following the
British that getting out of the European Union ... could
result in a better position for you than staying in the
European Union,” he said.
Orban has praised Trump and often battled Brussels.
His determination to keep out migrants and refugees,
including by building razor-wire border fences, has
angered his fellow European Union leaders.
He said Europe needed to engage with Trump to
form a bilateral agreement on military and economic
questions. “Otherwise the others will be first and the
European Union will be left behind,” he said.
Votes
In a speech in Brussels, Orban said a new era was
“knocking on the door of Europe”, with politicians in
denial about Europe’s loss of competitiveness and
dismissive of votes that have brought in Trump and
will lead to Britain’s EU exit.
Britain’s opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
faced a party rebellion on Friday over his support for
triggering Brexit, after two lawmakers resigned from
his policy team and others publicly promised to defy
him on the issue.
Corbyn has ordered his lawmakers to support legislation published on Thursday which will allow
Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May to begin
the legal process of leaving the European Union.
That decision has strained Corbyn’s authority over
a party whose membership is deeply divided between
its traditional working class voters, who strongly supported Brexit in England’s struggling post-industrial
regions, and pro-EU voters in more prosperous urban
constituencies.
“I believe that leaving is a terrible mistake and I
cannot reconcile my overwhelming view that to
endorse the step that will make exit inevitable, is
wrong,” wrote Jo Stevens, Labour’s spokeswoman for
Wales, in a resignation letter to Corbyn.
Stevens, whose constituency is in the Welsh capital
of Cardiff which voted in favour of staying within the
EU, said that she felt May was leading Britain towards
a “brutal exit”.
The resignation signalled an embarrassing internal
rebellion for Corbyn that will come to a head when
lawmakers vote for the first time on the legislation
next Wednesday.
But is highly unlikely to result in a defeat for May,
who retains a parliamentary majority and is expected
to pass the new law and then formally trigger Brexit
by the end of March.
Also:
LONDON: The number of European nurses registering
to work in Britain has fallen by more than 90 percent
since last June’s Brexit vote, the British Nursing and
Midwifery Council (NMC) told AFP on Friday.
A total of 101 nurses and midwives from EU
nations registered in December, compared with 1,304
in July, the month after the referendum, according to
the NMC.
The country’s National Health Service (NHS) is
currently in the spotlight over an apparent “winter
crisis” and already has a staff shortage with 24,000
nursing vacancies across Britain.
Official figures comparing the monthly averages
for previous years show 204 nurses registering in
2016, down from 820 in 2015 and 707 in 2014.
“This is the first sign of a change following the EU
referendum and it is our responsibility as the regulator
to share these figures with the public,” said Janet
Davies, chief executive of the Royal College of
Nursing (RCN).
However, she stressed that it was not possible to
link the fall in registrations with Brexit “definitively”.
There are almost 700,000 nurses currently registered in the UK, of which 84.8 percent are British, 5.6
percent from the EU and 9.6 percent from the rest of
the world.
EU
President rattles US traditional European allies
Brexit, Trump top Lisbon summit
This file photo taken on March 6,
2012 shows a member of staff posing
next to a 1771 portrait by German artist Johan Zoffany of Britain’s King
George III, entitled ‘George III’ at the
Royal Academy of Arts in central
London on March 6, 2012, during a
press preview for the forthcoming
exhibition ‘Johan Zoffany RA: Society
Observed’. Thousands of papers from
the reign of King George III went
online on Jan 28, with the trove
including an essay by the monarch on
losing America and details of his spy
network. (AFP)
May
Lambert
Britain
Queen back on duty after cold:
Queen Elizabeth II on Friday carried out
her first visit since suffering a cold over
Christmas, visiting an exhibition on Fijian
art and culture.
The 90-year-old sovereign, who is the
Church of England’s supreme governor,
missed the Christmas Day church service
at her Sandringham estate in Norfolk, eastern England, with a heavy cold that lasted
around a fortnight.
But she conducted her first visit of 2017
with a trip to the nearby town of Norwich
to see an exhibition, “Fiji: Art and Life in
the Pacific.”
Two Fijian warriors carrying war clubs
and wearing skirts made from dried bark
strands symbolically guarded the monarch
on her arrival.
One of them was 19-year-old Joe
Cokanasiga, a winger with London Irish
rugby club.
“It was a bit cold out there but a real
experience and honour to be asked to be
here -- we added some atmosphere to the
occasion,” he said.
The head of state was fascinated by the
war clubs inside the exhibition.
“We talked about the impact of one of
those clubs, which would be quite impressive,” said co-curator Karen Jacobs. (AFP)
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LISBON, Jan 28, (AFP): Leaders of
seven southern European Union
nations met in Lisbon on Saturday,
seeking a united front against Brexit
and the new protectionist administration of US President Donald Trump.
The mostly centre-left leaders taking part — the second summit of
southern EU leaders in four months
— are also expected to renew action to
boost flagging growth and tackle the
migrant crisis.
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio
Costa shook hands and embraced
Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni,
French President Francois Hollande
and the other leaders as they arrived.
Faced with the rise of “protectionism and populism”, the EU needs
urgent reforms to “surpass the economic, social and political legitimacy
crisis which is weakening it,” Costa
said ahead of the event.
Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Malta
are the other countries present.
Hollande warned Friday after talks
with German Chancellor Angela
Merkel in Berlin that Trump’s administration poses “challenges” to “our
trade rules, as well as to our ability to
resolve conflicts around the world”.
Trump has rattled America’s traditional European allies with a range of
radical policy plans.
He has called NATO “obsolete”,
announced he would rip up a planned
transatlantic trade plan and supported
Britain’s move to leave the EU, calling
it a “wonderful thing” on Friday during a meeting with British Prime
Minister Theresa May.
Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem
warned Thursday that Europe was “on
its own” after Trump took over as US
president, but said it could be an
opportunity to strengthen the EU.
The Lisbon summit is a follow up to
a first gathering in Athens in September
2016 as part of a push by Greek Prime
Minister Alexis Tsipras to create a
England in 2016, a 16 percent rise on the
year before, according to the Department
for Communities and Local Government.
“The fact that there are more people
who are homeless, it’s very clear that there
are more people being exploited,” Kevin
Hyland, Britain’s Independent Anti-
strong southern “axis” to counter the
influence of nations in northern
Europe.
The group is often referred to —
sometimes dismissively — as “Club
Med”, even though one of its members, Portugal, is not on the
Mediterranean.
It includes some of the nations hardest hit by the financial crisis.
Portugal and Greece both got international bailouts worth tens of billions
of euros which came with demands for
tough austerity measures and economic reforms.
The leaders will issue a joint statement after the meeting. It is expected
to focus on the need to boost growth
and investment in Europe.
Economic growth “must be at the
centre” of the EU’s policies, Gentiloni
said Friday in Madrid after talks with
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano
Rajoy.
He also urged Brussels to show
“flexibility” when it enforces deficit
rules.
“Simply I think Italy needs expansionary economic policies,” he said.
Also:
BRUSSELS: The European Union is
looking at new proposals to handle
asylum seekers arriving on its soil,
hoping to end more than a year of
wrangling that has undermined its
unity, officials and diplomats said.
EU leaders have given themselves
until mid-year to come to an agreement on the stalled reform of asylum
rules. They are at loggerheads over
how to handle an influx of refugees
that has triggered rows, notably
between Germany and Mediterranean
states on the one hand, and easterners
Poland and Hungary on the other.
German Interior Minister Thomas
de Maiziere said after talks with EU
counterparts this week they were looking at a three-tier system for low, high
Slavery Commissioner, told the Thomson
Reuters Foundation in an interview.
British Prime Minister Theresa May
has called modern slavery “the great
human rights issue of our time”.
In 2015, Britain passed tough anti-slavery legislation introducing life sentences
Risk for UK rough sleepers: Rogue
employers are tapping the rising number of
rough sleepers on Britain’s streets and luring them into a life of modern slavery in
building, farming and even illegal boxing,
a British homeless charity said on
Thursday.
Of the 61 homeless organisations surveyed by The Passage charity, it said 64
percent had come across cases of modern
slavery. Case workers cited vulnerable
homeless people who were recruited off
the street to work in building sites, on
farms and to help with illegal boxing
matches for little or no pay.
The finding comes as new figures reveal
more than 4,100 people slept rough in
Britain’s Prince Harry (center), runs with staff and service users of The Running
Charity in northwest London on Jan 26. The Running Charity is the UK’s first
running-orientated programme for homeless and vulnerable young people. The
programme engages young people in regular running-based activities with
qualified fitness professionals as coaches, harnessing the underlying benefits of
the sport as a powerful motivational tool. (AFP)
and very high volumes of arrivals.
In the first instance, the current rules
would mostly apply, including a key
proviso that the first EU country
through which a person arrives in the
bloc must handle their case.
This is precisely what led to the
build-up of an excessive strain on the
Mediterranean EU states during a
2015 influx. Hence, diplomats said of
the latest proposals on the table, for
times of high arrivals that rule would
no longer apply.
The EU would have a mix of tools
from relocation of asylum seekers to
other countries in the bloc, to assistance in cash and equipment, or offering expert help.
“There should be a level of acceptance in every area. It’s not a question
that one member state might opt out
from a particular, important area,” said
Carmelo Abela, interior minister of
Malta, the current chair of EU meetings.
Around 1.5 million refugees and
migrants reached Europe in 2015 and
2016, overrunning frontline states
Greece and Italy, and mostly heading
to the wealthy Germany, Austria and
Sweden.
These countries called on other EU
states to help by taking some of the
asylum seekers in. But Poland and
Hungary refuse, instead offering other
assistance.
Poland’s nationalist-minded, eurosceptic government strongly rejects any
compulsory sharing of asylum seekers.
Berlin has threatened to go for majority rather than unanimous voting on the
asylum reform, which would override
Polish and Hungarian objections.
Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit
Warsaw next month to press for a deal.
But the Polish government has also
used pressure from Brussels and Berlin
to beef up its own support among antimigration and eurosceptic constituencies.
for traffickers and forcing companies to
disclose what they are doing to make sure
their supply chains are free from slavery.
(RTRS)
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New light on George III: Thousands
of papers from the reign of Britain’s King
George III went online Saturday, including
an essay by the monarch on losing
America and details of his spy network.
Some 33,000 pages were published by
the Royal Archives, detailing the life and
times of Britain’s longest-reigning king,
who was on the throne from 1760 to 1820.
“George III is often labelled as ‘mad’, or
the king who lost America,” said the
Georgian Papers Programme.
The papers bring new insights into a
“complex, engaged polymath and highly
informed monarch”, it said.
Oliver Urquhart Irvine, the Royal
Archives librarian, said the new database,
which has the support of Queen Elizabeth
II, would open up the historic papers to a
global audience.
“Seeing original documents is utterly
compelling,” he said. “You can feel the
passion, personality, worries and triumphs
of individuals who have shaped major
events. It can change your perspective of
history.”
“The king takes his job very seriously.
He is processing knowledge on a protoindustrial scale as a part of his role,” said
Andrew Lambert, professor of naval history at King’s College London.
“He’s the best-informed chief executive
this country has ever had.”
The papers are accompanied by a BBC
documentary, “George III -- The Genius of
the Mad King”. (AFP)