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A possible upsurge in the number of refugees and migrants crossing Bosnia and Herzegovina to the West would pose a severe strain on the country's weak resources, experts say.

Bosnians on the margins of society are getting a new start in life, thanks to a programme that give them a chance to play in international football tournaments.

ZÜRICH. Hétfő este 21 óra után néhány perccel Svájcban majdnem ötös erősségű földrengés volt. A Richter-skála szerinti 4,7-es rázkódást sokan érezték, mert mélysége csak 6 km-es volt.

Kosovo's president is mulling ways to bypass a Serb veto on the formation of an army by proposing changes that would broaden the responsibilities of the existing Kosovo Security Force.

The main opposition Social Democrats and Macedonia's ethnic Albanian parties have dismissed VMRO DPMNE leader and former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's call for another general election.

PÁRIZS. A többsebességes Európa beindítását szorgalmazta Versailles-ban tartott hétfő esti találkozóján Angela Merkel német kancellár, Francois Hollande francia államfő, Paolo Gentiloni olasz és Mariano Rajoy spanyol miniszterelnök.

Second post on our series on the Dutch general elections.

On Wednesday 15 March, Dutch voters will head to the polls to elect a new parliament and prime minister. And for once, the rest of Europe is very interested, as the question looms whether the leader of the far-right populist Party for Freedom (PVV) Geert Wilders may become head of government after these elections.

In good company in the European Parliament.

Although the Freedom Party’s election programme only consists of one single page with eleven bullet points, it does not fail to shock many. Geert Wilders promises a Dutch exit from the EU, the closure of all mosques, a ban on the Koran, and closed borders for refugees and immigrants from Islamic countries. Just a few months ago, Wilders was convicted by a Dutch court for group defamation and incitement of discrimination after he had stirred up an audience to chant ‘fewer, fewer, fewer Moroccans’. Yet Wilders has headed the election polls for well over a year and is now in a neck-and-neck race with the incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte from the Liberal Conservative Party (VVD).

Wilders’ popularity is not new, but has seen some high peaks recently. Indeed, the court conviction seems to have been ‘grist to Wilders’ mill’. It has fuelled the image that he is the only politician with the courage to say what is going ‘wrong’ in the Netherlands. Another important rise in popular support occurred in fall 2015, when the refugee crisis led to heated debates about immigrants taking advantage of the Dutch state and protests about the location of asylum centres. Wilders spoke in parliament about a ‘tsunami’ of asylum seekers, and said that the IS was smuggling thousands of terrorists into Europe.

Broadly speaking, it seems that a large group of Dutch voters feel that their quality of life is threatened by pressure from outside. Such pressures include the presence of Muslims, who are seen as a menace to the culture of gender equality, tolerance and freedom, perceived as ‘typically Dutch’. Moreover, the budget cuts over the course of the economic crisis are seen to have disproportionally hit the ‘hard-working’ Dutch citizen and the pensioners, and thereby threatened their social security. And finally, many do not only see the European Union and ‘Brussels’ as a threat to national culture and sovereignty, but share a widespread perception that the Dutch have paid billions of euros to Eastern and Southern member states in the wake of enlargement and the economic crisis. In this context, Wilders puts the blame on elitist politicians and promises to give ‘our money’ and the Netherlands back to ‘us’.

So the question is: can Wilders ‘win’?

In good company at the German carnival.

Current polls indicate his chances to become the largest party are good. But there are bumps in his road ahead. First, Wilders is a supporter of the presidency of Donald Trump (politico even claims he has ‘invented Trumpism’), but Dutch media have been overwhelmingly negative about Trump’s personality, behaviour and policies ever since he took office. Second, Wilders has caused some fuss in the run-up to the first election debates. He tweeted a fake picture in which the leader of the Liberal Democrats (D66) appeared to stand in a group of protesters demanding ‘sharia for the Netherlands’. He also cancelled two out of four initially scheduled debates, after a television channel adjusted the number of parties invited to participate in the debate and published an interview in which Wilders’ own (estranged) brother severely critiques his ideas. Both Wilders’ support for Trump and his absence from most major debates may diminish potential voters’ sympathy for him personally, which may lead to a shift away from his Party for Freedom, as previous occasions have shown.

But even if the Party for Freedom were to become the biggest group in the Parliament, Wilders’ chances of becoming Prime minister seem very slim. In the Netherlands, the 150 members of the House of Representatives are elected from party lists through proportional representation. The threshold for a party to enter the House is one seat – 0.67% of the votes – so that the percentage of votes roughly determines the percentage of seats won by a party. Moreover, political preferences of Dutch voters have become highly fragmented (as elsewhere in Europe). Altogether, it is likely that almost 15 parties will enter parliament after the elections, and that even even the biggest party in parliament will only assume around 30 seats. In this scenario, Wilders would need to find at least three partners to form a coalition government with a stable majority, but potential coalition partners have already announced that they are unwilling to cooperate with Wilders. This seems to leave him in an isolated position.

The election debates will really take off in the final three weeks before the election. It remains to be seen what the decisive issues will be – likely contenders are the costs and quality of health care and care for the elderly, pensions, defence, European integration (or disintegration), or immigration and asylum. Whether the bumps in Wilders’ road will turn out to be roadblocks remains to be seen.

The post Can the populist far-right win the elections in the Netherlands? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

En visite mardi en Somalie, le Secrétaire général de l'ONU, António Guterres, a réclamé un soutien international pour éviter la famine dans ce pays africain frappé par la sécheresse et pour freiner la propagation du choléra.

Hearing the heart-wrenching stories of desperate families displaced in Somalia, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today urged a massive scale up in international support to avert a famine in the drought-striken Horn of Africa nation and curb the spread of cholera.

Populist politician Geert Wilders has turned his fire on Moroccans, but his campaign is faltering.

How a school science lab experiment is helping tackle the polluting smog that chokes Egypt's cities.

Swedish defence and security company Saab has secured a contract for the delivery of the advanced anti-submarine warfare (ASW) AUV62-AT training system.

Australian Minister for Defence Marise Payne has announced a $213m upgrade to the Royal Australian Navy's (RAN) Garden Island facility in Sydney.

The United Nations political affairs chief today stressed that West Africa could be a model of how the UN can work with local partners in bringing stability to regions or sub-regions.

En 1893, l’explorateur norvégien Fridtjof Nansen lançait Fram, son bateau en bois, dans les étendues glacées de l’Arctique. Son idée était simple : se faire emprisonner dans les glaces en mer de Sibérie puis se laisser porter par le courant transpolaire arctique pour atteindre le pôle Nord. Nansen dût abandonner son bateau en cours d’expédition et skier des centaines de kilomètres avant de trouver des secours. Le Fram, lui, finit par ressortir intact de la calotte glaciaire au niveau du détroit qui porte aujourd’hui son nom entre le Gröenland et l’archipel du Svalbard.

• Lire la suite de Le brise-glace Polarstern va dériver dans la glace arctique pendant un an

The development of China’s Internet attracted great attention among foreign observers in 2016. This was due to record sales in Internet trade, extensive hacker attacks on private companies and government agencies, huge investment programmes for start-ups, a new controversial Internet law and the growth of government Internet censorship. China 4.0 stands for both control and creativity. How does that work? What is the Chinese public saying about the opportunities and risks of the digital transformation? What goals is the government pursuing, particularly with their Big Data and Internet Plus strategies? And what are the consequences of a new law on Internet security which comes into force in June 2017? New frameworks are being defined that could shape long-term cooperation with China on issues surrounding digitisation. An analysis of opinions emanating from Party members, economists, the military and scientists sheds light on the positions that are currently dominating Chinese discourse on the subject. It also poses the question to what extent China might become a laboratory for the global digital future.

Seit Donald Trump sein Amt als US-Präsident angetreten hat, scheint ein Ende des Jemen-Konflikts in weite Ferne gerückt. Der damalige US-Außenminister Kerry hatte in den letzten Monaten seiner Amtszeit versucht, eine diplomatische Lösung zu finden. Dabei hatte er auf direkte Gespräche zwischen den Hauptkonfliktparteien gesetzt, den jemenitischen Huthis und Saudi-Arabien. Nun aber stellt sich das Weiße Haus wieder vorbehaltlos hinter das Königreich. Die neue US-Administration sieht in den Huthis fälschlich nur einen Stellvertreter Irans, dessen Einfluss in der Region zurückgedrängt werden soll. Washingtons Unterstützung für die saudische Militärallianz droht indes nicht nur die katastrophale humanitäre Lage weiter zu verschlimmern. Die USA schaden damit auch ihren eigenen Anti-Terror-Operationen gegen al-Qaida, die sie seit 2002 im Jemen betreiben. Deutschland und die EU sollten vor diesem Hintergrund zu einer eigenständigen Position finden und zwischen den Konfliktparteien vermitteln.

European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker called for a common EU defence headquarters in September after the Brexit vote, resurrecting an idea that had circulated in the EU for years. Today, the European Union has approved plans for a military headquarters to coordinate overseas security operation, foreign and defence ministers of the 28 member states (Britain having long opposed it) "unanimously" backed the project.

The new MPCC (Military Planning Conduct and Capability facility) will command the EU's non-executive military missions. The facility will initially run three operations - civil-military training missions in Mali, the Central African Republic and Somalia - which do not involve the use of force, other than in self-defence. The MPCC will initially have a small staff of around 30 and come under the EU's existing military structures.

But top EU officials, including Ms Mogherini, have had to repeatedly issue reassurances that the bloc is not going to undercut NATO as the primary defence for Europe. Besides Britain, many of the former Communist states of eastern Europe such as Poland and Hungary have argued consistently that NATO must come first, given the need for US support in facing a more assertive Russia.

The EU has also mounted Operation Sophia in the central Mediterranean, which can use force to stop migrant smugglers, and Operation Atalanta, part of international antipiracy forces off the Horn of Africa, these executive operations have their own command centres which will remain separate.

Tag: MPCCMogheriniCSDP

As a severe drought deepens in Somalia, the risk of famine is looming in the long-troubled country, with about half the population in need of some form of assistance, according to an assessment by United Nations agencies and humanitarian partners.

Italian Beretta PM12 Submachine Gun