Displaying items by tag: Europe

France has taken the hardest line of the member states in recent weeks, including its insistence that an outline of the future relationship should be detailed. Other states suggested it should be allowed to be vague in order to ease the passage to a deal, after the EU rejected key planks of it on customs and the single market. Emmanuel Macron has urged his EU counterparts to stand firm against Theresa May in Brexit negotiations after the PM urged the bloc to give ground in talks. The French president said that EU unity must take precedence over any other considerations. Other leaders took a softer line. Xavier Bettel of Luxembourg said ‘compromise from both sides, not from one side’ was necessary and Irish PM Leo Varadkar told reporters that Mrs May was ‘working hard’ on the issue of Northern Ireland, and that she appeared to be ‘very sincere’.

Up to 9,000 asylum-seekers strive to survive both inside and outside Camp Moria in tents exposed to cold and rain. 23-year-old Maryam Parsa from Afghanistan said that Moria is not what she expected. There were not enough doctors for the children, not enough medicine, or blankets, or food. ‘Our sons all become sick. This is not a good situation for us. If they don’t let us go to Europe, then make this situation good.’ Muhammad Raza, at 18, has won medals in karate and wishes to become a professional after relocating to France, but is disappointed with living conditions in camp Moria. Activists and NGOs call Moria the ‘shame of Europe’ and ask authorities to move children and other vulnerable refugees away from there. The government said that it has moved around 4,000 since June, but more refugees keep landing in Lesbos.

The ‘C-9’ are nine cardinals from around the world who meet four times a year to advise the Pope. At the end of their most recent meeting they announced that he had summoned senior bishops from around the world to the Vatican to discuss the protection of minors. The heads of the national bishops' conferences will meet in February 2019 to try to come to grips with a spreading sexual abuse crisis in the USA, Chile, Australia, Germany, and elsewhere. It was recently revealed that 1,670 German priests had sexually abused 3,677 minors, mostly males, over a seventy-year period. A US grand jury found 301 priests in Pennsylvania guilty of sexually abusing minors over a similar period. In August, Italian archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò accused the Pope of knowing about sexual misconduct by a US cardinal and doing nothing about it.

The European parliament voted to sanction Hungary for neglecting norms on democracy, civil rights and corruption. Since 2010, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has pressurised courts, media and non-government groups to prevent migrants entering Hungary. He has also led opposition to Angela Merkel and others who want Europe to take in more Muslim refugees. Poland, the biggest former communist country in the EU, will oppose any sanctions imposed by the bloc on Hungary. Its prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said, ‘Every country has its sovereign right to make internal reforms it deems appropriate, and actions aimed against member states serve only to deepen divides in the EU and increase citizens’ current lack of confidence to European institutions.’ A BBC report says that Mr Orban appears increasingly isolated among European conservatives, but is being applauded by nationalist parties.

Many believe the Russian government hopes that a TV interview with the two men suspected of being spies and using Novichok in the UK will generate sympathy at home (see ). Putin says they are sports nutrition salesmen, not assassins. But the risk for Russia is that the interview raises more questions than it answers and offers more details for sceptics to unpick and challenge. The two suspects accused of carrying out the nerve agent attack claimed they had travelled to Salisbury to see its famous cathedral. The BBC reported that one of them said, ‘Maybe we did approach Skripal's house, but we don't know where it is located.’

If Western sanctions go as far as excluding Russia from the World Wide Web, the country's own internet is ready, according to Russia’s presidential aide on the internet. ‘Technically, we are ready for anything now,’ he said. However, the shutdown will not be painless. Failures always occur when moving from one technology to another, and those keeping data abroad will experience difficulties. Russia has a data privacy law. All companies processing personal data of Russian citizens are obliged to store it on servers within the country’s borders. The professional network website LinkedIn has already been banned in Russia for refusing to comply. Twitter and other social networks have agreed to move data about Russians to the country.

How do you persuade someone who already thinks they’re a Christian to become one? The largest mission field in Western Europe is not self-identifying atheists or Muslim immigrants; it is people who call themselves Christians but exhibit few, if any, signs of faith. A Pew Research Centre report stated that people who identify with Christianity, but rarely or never attend church services, make up the biggest segment of the region’s population. 46% of Western Europeans are non-practising Christians, 18% are regular church attendees, 24% are religiously unaffiliated, and 5% follow other faiths.

Last week it was reported that the Arctic Sea is breaking up for the first time on record, and we prayed for nations to acknowledge climate change and seek ways to turn it around. The acceleration of climate change has greater impact on the Arctic region than elsewhere, posing serious threats to the sensitive environment and those who depend on it. Good cooperation is needed between researchers, public authorities, companies, and Arctic inhabitants. Pray for the adoption of a new kind of climate-resilient thinking. Further development is needed in flood warning systems and dam safety. In response to these needs, and as part of its 2017-2019 chairmanship of the Arctic Council, Finland will be hosting the first Arctic Resilience Forum on 10-11 September 2018.

Pope Francis visited Ireland on 25 and 26 August and begged forgiveness for clerical child sex abuse. He said no-one could fail to be moved by stories of those who ‘suffered abuse, were robbed of their innocence, and left scarred by painful memories’. In a speech at Dublin Castle, the Pope expressed his shame at the Catholic Church's failure to address adequately the ‘repellent crimes’ of sex abuse by clergy. He later met eight survivors of sexual abuse, telling them that he viewed clerical sex abuse as ‘filth’. Since the last Papal visit Ireland has ‘modernised’ laws on abortion, contraception, divorce and same-sex marriage. Pray for the church to move on, even stronger, now that past sins are repented of.

After meeting Dominic Raab on 21 August, Michel Barnier outlined things yet to be done: a backstop solution for avoiding a hard border in Ireland; outstanding issues of the Withdrawal Agreement, eg protection of borders; and a political declaration on future relationships. We can pray for the teams now working on these issues to make progress according to God’s timing and strategy. Mr Barnier also said, ‘As you know, we need a legally operational backstop solution in the Withdrawal Agreement. We must find pragmatic solutions, in line with the commitments made by Theresa May in December and March. We must de-dramatise the issue, and spell out which controls are needed, and and how they should be done. Next time we meet, Dominic and I will take stock of this work. The negotiations are now entering the final stage. We have agreed that the EU and the UK will negotiate continuously from now on.’ See also UK article on Brexit key dates.