Tag: human rights

On a visit to Cyprus yesterday (18 October), French Immigration Minister Eric Besson said Turkey must "do better" on immigration by protecting its borders and readmitting illegal migrants, including hundreds of prostitutes working in the northern part of Cyprus.

The wider area of downtown Belgrade was the scene of rioting in the morning and early afternoon of Sunday (10 October), with anti-gay demonstrators clashing with police guarding a Gay Pride parade. BETA agency, EurActiv's partner in Serbia, reports.

Ten opposition parties in the Ukrainian parliament have condemned a court decision which strengthens President Viktor Yanukovich's control over the country by returning him key presidential powers lost to parliament in 2004.

Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, who was caught in a bitter row with Paris last week over the French government's Roma expulsions, said the European Commission will start a legal procedure against France and several other EU countries for failing to transpose into national law a 2004 directive on the free movement of persons.

Recent tensions between France, the European Commission and the European Parliament over the Roma expulsions carried out by the French authorities this summer are likely to mar today's EU summit, which was supposed to discuss the Union's common foreign policy.

EU European affairs ministers yesterday (13 September) decided to extend monitoring on Romania and Bulgaria, which was put in place to tackle their poorly functioning judicial systems and inability to curb corruption. France said the majority of countries are opposed to Bucharest and Sofia's accession to Schengen until the monitoring has been lifted.

Lawmakers from the far-right were the only ones to defend French President Nicolas Sarkozy's tough policies towards the Roma during a debate in the European Parliament yesterday (2 September).

Romania should not interpret freedom of movement in the EU as a right to get rid of its Roma at the expense of other countries, Pierre Lellouche, the French state secretary for European affairs, told the press yesterday (31 August) in Brussels, triggering a strong reaction from Bucharest.

The European Parliament's silence during the summer recess has been broken by liberal group ALDE, which called for a parliamentary debate on the Roma situation in Europe in early September, following France's move to expel members of that minority to their countries of origin, Romania and Bulgaria.

The European Commission is following very closely France's dealings with its Roma, who the authorities are planning to expel in groups, Commission representatives said yesterday (18 August), after being asked by the Brussels press whether the expulsions were in line with EU legislation.

Shorter prison sentences will be given to "stone-throwing children" in line with a government-backed bill that was partially approved by the Turkish parliament yesterday (21 July). The move is seen as an attempt to appease human rights groups, who have criticised Turkey's anti-terror laws for violating UN conventions on children.

A dozen centre-right MEPs tried to prevent Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki from entering the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday (1 June), with some of them getting into a scuffle with security guards. Mottaki addressed the Parliament's foreign affairs committee and held talks with Socialists & Democrats group leader Martin Schulz.

Turkey needs to modernise its constitution but some of the government's reform proposals would seriously undermine the independence of the judiciary, Kader Sevinç of the main Turkish opposition party told EurActiv in an interview, accusing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of showing "authoritarian" and "un-European" behaviour.

Mutual resentment between Poland and Russia is being replaced with openness and the beginnings of friendship in the emotional days since the tragic plane crash in Smolensk, in which the Polish president and his delegation lost their lives, Piotr Maciej Kaczyński, a researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), told EurActiv in an interview.

New Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov is instilling an atmosphere of fear among society in governing the country that is reminiscent of Stalinism, his Socialist predecessor, Sergey Stanishev, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

Human rights activists in Belarus said on 25 March that two convicts were executed last week. The news triggered protests from European parliamentarians.

Italy said yesterday (25 February) that Libya may renege on a deal to control the flow of illegal immigrants over a visa spat with Switzerland that has escalated into a Europe-wide row. In the meantime, Libya's leader, Muammar Gaddafi, called for a "holy war" against Switzerland.

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek called on the Russian authorities to cease a "heavy-handed" crackdown on peaceful protests following the arrest of some 100 anti-Kremlin protesters on Sunday, including Oleg Orlov, head of the 'Memorial' human rights centre and winner of the 2009 Sakharov Prize.  

In an exclusive interview with EurActiv, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev voiced his country's intention to call a summit of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) this year, the first since 1999.

Civil unrest will grow in the coming years unless heads of state and government show political leadership to stop climate change, said Mary Robinson, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and former Irish president, in an interview with EurActiv.

Leaders from China and Europe will sign a new Science and Technology Agreement at next week's summit in Nanjing, where progress is also likely on a major near-zero emissions coal project.

Activists from Memorial, a Russian NGO defending human rights in post-Soviet states, have won the European Parliament's 2009 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, highlighting the Parliament's growing willingness to confront Moscow.

Despite an attack by Kurdish militants killing four soldiers, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan voiced determination on Sunday (30 August) to push forward his plan to grant more rights to the country's largest minority.

In just one week, the president of the European Parliament has twice called on the Russian authorities to bring to justice the killers of two human rights activists – Natalia Estemirova and Andrei Kulagin.