The new proposal — which immigrant advocates refer to as the “transit ban” or the “asylum ban” — is the White House’s most restrictive border control measure to date and essentially will serve as its policy solution to the long-awaited end of Title 42. Within minutes of its posting, the Biden administration faced a flood of backlash from immigrant advocates and Democrats who accused officials of perpetuating the Trumpian approach to border politics that Biden pledged on the campaign trail to end. Threats of lawsuits also began to percolate.
Former Biden White House official Andrea Flores, who now serves as chief counsel for Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), condemned the administration for resurrecting a policy that “normalizes the white nationalist belief that asylum seekers from certain countries are less deserving of humanitarian protections.”
Administration officials in their call with reporters rejected the notion that the proposed regulation was like the Trump transit ban, noting it was not a “categorical ban” on asylum seekers. Instead, they said, the administration had expanded “existing lawful pathways” through the parole programs, and that the measures were not intended to curb people from seeking asylum but to help ensure order at the southern border.
The Biden administration has repeatedly warned of an influx of migrants amid the end of Title 42, which has been used more than 2 million times to expel asylum seekers on public health grounds. Administration officials on Tuesday said the new rule will help the administration manage a bogged-down border and asylum processing system.
But for critics, those utterances and the implementation of the new rule only underscored the degree to which the administration continues to see the southern border as a political issue, and not a humanitarian challenge, facing Biden’s presidency.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Service and a former Obama official, said the rule “reaches into the dustbin of history to resurrect one of the most harmful and illegal anti-asylum policies of the Trump administration.” Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.) called on Biden to “abandon this misguided policy now.” And Sergio Gonzalez, president of the Immigration Hub, said the move “flies in the face” of Biden’s campaign promise to “rebuild a fair, humane and orderly immigration system.”
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney in Title 42-related lawsuits, said in a statement to POLITICO that he’s prepared to take legal action.
“We successfully sued to stop the Trump asylum bans and will sue again if the Biden administration enacts these anti-asylum rules,” Gelernt said.
Tuesday’s proposed regulation was first floated in January, when Biden unveiled a new border measure that involved accepting 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela while cracking down on those who fail to use the plan’s legal pathways. The policy forced migrants to apply for asylum from their home country, while expelling those who try to enter the U.S. unlawfully from Mexico. Migrants were only approved if they had a verified sponsor and were allowed to enter the U.S. by air.
The number of migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross the border has dropped by 40 percent since December, which administration officials credit to the new measures.
Administration officials on Tuesday said they were looking into expanding the humanitarian parole program for other nationalities and are “working closely with our partners across the hemisphere to encourage them to also expand their legal pathways.”
During his speech last month, Biden also unveiled a new app for asylum seekers and other migrants to schedule appointments to be considered for entry into the United States. Advocates scoffed at the administration’s pushback on Tuesday.
“While the Biden admin has launched a smartphone app for asylum appointments and expanded a temporary parole option for an extremely limited subset of four nationalities, these measures are no substitute for the legal right to seek asylum, regardless of manner of entry,” O’Mara Vignarajah said.
Administration officials also used Tuesday’s announcement to criticize Congress, arguing that the White House has been left to roll out new policies to fill the “void” left by inaction on the Hill.
“To be clear, this was not our first preference or even our second. From day one, President Biden has urged Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures to ensure orderly, safe and humane processing of migrants at our border,” a senior administration official said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“I woke at 5 o’clock,” the Estonian prime minister recalled recently. The phone was ringing. Her Lithuanian counterpart was on the line.
“Oh my God, it’s really happening,” came the ominous words, according to Kallas. Another call came in. This time it was the Latvian prime minister.
It was February 24, 2022. War had begun on the European continent.
The night before, Kallas had told her Cabinet members to keep their phones on overnight in anticipation of just this moment: Russia was blitzing Ukraine in an attempt to decapitate the government and seize the country. For those in Estonia and its Baltic neighbors, where memories of Soviet occupation linger, the first images of war tapped into a national terror.
“I went to bed hoping that I was not right,” Kallas said.
Across Europe, similar wakeup calls were rolling in. Russian tanks were barreling into Ukraine and missiles were piercing the early morning sky. In recent weeks, POLITICO spoke with prime ministers, high-ranking EU and NATO officials, foreign ministers and diplomats — nearly 20 in total — to reflect on the war’s early days as it reaches its ruinous one-year mark on Friday. All described a similar foreboding that morning, a sense that the world had irrevocably changed.
Within a year, the Russian invasion would profoundly reshape Europe, upending traditional foreign policy presumptions, cleaving it from Russian energy and reawakening long-dormant arguments about extending the EU eastward.
But for those centrally involved in the war’s buildup, the events of February 24 are still seared in their memories.
In an interview with POLITICO, Charles Michel — head of the European Council, the EU body comprising all 27 national leaders — recalled how he received a call directly from Kyiv as the attacks began.
“I was woken up by Zelenskyy,” Michel recounted. It was around 3 a.m. The Ukrainian president told Michel: “The aggression had started and that it was a full-scale invasion.”
Michel hit the phones, speaking to prime ministers across the EU throughout the night.
Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell speak to the press on February 24, 2022 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
By 5 a.m., EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was in his office. Three hours later, he was standing next to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the duo made the EU’s first major public statement about the dawning war. Von der Leyen then convened the 27 commissioners overseeing EU policy for an emergency meeting.
Elsewhere in Brussels, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg was on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who were six hours behind in Washington, D.C. He then raced over to NATO headquarters, where he urgently gathered the military alliance’s decision-making body.
The mood that morning, Stoltenberg recalled in a recent conversation with reporters, was “serious” but “measured and well-organized.”
In Ukraine, missiles had begun raining down in Kyiv, Odesa and Mariupol. Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to social media, confirming in a video that war had begun. He urged Ukrainians to stay calm.
These video updates would soon become a regular feature of Zelenskyy’s wartime leadership. But this first one was especially jarring — a message from a president whose life, whose country, was now at risk.
It would be one of the last times the Ukrainian president, dressed in a dove-gray suit jacket and crisp white shirt, appeared in civilian clothes.
Europe’s 21st-century Munich moment
February 24, 2022 is an indelible memory for those who lived through it. For many, however, it felt inevitable.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, an annual powwow of defense and security experts frequented by senior politicians.
It was here that the Ukrainian leader made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions, hitting out at Germany for promising helmets and chiding NATO countries for not doing enough.
“What are you waiting for?” he implored in the highly charged atmosphere in the Bayerischer Hof hotel. “We don’t need sanctions after bombardment happens, after we have no borders, no economy. Why would we need those sanctions then?”
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, where he made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions | Pool photo by Ronald Wittek/Getty Images
The symbolism was rife — Munich, a city forever associated with appeasement following Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated attempt to swap land for peace with Adolf Hitler in 1938, was now the setting for Zelenskyy’s last appeal to the West.
Zelenskyy, never missing a moment, seized the historical analogy.
“Has our world completely forgotten the mistakes of the 20th century?” he asked. “Where does appeasement policy usually lead to?”
But his calls for more arms were ignored, even as countries began ordering their citizens to evacuate and airlines began canceling flights in and out of the country.
A few days later, Zelenskyy’s warnings were coming true. On February 22, Vladimir Putin inched closer to war, recognizing the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine. It was a decisive moment for the Russian president, paving the way for his all-out assault less than 48 hours later.
The EU responded the next day — its first major action against Moscow’s activities in Ukraine since the escalation of tensions in 2021. Officials unveiled the first in what would be nine sanction packages against Russia (and counting).
In an equally significant move, a reluctant Germany finally pulled the plug on Nord Stream 2, the yet unopened gas pipeline linking Russia to northern Germany — the decision, made after months of pressure, presaged how the Russian invasion would soon upend the way Europeans powered their lives and heated their homes.
Summit showdown
As it happened, EU leaders were already scheduled to meet in Brussels on February 24, the day the invasion began. Charles Michel had summoned the leaders earlier that week to deal with the escalating crisis, and to sign off on the sanctions.
Throughout the afternoon, Brussels was abuzz — TV cameras from around the world had descended on the European quarter. Helicopters circled above.
Suddenly, the regular European Council meeting of EU leaders, oftena forum for technical document drafting as much as political decision-making, had become hugely consequential. With war unfolding, the world was looking at the EU to respond — and lead.
European leaders gathered in Brussels following the invasion | Pool photo by Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images
The meeting was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. As leaders were gathering, news came that Russia had seized the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Moldova had declared a state of emergency and thousands of people were pouring out of Ukraine. Later that night, Zelenskyy announced a general mobilization:every man between the ages of 18 and 60 was being asked to fight.
Many leaders were wearing facemasks, a reminder that another crisis, which now seemed to pale in comparison, was still ever-present.
Just before joining colleagues at the Europa building in Brussels, Emmanuel Macron phoned Putin — the French president’s latest effort to mediate with the Russian leader. Macron had visited Moscow on February 7 but left empty-handed after five hours of discussions. He later said he made the call at Zelenskyy’s request, to ask Putin to stop the war.
“It did not produce any results,” Macron said of the call. “The Russian president has chosen war.”
Arriving at the summit, Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš captured the gravity of the moment. “Europe is experiencing the biggest military invasion since the Second World War,” he said. “Our response has to be united.”
But inside the room, divisions were on full display. How far, leaders wondered, could Europe go in sanctioning Russia, given the potential economic blowback? Countries dug in along fault lines that would become familiar in the succeeding months.
The realities of war soon pierced the academic debates. Zelenskyy’s team had set up a video link as missile strikes encircled the capital city, wanting to get the president talking to his EU counterparts.
One person present in the room recalled the percolating anxiety as the video feed beamed through — the image out of focus, the camera shaky. Then the picture sharpened and Zelenskyy appeared, dressed in a khaki shirt and looking deathly pale. His surroundings were faceless, an unknown room somewhere in Kyiv.
“Everyone was silent, the atmosphere was completely tense,” said the official who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Zelenskyy, shaken and utterly focused, told leaders that they may not see him again — the Kremlin wanted him dead.
“If you, EU leaders and leaders of the free world, do not really help Ukraine today, tomorrow the war will also knock at your door,” he warned, invoking an argument he would return to again and again: that this wasn’t just Ukraine’s war — it was Europe’s war.
Black smoke rises from a military airport in Chuguyev near Kharkiv on February 24, 2022 | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
Within hours, EU leaders had signed off on their second package of pre-prepared sanctions hitting Russia. But a fractious debate had already begun about what should come next.
The Baltic nations and Poland wanted more — more penalties, more economic punishments. Others were holding back. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi aired their reluctance about expelling Russian banks from the global SWIFT payment system. It was needed to pay for Russian gas, after all.
How quickly that would change.
Sanctions were not the only pressing matter. There was a humanitarian crisis unfolding on Europe’s doorstep. The EU had to both get aid into a war zone and prepare for a mass exodus of people fleeing it.
Janez Lenarčič, the EU’s crisis management commissioner, landed in Paris on the day of the invasion, returning from Niger. Officials started making plans to get ambulances, generators and medicine into Ukraine — ultimately comprising 85,000 tons of aid.
“The most complex, biggest and longest-ever operation” of its kind for the EU, he said.
By that weekend, there was also a plan for the refugees escaping Russian bombs. At a rare Sunday meeting, ministers agreed to welcome and distribute the escaping Ukrainians — a feat that has long eluded the EU for other migrants. Days later, they would grant Ukrainians the instant right to live and work in the EU — another first in an extraordinary time. Decisions that normally took years were now flying through in hours.
Looming over everything were Ukraine’s repeated — and increasingly dire — entreaties for more weapons. Europe’s military investments had lapsed in recent decades, and World War II still cast a dark shadow over countries like Germany, where the idea of sending arms to a warzone still felt verboten.
There were also quiet doubts (not to mention intelligence assessments). Would Ukraine even have its own government next week? Why risk war with Russia if it was days away from toppling Kyiv?
“What we didn’t know at that point was that the Ukrainian resistance would be so successful,” a senior NATO diplomat told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “We were thinking there would be a change of regime [in Kyiv], what do we do?”
That, too, was all about to change.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed Germany on the night of Russia’s invasion | Pool photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images
By the weekend, Germany had sloughed off its reluctance, slowly warming to its role as a key military player. The EU, too, dipped its toe into historic waters that weekend, agreeing to help reimburse countries sending weapons to Ukraine — another startling first for a self-proclaimed peace project.
“I remember, saying, ‘OK, now we go for it,’” said Stefano Sannino, secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic arm.
Ironically, the EU would refund countries using the so-called European Peace Facility — a little-known fund that was suddenly the EU’s main vehicle to support lethal arms going to a warzone.
Over at NATO, the alliance activated its defense plans and sent extra forces to the alliance’s eastern flank. The mission had two tracks, Stoltenberg recounted — “to support Ukraine, but also prevent escalation beyond Ukraine.”
Treading that fine line would become the defining balancing act over the coming year for the Western allies as they blew through one taboo after another.
Who knew what, when
As those dramatic, heady early days fade into history, Europeans are now grappling with what the war means — for their identity, for their sense of security and for the European Union that binds them together.
The invasion has rattled the core tenets underlying the European project, said Ivan Krastev, a prominent political scientist who has long studied Europe’s place in the world.
“For different reasons, many Europeans believed that this is a post-war Continent,” he said.
Post-World War II Europe was built on the assumption that open economic policies, trade between neighbors and mild military power would preserve peace.
“For the Europeans to accept the possibility of the war was basically to accept the limits of our own model,” Krastev argued.
Ukrainian refugees gather and rest upon their arrival at the main railway station in Berlin | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
The disbelief has bred self-reflection: Has the war permanently changed the EU? Will a generation that had confined memories of World War II and the Cold War to the past view the next conflict differently?
And, perhaps most acutely, did Europe miss the signs?
“The start of that war has changed our lives, that’s for sure,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. It wasn’t, however, unexpected, he argued. “We are very attentive to what happens in our region,” he said. “The signs were quite clear.”
Aurescu pointed back to April 2021 as the moment he knew: “It was quite clear that Russia was preparing an aggression against Ukraine.”
Not everyone in Europe shared that assessment, though — to the degree that U.S. officials became worried. They started a public and private campaign in 2021 to warn Europe of an imminent invasion as Russia massed its troops on the Ukrainian border.
In November 2021, von der Leyen made her first trip to the White House. She sat down with Joe Biden in the Oval Office, surrounded by a coterie of national security and intelligence officials. Biden had just received a briefing before the gathering on the Russia battalion buildup and wanted to sound the alarm.
“The president was very concerned,” said one European official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “This was a time when no one in Europe was paying any attention, even the intelligence services.”
But others disputed the narrative that Europe was unprepared as America sounded the alarm.
“It’s a question of perspective. You can see the same information, but come to a different conclusion,” said one senior EU official involved in discussions in the runup to the war, while conceding that the U.S. and U.K. — both members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — did have better information.
Even if those sounding the alarm proved right, said Pierre Vimont, a former secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic wing and Macron’s Russia envoy until the war broke out, it was hard to know in advance what, exactly, to plan for.
“What type of military operation would it be?” he recalled people debating. A limited operation in the east? A full occupation? A surgical strike on Kyiv?
Here’s where most landed: Russia’s onslaught was horrifying — its brutality staggering. But the signs had been there. Something was going to happen.
“We knew that the invasion is going to happen, and we had shared intelligence,” Stoltenberg stressed. “Of course, until the planes are flying and the battle tanks are rolling, and the soldiers are marching, you can always change your plans. But the more we approached the 24th of February last year, the more obvious it was.”
Then on the day, he recounted, it was a matter of dutifully enacting the plan: “We were prepared, we knew exactly what to do.”
“You may be shocked by this invasion,” he added, “but you cannot be surprised.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
In the packed meeting rooms and hallways of Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof last weekend, back-slapping allies pushed an agenda with the kind of forward-looking determination NATO had long sought to portray but just as often struggled to achieve. They pledged more aid for Ukraine. They revamped plans for their own collective defense.
Two days later in Moscow, Vladimir Putin stood alone, rigidly ticking through another speech full of resentment and lonely nationalism, pausing only to allow his audience of grim-faced government functionaries to struggle to their feet in a series of mandatory ovations in a cold, cavernous hall.
With the war in Ukraine now one year old, and no clear path to peace at hand, a newly unified NATO is on the verge of making a series of seismic decisions beginning this summer to revolutionize how it defends itself while forcing slower members of the alliance into action.
The decisions in front of NATO will place the alliance — which protects 1 billion people — on a path to one the most sweeping transformations in its 74-year history. Plans set to be solidified at a summit in Lithuania this summer promise to revamp everything from allies’ annual budgets to new troop deployments to integrating defense industries across Europe.
The goal: Build an alliance that Putin wouldn’t dare directly challenge.
Yet the biggest obstacle could be the alliance itself, a lumbering collection of squabbling nations with parochial interests and a bureaucracy that has often promised way more than it has delivered. Now it has to seize the momentum of the past year to cut through red tape and crank up peacetime procurement strategies to meet an unpredictable, and likely increasingly belligerent Russia.
It’s “a massive undertaking,” said Benedetta Berti, head of policy planning at the NATO secretary-general’s office. The group has spent “decades of focusing our attention elsewhere,” she said. Terrorism, immigration — all took priority over Russia.
“It’s really a quite significant historic shift for the alliance,” she said.
For now, individual nations are making the right noises. But the proof will come later this year when they’re asked to open up their wallets, and defense firms are approached with plans to partner with rivals.
To hear alliance leaders and heads of state tell it, they’re ready to do it.
“Ukraine has to win this,” Adm. Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s military committee, said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “We cannot allow Russia to win, and for a good reason — because the ambitions of Russia are much larger than Ukraine.”
All eyes on Vilnius
The big change will come In July, when NATO allies gather in Vilnius, Lithuania, for their big annual summit.
Gen. Chris Cavoli will reveal how personnel across the alliance will be called to help on short notice | Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images
NATO’s top military leader will lay out a new plan for how the alliance will put more troops and equipment along the eastern front. And Gen. Chris Cavoli, supreme allied commander for Europe, will also reveal how personnel across the alliance will be called to help on short notice.
The changes will amount to a “reengineering” of how Europe is defended, one senior NATO official said.
The plans will be based on geographic regions, with NATO asking countries to take responsibility for different security areas, from space to ground and maritime forces.
“Allies will know even more clearly what their jobs will be in the defense of Europe,” the official said.
NATO leaders have also pledged to reinforce the alliance’s eastern defenses and make 300,000 troops ready to rush to help allies on short notice, should the need arise.Under the current NATO Response Force, the alliance can make available 40,000 troops in less than 15 days. Under the new force model, 100,000 troops could be activated in up to 10 days, with a further 200,000 ready to go in up to 30 days.
But a good plan can only get allies so far.
NATO’s aspirations represent a departure from the alliance’s previous focus on short-term crisis management. Essentially, the alliance is “going in the other direction and focusing more on collective security and deterrence and defense,” said a second NATO official, who like the first, requested anonymity to discuss ongoing planning.
Chief among NATO’s challenges: Getting everyone’s armed forces to cooperate. Countries such as Germany, which has underfunded its military modernization programs for years, will likely struggle to get up to speed. And Sweden and Finland — on the cusp of joining NATO — are working to integrate their forces into the alliance.
Others simply have to expand their ranks for NATO to meet its stated quotas.
“NATO needs the ability to add speed, put large formations in the field — much larger than they used to,” said Bastian Giegerich, director of defense and military analysis and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
East vs. West
An east-west ideological fissure is also simmering within NATO.
Countries on the alliance’s eastern front have long been frustrated, at times publicly, with the slower pace of change many in Western Europe and the United States are advocating — even after Russia’s invasion.
Joe Biden traveled to Warsaw for a major speech last week that helped alleviate some of the tensions and perceived slights | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
“We started to change and for western partners, it’s been kind of a delay,” Polish Armed Forces Gen. Rajmund Andrzejczak said during a visit to Washington this month.
Those concerns on the eastern front are being heard, tentatively.
Last summer, NATO branded Russia as its most direct threat — a significant shift from post-Cold War efforts to build a partnership with Moscow. U.S. President Joe Biden has also conducted his own charm offensive, traveling to Warsaw for a major speech last week that helped alleviate some of the tensions and perceived slights.
Still, NATO’s eastern front, which is within striking distance of Russia, is imploring its western neighbors to move faster to help fill in the gaps along the alliance’s edges and to buttress reinforcement plans.
It is important to “fix the slots — which countries are going to deliver which units,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, adding that he hopes the U.S. “will take a significant part.”
Officials and experts agree that these changes are needed for the long haul.
“If Ukraine manages to win, then Ukraine and Europe and NATO are going to have a very disgruntled Russia on its doorstep, rearming, mobilizing, ready to go again,” said Sean Monaghan, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“If Ukraine loses and Russia wins,” he noted, the West would have “an emboldened Russia on our doorstep — so either way, NATO has a big Russia problem.”
Wakeup call from Russia
The rush across the Continent to rearm as weapons and equipment flows from long-dormant stockpiles into Ukraine has been as sudden as the invasion itself.
After years of flat defense budgets and Soviet-era equipment lingering in the motor pools across the eastern front, calls for more money and more Western equipment threaten to overwhelm defense firms without the capacity to fill those orders in the near term. That could create a readiness crisis in ammunition, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and anti-armor weapons.
A damaged Russian tank near Kyiv on February 14, 2023 | Sergei Dolzhenko/EPA-EFE
NATO actually recognized this problem a decade ago but lacked the ability to do much about it. The first attempt to nudge member states into shaking off the post-Cold War doldrums started slowly in the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
After Moscow took Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014, the alliance signed the “Wales pledge” to spend 2 percent of economic output on defense by 2024.
The vast majority of countries politely ignored the vow, giving then-President Donald Trump a major talking point as he demanded Europe step up and stop relying on Washington to provide a security umbrella.
But nothing focuses attention like danger, and the sight of Russian tanks rumbling toward Kyiv as Putin ranted about Western depravity and Russian destiny jolted Europe into action. One year on, the bills from those early promises to do more are coming due.
“We are in this for the long haul” in Ukraine, said Bauer, the head of NATO’s Military Committee, a body comprising allies’ uniformed defense chiefs. But sustaining the pipeline funneling weapons and ammunition to Ukraine will take not only the will of individual governments but also a deep collaboration between the defense industries in Europe and North America. Those commitments are still a work in progress.
Part of that effort, Bauer said, is working to get countries to collaborate on building equipment that partners can use. It’s a job he thinks the European Union countries are well-suited to lead.
That’s a touchy subject for the EU, a self-proclaimed peace project that by definition can’t use its budget to buy weapons. But it can serve as a convener. And it agreed to do just that last week, pledging with NATO and Ukraine to jointly establish a more effective arms procurement system for Kyiv.
Talk, of course, is one thing. Traditionally NATO and the EU have been great at promising change, and forming committees and working groups to make that change, only to watch it get bogged down in domestic politics and big alliance in-fighting. And many countries have long fretted about the EU encroaching on NATO’s military turf.
But this time, there is a sense that things have to move, that western countries can’t let Putin win his big bet — that history would repeat itself, and that Europe and the U.S. would be frozen by an inability to agree.
“People need to be aware that this is a long fight. They also need to be brutally aware that this is a war,” the second NATO official said. “This is not a crisis. This is not some small incident somewhere that can be managed. This is an all-out war. And it’s treated that way now by politicians all across Europe and across the alliance, and that’s absolutely appropriate.”
Paul McLeary and Lili Bayer also contributed reporting from Munich.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
AAP senior leader and Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia (Photo: Twitter)
New Delhi: Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Sunday urged the CBI to defer his questioning till the last week of February in connection with the Delhi Excise Policy case as he is busy finalising the city budget.
Sisodia had been called for questioning on Sunday in connection with the case, nearly three months after a charge sheet was filed in the matter, officials said.
The AAP leader has not been named as an accused in the charge sheet as the investigation against him and other suspects is still going on.
“I have written to the CBI and asked for time for February last week as I am finalising the budget of Delhi and it is a crucial time. I have told them that I will come after the last week of February,” he told reporters.
It’s my duty as finance minister to present the budget on time and I have been working 24 hours for it. I have requested the CBI to allow me to come after the last week of February and answer all their questions, he told reporters.
The deputy chief minister in the Aam Aadmi Party government, who also held the charge of the Excise department, was earlier questioned on October 17 last year and his home and bank lockers were also searched in connection with the case.
New Delhi: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has asserted that there was no “liquor scam” in Delhi and that the case over his government’s excise policy was created as a result of “political vendetta and conspiracy” ahead of his deputy Manish Sisodia’s questioning by the CBI slated for Sunday.
Reacting to Kejriwal’s assertion, Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva wondered why did the AAP government scrap the excise policy if there was no scam in it.
The Excise Policy 2021-22 was withdrawn by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government last year after a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe was recommended by Delhi Lieutenant Governor (LG) VK Saxena into “violation of norms and lapses”.
Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, Kejriwal said his government will fully cooperate with the CBI’s investigation into the alleged irregularities in the implementation of the now-scrapped Excise Policy 2021-22.
“First of all, there is no such thing as a liquor scam. We formulated the best and most transparent policy in the country,” he said when asked about the CBI summoning Sisodia.
The same policy implemented in Punjab has led to a 48-per cent rise in revenues, the chief minister said.
“In Delhi, they have framed the case as a result of political vendetta and conspiracy. Manish will go there and we will fully cooperate. Finally, the truth will prevail,” he said.
At another press conference, Sachdeva posed questions to Kejriwal, asking why a court denied bail to one of the accused in the case on four different occasions and whether Sisodia had any contact with the other accused.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader also wondered why did the deputy chief minister frequently change his mobile phones.
Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri alleged that the liquor “scam” involved an amount of Rs 6,000 crore and asserted that the truth will come out after the CBI probe.
BJP MP Parvesh Verma said the “liquor scam” of the AAP government has been “exposed” before people and Kejriwal is now defending Sisodia.
The CBI has called Sisodia for questioning in connection with the excise policy case nearly three months after filing the chargesheet.
Sisodia has not been named as an accused in the chargesheet as the probe against him and other suspects is still going on, officials said.
The deputy chief minister, who also held the charge of the excise department, was first questioned by the federal agency on October 17 last year and his house as well as bank lockers were also searched in connection with the case.
In a tweet in Hindi, Sisodia said nothing incriminating was found against him during the searches and he would continue to cooperate in the investigation.
“The CBI has called me again tomorrow. They have used the full power of the CBI, the ED against me, raided my house, searched bank lockers, but nothing was found against me,” he said.
In an apparent reference to the BJP-led Centre, the deputy chief minister said the CBI has been made to go after him because “they” want to stop his “good work” in the education sector for the children of Delhi.
The CBI is now focused on the alleged influence of a “south lobby” of businessmen and politicians on the formulation and implementation of the liquor policy to swing it in their favour, using middlemen, liquor traders and public servants, officials said.
It is alleged that the Delhi government’s policy to grant licences to liquor traders favoured certain dealers who had allegedly paid bribes for those, a charge strongly refuted by the AAP.
Manish Sisodia (Creative by Minhaj Adnan/Siasat.com)
New Delhi: The CBI has called Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia for questioning in connection with the Delhi Excise Policy case nearly three months after filing the charge sheet in the case, officials said Saturday.
Sisodia, called on Sunday for questioning, has not been named as accused in the charge sheet, they said.
Arrested businessmen Vijay Nair and Abhishek Boinpally were among the seven accused named in the charge sheet.
It is alleged the Delhi government’s policy to grant licences to liquor traders favoured certain dealers who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a charge strongly refuted by the AAP.
“It was further alleged that irregularities were committed including in modifications in Excise Policy, extending undue favours to the licensees, waiver/reduction in licence fee, extension of L-1 license without approval etc.
“It was also alleged that illegal gains on count of these acts were diverted to concerned public servants by private parties by making false entries in their books of accounts,” the CBI spokesperson had said.
The public health emergency is the legal backbone of the Title 42 policy, a decades-old health directive the Trump administration resurfaced in March 2020 to sharply curtail the flow of asylum seekers into the U.S., particularly across the border with Mexico. The Biden administration has pledged to end the policy.
While the Biden administration officially opposes Title 42 policy, which many immigrant-rights advocates have bitterly denounced, Republicans and even some Democrats welcomed legal action to keep the asylum restrictions in place. Officials in border areas feared a massive influx in migration and even began to see an increase in December before legal maneuvering halted plans to end the policy that month.
Earlier this month, the White House declared the Covid-19 and national public health emergencies would come to an end on May 11. In a statement to Congress, the administration noted that the continual renewal of Title 42 orders — which have allowed the government for the past three years to turn away migrants without listening to their asylum claims — would come to an end, too. Since its implementation, Title 42 has been used more than 2 million times to expel migrants.
“Absent other relevant developments, the end of the public health emergency will (among other consequences) terminate the Title 42 orders and moot this case,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court last week, establishing its legal stance on the fate of the policy. “The government has also recently announced its intent to adopt new Title 8 policies to address the situation at the border once the Title 42 orders end.”
After conflicting court rulings from federal district court judges in Washington, D.C. and Louisiana, a sharply divided Supreme Court stepped in last December, staying an order requiring the Biden administration to end Title 42. By a 5-4 vote, the justices put the D.C.-based judge’s order on hold and appeared to defer to the Louisiana-based judge’s order that blocked a wind-down of the policy.
However, the high court insisted at the time that it was not requiring that the controversial immigration policy be kept in place.
“The stay itself does not prevent the federal government from taking any action with respect to that policy,” the court said then.
The handling of the border has been a constant challenge for the Biden administration — stymied by court battles and a Congress unable to reach a deal on immigration reform. Administration officials have continually said they’re preparing to lift Title 42, and have rolled out new policies intended to alleviate pressure at the border.
In January, Biden unveiled a new border measure that involved accepting 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela while cracking down on those who fail to use the plan’s legal pathways. The number of migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross the border has dropped by 40 percent since December, which administration officials credit to the new policies.
The president’s announcement was made as the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice released details of a plan to impose a new regulation — a version of a Trump-era policy often called the “transit ban.” Under the new rule, migrants would be prohibited from applying for asylum in the United States unless they were first turned away for safe harbor by another country. It would also deem ineligible migrants who don’t go through authorized ports of entry.
The regulation is expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks and will likely be met with swift criticism from immigration lawyers, advocates and Democrats.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Joe Biden’s European friends may be miffed about his climate law.
But the U.S. president’s America-first, subsidy-heavy approach has actually gained some grudging — and for a Democrat unlikely — admirers on the Continent: Europe’s conservatives.
Within the center-right European People’s Party, the largest alliance of parties in the European Parliament, officials are smarting over why their own politicians aren’t taking a page from the Biden playbook.
Their frustration is homing in on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — a putative conservative the EPP itself helped install. Officials fear they have let von der Leyen lead the party away from its pro-industry, regulation-slashing ideals, according to interviews with leading party figures.
Biden’s law has now brought their grumbling to the surface.
On Thursday, a wing of EPP lawmakers defected during a Parliament vote over whether to back von der Leyen’s planned response to Biden’s marquee green spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Their concern: it doesn’t go far enough in championing European industries.
Essentially, they want it to feel more like Biden’s plan.
The IRA was an “embarrassment” for Europe, said Thanasis Bakolas, the EPP’s power broker and secretary general. The EU “had all these well-funded policies available. And then comes Biden with his IRA. And he introduces policies that are more efficient, more effective, more accessible to businesses and consumers.”
A bitter inspiration
European leaders were blindsided last summer when Biden signed the IRA into law.
Since then, they have complained loudly that the U.S. subsidies for homegrown clean tech are a threat to their own industries. But for the EPP, ostensibly on the opposite side to Biden’s Democrats, the law is also serving as bitter inspiration.
“It’s a little bit like in the fairy tale, that someone in the crowd — and this time it wasn’t the boy, it was the Americans — pretty much pointing the finger to the [European] Commission, and saying, ‘Oh, the king is naked?’” said Christian Ehler, a German European Parliament member from the EPP.
Viewed from bureaucratic, free-trading Brussels, Biden’s climate policy looks more sleek, geopolitically muscular — and, notably for the EPP, more appealing to voters on the right than anything actually coming out of the EPP-led Commission | Oliver Contreras/Getty Images
Under the EU’s centerpiece climate policy, the European Green Deal, the European Commission, the EU’s policy-making executive arm, has doggedly introduced law after law aimed at squeezing polluters from every angle using tighter regulations or carbon pricing. The goal is to zero out the bloc’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Biden’s IRA approaches the same goal by different means. It is laden with voter- and industry-friendly tax breaks and made-in-America requirements. Viewed from bureaucratic, free-trading Brussels, Biden’s climate policy looks more sleek, geopolitically muscular — and, notably for the EPP, more appealing to voters on the right than anything actually coming out of the EPP-led Commission.
For some, the sense of betrayal isn’t directed at Washington, but inward.
“We learned that we lost track for the last two years on the deal part of the Green Deal,” said Ehler, who is using his seat on Parliament’s powerful Committee on Industry, Research and Energy to push forfewer climate burdens on industry. “We are in the midst of the super regulation.”
The irony is that Biden and the Democrats probably wouldn’t have chosen this path were it not for Republicans’ decades-long refusal to move any form of climate regulation through Congress.
The IRA was a product of political necessity, shaped to suit independent-minded Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin of coal-heavy West Virginia.If Biden and his party had their druthers, Biden’s climate policy might have looked far more like the Brussels model.
Let’s get political
As party boss, Bakolas is preparing the platform on which the EPP — a pan-European umbrella group of 81 center-right parties — will campaign for the 2024 EU elections.
He is also flirting with an alliance with the far right, meaning the center-right and center-left consensus that has dominated climate policy in Brussels could break up. Bakolas advocates “a more political approach.”
“We need to do the same [as the U.S.], with the same tenacity and determination,” he said.
One big problem: It’s hard for the European Union, which doesn’t control tax policy, to match the political eye-candy of offering cashback for electric Hummers (something Americans can now claim on their taxes).
“Can Europe, this institutional arrangement in Brussels … act as effortlessly and seamlessly as the American administration? No, because it’s a difficult exercise for Europe to reach a decision … but it’s an exercise we need to do,” said Bakolas.
Within the center-right European People’s Party, the largest alliance of parties in the European Parliament, officials are smarting over why their own politicians aren’t taking a page from the Biden playbook | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
In other words, the EPP is looking to emulate Biden’s law — at least in spirit, if not in legalese.
The conservative thinking is beginning to coalesce into a few main themes: slowing down green regulation they feel burden industry; using sector-specific programs to help companies reinvest their profits into cleaning up their businesses; and slashing red tape they say slows already clean industries from getting on with the job.
EPP lawmaker Peter Liese said he had been “desperately calling” for these red-tape-slashing measures. He was glad to see some in von der Leyen’s contested IRA response plan. But Liese and the EPP want more.
“We can have an answer of the two crises, the two challenges, that we have: the climate crisis and challenge for our economy, including the IRA,” said Liese.
Green groups and left-wing lawmakers argue the EPP is simply using the IRA and Europe’s broader economic woes as a smokescreen to cover a broad retreat from the Green Deal. In recent months the party has blocked, or threatened to block, a host of green regulations proposed by the Commission.
“This is like trying to put on the ballroom shoes of your grandfather and trying to do a 100-meter sprint,” Green MEP Anna Cavazzini told Parliament on Wednesday.
Bakolas rejected that.
He said the party had finally woken up to the need to set a climate agenda that better reflected its own, center-right, free-market ideals.
“What the IRA did,” he said, “is to ring an alarm bell.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
MUNICH — NATO’s eastern flank has found its voice — but Joe Biden’s visit is a reminder that Western capitals still have the weight.
After Russia bombed its way into Ukraine, the military alliance’s eastern members won praise for their prescient warnings (not to mention a few apologies). They garnered respect for quickly emptying their weapons stockpiles for Kyiv and boosting defense spending to new heights. Now, they’re driving the conversation on how to deal with Russia.
In short, eastern countries suddenly have the ear of traditional Western powers — and they are trying to move the needle.
“We draw the red line, then we waste the time, then we cross this red line,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said over the weekend at the Munich Security Conference, describing a now-familiar cycle of debates among Ukraine’s partners as eastern capitals push others to move faster.
The region’s sudden prominence will be on full display as U.S. President Joe Biden travels to Poland this week, where he will sit down with leaders of the so-called Bucharest Nine — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
The choice is both symbolic and practical. Washington is keen to show its eastern partners it wants their input — and to remind Vladimir Putin of the consequences should the Kremlin leader spread his war into NATO territory.
Yet when it comes to allies’ most contentious decisions, like what arms to place where, the eastern leaders ultimately still have to defer to leaders like Biden — and his colleagues in Western powers like Germany. They are the ones holding the largest quantities of modern tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles, after all.
“My job,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in Munich, is “to move the pendulum of imagination of my partners in western Europe.”
“Our region has risen in relevance,” added Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský in an interview. But Western countries are still “much stronger” on the economic and military front, he added. “They are still the backbone.”
They’re listening … now
When Latvian Defense Minister Ināra Mūrniece entered politics over a decade ago, she recalled the skepticism that greeted her and like-minded countries when they discussed Russia on the global stage.
“They didn’t understand us,” she said in an interview earlier this month. People saw the region as “escalating the picture,” she added.
Latvian Defense Minister Ināra Mūrniece | Gints Ivuskans/AFP via Getty Images
February 24, 2022, changed things. The images of Russia rolling tanks and troops into Ukraine shocked many Westerners — and started changing minds. The Russian atrocities that came shortly after in places like Bucha and Irpin were “another turning point,” Mūrniece said.
Now, the eastern flank plays a key role in defining the alliance’s narrative — and its understanding of Russia.
“Our voice is now louder and more heard,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu.
The Bucharest Nine — an informal format that brings together the region for dialogue with the U.S. and occasionally other partners — is one of the vehicles regional governments are using to showcase their interests.
“It has become an authoritative voice in terms of assessment of the security situation, in terms of assessment of needs,” Aurescu said in an interview in Munich. NATO is listening to the group for a simple reason, he noted: “The security threats are coming from this part of our neighborhood.”
Power shifts … slowly
While the eastern flank has prodded its western partners to send once-unthinkable weapons to Ukraine, the power balance has not completely flipped. Far from it.
Washington officials retain the most sway in the Western alliance. Behind them, several western European capitals take the lead.
“Without the Germans things don’t move — without the Americans things don’t move for sure,” said one senior western European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
And at this stage of the war, as Ukraine pushes for donations of the most modern weapons — fighter jets, advanced tanks, longer-range missile systems — it’s the alliance’s largest economies and populations that are in focus.
“It’s very easy for me to say that, ‘Of course, give fighter jets’ — I don’t have them,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told reporters earlier this month.
Asked if his country would supply Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets, Morawiecki conceded in Munich, “we have not too many of them.” | Omar Marques/Getty Images
“So it’s up to those countries to say who have,” she said. “If I would have, I would give — but I don’t.”
And even some eastern countries who have jets don’t want to move without their Western counterparts.
Asked if his country would supply Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets, Morawiecki conceded in Munich, “we have not too many of them.” He did say, however, that Poland could offer older jets — if the allies could pull together a coalition, that is.
Another challenge for advocates of a powerful eastern voice within NATO is that the eastern flank itself is diverse.
Priorities vary even among like-minded countries based on their geographies. And, notably, there are some Russia-friendly outliers.
Hungary, for example, does not provide any weapons assistance to Ukraine and continues to maintain a relationship with the Kremlin. In fact, Budapest has become so isolated in Western policy circles that no Hungarian government officials attended the Munich Security Conference.
“I think the biggest problem in Hungary is the rhetoric of leadership, which sometimes really crosses the red line,” said the Czech Republic’s Lipavský, who was cautious to add that Budapest does fulfill NATO obligations, participating in alliance defense efforts.
Just for now?
There are also questions about whether the east’s moment in the limelight is a permanent fixture or product of the moment. After all, China, not Russia, may be seizing western attention in the future.
“It’s obvious that their voice is becoming louder, but that’s also a consequence of the geopolitical situation we’re in,” said the senior western European diplomat. “I’m not sure if it’s sustainable in the long run.”
A second senior western European diplomat, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal alliance dynamics, said that the eastern flank countries sometimes take a tough tone “because of the fear of the pivot to China.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has also reiterated that western alliance members play a role in defending the eastern flank | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
Asked if the war has changed the balance of influence within the alliance, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said: “Yes and no.”
“We have to defend our territories, it is as simple as that,” she told POLITICO in Munich. “In order to do so we had to reinforce the eastern flank — Russia is on that part of the continent.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has also reiterated that western alliance members play a role in defending the eastern flank.
Asked whether NATO’s center of gravity is shifting east, he said on a panel in Munich that “what has shifted east is NATO’s presence.”
But, he added, “of course many of those troops come from the western part of the alliance — so this demonstrates how NATO is together and how we support each other.”
And in western Europe, there is a sense that the east does deserve attention at the moment.
“They might not have all the might,” said the second senior western European diplomat. “But they deserve solidarity.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference President and Member of the Parliament from Srinagar on Thursday said the narratives of peaceable calm, development and prosperity peddled by the government doesn’t reflect the reality on the ground.
This he said while addressing people at Habbak today. Party’s Provincial President (Kashmir) Nasir Aslam Wani was also present on the occasion.
Interacting with the workers, Dr Farooq said, “Three years on, there is little to show of a revitalised administration, increased job opportunities for our educated youth and infrastructure augmentation. There is pervasive rage among people, stemming from misgovernance, and unaccountability. Claims of changed ground situation in Jammu and Kashmir emanating from the government are a bundle of lies to whitewash the devastating impact of the GoI’s August 5, 2019 decisions on the people and economy of the erstwhile state.”
Dr Farooq said such claims are akin to running salt into the wounds of people of J&K, who are being denied democracy and not trusted with a popular government, whose democratic rights have been crippled and whose exclusive rights over land, jobs and natural resources stand liquidated.
Dr Farooq further said, “The hard earned gains of our governments during its successive governments in terms of bridging building people’s trust in government has received a setback. The anti-poor, anti-trader and anti-consumer policies being pursued by the incumbent administration have further increased the wedge between the administration and people.”
