New Delhi: The Chief Justice of India (CJI), D.Y. Chandrachud said on Saturday that for the court, there are no big and small cases – every matter is important, and the court has sought to use the language of the Constitution to humanise law and act as the protector and defender of fundamental rights and liberties.
Addressing a programme to mark the 73rd anniversary of the establishment of the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice said: “If we peruse the history of this court, we realise that the history of the Supreme Court is the history of the daily life struggles of the Indian people.”
Citing the daily case mentioning list, he stressed that through these seeming requests, one can sense the pulse of the nation.
“Above all, the message in this uniquely citizen-centric initiative is an assurance that the court exists to protect our citizens from injustice, their liberties are as precious to us and that the judges work in close connection with the citizens,” he said.
Chandrachud emphasised that for the court, there are no big or small cases, as every matter is important, and because it is in the seemingly small and routine matters involving grievances of citizens that issues of constitutional and jurisprudential importance emerge.
“In attending to such grievances, the court performs a plain constitutional duty, obligation and function,” he said, adding that the Supreme Court serves the world’s most populous democracy and is in true aspect a ‘people’s court’ because it is a collective heritage of the citizens of India.
The Chief Justice added that the court has also ensured that the criminal justice administration is not de-linked from the framework of human rights.
He said, for instance, while the death penalty has been upheld to be legal, the Supreme Court laid down various mitigating and aggravating circumstances that a judge should take into account before awarding the death sentence.
“This ensures fairness in the process. Psychiatric assessment of death row convicts is a humanising influence on the law. Thus, the court has sought to use the language of the Constitution to humanise law and act as the protector and defender of fundamental rights and liberties,” he said, adding that the Supreme Court has made a constant endeavour to ensure access to justice for everyone.
Citing public interest litigation (PIL), he said anyone can approach the constitutional courts in India to seek redressal of a violation of the fundamental rights of any person.
“By doing so, the court opened its door to persons bereft of means to approach the courts because of their social and economic disadvantages. This has provided a space for citizens to converse with the state on equal terms. In turn, the court has been using its jurisdiction to make the ‘rule of law’ a daily reality for persons belonging to marginalised communities,” the Chief Justice said.
He also said that in the recent Budget, the Centre has announced a provision of Rs 7,000 crore for Phase III of the e-Courts project.
“This will help enhance the accessibility of the judicial institutions and improve the efficiency of the justice delivery system in India. Such endeavours will ensure that the court truly reaches out to every citizen of our country,” Chandrachud said.
He also pointed out that between March 23, 2020, and October 31, 2022, the Supreme Court alone heard 3.37 lakh cases through video conferencing.
The Chief Justice of Singapore, Justice Sundaresh Menon, also delivered a lecture on the topic ‘Role of judiciary in a changing world’.
The apex court came into existence on January 28, 1950, two days after India became a Republic on January 26.
Bengaluru: A high-level committee on Thursday decided to approach the Centre afresh with a plea to denotify about 9,600 acres of forest land in favour of 11,000 to 12,000 families displaced due to the Sharavathi river project in Shivamogga district of Karnataka and rehabilitated there decades ago.
The panel is headed by State Home Minister Araga Jnanendra and former Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, both of whom hail from the district.
After a meeting here, Yediyurappa told reporters that a fresh proposal would be sent to the Centre with a request to denotify the forest land in favour of those displaced families who have not yet got rights over the land.
“We had called on the Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav and apprised him of the predicament of nearly 11,000 to 12,000 displaced people (families). He has asked us to survey the land and send a proposal,” Yeddyurappa said.
He said those dwelling on the land have not got ownership rights and it is akin to being landless.
“The district administration has completed the survey and prepared a proposal to give ownership on 9,600 acres of land. We will send the proposal today itself,” Yeddyurappa said.
Shivamogga MP and Yediyurappa’s son B Y Raghavendra, legislators, and senior officials attended the meeting.
A U.S. citizen was arrested for walking a cow through Red Square in Moscow, according to local media.
Alicia Day, “who is a vegetarian and animal rights activist, was walking on Red Square … using a calf as visual propaganda and shouting the slogan ‘animals are not food,’” a judge at Moscow’s Tverskoy district court was quoted as saying.
Day was arrested on Tuesday for participating in an unsanctioned protest. She also allegedly resisted arrest, the court said, and was fined 20,000 rubles (€261).
“I bought the calf [named Doctor Cow] so that it wouldn’t be eaten. I decided to take him to such a beautiful place and show him the country,” Day told the TASS news agency.
“I just wanted to show Doctor Cow the Red Square,” the vegan activist said in her defense, adding that she didn’t regret her actions.
The New Jersey-born vegan activist made headlines in 2019 when she was living in London and kept a pet pig in her flat, spoiling it with trips to restaurants and sharing baths with it.
KYIV — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused to veto a new law that strengthens punishment for wayward military personnel on Thursday, rejecting a petition signed by over 25,000 Ukrainians who argue it’s too harsh.
“The key to the combat capability of military units and ultimately of Ukraine’s victory, is compliance with military discipline,” Zelenskyy said in his written response to the petition.
Ukrainian soldiers have stunned the world with their resilience and battlefield successes, withstanding a year-long onslaught from Russian troops. But among Kyiv’s forces, made up largely of fresh recruits lacking previous military experience or training, some are struggling to cope. There are those who have rebelled against commanders’ orders, gotten drunk or misbehaved; others, running low on ammunition and morale, have fled for their lives, abandoning their positions.
Seeking to bring his forces into line, Zelenskyy in January signed into force a punitive law that introduces harsher punishment for deserters and wayward soldiers, and strips them of their right to appeal.
The law aims to standardize and toughen the repercussions for rule-breaking, improving discipline and the combat readiness of military units. Disobedience will be punishable by five to eight years in prison, rather than the previous two to seven; desertion or failure to appear for duty without a valid reason by up to 10 years. Threatening commanders, consuming alcohol, questioning orders and many other violations will also be dealt with more harshly, potentially with prison time; those who broke these rules in the past may have gotten away with a probation period or the docking of their combat pay.
Those who lobbied in favor of the new law, such as the Ukrainian Army General Staff, argue it will make discipline fairer: Previously, because courts adjudicated infractions on a case-by-case basis, some perpetrators were able to escape punishment for serious rule-breaking entirely, while others received harsher sentences for less significant violations, according to an explanatory note that accompanied the new law.
But soldiers, lawyers and human rights watchdogs have slammed the measures as an inappropriate and blunt instrument that won’t deal with the root causes of military indiscipline — and over 25,000 Ukrainians called on the president to veto the law altogether in a petition submitted to the president late last year.
The new punitive rules remove discretion and turn courts into a “calculator” for doling out punishment to soldiers, regardless of the reasons for their offenses, lawyer Anton Didenko argued in a column on Ukraine’s Interfax news agency.
“This law will have negative consequences for the protection of the rights of military personnel who are accused of committing a crime and will reduce the level of motivation during service,” an NGO, called the Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition, said in a statement. “This can carry risks both for the protection of human rights and for the defense capability of the state.”
Zelenskyy’s military commanders disagree, arguing the measures are necessary to hold firm in the face of Russia’s assault.
Ukraine’s armed forces have swelled to over a million soldiers in the past year | Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images
“The army is based on discipline. And if the gaps in the legislation do not ensure compliance, and refuseniks can pay a fine of up to 10 percent of combat pay or receive a punishment with probation, this is unfair,” argued the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi in a video in favor of the new rules.
Zelenskyy, in his response to the popular petition asking him to scrap the changes, agreed that disciplinary action against military personnel should take into account their individual circumstances, and promised that the cabinet of ministers would further consider how to improve the disciplinary mechanism — though he did not specify when this work might be done; nor suspend the law in the meantime.
Army of civilians
Ukraine’s armed forces have swelled rapidly to over a million soldiers in the year since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 — up from 250,000 personnel.
The influx of hundreds of thousands of new recruits, whom Ukraine has had to equip and train while withstanding the barrage from Russia, has compromised the usual vetting process and meant some unsuitable soldiers have ended up in combat, Valerii Markus, the chief master sergeant of the 47th Separate Assault Brigade, told subordinates in a lecture about “desertion at the front,” posted to his YouTube channel in January.
“We were trying to vet the candidates as well as we could in those circumstances,” Markus said. “However, many people in our own brigade don’t want to be there.” He said some of those who had joined up for the wrong motivations, such as for a pay check, subsequently “break down under pressure and want to flee; start to revolt.”
Markus said commanders frequently didn’t understand the problems and shortages faced by their troops on the ground due to local sergeants failing to communicate with them. He played videos of soldiers complaining about a lack of weapons or inappropriate or illegal orders from their commanders, before telling those in the audience that most problems could be resolved internally through the proper channels, while publicly airing complaints discredited Ukraine’s army and undermined attempts to help troops.
“Do I recognize the existence of problems that lead to the arbitrary abandonment of positions? Yes,” Zaluzhnyi said in his video supporting the reforms. “Am I working on their elimination? Successful operations to liberate the territories of our state are a confirmation of that.”
But members of Ukraine’s armed forces, many of whom have expressed respect for Zaluzhnyi, were deeply disappointed by his support of the new law.
“It is very demotivating. This is such a striking contrast with Zaluzhnyi’s human- and leader-oriented ‘religion,’” said Eugenia Zakrevska, a human rights lawyer who enlisted in the war effort and is now a member of the 92nd Ivan Sirko Separate Mechanized Brigade. This was a pointed reference to an interview the commander-in-chief gave to the Economist in December, in which he said that unlike the Kremlin, the “religion” he and Ukraine practised was “to remain human in any situation.”
Treating the symptoms, not the disease
Those who oppose the new law argue that Ukraine needs to deal with the underlying causes of desertion and misbehavior, rather than punishing soldiers who break the rules more harshly.
A Ukrainian army officer who recently left the frontline city of Bakhmut (and requested anonymity as officers are not authorized to speak to the press) told POLITICO: “Sometimes abandonment of positions becomes the only way to save personnel from senseless death. If they cannot deliver ammunition or [relieve troops], when you sit in the trenches for several days without sleep or rest, your combat value goes to zero.”
In responding to the petition asking him to reconsider, President Zelenskyy agreed that disciplinary action should take into account the individual circumstances of military personnel | Yuriy Dyachyshyn/ AFP via Getty Images
The officer added that many discipline problems are rooted in ineffective or careless command, as well as the strain placed on Kyiv’s forces battling a far larger army of invaders, meaning they are not rotated as often as they ought to be.
“Fatigue and trauma lead to mental disorders, and bring chaos, negligence and even depravity into a soldier’s life. This strongly affects fighting qualities and obedience,” the officer said.
Zakrevska, from the Ivan Sirko brigade, said Ukrainian soldiers rarely abandon their positions — continuing to fight even when outnumbered and carrying significant casualties.
“Once, I had to call the command and ask for our sergeant to be ordered to go to the hospital — because he refused evacuation even though he was badly wounded,” Zakrevska said. “He stayed with us, although he could not get proper medical help as our doctor was also injured.”
It is only out of sheer desperation that soldiers leave their posts, Zakrevska argued, adding that to prevent desertion, commanders should rotate fighters more frequently. But she acknowledged that in many places, R&R for the troops is impossible due to a shortage of combat-capable fighters.
Most brigades are full, Zakrevska said — but some of those in them aren’t fit to fight, and “it is impossible to fire them. Because no one can be fired from the army at all. Only after a verdict in a criminal case. Such a system also greatly undermines morale. Because it turns service in the army from an honorable duty into a punishment.”
“In the situations of despair and complete exhaustion, fear of criminal liability does not work,” Zakrevska argued.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — Public sector workers on strike, the cost-of-living climbing, and a government on the ropes.
“It’s hard to miss the parallels” between the infamous ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978-79 and Britain in 2023, says Robert Saunders, historian of modern Britain at Queen Mary, University of London.
Admittedly, the comparison only goes so far. In the 1970s it was a Labour government facing down staunchly socialist trade unions in a wave of strikes affecting everything from food deliveries to grave-digging, while Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives sat in opposition and awaited their chance.
But a mass walkout fixed for Wednesday could yet mark a staging post in the downward trajectory of Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, just as it did for Callaghan’s Labour.
Britain is braced for widespread strike action tomorrow, as an estimated 100,000 civil servants from government departments, ports, airports and driving test centers walk out alongside hundreds of thousands of teachers across England and Wales, train drivers from 14 national operators and staff at 150 U.K. universities.
It follows rolling action by train and postal workers, ambulance drivers, paramedics, and nurses in recent months. In a further headache for Sunak, firefighters on Monday night voted to walk out for the first time in two decades.
While each sector has its own reasons for taking action, many of those on strike are united by the common cause of stagnant pay, with inflation still stubbornly high. And that makes it harder for Sunak to pin the blame on the usual suspects within the trade union movement.
Mr Reasonable
Industrial action has in the past been wielded as a political weapon by the Conservative Party, which could count on a significant number of ordinary voters being infuriated by the withdrawal of public services.
Tories have consequently often used strikes as a stick with which to beat their Labour opponents, branding the left-wing party as beholden to its trade union donors.
But public sympathies have shifted this time round, and it’s no longer so simple to blame the union bogeymen.
Sunak has so far attempted to cast himself as Mr Reasonable, stressing that his “door is always open” to workers but warning that the right to strike must be “balanced” with the provision of services. To this end, he is pressing ahead with long-promised legislation to enforce minimum service standards in sectors hit by industrial action.
Sunak has made tackling inflation the raison d’etre of his government, and his backbenchers are reasonably content to rally behind that banner | POOL photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Unions are enraged by the anti-strike legislation, yet Sunak’s soft-ish rhetoric is still in sharp relief to the famously bellicose Thatcher, who pledged during the 1979 strikes that “if someone is confronting our essential liberties … then, by God, I will confront them.”
Sunak’s careful approach is chosen at least in part because the political ground has shifted beneath him since the coronavirus pandemic struck in 2020.
Public sympathy for frontline medical staff, consistently high in the U.K., has been further embedded by the extreme demands placed upon nurses and other hospital staff during the pandemic. And inflation is hitting workers across the economy — not just in the public sector — helping to create a broader reservoir of sympathy for strikers than has often been found in the past.
James Frayne, a former government adviser who co-founded polling consultancy Public First, observes: “Because of the cost-of-living crisis, what you [as prime minister] can’t do, as you might be able to do in the past, is just portray this as being an ideologically-driven strike.”
Starmer’s sleight of hand
At the same time, strikes are not the political headache for the opposition Labour Party they once were.
Thatcher was able to portray Callaghan as weak when he resisted the use of emergency powers against the unions. David Cameron was never happier than when inviting then-Labour leader Ed Miliband to disown his “union paymasters,” particularly during the last mass public sector strike in 2011.
Crucially, trade union votes had played a key role in Miliband’s election as party leader — something the Tories would never let him forget. But when Sunak attempts to reprise Cameron’s refrains against Miliband, few seem convinced.
QMUL’s Saunders argues that the Conservatives are trying to rerun “a 1980s-style campaign” depicting Labour MPs as being in the pocket of the unions. But “I just don’t think this resonates with the public,” he added.
Labour’s current leader, Keir Starmer, has actively sought to weaken the left’s influence in the party, attracting criticism from senior trade unionists. Most eye-catchingly, Starmer sacked one of his own shadow ministers, Sam Tarry, after he defied an order last summer that the Labour front bench should not appear on picket lines.
Starmer has been “given cover,” as one shadow minister put it, by Sunak’s decision to push ahead with the minimum-service legislation. It means Labour MPs can please trade unionists by fighting the new restrictions in parliament — without having to actually stand on the picket line.
So far it seems to be working. Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, an umbrella group representing millions of U.K. trade unionists, told POLITICO: “Frankly, I’m less concerned about Labour frontbenchers standing up on picket lines for selfies than I am about the stuff that really matters to our union” — namely the government’s intention to “further restrict the right to strike.”
The TUC is planning a day of action against the new legislation on Wednesday, coinciding with the latest wave of strikes.
Sticking to their guns
For now, Sunak’s approach appears to be hitting the right notes with his famously restless pack of Conservative MPs.
Sunak has made tackling inflation the raison d’etre of his government, and his backbenchers are reasonably content to rally behind that banner.
As one Tory MP for an economically-deprived marginal seat put it: “We have to hold our nerve. There’s a strong sense of the corner (just about) being turned on inflation rising, so we need to be as tough as possible … We can’t now enable wage increases that feed inflation.”
Another agreed: “Rishi should hold his ground. My guess is that eventually people will get fed up with the strikers — especially rail workers.”
Furthermore, Public First’s Frayne says his polling has picked up the first signs of an erosion of support for strikes since they kicked off last summer, particularly among working-class voters.
“We’re at the point now where people are feeling like ‘well, I haven’t had a pay rise, and I’m not going to get a pay rise, and can we all just accept that it’s tough for everybody and we’ve got to get on with it,’” he said.
More than half (59 percent) of people back strike action by nurses, according to new research by Public First, while for teachers the figure is 43 percent, postal workers 41 percent and rail workers 36 percent.
‘Everything is broken’
But the broader concern for Sunak’s Conservatives is that, regardless of whatever individual pay deals are eventually hammered out, the wave of strikes could tap into a deeper sense of malaise in the U.K.
Inflation remains high, and the government’s independent forecaster predicted in December that the U.K. will fall into a recession lasting more than a year.
More than half (59 percent) of people back strike action by nurses, according to new research by Public First, while for teachers the figure is 43 percent, postal workers 41 percent and rail workers 36 percent | Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
Strikes by ambulance workers only drew more attention to an ongoing crisis in the National Health Service, with patients suffering heart attacks and strokes already facing waits of more than 90 minutes at the end of 2022.
Moving around the country has been made difficult not only by strikes, but by multiple failures by rail providers on key routes.
One long-serving Conservative MP said they feared a sense of fatalism was setting in among the public — “the idea that everything is broken and there’s no point asking this government to fix it.”
A former Cabinet minister said the most pressing issue in their constituency is the state of public services, and strike action signaled political danger for the government. They cautioned that the public are not blaming striking workers, but ministers, for the disruption.
Those at the top of government are aware of the risk of such a narrative taking hold, with the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, taking aim at “declinism about Britain” in a keynote speech Friday.
Whether the government can do much to change the story, however, is less clear.
Saunders harks back to Callaghan’s example, noting that public sector workers were initially willing to give the Labour government the benefit of the doubt, but that by 1979 the mood had fatally hardened.
This is because strikes are not only about falling living standards, he argues. “It’s also driven by a loss of faith in government that things are going to get better.”
With an election looming next year, Rishi Sunak is running out of time to turn the public mood around.
Annabelle Dickson and Graham Lanktree contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Chennai: South Indian Superstar Rajinikanth has issued a public notice on the infringement of rights, and warned of legal action against those who commercially exploit the actor’s name, image, voice, etc., without taking his consent.
His advocate S. Elambharathi issued a public notice warning civil and criminal proceedings against those who infringe upon the actor’s personality, including his voice, image, name, and other unique behaviour of his.
The notice issued on Saturday stated that only the actor has the control over the commercial utilization of his personality, name, voice, image, etc.
The notice also said that several mediums, platforms, product manufacturers were misappropriating his name, image, voice, caricature image, and artistic image, and AI-generated images to create confusion among the public and to entice them to buy certain products or to access the medium through which the actor’s manners were misused.
The notice said, “His charisma and nature as an actor and human being has earned him the title of ‘Superstar’ called by millions and millions of his fans across the world. The sheer proportion of his fan base and his respect across the film industry is unmatched and indisputable. Any damage to his reputation or personal life would entail a great loss to our client.”
It is to be noted that Rajinikanth is presently shooting for the big-budget movie, ‘Jailor’ in which Malayalam superstar Mohanlal is playing a cameo role.
“Here in New York we will never let the extremist, anti-choice agenda to prevent anyone from accessing reproductive health care,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Tuesday at a rally near the state Capitol with abortion-rights activists.
New York added stronger abortion rights into state law in 2019 and approved new laws last year to shield providers and patients from out-of-state litigation.
But in the wake of the Roe vs. Wade decision, abortion rights advocates and some lawmakers pushed to enshrine the protections in the constitution as a way to make it harder to overturn by any future legislature.
The amendment adds new protected classes to the constitution’s existing Equal Protection Clause, which prohibits discrimination based on a person’s race, color, creed or religion. It would also bar intentional government discrimination based on a person’s ethnicity, national origin, age, disability or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes and reproductive health care and autonomy.
“We’re modernizing our constitution to recognize that all these categories of New Yorkers should have equal rights under the constitution to be protected from discrimination,” Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) said at a news conference. “Because guess what we’ve learned recently? The courts can change and suddenly protections you thought you had because some court cases aren’t there anymore.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul hailed the measure, and she proposed new laws in her State of the State address earlier this month that would allow pharmacists to directly prescribe contraceptive pills and increase Medicaid reimbursement rates for reproductive health providers.
“I’m the first governor in the state of New York to ever have had a pregnancy, ever raise children, ever had to go through all the screaming,” Hochul, the first woman governor, said at the rally. “I know more than any governor before me of what it’s like to be a woman and whether someone else in Washington has the right to take away what I should be able to decide on my own.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
In a conversation and statement shared first with POLITICO, she described her decision not to be renominated as the new Congress has taken over as hers alone and praised the Biden team’s support.
“At present, I don’t see a path forward for confirmation, and after 1 ½ years, it’s time to move on,” Margon said in the statement. “I will continue to work on democracy and human rights, and am grateful to President Biden and Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken for their confidence in me and the honor of a nomination.”
Margon faced opposition from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican, Jim Risch of Idaho. Risch, citing past tweets of hers, accused Margon of supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which targets Israel due to its policies toward the Palestinians.
Margon denied supporting the BDS movement, but her attempts to clarify the tweets didn’t sway Risch. Neither did a letter of support from a bipartisan group of foreign policy professionals, some of them prominent in the Jewish community, who dismissed the anti-Israel allegations against Margon.
A spokesperson for Risch did not immediately offer comment Tuesday morning.
Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey who chairs the committee, has spoken in support of Margon’s nomination. But he did not bring her up for a vote in the committee, apparently due to the custom of “comity” that committee leaders follow.
That custom calls for the top Democrat and top Republican on the committee to jointly agree on items such as scheduling votes on nominees. The idea behind the tradition is to avoid having the majority run roughshod over the minority, but the minority can also use it as a stalling tactic.
In a statement Tuesday, Menendez called the GOP opposition to Margon’s nomination “deeply unfortunate.” But he defended the comity custom as one that fosters cooperation across the aisle.
“I believe we are strongest when we speak with a bipartisan voice,” he said. “This underpins our committee’s ability to pursue robust activity that advances American foreign policy priorities.”
A senior State Department official heaped praise on Margon, calling her an “extraordinary person with immense talent, drive and determination.” The administration will now have to decide on a new nominee, the official said, without disclosing potential names. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the topic involved sensitive personnel matters and discussions with Capitol Hill.
Even if the Biden administration finds a new nominee quickly, however, the confirmation process could drag on again, a pattern statistics indicate has gotten worse over the past two decades.
Biden has insisted that he is committed to keeping human rights at the core of his foreign policy. But his administration, like many others before it, has been accused of inconsistency on that front, not least as it has tried to gain favor with autocracies such as Saudi Arabia for geostrategic reasons.
The senior State Department official said that even if the assistant secretary role is not filled, the administration has others who routinely raise human rights with foreign counterparts.
“We need to get this post right, but throughout the department, throughout the administration, you have a commitment to human rights,” the official said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
PARIS — The French data protection authority’s president Marie-Laure Denis warned Tuesday against using facial recognition as part of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics security toolkit.
“The members of the CNIL’s college call on parliamentarians not to introduce facial recognition, that is to say the identification of people on the fly in the public space,” she told Franceinfo.
The French government is seeking to ramp up France’s arsenal of surveillance powers to ensure the safety of the millions of tourists expected for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. The plans include AI-powered cameras for the first time — but not facial recognition.
The Senate’s plenary session starts to vote today on the law introducing the new powers. Senators are divided between those who want to add privacy safeguards and those who want to push the surveillance and security arsenal further, mainly by introducing facial recognition.
“The amendment [to include facial recognition] was rejected in the Senate’s law committee, but it can come back [in the plenary session],” the CNIL’s chief cautioned.
Civil liberties NGOs such as La Quadrature du Net and the Human Rights League are currently campaigning against the experimental AI-powered surveillance cameras. Denis however tried to assuage concerns.
The CNIL will monitor algorithmic training to ensure there is no bias and that footage of people is deleted in due time, she said. The experiment will “not necessarily” become permanent, she added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has a tight two-year timetable for securing EU membership that is bound to dominate discussions at this week’s historic EU-Ukraine summit, the first to take place on Ukrainian soil.
The problem? No one within the EU thinks this is realistic.
When EU commissioners travel to Kyiv later this week ahead of Friday’s summit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the heads of the European Commission and Council, their main task is likely to involve managing expectations.
Shmyhal himself is imposing a tough deadline. “We have a very ambitious plan to join the European Union within the next two years,” he told POLITICO. “So we expect that this year, in 2023, we can already have this pre-entry stage of negotiations,” he said.
This throws down a gauntlet to the EU establishment, which is trying to keep Ukrainian membership as a far more remote concept.
French President Emmanuel Macron said last year it could be “decades” before Ukraine joins. Even EU leaders, who backed granting Ukraine candidate status at their summit last June, privately admit that the prospect of the country actually joining is quite some years away (and may be one reason they backed the idea in the first place.) After all, candidate countries like Serbia, Turkey and Montenegro have been waiting for many years, since 1999 in Ankara’s case.
Ukraine is a conundrum for the EU. Many argue that Brussels has a particular responsibility to Kyiv. It was, after all, Ukrainians’ fury at the decision of President Viktor Yanukovych to pull out of a political and economic association agreement with the EU at Russia’s behest that triggered the Maidan uprising of 2014 and set the stage for war. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it: Ukraine is “the only country where people got shot because they wrapped themselves in a European flag.”
Ukraine’s close allies in the EU such as Poland and the Baltic countries strongly support Kyiv’s membership push, seeing it as a democracy resisting an aggressor. Many of the EU old guard are far more wary, however, as Ukraine — a global agricultural superpower — could dilute their own powers and perks. Ukraine and Poland — with a combined population of 80 million — could team up to rival Germany as a political force in the European Council and some argue Kyiv would be an excessive drain on the EU budget.
Short-term deliverables
Friday’s summit in Kyiv — the first EU meeting of its kind to take place in an active war zone — will be about striking the right balance.
Though EU national leaders will not be in attendance, European Council officials have been busy liaising with EU member states about the final communiqué.
Some countries are insisting the statement should not stray far from the language used at the June European Council — emphasizing that while the future of Ukraine lies within the European Union, aspirant countries need to meet specific criteria. “Expectation is quite high in Kyiv, but there is a need to fulfill all the conditions that the Commission has set out. It’s a merit-based process,” said one senior EU official.
Ukraine is a conundrum for the EU. Many argue that Brussels has a particular responsibility to Kyiv | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Still, progress is expected when Zelenskyy meets with von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel.
Shmyhal told POLITICO he hopes Ukraine can achieve a “substantial leap forward” on Friday, particularly in specific areas — an agreement on a visa-free regime for industrial goods; the suspension of customs duties on Ukrainian exports for another year; and “active progress” on joining the SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) payments scheme and the inclusion of Ukraine into the EU’s mobile roaming area.
“We expect progress and acceleration on our path towards signing these agreements,” he said.
Anti-corruption campaign
The hot topic — and one of the central question marks over Ukraine’s EU accession — will be Ukraine’s struggle against corruption. The deputy infrastructure minister was fired and deputy foreign minister stepped down this month over scandals related to war profiteering in public contracts.
“We need a reformed Ukraine,” said one senior EU official centrally involved in preparations for the summit. “We cannot have the same Ukraine as before the war.”
Shmyhal insisted that the Zelenskyy government is taking corruption seriously. “We have a zero-tolerance approach to corruption,” he said, pointing to the “lightning speed” with which officials were removed this month. “Unfortunately, corruption was not born yesterday, but we are certain that we will uproot corruption,” he said, openly saying that it’s key to the country’s EU accession path.
He also said the government was poised to revise its recent legislation on the country’s Constitutional Court to meet the demands of both the European Commission and the Venice Commission, an advisory body of the Council of Europe. Changes could come as early as this week, ahead of the summit, Shmyhal said.
Though Ukraine has announced a reform of the Constitutional Court, particularly on how judges are appointed, the Venice Commission still has concerns about the powers and composition of the advisory group of experts, the body which selects candidates for the court. The goal is to avoid political interference.
Shmyhal said these questions will be addressed. “We are holding consultations with the European Commission to see that all issued conclusions may be incorporated into the text,” he told POLITICO.
Nonetheless, the symbolic power of this week’s summit is expected to send a strong message to Moscow about Ukraine’s European aspirations.
European Council President Michel used his surprise visit to Kyiv this month to reassure Ukraine that EU membership will be a reality for Ukraine, telling the Ukrainian Rada (parliament) that he dreams that one day a Ukrainian will hold his job as president of the European Council.
“Ukraine is the EU and the EU is Ukraine,” he said. “We must spare no effort to turn this promise into reality as fast as we can.”
The key question for Ukrainians after Friday’s meeting will be how fast the rhetoric and promises can become a reality.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
