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Police Link Scotland University Device to London Mail Bombs 

British police said a suspicious package destroyed by bomb-disposal experts at the University of Glasgow on Wednesday contained an explosive device and was linked to three letter bombs sent to two London airports and a railway station.  

The Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command said the item sent to the Scottish university had “similarities in the package, its markings and the type of device” to the three small improvised bombs received by the London transportation hubs on Tuesday.  

The mailing envelope sent to London’s Heathrow Airport with one of the bombs inside partly caught fire when someone opened it, but no one was injured.  

The force said it had not identified the sender and urged transportation operators, mail sorting companies and schools “to be vigilant” about watching for suspicious packages. 

Precautionary evacuation

The University of Glasgow said several buildings on its campus, including the mailroom, were evacuated “as a precautionary measure” after the package was found in the mailroom on Wednesday morning. 

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson of Police Scotland said “the package was not opened and no one was injured.” 

He said bomb-disposal experts later performed a controlled explosion on the item.  

Another package sparked an evacuation Wednesday at the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters in Edinburgh. It was found to contain “promotional goods” and deemed no threat to the public, police said. 

The envelopes received in London appeared to carry Irish stamps, and Jarrett said one line of inquiry “is the possibility that the packages have come from Ireland.” 

There has been speculation the devices could be connected to Irish Republican Army dissidents. But Dean Haydon, Britain’s senior national coordinator for counterterrorism policing, said no sender had been identified and no group had claimed responsibility. 

“We are talking to our Irish counterparts but at the moment there’s nothing to indicate motivation of the sender or ideology, so I cannot confirm at the moment if it’s connected to any Ireland-related terrorist groups,” he said.
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Pope Opens Lent With Call to Avoid ‘Clutches of Consumerism’

Pope Francis has urged Roman Catholic faithful to free themselves from the “clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness” as he marked the start of Lent, the period of prayer and fasting before Easter.

Francis led a procession and then celebrated Ash Wednesday Mass at the basilica of Santa Sabina, one of Rome’s most beautiful.

In his homily, Francis said the 40-day period of Lent is a “wakeup call for the soul” to rediscover the direction of life.

He said: “We need to free ourselves from the clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness, from always wanting more, from never being satisfied, and from a heart closed to the needs of the poor.”

At the end of Lent, Christians commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
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US Ups Pressure on Turkey Over Russian Missile System Purchase

Washington is ratcheting up pressure on Ankara over its decision to buy a Russian missile system, which was confirmed last month by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Senior U.S. diplomats held talks this week in the Turkish capital to lobby against the sale as Washington warns of “grave consequences.”

Deputy Assistant Secretary Matthew Palmer met Wednesday with senior Turkish officials in the latest diplomatic effort to block Ankara’s procurement of Russia’s S-400 missile system.

However Erdogan reiterated his commitment to buy the Russian system. In a television interview Wednesday, he indicated interest in expanding the purchase to Russia’s more advanced S-500 system.

“I would hope that they [Ankara] reconsider this one decision on S-400,” U.S. General Curtis Scaparrotti told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Scaparrotti warned that the sale poses a threat to American systems used by Turkey, “it’s a problem for all of our aircraft, but specifically the F-35, I believe.”

The F-35 is America’s newest and most technologically advanced plane. Turkey is a co-producer of the aircraft and is due to buy a 100, of which the first two are due to be delivered later this year.

Washington fears the sophisticated radar of the S-400 system could compromise the F-35 technology, which was developed to elude Russian-made systems.

Turkey’s purchase of the F-35 is now under threat.

“Turkey’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 air-defense system will have grave consequences for the U.S. defense relationship with Turkey,” U.S. Pentagon spokesman Nick Pahon said Monday in a statement.

Ankara insists the S-400 offers the best value for its needs and poses no threat to NATO systems. Washington is offering an alternative to the S-400, its more expensive Patriot missile system, but negotiations with Ankara remain stalled over pricing and technology-transfer issues.

Analysts warn the consequences for Ankara, however, could be far-reaching. “If this purchase would go through, even beyond these military aspects, the escalation in Turkish-U.S. tensions would be significant in terms of affecting Turkey’s political risk, for the economy,” said Sinan Ulgen head of the Istanbul based think tank Edam.

Warning to Turkey

The decision by U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday to include Turkey along with India in ending a preferential trade agreement is widely interpreted as a warning to Ankara. While the move affects just one percent of Turkey’s total exports, the Turkish currency fell sharply on the news.

“It is clear that the general tendency in Washington, D.C., is to punish Turkey for perceived misconduct, which remains a significant threat to the Turkish economy,” said Atilla Yesilada of Global Securities.

Turkey’s economy is still reeling from a 2018 spat with Washington. Last year, the Turkish currency collapsed after Trump hit Ankara with sanctions over the detention by Turkey of American pastor Andrew Brunson, who has since been released. Although the sanctions lasted only a few weeks, Turkey’s economy now faces a recession.

Washington has various means to inflict further pain on the Turkish economy. U.S. Treasury authorities are still considering imposing a potential multibillion-dollar fine on Turkish State lender Halk Bank after the conviction of one of its senior employees by a New York court for violating the United States’ Iranian sanctions.

Ankara is not expected to make any concessions, though, before crucial local elections on March 31. Analysts say taking a hardline against Washington plays well among Erdogan’s supporters.

Upcoming meeting

Erdogan said last month that Trump had agreed to meet in April. Ankara officials claim the two presidents maintain a strong working relationship, and they blame current bilateral tensions on ministers and advisers around the U.S. president.

Analysts point out that Erdogan probably will be buoyed by Trump’s silence on the controversy of the S-400 deal. “Ankara only cares about what Trump says for Ankara as only Trump is its interlocutor,” said former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who served in Washington.

Erdogan is widely seen as being unlikely to give up on the Russian missile purchase before meeting Trump. “This could be seen as essentially a negotiating position,” Ulgen said.

But the S-400 purchase also is a powerful symbol of Ankara’s deepening relationship with Moscow. The two countries increasingly are cooperating in efforts to end the Syrian civil war, despite backing rival sides in the conflict.

The current thaw followed painful economic sanctions by Moscow on Ankara after a Turkish jet downed a Russian bomber attacking Syrian rebel forces. Analysts suggest Erdogan will be wary of again provoking Russia. Before the downing of the Russian jet, Turks enjoyed visa-free travel.

“Turkey once betrayed the Russians, shooting down their fighter, and the Russians have not forgotten this,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. “If Russia really trusted Turkey, they would lift their visa requirement, but they still have it. It means Turkey doesn’t deserve the Russians’ trust.”

Observers warn the S-400 missile sale poses Ankara with a diplomatic conundrum: how to avoid drawing the ire of either Washington or Moscow.
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Body Language: The Russian Science Keeping N. Korea’s Dead Leaders Looking Fresh

Perhaps none of the communist legacies shared by Vietnam and North Korea highlighted during Kim Jong Un’s “goodwill visit” to Hanoi is stranger than the embalmed leaders on display in their capital cities, and the secretive team of Russian technicians that keeps the aging bodies looking ageless.

Kim laid a wreath outside Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum in the Vietnamese capital on Saturday, after the conclusion of his shortened summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Inside the dark interior of the mausoleum, the embalmed corpse of Vietnam’s founding father lies displayed in a glass coffin for a steady stream of tourists who silently shuffle by.

In Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather and father are on similar display in the loftily named Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, a monument to the cult of personality that surrounds North Korea’s ruling family.

All three leaders were originally preserved by a team of specialists from the so-called “Lenin Lab” in Moscow, which first embalmed and displayed Vladimir Lenin’s body in 1924.

The Soviet Union may have collapsed, and socialism in both Vietnam and North Korea has taken on forms barely recognizable to the ideology’s first thinkers, but that same lab still performs annual maintenance on Ho, and according to at least one researcher, still helps North Korea keep the Kims looking fresh.

“The original embalming and the regular re-embalmings have always been conducted by the scientists of the Moscow lab,” said Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, who is writing a book about the embalmed communist leaders. “Over the years they trained local scientists in some techniques, but not all, maintaining the core of the know-how secret.”

Body work

Unlike earlier preservation processes such as mummification, the permanent embalming pioneered by Soviet scientists kept the bodies flexible, with unblemished skin and a lifelike, if rather waxy, pallor.

With North Vietnam under regular attack by American warplanes at the time of Ho’s death in 1969, the Soviet Union airlifted chemicals and equipment to a cave outside Hanoi, which the Soviet experts turned into a sterile lab, Yurchak said.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, the government lab faced a funding crisis, leading it to rely more heavily on offering services to foreign clients, Yurchak said.

Among those customers was North Korea, where Russian specialists embalmed both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il at a laboratory built into the mausoleum in Pyongyang.

The original embalming takes several months, and the bodies need regular upkeep.

“Every one-and-a-half to two years, these bodies are re-embalmed by the Moscow scientists,” Yurchak said, citing interviews he conducted with lab scientists and his own field research.

The website for the committee that manages Ho’s mausoleum says Russia started charging for the chemicals after the Soviet Union collapsed, prompting Hanoi to ask that the supplies be produced in Vietnam. Vietnam has also sent technicians to study in Russia and can now handle the operations of the mausoleum by itself, the website says.

A source with committee, however confirmed the monument is closed every year for two months and that Russian technicians help with annual maintenance of the body.

When contacted by Reuters, the mausoleum lab in Moscow, which since 1992 has been known as the Center for Scientific Research and Teaching Methods in Biochemical Technologies, declined to comment on any aspect of its work.

The North Korean delegation at the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.

Researcher Tom Fowdy, who founded a group promoting tourism and cultural engagements in North Korea, said he has seen the Kumsusan Palace closed for unexplained “renovations,” but maintenance of the bodies is a mystery.

“While it is obvious the methodology was derived from Russia, it will be a closely kept secret,” he said.

Some experts say China, which relied on its own scientists to embalmed Mao Zedong because of tension between Beijing and Moscow at the time, may have taught or helped North Korea.

Changing symbols

Visitors to Pyongyang’s Kumsusan Palace pass displays that include Kim Jong Il’s personal yacht and an Apple computer the dictator had once owned, before being required to bow three times to the bodies.

“The personality politics of the Kims exceeds all others,” Fowdy said, noting that maintaining the memorial will continue to “receive overwhelming priority” in North Korea’s government budgeting.

It’s not clear how much impoverished North Korea spends on maintaining the Kims’ bodies. When Moscow released preservation costs for the first time in 2016, it reported spending nearly $200,000 that year to maintain Lenin.

Originally the embalming was seen as a way of joining the various countries to international communism, as embodied in Lenin.

But as Vietnam and North Korea developed in their different political ways, so has the meaning attached to preserving the leaders’ bodies.

“Today this original meaning of these bodies has changed — in Vietnam the body of Ho today stands for anti-colonial struggles for independence and even for new nationalism, much more than for communism,” Yurchak said. “In North Korea the two Kims’ bodies stand for a self-sufficient country organized around one leader and existing in the face of the ‘imperialist surroundings.'”
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A Growing Movement — Teens Skip School to Strike for Climate

An environmental movement is growing in Europe and looking to come to the U.S.: Kids and teenagers skipping class to protest and raise awareness of climate change issues. While their cause is mostly praised, their method is controversial. Should students go on school strikes for political issues? VOA’s Markus Meyer-Gehlen explains.
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European Conservative Gives Ultimatum to Hungary’s Orban

The leader of the main center-right party in the European Parliament said on Tuesday that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban must apologize for his criticism of the EU or his ruling Fidesz party could be suspended from the grouping.

Orban, an outspoken nationalist, wants to remain in the EPP, Fidesz said on Tuesday, despite growing pressure within the European Parliament’s biggest grouping to suspend or expel it, a scenario backed by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.

The Hungarian leader has long been at loggerheads with Brussels over his hardline stance on immigration and accusations — which he denies — that he is undermining the rule of law. The feud is escalating ahead of European Parliament elections in May.

“Viktor Orban must immediately and permanently end his government’s anti-Brussels campaigns,” Manfred Weber, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) candidate to be EU Commission President, told Bild newspaper.

On Monday, the EPP said it had received motions from 12 member parties in nine EU countries and would discuss suspending or excluding Fidesz on March 20.

Juncker, who in 2014 was the EPP’s candidate for the top EU executive position he now holds, accused Orban of coming “within a hair’s breadth” of peddling falsehoods and said he would support the exclusion.

Asked about Orban, Juncker told German broadcaster ZDF: “Whoever lies in European affairs for domestic political reasons has to ask himself whether he still wants to belong to the EPP club. I think, they are not one of them any more.”

“I already said months ago that the EPP’s biggest problem in the European elections has a name, and that is Orban. I will support this exclusion,” Juncker added.

Speaking to journalists in the Germany town of Rottersdorf, Weber said that in recent weeks “Viktor Orban and the Fidesz have crossed red lines again” and added that all options were on the table, “especially the option of expulsion and going away, going our future way without Fidesz.”

Orban’s party said in a statement: “Fidesz does not want to leave the (European) People’s Party, our goal is for anti-immigration forces to gain strength within the EPP.”

‘Constructive dialogue’

Orban has launched a media and billboard campaign that frames the May elections as a choice between forces backing and opposing mass immigration and that attacks Juncker.

However, on Tuesday he said he welcomed an initiative by French President Emmanuel Macron for reforming the EU. 

“In the details, of course, we have differences of views, but far more important than these differing opinions is that this initiative be a good start to a serious and constructive dialogue on the future of Europe,” Orban said in a statement to Reuters.

Weber told Bild newspaper he expected an apology to EPP member parties, an immediate and permanent end to Orban’s anti-EU campaigns and renewed government support for Central European University to stay in Budapest.

CEU was forced out of Hungary and plans to relocate to Vienna from September as Orban wages a bitter campaign against its founder, U.S. billionaire George Soros, accusing him of supporting immigration to undermine Europe’s way of life.

Hungarian-born Soros, 87, denies that.

The EPP has 217 lawmakers in the 750-strong EU legislature, 12 of them from Fidesz. It is expected to remain the biggest parliamentary group in the May elections, although likely weakened, opinion polls show.

Far-right, populist parties are expected to perform well.
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Former Colonial Power France Silent on Algerian Protests

In recent weeks, French President Emmanuel Macron has spoken out forcefully in favor of the European Union and Venezuela’s opposition protests. He has dominated town hall meetings to address grievances at home, and sought stronger ties in China.

But when it comes to addressing the political crisis roiling former French colony Algeria, just across the Mediterranean, the normally loquacious Macron and his government have been remarkably silent.

After ailing Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 82, announced a controversial re-election bid on Sunday, the Elysee presidential palace issued only a brief statement, blandly expressing support for a vote “under good conditions,” and Algerians’ right to freely choose their government.  

“We’re not going to comment on what’s happening,” Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume said on French radio, echoing other members of Macron’s ruling La Republique en Marche Party. “I see the enormous demonstrations on the streets of Algiers … but as a member of the French government, I shouldn’t be commenting.”

But today, some are calling on Paris to do just that and side with the Algerian street.

“The French government will be very prudent” as it wonders whether Algeria’s ruling party, in power since independence, will topple or be “reborn from its ashes,” said Sciences-Po University North Africa expert Khadija Mohsen-Finan. 

She added of Macron, “one cannot hide behind arguments of noninterference by a foreign country. The president needs to emerge from his silence and say things clearly.”

Strategic ties

Other observers warn such a step could undermine France’s delicate but strategic relationship with the Bouteflika regime, and that key French priorities —from curbing migration and terrorism in the Sahel, to Algerian gas exports to France — risk being compromised if the North African country tips into turmoil.

“President Macron faces an impossible equation” between supporting pro-democracy protesters or a regime France counts as an ally in fighting terrorism, historian Benjamin Stora said in a radio interview. “A destabilization of Algeria would open the door to a political unknown.”

France’s rocky history with Algeria partly helps to explain its hands-off stance today. Successive French leaders have refused to formally apologize for decades of occupation, which ended only in 1962, after Algeria’s bloody and protracted revolution. That includes Macron, despite controversially calling French colonialism a “crime against humanity” as a presidential candidate. 

Paris also kept a low profile during Algeria’s brutal civil war in the 1990s, which pitted the country’s military-backed government against an Islamist opposition.

That did not stop Paris from being targeted by Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group (GIA), who blamed Paris for siding with Algiers.  In the early 1990s, the militants killed French expatriates, hijacked an Air France plane, and launched several terrorist attacks in Paris.

Under Macron, France has tried to forge closer economic and security ties with its former colony. Visiting Algiers in late 2017, the president called for opening a “new chapter” with Algeria, and urged young Algerians to look to the future.

“There are so many ties that unite us — history, shared memory, the Algerian community here. It’s completely normal that they should be attentive of what happens in Algeria,” Algeria’s ambassador to France Abdelkader Mesdoua told C-TV of Macron’s government.  However, the ambassador also pointed to French statements about respecting Algerian sovereignty.

Terrorism vs. democracy?

While the past looms large in bilateral ties, Algeria today is considered a key ally in battling Islamist groups in the Sahel, where France deploys more than 4,000 troops. Some French also consider it a bulwark against mass migration to Europe.

“The aspirations of Algeria’s youth are completely legitimate,” said Jordan Bardela, senior member of the far-right National Rally Party in remarks on French TV, even as he warned that instability in Algeria could unleash “immigration without precedent” from sub-Saharan Africa and by Algerian youth — an assessment experts say is overblown.    

Yet among Algeria’s sizable diaspora here, some are calling for a stronger French response.

“France needs to help the Algerian people liberate themselves from these mafia,” Djamel Maiedinne, who joined Algerians demonstrating against Bouteflika and his government in Paris on Sunday. “The French government needs to understand that we’re millions, not thousands.”

Another demonstrator, Yasmine Bouaouiche, blamed French authorities for propping up what she considers a repressive regime for decades. “The French government needs to cut the cord,” she said.

Some media have also waded into the debate. An editorial by Europe 1 radio criticized Macron’s noncommittal stance as motivated by a misplaced fear of Islamists coming to power in Algeria, and posing a potential security threat to Europe.

“History shows that military powers nourish Islamism,” the editorial added, citing the case of Libya and Egypt “and Algeria also.”

But other analysts believe French authorities are truly caught in a bind.

“If France supports the street, it would be considered meddling. If it supports the (Algerian) power, it would be seen as foreign interference,” political scientist Naoufel Brahimi El Mili told French radio. “In both cases, France can’t do anything but offer a deafening silence.”

 
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Queen Marks 50th Anniversary of Investiture of Charles as Prince of Wales

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth held a reception at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday to mark the 50th anniversary of the investiture of her oldest son Charles as Prince of Wales.

Senior royals including Charles’s own sons William and Harry and their wives Kate and Meghan attended the party which the palace said paid tribute to the prince’s 50 years of service to Wales.

Charles was created Prince of Wales, the title traditionally held by the heir to the British throne, in July 1958 when he was nine. He was formally invested with the title at a televised ceremony at Caernarfon Castle in July 1969.

The regalia that Charles wore for the occasion, along with the coronet, sword and other regalia used in the ceremony, were on display at the reception.

Joining the royals were figures from the prince’s Welsh charities while there were musical performances by students from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and a speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

Charles, 70, has waited longer than any of his predecessors to become monarch and would be the oldest-ever king at the start of his reign when he succeeds his 92-year-old mother, who herself holds the record for the longest reign in British history.
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General: No F-35 jet Sale to Turkey if it Buys Russia System

The top U.S. commander for Europe says he would recommend the United States not sell its high-tech F-35 fighter jet to Turkey, if Ankara moves ahead with plans to buy a Russian missile defense system.

 Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, head of U.S. European Command, says Turkey should reconsider its plan to buy the S-400 from Russia this year or forfeit other future American military aircraft and systems. He says the S-400 surface-to-air missile defense system would be a threat to the F-35.

Scaparrotti says U.S. officials are currently in Turkey explaining the consequences of the S-400 purchase.

The State Department in December approved the sale of a $3.5 billion Patriot missile defense system to Turkey. The F-35 delivery to Turkey has been delayed as negotiations about the S-400 continue.

 
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Rise in Populism Eroding Women’s Rights, Global Leaders Warn

From access to abortion to equal work opportunities, women’s rights are being eroded by a rise in global populism, a group of female leaders warned Monday.

There has been a resurgence in nationalist-populist sentiment in many countries around the world, from Brazil to Turkey, the Philippines, Russia and the United States.

That has led to a deliberate rolling back of rights gained through the “sacrifices and struggles” of generations of women, the newly-formed Group of Women Leaders for Change and Inclusion said in an open letter ahead of International Women’s Day.

“More and more nationalistic, populist regimes are starting to suggest that women’s empowerment is a challenge to power,” said Argentina’s former foreign minister Susana Malcorra, a founder member.

“There are number of places where we see this happening as a trend. And in our view, if we don’t speak up loudly about it, it will be hard to reverse,” she told Reuters in a phone interview from Madrid.

U.S. President Donald Trump in 2017 imposed a gag rule that banned U.S.-funded groups globally from discussing abortion, forcing them to accept the restriction or reject it and lose funding.

The gag rule has forced the closure of health clinics and outreach programs by charities that fear non-compliance could lead to the loss of their U.S. health care aid, which totals about $8 billion a year.

This comes at a time when abortion rights are under scrutiny in other countries around the globe.

Last year, Ireland ended its strict abortion ban, while the conservative government in Poland pushed to tighten its already restrictive abortion laws.

Argentina rejected a measure to legalize abortion, and the election of a far-right president in Brazil was expected to slow efforts to legalize abortion there.

The World Economic Forum said in a 2018 global report that there were fewer women working last year than men, mostly because a lack of child care kept them from jobs or from progressing to senior roles.

It will be 202 years before women can earn the same as men and have equal job opportunities, it said.

Meanwhile, Kenyan lawmakers last November blocked a push to give one in three parliamentary seats to women.

“We need to make policies that make sure women don’t derail from their careers because they become mothers, that also allows for partners to share the responsibilities,” said Malcorra.

The letter signed by nearly 40 female leaders — from Irina Bokova, ex-head of U.N. cultural agency UNESCO, to Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde — urged action to protect basic women’s rights before it was too late.

“We are losing something and we’re not even conscious of it,” Malcorra said. “We want to make sure that people understand that the situation is serious and could become critical.”
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EU Executive Hits Back at Hungary’s Orban Ahead of Elections

The European Union executive accused Hungary’s nationalist government on Monday of distorting the truth about immigration into the bloc, marking a further deterioration in their troubled relationship ahead of European Parliament elections in May.

The EU has long been critical of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s stance on migrants and his record on democratic freedoms. Orban says the EU has imperiled Europe’s Christian civilization by allowing mass immigration.

Orban has recently stepped up his anti-immigration campaign with billboards and inserts in state media that vilify European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and Hungarian-born U.S. billionaire George Soros, accusing them of being in cahoots to bring large numbers of Muslim immigrants into Europe.

“The Commission has been unambiguous about our opinion of the Hungarian government campaign that distorts the truth and seeks to paint a dark picture of a secret plot to drive more migration to Europe, allegedly,” European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told a news briefing.

The Hungarian campaign has triggered renewed calls to expel Orban’s ruling Fidesz party from the biggest group in the European Parliament, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP). The EPP will discuss the issue March 20.

The EPP’s candidate to head the next European Commission, senior German lawmaker Manfred Weber, has said he no longer rules out expelling Fidesz.

“Viktor Orban has severely damaged the EPP with his statements and poster campaign,” Weber told the German weekly Spiegel in a weekend interview. “That’s why I expect him to apologize and end the action.”

‘Useful idiots’

But Orban, speaking to the German Welt am Sonntag weekly, dismissed seeking the expulsion of Fidesz as “useful idiots” who played into the hands of the EPP’s left-wing rivals.

“We can chalk it up to the start of the European Parliament campaign,” Zoltan Novak of the Centre for Fair Political Analysis, a Hungarian think-tank, said of Orban’s tactics. “He wants to be the antithesis to the mainstream elite.”

“He wants to embody another Europe, one that rejects immigration … federalization and further EU integration.”

The EPP currently has 217 lawmakers in the 750-strong EU legislature, 12 of them from Fidesz. The EPP is expected to remain the biggest faction in the new European Parliament but will most likely be weakened, surveys show.

The EU has been largely unsuccessful in taming Orban. A probe launched in 2018 against Budapest for weakening the rule of law in the ex-communist country has proven largely ineffective beyond causing Hungary reputational damage.

Brussels is considering making access to EU budget funds from 2021 conditional on respecting democratic principles.

Hungary and most other ex-communist EU members receive large sums from the budget for infrastructure and other projects.
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Macron Unveils Plan for ‘European Renaissance’ Ahead of EU Vote

French President Emmanuel Macron has made an impassioned defense of a new Europe in a newspaper column published in each of the 28 member states in which he laid out his ideas for a “European renaissance” ahead of EU elections in May.

Calling the vote decisive and warning of a Europe in danger, his words are intended as a wake-up call for the bloc as he seeks to push fundamental reform of the European Union.

Macron’s column coincides with rising tensions in the West, shaken by U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies and Britain’s departure from the EU. A more assertive China and Russia also pose major challenges.

A number of proposals made in the column to appear on Tuesday in newspapers ranging from The Guardian in Britain to Die Welt in Germany and El Pais in Spain aim at protecting and defending Europe’s citizens while giving the bloc new impetus in the face of global competition.

“In a few weeks, the European elections will be decisive for the future of our continent. Europe has never been as necessary since World War II as it is now and yet never has Europe been in such danger,” Macron wrote. “Nationalism offers nothing. It is a project of rejection.”

Proposals include creating a European agency to protect democracies which would provide experts to safeguard elections from manipulation and a ban on financing by foreign powers of European political parties.

Macron also suggested reviewing the Schengen system and creating a common border police and European asylum office. The French leader is focused on championing a “Europe that protects” for the May 26 European election as he seeks to convince voters with plans aimed at reforming Europe’s trade, competition, digital and climate policies, including creating a European climate bank to finance the ecological transition.

He also urged a ban on companies that threaten European strategic interests and called for a type of Europe first policy as America and China have done.

As part of efforts to convince European citizens not to back nationalists, Macon also urged for European institutions and states to take part in a “Conference for Europe” by year-end. Its objective would be to propose changes to the bloc’s political project without taboos, including reviewing existing treaties.

“In this Europe, the people will have truly taken back control of their destiny; in this Europe, Britain, I am sure, will find its place,” Macron wrote.
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