italian election results: will brussels finally listen to the people

The core point in all of this is that populist and racist politicians across the EU are blaming a tiny minority of asylum seekers for broader social and economic problems. There is absolutely no basis for this in fact.
 

Everything I have said is in the context of the Italian elections. Are the hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Italy refugees or economic migrants? If an economic migrant arrives at an Italian port and claims asylum, Italy under EU law must treat them as a refugee. Which is why Italy is seeking changes to EU law governing refugee \ asylum.
 

No, and anyone who thinks that doesn't know what they are talking about when Italian law is subject to EU law.
 
You have to distinguish between conservative and more secularised Muslims.
I agree that many of the values of conservative Muslims are incompatible with our more liberal secular culture.
 

I am not knocking concerns. But I think a key word is missing. 'SOME' muslims believe the above. Muslim women have risen to power in countries like Pakistan. (The US or Ireland still hasn't voted for a female leader). Some of the top scholars are muslim women.

I don't think anyone would argue that there isn't a lot of work to be done with regard to attitudes around homosexuality but even the liberal West non-muslims have struggled with this. Look at how divisive, the recent debate in Australia was. The Catholic church has barely changed their views so am not going to condemn another religion when my own is so behind the times.
 
The core point in all of this is that populist and racist politicians across the EU are blaming a tiny minority of asylum seekers for broader social and economic problems. There is absolutely no basis for this in fact.

Please find me one major Italian party who lay the majority of the blame for Italy's social and economic problems at the hands of asylum seekers.
If that was the case why was 'austerity' and the euro also a hot topic in the election?
 
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Everything I have said is in the context of the Italian elections. Are the hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Italy refugees or economic migrants?
160,000 arrived in 2016, 116,000 arrived in 2017. That's a reduction of about one third. It's a problem but it has nothing to do with Italy's debt or stagnant economy.

If an economic migrant arrives at an Italian port and claims asylum, Italy under EU law must treat them as a refugee. Which is why Italy is seeking changes to EU law governing refugee \ asylum.
No, under EU law Italy and Italian law determines if they are a refugee or an economic immigrant. Once that happens the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees kicks in.
 
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All the above covers is refugees who are protected by the Geneva convention.
Exactly. Italy, just like Ireland, have signed up to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and later protocols.
 
Have you anything to back that up?
Most refugees to be jobless for years, German minister warns
Prediction of long-term unemployment as hopes fade of boost to workforce skills
https://www.ft.com/content/022de0a4-54f4-11e7-9fed-c19e2700005f

I think it's deliberately misinterpreting the OP to say that Italians are laying all the blame for their country's problems on immigration. And I don't think it's fair to say that all populist parties are working solely off that mantra either.
Be that in Italy or other European countries that have moved to the right.

Immigration is a real concern for many and it's a valid concern. Dismissing it as populist, possibly racist or just being overly fearful is exactly what Brussels and Govt's throughout Western Europe have being doing for the past 20 years. And where are we now?
I don't want to see extreme right wing parties getting closer to power but if the Eu continues on it's current path, they are playing directly into the hands of those parties.

What has being going on in the Med for the past few years is nothing short of a ferry service. 'Build it' and they will come.
What Merkel did a few years ago in opening Germany's border and therefore the EU's, was high reckless and has created a political crisis throughout the EU. It was an open invitation to one and all to walk on into Europe unopposed and visa free. Syrians barely made up half of those that came in that 1.5m exodus in 2015/16.

Immigration is a problem for many whether the more liberal want to admit it or not. We either deal with it now and in a coherent manner that most people will agree with or we continue to allow the far right to grow.
 
Most refugees to be jobless for years, German minister warns
Prediction of long-term unemployment as hopes fade of boost to workforce skills
https://www.ft.com/content/022de0a4-54f4-11e7-9fed-c19e2700005f

It's behind a pay-wall so i can't read it but does it distinguish between working age refugees and children? Does it clarify if the 5 years will be due to delays in processing their applications?


The populist parties in Italy, and elsewhere, are conflating numerous issues, including immigration, and offering them up as the cause of their countries ills. Immigration has nothing to do with the economic problems facing Italy. It has nothing to do with the problems facing Greece. I haven't suggested that they are working solely off the mantra that immigrants are the source of their countries economic ills.

The Dublin accord gave power to individual countries to set their own immigration policies. The agreement with Turkey to warehouse the refugees from Syria etc has greatly reduced the flow. What else do you suggest should be done? We could stick a few 50mm machine guns ion the ships we send to the Med and just sink the boats and dinghies coming from Libya etc. Would that help? What, exactly, should the EU do to stop the flow of refugees ending up in Italy and Greece?
The reason they do end up in Italy is because Italy, rightly in my opinion, lets them in rather than let them die. Their neighbours, also in the EU, don't let any of them in. That is because each EU country can and does set its own immigration policy. Having said that the flow of refugees to Italy in the second half of 2017 was down by 70% on the same period in 2016.

I don't want to see extreme right wing parties getting closer to power but if the Eu continues on it's current path, they are playing directly into the hands of those parties.
What path? What, specifically, is the EU doing that it should do differently?

What has being going on in the Med for the past few years is nothing short of a ferry service. 'Build it' and they will come.
I think it was more a case of blow up their country and they'll leave.

1.5 million into a population of 500 million. You're right, Jordan got away lightly; 750,000 out of a population of 10 million. 90% of them are Syrian. The per capita income of Jordan is just under $10,000. In the EU it's $35,000. So, we have 45 times fewer refugees per capita than them but three and a half times the income... but we have the crisis, right?


Immigration is a problem for many whether the more liberal want to admit it or not. We either deal with it now and in a coherent manner that most people will agree with or we continue to allow the far right to grow.
Are you talking about refugees or immigrants?

What we need is a real and factual conversation about our place in the world. That should include starting wars about gas pipelines and broader geo-politics as well as just how rich and insulated we are from what goes on in large parts of the rest of the world.

The real problem is that for once a little bit of the mess we helped to create landed on out doorstep.
 
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Exactly the type of post that is part of the problem around the debate on immigration...."50mm machine guns" , talk of a Dublin accord which effectively died the day Merkle opened the borders and then practically imposed quotas on other EU state, downplaying of the numbers coming in in any 1 year.

Like abortion, immigration debates quickly get down and dirty.
 
I don't think anyone would argue that there isn't a lot of work to be done with regard to attitudes around homosexuality

and in my opinion also with regard to attitudes around women, your points are well made but not imo comprehensive, and with regards to integration.

The issue is that little or nothing is being done about starting this work. Indeed many commentators suggest that such work should not be done.
 
That's just selective nit-picking devoid of any facts or policies.
The Dublin Accord is the EU law, the repeal of which the 5Star movement have made a central part of their campaign. Merkle didn't open the borders, that's just emotive nonsense. She didn't impose quotas on other EU states, literally or practically. She asked and most countries said no.

Can you answer any of the questions I asked?
 
The core point in all of this is that populist and racist politicians across the EU are blaming a tiny minority of asylum seekers for broader social and economic problems. There is absolutely no basis for this in fact.

The core point is that Europe is circumscribed by countries for whose inhabitants our standard of living is unimaginably high. The opportunities available to our children are far beyond anything available to theirs.

People see our level of material achievement and understandably they want that for themselves. Unfortunately their education systems and culture prevent them for the most part from being able to contribute significantly to building that material achievement. It is no coincidence that attitudes toward women in public life changed as we built our current prosperity.

Many Europeans worry that the difference in living standards across the Mediterranean will cause problems for a long time to come. They do not see the political system as having anything meaningful to say in response to this situation. EU support for industrialisation in Morocco is perhaps the one positive initiate in this situation. But that is more an exception than a norm.
 

You called the rescue missions a Ferry Service.

Someone else said 'only europe sends out ships to "rescue" migrants in the sea and drops them in italy'

Amazing how quickly everyone forgets about the picture of the young boy in the red shirt. Do you think his parents valued his life less than we value our childrens that they would risk him travelling by sea like this simply to earn a few euro. Are we really going to just let bodies get washed up on our coastlines and not care? Are we really saying we would rather let them drown or return them a place to Syria that they were so desperate to escape that they risked their childrens lives to escape?

Nobody is saying there should be an open door policy to immigration but look at what happened when the new states all got access to the EU. All these scare stories. How we would be taken over by the Poles and Romanians. Its the same now.
 

You called the rescue missions a Ferry Service.

Someone else said 'only europe sends out ships to "rescue" migrants in the sea and drops them in italy' like it is a Sunday sail in Dublin Bay that has gone wrong.

They are equally as bad.

Amazing how quickly everyone forgets about the picture of the young boy in the red shirt. Do you think his parents valued his life less than we value our childrens that they would risk him travelling by sea like this. Are we really going to just let bodies get washed up on our coastlines and not care? Are we really saying we would rather let them drown or return them a place to Syria that they were so desperate to escape that they risked their childrens lives to escape?

Nobody is saying there should be an open door policy to immigration but look at what happened when the new states all got access to the EU. All these scare stories. How we would be taken over by the Poles and Romanians. Has our society
 
The core point is that Europe is circumscribed by countries for whose inhabitants our standard of living is unimaginably high. The opportunities available to our children are far beyond anything available to theirs.
That's part of the problem alright but it isn't the core problem. I don't think there is one core problem.

Do you really think that the main reason we are richer is that "their education systems and culture prevent them for the most part from being able to contribute significantly to building that material achievement". Do you think that our protectionist economic policies, historical and current political and military interference in their countries and regions have nothing to do with it? Read, well, any book on the history of the Middle East in the last 100 years, but particularly the period between 1918 and the 1960's and come back to me. The suppression of Arab nationalism, the undermining of the Hashemites in Arabia and the support for a savage, barbaric fundamentalist tribe in order to create a client state of the British (and later the Americans) etc etc. To put it all down to their religion, culture and nature is to ignore history.

Many Europeans worry that the difference in living standards across the Mediterranean will cause problems for a long time to come.
And rightly so. Why don't we start with not starting wars there? That should help.

They do not see the political system as having anything meaningful to say in response to this situation.
They do not see the political system offering easy answers. The reason for that is that there are no easy answers. The populists always trade on simplistic easy answers, just like the anti-reality alliance here (or whatever they call themselves now).

EU support for industrialisation in Morocco is perhaps the one positive initiate in this situation. But that is more an exception than a norm.
There are plenty of good things being done but there are plenty of bad things as well. Supporting relatively moderate countries such as Iran and opposing extremist countries which support terrorism and spend vast sums of money funding extremism in Europe (Saudi Arabia) would be a good start.
 
Nit picking and devoid of facts ...exactly what I was thinking reading your contributions thus far.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41172638
The EU's top court has rejected a challenge by Hungary and Slovakia to a migrant relocation deal drawn up at the height of the crisis in 2015.
The European Court of Justice overruled their objections to the compulsory fixed-quota scheme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis
Late on 4 September 2015, Chancellor Werner Faymann of Austria, in conjunction with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, announced that migrants would be allowed to cross the border from Hungary into Austria and onward to Germany

And with regards to your earlier post and the FT article I posed...if you really wanted, you could find that article.
But your a smart guy Purple...do you honestly believe that 1 of the reasons for high unemployment is because of delays in process applications? Or if you actually thought about it, is it more likely to do with lack of skills and educational qualifications. Or do you believe the myth that it was mostly Doctors and Engineers who arrived into Europe???

You reference Jordan and the number of people having to go there. It's a neighbour of Syria, thats what happens in war. It costs a fraction in euro terms to educate/house/provide health care to displaced persons in Jordan/Lebanon v's what it does in Europe. Norway produced a very good study on this.
Foreign aid should have been pumped into those camps to provide the basic needs though I don't think that would have stopped the flows once word got out that Europe was open.
The people coming to Europe through the Balkans had crossed through at last 2 safe countries before heading into Greece.

All the ferries in the Med have done is encourage migration, first into Libya and then on to Europe. This has then contributed massively to the result we have just seen in Italy just like migration through the Balkan route has done the same in Austria and to a lesser but still significant degree in Germany. It will lead to right wing parties getting stronger in Sweden and other countries will follow. It has made Hungary, Cezh and Poland near pariah states within the EU.

And all this talk (note, there has been no debate) of Ireland 2040 and another 1m in the state, around 50% of whom will be new migrants (and Govt figures on migrants are always hopelessly under estimated )....well, don't be surprised if there is a far right party here by then also.

Europe has in part created this crisis and even encouraged aspects of it at the elite levels. Don't be surprised when the voters bite back whether you believe their views to be a correct interpretation or not.
 
You are saying exactly that!
That poor boy who drowned (along with most of his family) was making a very dangerous crossing from a safe country (Turkey) into the EU illegally. They were doing this because they knew they would never get a VISA and because once in the EU by any means, you are there forever.
There are reports that it was his father who drove the boat and he was questioned by authorities about that!
 
Nit picking and devoid of facts ...exactly what I was thinking reading your contributions thus far.
I've gone into considerable detail and asked you specific questions, none of which you have even attempted to answer.

And with regards to your earlier post and the FT article I posed...if you really wanted, you could find that article.
Ok, so I should illegally view content that's behind a pay-wall? No, just like I don't steal TV content and Movies through illegal downloads.

Total strawman argument. Who here, or anywhere, suggested that it was mostly Doctors and Engineers who arrived into Europe?

Okay, so pay someone else to deal with it but don't let the darkies into our back yard.

The people coming to Europe through the Balkans had crossed through at last 2 safe countries before heading into Greece.
Yes, and the Dublin Protocols mean that those people should be returned to their post of first entry. The EU is trying to prevent that happening but individual EU countries, in this case Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia, are ignoring EU law.

There you go again with the ferries. We are talking about a tiny minority of people. They may be used as an excuse as a justification for the rise of far right parties but history shows us that they are good at picking on minorities.

People born in the EU, UK, USA, Australia and Canada make up around 90% of our immigrants. The rest of the world make up the balance. That includes China, India etc. Which of those places should we ban?

Europe has in part created this crisis and even encouraged aspects of it at the elite levels. Don't be surprised when the voters bite back whether you believe their views to be a correct interpretation or not.
Can you back that up with anything?