Europe
Here’s why it’s so hard to buy vegetables in the UK
When European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen visited Britain last week, some joked on social media: Can you please bring us some tomatoes?
People in the U.K. have had to ration salad staples like tomatoes and cucumbers for the past two weeks amid a shortage of fresh vegetables. Shelves of fresh produce in many stores have been bare, and most major supermarkets have imposed limits on how many salad bags or bell peppers customers are allowed to buy.
Officials blame the problem on recent bad weather in Spain and North Africa, saying the shortages could persist for up to a month. But many people were quick to point out that other European countries don’t seem to be suffering the same challenges, leading some to wonder if it was a consequence of Britain’s divorce from the EU.
Britain’s government has rejected the suggestion that Brexit is to blame. But shoppers aren’t happy, and Environment Secretary Therese Coffey’s suggestion that consumers should “cherish” British produce and eat more turnips instead of imported food drew widespread mockery.
Experts say Brexit likely played a part in the food shortage, though a more complex set of factors — including climate change, the U.K.’s overreliance on imports during the winter, soaring energy costs and the competitive pricing strategies at British supermarkets — are more salient explanations.
A look at some of the factors contributing to what one European broadcaster has called Britain’s “vegetable fiasco”:
COLD WEATHER, HIGH ENERGY BILLS
Unusually cold temperatures in Spain and heavy rain and flooding in Morocco — two of the biggest tomato suppliers to the U.K. — have led to poor yields and are cited as the primary cause of the shortage.
In Spain, farmers blame recent freezing temperatures following record heat and dry conditions last year.
In the southern province of Almeria, which grows 40% of Spain’s fresh vegetable exports, the production levels of tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplants fell by over 20% during the first three weeks of February compared with the same period in 2022, according to FEPEX, an organization representing Spanish fruit and vegetable exporters. The group said the situation is improving.
Heat and drought in Europe last year also are affecting vegetable harvests in other countries, including Germany.
Separately, the Netherlands, another major tomato producer, has seen a drop in output because skyrocketing energy bills tied to Russia’s war in Ukraine meant many growers couldn’t justify the cost of turning on the LED lights in their greenhouses this winter.
Vegetable growers in the U.K. have reported that they, too, were forced to leave their greenhouses empty.
Richard Diplock, managing director at the Green House Growers based in southern England, said his energy costs are some six times higher compared with previous winters.
“We made the decision that we couldn’t afford to heat the greenhouses in December and January, and we’ve held back planting until February. Lots of tomato growers are in a similar position,” he said.
BLAMING BREXIT
The shortages in Britain — and contrasting pictures of full vegetable shelves in supermarkets in mainland Europe — led to a degree of Brexit schadenfreude in some EU news outlets.
Experts say extra bureaucracy and costs associated with Brexit have played a part, though they stress it’s not a main factor.
“One hypothesis for fewer exports to the U.K. is that if supply is constrained, why would you go to extra paperwork (to export to Britain)?” said Michael Winter, a professor of agricultural change at the University of Exeter. “If transaction costs are greater for exporting to one country compared to another, that’s going to dictate where you go.”
“Brexit has exaggerated the problem, without a doubt,” Winter added. “But I don’t want to overplay that. It’s more to do with climate change and lack of investment in our industry.”
SUPERMARKET PRICING
Farmers say another factor is how Britain’s biggest supermarkets have sought to stay competitive by keeping prices as low as possible even as food costs have spiked, a major driver of inflation that’s at the highest levels in decades.
In some EU countries, like Germany, there are no empty shelves, but the prices for fresh vegetables have shot up massively. British supermarkets are reluctant to pay more or charge customers so much, Diplock said.
“Being in the U.K., you know every week the price of a cucumber is 75p ($0.90) no matter what time of year it is,” Diplock said. “North African and Spanish producers will see a better return for supplying European supermarkets.”
“WHERE’S THE INVESTMENT?”
Even if energy costs hadn’t risen so much, British growers would not come close to making up for the shortfalls in imported produce, Diplock said.
During the winter, domestic U.K. production only accounts for 5% or less of tomatoes and cucumbers sold in British supermarkets.
The National Farmers’ Union has warned for months that overreliance on imported fresh produce leaves the U.K. vulnerable to unpredictable weather events and other external factors like the war in Ukraine.
Farmers also have complained about the lack of government investment in the sector and funding to help them cope with painfully high energy bills.
The government has spent billions to help consumers and businesses as European natural gas prices soared to record highs on Russia’s curtailed supplies.
“The bigger question is why have we, in this country, neglected horticulture,” Winter said. “This is a bit of a wake-up call.”
A look at some of Europe’s train disasters in recent times
A head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train in Greece has killed dozens of people and injured scores more. Rail travel in Europe is a common and relatively affordable and convenient way for many Europeans to travel.
It also has a good safety record overall, growing safer in past years. Yet the tragedy in Greece is a reminder of how deadly crashes can be when they happen. Here is a look at some of the most deadly train crashes in recent years.
FUNICULAR FIRE
In November 2000, a cable car on a funicular railway caught fire in a mountain tunnel in Kaprun, Austria, killing 155 people. Those who died were skiers and snowboarders heading to the slopes of the Kitzsteinhorn mountain.
Read more: Rescuers comb wreckage of Greece’s deadliest train crash
HIGH-SPEED TRAIN HITS BRIDGE
In June 1998, a high-speed train traveling at 200 kph (125 mph) collided with a bridge at Eschede, Germany, causing it to collapse, a crash that killed 101 people and injured more than 100. It was Germany’s deadliest postwar rail disaster.
SPANISH COMMUTER TRAIN
In July 2013, a commuter train hurtled off the rails as it came around a bend near the northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela, killing 80 and injuring 145 others. An investigation showed the train was traveling 179 kph (111 mph) on a stretch with an 80 kph (50 mph) speed limit when it left the tracks and smashed into a wall. The case finally went to trial in October with the driver and a former railway security director accused of professional negligence. A verdict is expected in the coming months.
SPANISH SUBWAY TRAIN
A subway train traveling at excessive speed crashed in an underground tunnel in the eastern city of Valencia in July 2006, killing 43 people and injuring scores more. It took 13 years for a court to find four managers of the city’s subway system guilty of negligent manslaughter for not taking the necessary safety measures needed to prevent the tragedy.
Read more: Fiery Greece train collision kills 32, injures at least 85
TRAIN PLUNGES INTO RAVINE
In January 2006, a failure of the braking system in a train caused it to derail and plunge into a ravine outside the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica. The crash killed 45 people, including five children, and injured a further 184. It was the worst train disaster in Montenegro’s history.
EXPLOSION AT STATION
In 2009, a freight train carrying gas derailed at the Viareggio station, near the Tuscan city of Lucca, and exploded, killing 32 people. Poorly maintained axels of the train were blamed.
HEAD-ON CRASH IN LONDON
The worst rail crash in Britain in the past 30 years happened in October 1999, when a train heading out of London’s Paddington station went through a red light and crashed into an incoming high-speed train, killing 31 people. Around 400 people were injured.
COMMUTER TRAINS CRASH
In July 2016, two Italian commuter trains collided head-on in late morning between towns in the southern region of Puglia, killing 31 people and injuring scores more. An investigation found an error of communication between the stations that each train had departed from.
RUSH HOUR CRASH NEAR BRUSSELS
On Feb. 15, 2010, two commuter trains slammed into one another just outside Brussels during morning rush hour when one ran a red light. In all, 19 people were killed and 171 injured in the nation’s worst train crash. Compounding the tragedy was that a similar red-light crash had happened years before and that promises to add security measures weren’t fully implemented.
Rescuers comb wreckage of Greece’s deadliest train crash
Rescuers searched late into the night Wednesday for survivors amid the mangled, burned-out wrecks of two trains that collided in northern Greece, killing at least 43 people and crumpling carriages into twisted steel knots in the country’s deadliest rail crash.
The impact just before midnight Tuesday threw some passengers into ceilings and out the windows.
“My head hit the roof of the carriage with the jolt,” Stefanos Gogakos, who was in a rear car, told state broadcaster ERT. He said windows shattered, showering riders with glass.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called the collision of the passenger train and a freight train “a horrific rail accident without precedent in our country,” and pledged a full, independent investigation.
He said it appeared the crash was “mainly due to a tragic human error,” but did not elaborate.
The train from Athens to Thessaloniki was carrying 350 passengers, many of them students returning from raucous Carnival celebrations. While the track is double, both trains were traveling in opposite directions on the same line near the Vale of Tempe, a river valley about 380 kilometers (235 miles) north of Athens.
STATIONMASTER ARRESTED; MINISTER RESIGNS
Authorities arrested the stationmaster at the train’s last stop, in the city of Larissa. They did not release the man’s name or the reason for the arrest, but the stationmaster is responsible for rail traffic on that stretch of the tracks. He was due to appear before a prosecutor Thursday to be formally charged.
Transportation Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned, saying he was stepping down “as a basic indication of respect for the memory of the people who died so unfairly.”
Karamanlis said he had made “every effort” to improve a railway system that had been “in a state that doesn’t befit the 21st century.”
But, he added, “When something this tragic happens, it’s impossible to continue as if nothing has happened.”
The union representing train workers announced a 24-hour strike for Thursday, while protests by left-wing groups broke out in Athens late Wednesday. Athens metro workers also called a 24-hour strike for Thursday, saying they face similar problems as railway employees.
WRECKAGE MAKES RESCUE EFFORTS DIFFICULT
Emergency workers used cranes and other heavy machinery to move large pieces of the trains, revealing more bodies and dismembered remains. The operation was to continue overnight, with firefighters proceeding painstakingly through the wreckage.
“It’s unlikely there will be survivors, but hope dies last,” rescuer Nikos Zygouris said.
Larissa’s chief coroner, Roubini Leondari, said 43 bodies had been brought to her for examination and would require DNA identification as they were largely disfigured.
“Most (of the bodies) are young people,” she told ERT. “They are in very bad condition.”
Greece’s firefighting service said 57 people remained hospitalized late Wednesday, including six in intensive care. More than 15 others were discharged after receiving treatment.
More than 200 people who were unharmed or suffered minor injuries were taken by bus to Thessaloniki, 130 kilometers (80 miles) to the north. Police took their names as they arrived, in an effort to track anyone who may be missing.
Hellenic Train, which operates all of Greece’s passenger and cargo trains, including those that collided, offered its “heartfelt condolences” to the victims’ families. The company belongs to Italy’s state railways.
Eight rail employees were among the dead, including the two drivers of the freight train and the two drivers of the passenger train, according to Yannis Nitsas, president of the Greek Railroad Workers Union.
The union called the one-day strike to protest what it said was chronic neglect of Greece’s railways by successive governments.
“Unfortunately, our long-standing demands for staff hirings, better training and above all use of modern safety technology always end up in the wastepaper basket,” it said in a statement.
PASSENGERS SAY TRAIN CRASH WAS LIKE AN EXPLOSION
A teenage survivor who did not give his name to reporters said that just before the crash he felt sudden braking and saw sparks — and then there was a sudden stop.
“Our carriage didn’t derail, but the ones in front did and were smashed,” he said, visibly shaken. He used a bag to break the window of his car, the fourth, and escape.
Gogakos said the crash felt like an explosion, and some smoke entered the carriage. He said some passengers escaped through windows but that after a few minutes, crew members were able to open the doors and let people out.
Multiple cars derailed, and at least one burst into flames.
“Temperatures reached 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,372 degrees Fahrenheit), which makes it even more difficult to identify the people who were in it,” fire service spokesperson Vassilis Varthakoyiannis said.
A man who was trying to ascertain the fate of his daughter, who was on the train, said he had a harrowing phone conversation with her before she was cut off.
“She told me, ‘We’re on fire. ... My hair is burning,’” he told ERT, without giving his name.
GREECE GOES FROM CARNIVAL TO MOURNING
Many of the passengers were students returning to Thessaloniki from Carnival, but officials said but no detailed passenger list was available. This year was the first time the festival, which precedes Lent, was celebrated in full since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
The government declared three days of national mourning from Wednesday, while flags flew at half-staff outside all European Commission buildings in Brussels.
Visiting the accident scene, Prime Minister Mitsotakis said the government must help the injured recover and identify the dead.
“I can guarantee one thing: We will find out the causes of this tragedy, and we will do all that’s in our power so that something like this never happens again,” Mitsotakis said.
It was the country’s deadliest rail crash on record. In 1968, 34 people died in a crash in the southern Peloponnese region.
Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou broke off an official visit to Moldova to visit the scene, laying flowers beside the wreckage.
Pope Francis offered condolences to the families of the dead in a message sent to the president of the Greek bishops conference by the Vatican’s secretary of state,
Condolences poured in from around the world, including neighboring Turkey, Greece’s historic regional rival. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed sorrow and wishes for a speedy recovery for those injured, his office said.
Despite the frosty relations between the two NATO members, Greece’s leadership had called Erdogan last month following a massive earthquake that killed tens of thousands in Turkey.
In Athens, several hundred members of left-wing groups marched late Wednesday to protest the train deaths. Minor clashes broke out as some protesters threw stones at the offices of Greece’s rail operator and riot police and set dumpsters on fire. No arrests or injuries were reported.
Finland’s Parliament gives final approval for NATO bid
Finland’s Parliament gave final approval Wednesday to the Nordic country’s bid to join NATO, with lawmakers signing off on membership along with the required legislation.
The 200-seat Eduskunta legislature voted 184-7 to authorize Finland’s accession to NATO, clearing the last required domestic hurdle to becoming part of the 30-member Western military alliance.
Two of NATO’s 30 existing members, Turkey and Hungary, have yet to ratify the joint application Finland and neighboring Sweden made last year. Admitting new members requires unanimous approval.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s center-left government initiated the vote, seeking to secure the approval of her country’s lawmakers before an April 2 general election.
President Sauli Niinisto has pledged to sign Wednesday’s legislative decisions into law before the election.
Finland and Sweden, which are close partners culturally, economically and politically, applied together to join NATO in May 2022. Their bid is historic as Finland has remained military non-aligned since World War II, and Sweden has not been in a military conflict in the past 200 years.
Most of the opposition to accepting Finland and Sweden as new NATO members comes from Turkey, which wants stronger action, mostly from Sweden, against groups that Ankara considers as terrorist organizations.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Wednesday that Sweden needs a law which forbids participation in terrorist organizations -- a move considered important for Turkey to sign off on Sweden’s NATO application.
“For far too long, Sweden has had too lax legislation regarding the possibility of participating in terrorist activities without it being a crime,” Swedish news agency TT quoted Kristersson as saying.
Such a law is expected to be take effect by June 1, TT reported.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday in Helsinki that adding Finland and Sweden as members was “a top priority” for the alliance. He urged Turkey and Hungary to ratify the Nordic countries’ accession.
Turkey has agreed to resume talks with Finland and Sweden in Brussels this month to iron out obstacles and issues that Ankara has, especially with Sweden.
Meanwhile, Hungary’s parliament was scheduled to start debating the Nordic duo’s NATO membership on Wednesday, with expected ratification at the end of March.
A senior Hungarian lawmaker said last week that Hungary was planning to send a delegation to Finland and Sweden to resolve “political disputes” that have raised doubts among some Hungarian lawmakers of whether to support their NATO bids.
Italy: Migrants paid 8,000 euros each for ‘voyage of death’
Rescue teams pulled more bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the death toll from Italy’s latest migration tragedy to 65, as prosecutors identified suspected smugglers who allegedly charged 8,000 euros (nearly $8,500) for each person making the “voyage of death” from Turkey to Italy.
Authorities delayed a planned viewing of the coffins to allow more time for identification of the bodies, as desperate relatives and friends arrived in the Calabrian city of Crotone in hope of finding their loved ones, some of whom hailed from Afghanistan.
“I am looking for my aunt and her three children,” said Aladdin Mohibzada, adding that he drove 25 hours from Germany to reach the makeshift morgue set up at a sports stadium. He said he had ascertained that his aunt and two of the children died, but that a 5-year-old survived and was being sheltered in a center for minors.
Also Read: Deadly shipwreck in Italy must trigger action to save lives: UN
“We are looking into possibilities to send (the bodies) to Afghanistan, the bodies that are here,” he told The Associated Press outside the morgue. But he complained about a lack of information as authorities scrambled to cope with the disaster. “We are helpless here. We don’t know what we should do.”
At least 65 people, including 14 minors, died when their overcrowded wooden boat slammed into shoals 100 meters (yards) off the shore of Cutro and broke apart early Sunday in rough seas. Eighty people survived, but many more are feared dead since survivors indicated the boat had carried about 170 people when it set off last week from Izmir, Turkey.
Aid groups at the scene have said many of the passengers hailed from Afghanistan, including entire families, as well as from Pakistan, Syria and Iraq. Rescue teams pulled two bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the toll to 65, police said.
Also Read: Rescuers find 60th body off Italy after migrant shipwreck
Premier Giorgia Meloni sent a letter to European leaders demanding quick action on the continent’s longstanding migration problem, insisting that migrants must be stopped from risking their lives on dangerous sea crossings.
“The point is, the more people who set off, the more people risk dying,” she told RAI state television late Monday.
Meloni’s right-wing government, which swept elections last year in part on promises to crack down on migration, has concentrated on complicating efforts by humanitarian boats to make multiple rescues in the central Mediterranean by assigning them ports of disembarkation along Italy’s northern coasts. That means the vessels need more time to return to sea after bringing migrants aboard and taking them safely to shore.
But aid groups’ rescue ships don’t normally operate in the area of Sunday’s shipwreck, which occurred off the Calabrian coast in the Ionian Sea. Rather, the aid groups generally operate in the central Mediterranean, rescuing migrants who set off from Libya or Tunisia — not from Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean.
Crotone prosecutor Giuseppe Capoccia confirmed investigators had identified three suspected smugglers, a Turk and two Pakistani nationals. A second Turk is believed to have escaped or died in the wreck.
Italy’s border police said in a statement that organizers of the crossing charged 8,000 euros (around $8,500) each for the “voyage of death.”
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi pushed back at suggestions that the rescue was delayed or affected by government policy discouraging aid groups from staying at sea to rescue migrants.
The EU border agency Frontex has said its aircraft spotted the boat off Crotone at 10:26 p.m. Saturday and alerted Italian authorities. Italy sent out two patrol vessels, but they had to turn back because of the poor weather.
Piantedosi told a parliamentary committee that the ship ran aground and broke apart at around 5 a.m. Sunday.
“There was no delay,” Piantedosi told Corriere della Sera. “Everything possible was done in absolutely prohibitive sea conditions.”
The Italian Coast Guard issued a statement on Tuesday saying Frontex had indicated that the migrants’ boat was “navigating normally” and that only one person could be seen above deck.
It added that an Italian border police vessel, “already operating in the sea” set out to intercept the migrant boat.
“At about 4:30 a.m., some indications by telephone from subjects on land, relative to a boat in danger a few meters from the coast, reached the Coast Guard,″ the statement said.
At that point, a Carabinieri police boat which had been alerted by border police “informed the Coast Guard about the shipwreck.”
In contrast to similar cases of migrant vessels in distress, “no phone indication ever came from migrants aboard” to the Coast Guard, the statement noted.
Not rarely, migrants aboard a vessel in distress contact Alarm Phone, a humanitarian support hotline which relays indications of boats in trouble in the Mediterranean to maritime authorities.
When briefing lawmakers, the interior minister cited figures supporting Italy’s long-held frustration that fellow European Union nations don’t honor pledges to accept a share of asylum-seeking migrants who reach Italy.
Piantedosi said that while these pledges covered some 8,000 migrant relocations from June last year through this month, only 387 people actually were transferred to other EU nations, with Germany taking in most of them.
Fiery Greece train collision kills 32, injures at least 85
A passenger train in Greece carrying hundreds of people collided with an oncoming freight train in a fiery wreck in the country's north early Wednesday, killing 32 and injuring at least 85, officials said.
Multiple cars derailed and at least three burst into flames after the collision near Tempe, a small town next to a valley where major highway and rail tunnels are located, some 380 kilometers (235 miles) north of Athens.
Survivors said several passengers were thrown through the windows of the train cars due to the impact. They said others fought to free themselves after the passenger train buckled, slamming into a field next to the tracks.
Hospital officials in the nearby city of Larissa said at least 25 people had serious injuries.
“The evacuation process is ongoing and is being carried out under very difficult conditions due to the severity of the collision between the two trains,” said Vassilis Varthakoyiannis, a spokesperson for Greece’s firefighting service.
Rescuers wearing head lamps worked in thick smoke, pulling pieces of mangled metal from the cars to search for trapped people. Others scoured the field with flashlights and checked underneath the wreckage. Several of the dead are believed to have been found in the restaurant area near the front of the passenger train.
Also Read: Greece: 3 dead after boat with migrants hits rocks
The possible cause of the collision was not immediately clear. Two rail officials were being questioned by police but had not been detained.
Passengers who received minor injuries or were unharmed were transported by bus to Thessaloniki, 130 kilometers (80 miles) to the north. Police took their names as they arrived, in an effort to track anyone who may be missing.
A teenage survivor who did not give his name told reporters as he got off one of the buses that just before the crash, he felt a strong braking and saw sparks and then there was a sudden stop.
“Our carriage didn’t derail, but the ones in front did and were smashed,” he said, visibly shaken.
He added that the first car caught fire and that he used a bag to break the window of his car, the fourth, and escape.
Also Read: Cargo plane carrying munitions from Serbia to Bangladesh crashes in Greece
Rail operator Hellenic Train said the northbound passenger train from Athens to Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, had about 350 passengers on board.
In comments to state television, Costas Agorastos, the regional governor of the Thessaly area, described the collision as “very powerful" and said it was “a terrible night.”
“The front section of the train was smashed. ... We’re getting cranes to come in and special lifting equipment clear the debris and lift the rail cars. There's debris flung all around the crash site."
Officials said the army had been contacted to assist.
Hellenic Train, which has added highspeed services in recent years, is operated by Italy's FS Group, which runs rail services in several European countries.
Rescuers find 60th body off Italy after migrant shipwreck
Rescue crews searched by sea and air Monday for the dozens of people believed still missing from a shipwreck off Italy’s southern coast that drove home once again the desperate and dangerous crossings of migrants seeking to reach Europe.
At least 80 people survived Sunday’s shipwreck off the Calabrian coast, but rescue crews recovered 60 bodies, including those of several children and the corpse of a young man Monday morning. Dozens more were feared dead given survivor reports that the ship, which set off from Turkey last week, had carried about 170 people.
The beach at Steccato di Cutro, on Calabria’s Ionian coast, was littered with the splintered remains of the ship that broke up in stormy seas on the reefs offshore, as well as the belongings the migrants had brought with them, including a toddler’s tiny pink sneaker and a yellow plastic pencil case decorated with pandas.
There were only a few life jackets scattered amid the debris.
On Monday, two coast guard vessels searched the seas north to south off Steccato di Cutro while a helicopter flew overhead and a four-wheel vehicle patrolled the beach. A strong wind whipped the seas that still churned up splinters of the ship, gas tanks, food containers and shoes. A pickup truck came to take away the body of the latest victim.
Firefighter Inspector Giuseppe Larosa said what gutted the first rescue crews who arrived on the scene was how many children were killed, and that the bodies of the dead had scratches all over them, as if they had tried to hang onto the ship to save themselves.
“It was a chilling scene. Bodies spread out on the beach, so many bodies, so many children," he said on the beach Monday morning. He said he had focused on the recovery efforts, but he was struck by what he found in the survivors.
“What struck me was their silence," he said. “Terror in their eyes, but mute. Silent."
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, who has spearheaded Italy’s crackdown on migration, visited the scene Sunday and met with local officials in Crotone. At a news conference, he insisted the solution was to put an end to migrant crossings at their origin.
“I ask myself how it’s possible that these crossings are organized, pushing women and children to make the trips that end up tragically dangerous,” he said.
Italy's government under Premier Giorgia Meloni has focused on trying to block migrant ships from departing, while discouraging humanitarian rescue teams from operating in the Mediterranean. Meloni said Sunday that the government was committed to that policy “above all by insisting on the maximum collaboration with the countries of origin and departure.”
Italy has complained bitterly for years that fellow European Union countries have balked at taking in migrants, many of whom are aiming to find family or work in northern Europe. Italy is a prime destination, especially for smuggling operations launching boats from Libyan shores.
But Italy is also a destination for smugglers leaving from Turkey. According to U.N. figures, arrivals from the Turkish route accounted for 15% of the 105,000 migrants who arrived on Italian shores last year, with nearly half of those fleeing from Afghanistan.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for a redoubling of efforts to deal with the problem.
“The resulting loss of life of innocent migrants is a tragedy,” she said.
Meloni’s government has concentrated on complicating efforts by humanitarian boats to make multiple rescues in the central Mediterranean by assigning them ports of disembarkation along Italy’s northern coasts. That means the vessels need more time to return to the sea after bringing migrants aboard and taking them safely to shore.
Humanitarian organizations have lamented that the crackdown also includes an order to the charity boats not to remain at sea after the first rescue operation in hopes of performing other rescues, but to head immediately to their assigned port. Violators face stiff fines and confiscation of rescue vessels.
France to unveil new economic, military strategy in Africa
French President Emmanuel Macron will unveil on Monday his country’s changing economic and military strategy in Africa in the coming years, as France’s influence substantially declines on the continent.
Macron is expected to call for a more balanced partnership with African nations, in a speech at the Elysee presidential palace before he begins an ambitious Africa trip on Wednesday to Gabon, Angola, the Republic of Congo and Congo.
Monday’s speech comes at a time when France’s influence on the continent is facing more challenges than it has in decades.
In less than a year, French troops had to withdraw from Mali, which turned instead to Russian military contractors, and most recently from Burkina Faso, which also appears to increasingly look towards Moscow.
A growing anti-France sentiment has led to street protests in several West and North African countries against the former colonial power.
In addition, historical economic ties that France had with the region are being challenged by the growing commercial presence of Russia, China and Turkey.
“It’s not a trip that aims at getting into the race to regain a regretted influence,” a top official at the French presidency said. The trip isn’t aimed to “try to get back to the past. It’s more to respond to a demand for partnership, for relations, but with new methods and a new approach,” he said.
The official was speaking on condition of anonymity in line with the French presidency’s customary practices.
Macron is notably expected to detail changes that France will bring in its military deployment in the Sahel region.
Last year, he announced the formal end of the so-called Barkhane military force after France withdrew its troops from Mali. French operations to help fight Islamic extremists in the Sahel region are now focusing mostly on Niger and Chad, where the country still has about 3,000 troops.
Macron in recent years insisted any French presence in Africa should be based on “partnership” in efforts to move away from post-colonial interference.
“Faced with the strategic threats ahead, whether it’s war in Ukraine, economic shock, pandemic shock, it’s crucial that Europe and Africa are as aligned as possible and get, let’s say, as intimate as possible in their dialogue,” the French official said.
Macron, 45, is the first French president born after the colonial era. He has previously sought to extend France’s cooperation with English-speaking countries, like Ghana and Kenya, and increase French investments in Africa’s private sector.
During this week’s tour, he will notably visit Portuguese-speaking Angola, with the aim to develop links especially in the fields of agriculture and food industry as well as energy, including oil and gas.
Yet Macron’s tour this week in central Africa already faces questions.
Some opposition activists in Gabon have denounced his visit, which they perceive as bringing support to President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose family has ruled since the 1960s, before the presidential election scheduled later this year.
Similar questions have been raised in Congo before a December presidential election.
“Before, during and after this trip, the president of the republic, like all French authorities, will show strict neutrality regarding these elections,” the French top official said.
The Elysee stressed that Macron is coming to Gabon mostly to attend a major climate-related summit focusing on the preservation of forests.
He will also seek to show France’s attachment to improving economic and cultural relations with two French-speaking countries, neighbouring Republic of Congo and Congo, not only via talks with authorities, but also by establishing links with local populations, entrepreneurs, artists and activists, according to the Elysee.
‘Love doesn’t exist’: Immigrants defy forced marriage abroad
From the day of her birth in Pakistan, Iram Aslam was betrothed to a cousin 17 days older. But to the young woman, who emigrated as a teenager to this Italian farm town on the Po River plain, the cousin felt like a brother. So on a visit to her homeland, she played for time, telling her aunts she wasn’t ready for marriage.
“They did everything possible to make me marry him,″ said Aslam, now 29. She said she told them: ”‘I don’t want to marry him and please don’t ask me anymore.’”
Her family, in both Italy and Pakistan, kept scheming to have her wed a man of their choice — and their caste. Aslam dismissed around 30 potential husbands.
“In the end, I made everyone angry, and no one talks to me anymore,” she said of her relatives in Pakistan.
In two murder trials this month, Italian prosecutors are seeking justice for Pakistani immigrant women allegedly killed because they refused marriages imposed by their parents. The cases highlight differences, often misconstrued as religion-based, between centuries-old immigrants’ cultural traditions and Western values prizing individualism.
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“I liked another person, wanted another one,″ Aslam said of her own situation. “But they didn’t want it, because among us, love doesn’t exist.” Love is viewed “as a sin,” she added, her thick, wavy brown hair covered by a multicolored headscarf. She asked that her face not be fully shown for fear of further antagonizing Pakistani neighbors in Guastalla, a town of 15,000 where they are the dominant immigrant community.
To escape marriage-obsessed relatives, Aslam went for a time to live in Germany.
But there was no escape for 18-year-old Saman Abbas.
Like Aslam, she emigrated as a teenager from Pakistan to an Italian farm town, Novellara, 11 kilometers (seven miles) from Guastalla.
In what appears to be an identity card photo taken shortly after her arrival, Abbas’ face is framed by a black hijab, or headscarf. But the young woman quickly embraced Western ways, appearing in social media posts with her hair tumbling out from under a bright red headband. In one, she and her Pakistani boyfriend were shown kissing on a street in the regional capital, Bologna.
According to Italian investigators, that kiss enraged Abbas’ parents, who wanted their daughter to marry a cousin in Pakistan.
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In November, her body was dug up in the ruins of a Novellara farmhouse. She had last been seen alive a few hundred yards away on April 30, 2021, in surveillance camera video as she walked with her parents on the watermelon farm where her father worked. A few days later, her parents caught a flight from Milan to Pakistan.
Abbas had reportedly told her boyfriend she feared for her life, because she refused to be married to an older man in her homeland.
An autopsy revealed a broken neck bone, possibly caused by strangulation.
An uncle and a cousin were extradited from France, and another cousin from Spain. They are now on trial in Reggio Emilia, the provincial capital with jurisdiction over Novellara, accused of Abbas’ murder.
Also indicted is her father, Shabbir Abbas, arrested in his village in eastern Punjab. The whereabouts of her mother, who is also charged, are unknown.
A lawyer for her father, Akhtar Mahmood, told Italian state television that the young woman’s family is innocent. He disputed prosecutors’ allegations, contending that she had wanted to return with her family to Pakistan to flee Western ways.
Asked about Italy’s request for Shabbir Abbas’ extradition, Pakistan’s ambassador to Italy, Ali Javed, told The Associated Press that the Pakistani government would “not hesitate” to do so. However, Italy has no extradition treaty with Pakistan.
Javed blamed “individual ignorance″ for forced marriage, which is illegal in Pakistan.
In 2019, Italy made coercing an Italian citizen or resident into marriage, even abroad, a crime covered under domestic violence laws.
Late this month, police in Spain detained the father of two sisters who were allegedly murdered while visiting family in Pakistan. The women had reportedly refused to have their husbands come to Spain after being forced to marry their cousins.
In the United Kingdom, home to Europe’s largest Pakistani community, the government’s Forced Marriage Unit cautioned that the problem of forced marriage isn’t “specific to one country, religion or culture” and said statistics don’t reflect “the full scale of the abuse” since forced marriage is a “hidden crime.”
Under the Italian justice system, civil plaintiffs can attach lawsuits for damages to criminal trials, and two organizations representing Islamic communities in Italy are among those suing in the Abbas trial.
Other plaintiffs include women’s advocacy organizations.
Tiziana Dal Pra, whose group, Trama delle Terre, promotes intercultural relations, said that while violence surrounding forced marriage “gets interpreted as religious,” what’s really at play is “patriarchal control” of women’s bodies.
In December, a court in the northern city of Brescia convicted and gave five-year prison sentences to three Pakistani immigrants — the parents and older brother of four girls — for beating them and keeping them out of school.
According to court documents, the parents threatened their daughters that if they refused arranged marriages, they would end up like that “girl in Pakistan.”
The court said that threat referred to 25-year-old Sana Cheema, who was slain when she returned from Italy to Pakistan in 2018, allegedly at her parents’ insistence.
By her friends’ accounts, Cheema, who had taken Italian citizenship, loved her life in Brescia, where she worked out at a gym, went out for coffee with girlfriends and danced with them at a disco. She was proud of her job teaching at a driving school in the northern city.
Brescia prosecutors are now trying Cheema’s father and brother in absentia on a novel charge: murder in violation of the political right to marry one’s own choice.
In 2019, a court in Pakistan acquitted the two on murder charges, citing insufficient evidence. But Italy’s justice ministry ruled the Brescia trial could go forward since Pakistan and Italy have no agreement governing cases involving so-called judicial double jeopardy.
Cheema’s family initially told Pakistani authorities that she died of a heart attack the day before she was supposed to fly back to Italy. Two friends testified in Brescia this month that Cheema told them her parents wanted her to marry a cousin in Pakistan.
They also quoted from Facebook messages in which Cheema said her parents had confiscated her passport and phone in Pakistan.
With the Italian Embassy closely following the case, Cheema’s body was exhumed. An autopsy indicated she was likely strangled.
Prosecuting the case in Italy sends the message that “exercising the right of who you want to live with, above all, who you want to marry, is a political right” to be guaranteed “with utmost firmness,” Brescia Prosecutor General Guido Rispoli told the AP.
At the edge of a field near the farmhouse where Saman Abbas’ body was found, mourners have left a stuffed toy squirrel and bunches of flowers at an improvised shrine.
“It will continue to happen, I tell you, that’s how it is,″ Aslam said of violence linked to forced marriage.
What progress has been made with trials like the ones in Reggio Emilia and Brescia isn’t enough, she added: “It’s like salt in flour.”
Serbia, Kosovo leaders weigh EU proposals to improve ties
The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo are holding talks on Monday on European Union proposals aimed at ending a long series of political crises and setting the two on the path to better relations and ultimately mutual recognition.
Tensions have simmered between Serbia and its former territory since Kosovo unilaterally broke away in 2008; a move recognized by many Western countries but opposed by Serbia, with the backing of Russia and China.
Recently, those tensions flared over seemingly trivial matters like vehicle license plate formats, or the arrest of an ethnic Serb police officer, triggering renewed concern among Western leaders that a new Balkan conflict might break out just as Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its second year.
At meetings in Brussels, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti are expected to discuss ways to put the European proposals into action. Both leaders have already discussed the plan, which hasn't been made public, and EU officials are confident of progress.
A senior EU official said before the talks that “we need to break the vicious circle of crisis.” He said the proposals are “not the end of the road” when it comes to normalizing ties between Belgrade and Pristina, but that given recent tensions, the EU plan is the “maximum achievable at this point.”
The official briefed reporters on the condition that he not be named because of the highly sensitive nature of the meetings. Previous talks between Vucic and Kurti have degenerated into arguments and mutual recrimination, but this time both leaders have already endorsed the proposals “in principle,” he said.
Vucic said Sunday, before the meetings supervised by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, that he’s “ready to work on the concept and implementation of the proposed plan with clearly defined limitations.”
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He didn't specify the “limitations,” but he has repeatedly said that they include the refusal to recognize Kosovo as an independent state as well as agree to it becoming a U.N. member.
The EU has mediated negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo since 2011, but few of the 33 agreements that have been signed were put into action. The EU and the U.S. have pressed for faster progress since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
Earlier this month, hundreds of Serbian nationalists gathered in Belgrade to demand that Vucic reject the EU plan and pull out of the talks.
Shouting “Treason” and carrying banners reading “No surrender,” the right-wing protesters blocked traffic as they gathered near the Serbian presidency building. The protesters are also strongly pro-Russia, and one banner read: “Betrayal of Kosovo is betrayal of Russia!”
In recent months, U.S. and EU envoys have visited Pristina and Belgrade regularly to encourage them to accept the new proposals, and the two leaders met with senior EU representatives on the sidelines of a major security conference in the German city of Munich earlier this month.