A Saudi court on Monday sentenced prominent women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul to nearly six years in prison, her family said, after her conviction in a trial that has drawn international condemnation.
The verdict and sentence pose a challenge to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s relationship with U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, who has criticised Riyadh’s human rights record.
Read more at:
Saudi court jails women's rights activist, posing challenge for Biden | Reuters
Showing posts with label Challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Challenge. Show all posts
12/28/20
8/26/19
Britain-Brexit: shutting down parliament 'gravest abuse of power in living memory'
Boris Johnson
would be committing the “gravest abuse of power and attack on UK
constitutional principle in living memory” if he shuts down parliament
to help force through a no-deal Brexit, according to legal advice
obtained by Labour.
In a six-page document prepared for Jeremy Corbyn, the shadow attorney general, Shami Chakrabarti, laid out how any such move by the prime minister would be open to immediate legal challenge in the courts.
She said it could be subject to judicial review and the courts “might well even grant interim injunctive relief in order to allow both houses of parliament to continue to sit and discharge their primary and sovereign constitutional role in this current moment of national crisis”.
The advice from Chakrabarti, a barrister, was commissioned by Labour after leaked emails showed No 10 had sought the counsel of Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, on whether a five-week prorogation from 9 September might be possible to avoid a confidence vote and help enable a no-deal Brexit.
The initial legal guidance for No 10 was that shutting parliament may be possible, unless action being taken in the courts by anti-Brexit campaigners succeeds in the meantime.
Johnson was pressed repeatedly on Monday on what he would do if MPs tried to thwart his Brexit policy – at a press conference at the close of the G7 summit in Biarritz. He declined to rule out temporarily shutting down parliament.
“I think that this [is] really a matter for parliamentarians to get right ourselves,” he said. “We asked the people to vote on whether they wanted to stay in or leave the EU; they voted to leave by a big majority.
Asked explicitly whether he would consider proroguing parliament, he said: “I rely on parliamentarians to do the right thing and honour the pledge that they made to the people of this country.”
Read more at: Brexit: shutting down parliament 'gravest abuse of power in living memory' | Politics | The Guardian
In a six-page document prepared for Jeremy Corbyn, the shadow attorney general, Shami Chakrabarti, laid out how any such move by the prime minister would be open to immediate legal challenge in the courts.
She said it could be subject to judicial review and the courts “might well even grant interim injunctive relief in order to allow both houses of parliament to continue to sit and discharge their primary and sovereign constitutional role in this current moment of national crisis”.
The advice from Chakrabarti, a barrister, was commissioned by Labour after leaked emails showed No 10 had sought the counsel of Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, on whether a five-week prorogation from 9 September might be possible to avoid a confidence vote and help enable a no-deal Brexit.
The initial legal guidance for No 10 was that shutting parliament may be possible, unless action being taken in the courts by anti-Brexit campaigners succeeds in the meantime.
Johnson was pressed repeatedly on Monday on what he would do if MPs tried to thwart his Brexit policy – at a press conference at the close of the G7 summit in Biarritz. He declined to rule out temporarily shutting down parliament.
“I think that this [is] really a matter for parliamentarians to get right ourselves,” he said. “We asked the people to vote on whether they wanted to stay in or leave the EU; they voted to leave by a big majority.
Asked explicitly whether he would consider proroguing parliament, he said: “I rely on parliamentarians to do the right thing and honour the pledge that they made to the people of this country.”
Read more at: Brexit: shutting down parliament 'gravest abuse of power in living memory' | Politics | The Guardian
12/29/17
Poland and Hungary want their cake and eat it also: EU’s biggest challenge for 2018: Poland, Hungary- by Beata Stur
The conflict between the European Commission and Poland and Hungary
could be the greatest challenge awaiting Brussels in the new year.
According to Jon Henley, reporting for the Guardian, the two former communist bloc countries face the risk of becoming the EU’s “first rogue states”.
“How Europe deals with members deliberately flouting the core western liberal norms and values it strives to embody – social tolerance, respect for free speech, an independent judiciary – could dominate 2018 far more than Britain’s exit,” Henley wrote.
In December, Brussels triggered Article 7 of the EU Treaty against Poland over changes to the judiciary by the country’s ruling conservatives. The mechanism could ultimately lead to Poland losing its EU voting rights.
In the same month, the European Commission referred Hungary to the European Court of Justice over Viktor Orban’s “ongoing assault on political freedoms”.
Both governments have also met with criticism for refusing to take in refugees.
While the formal warning to Poland – which could strip the country of its EU voting rights, seems unlikely because it requires a unanimous vote of all member states, calls to make EU funds conditional on upholding the rule of law are more real.
Poland and Hungary are among the largest net recipients of EU funds. Countries such as Germany, France and the Nordic states support this approach.
Note EU-Digest: Like Britain, Hungary and Poland seem to think that you can have your cake and eat it also in the EU. "That is not the way the cookie crumbles".
Read more: EU’s biggest challenge for 2018: Poland, Hungary
“How Europe deals with members deliberately flouting the core western liberal norms and values it strives to embody – social tolerance, respect for free speech, an independent judiciary – could dominate 2018 far more than Britain’s exit,” Henley wrote.
In December, Brussels triggered Article 7 of the EU Treaty against Poland over changes to the judiciary by the country’s ruling conservatives. The mechanism could ultimately lead to Poland losing its EU voting rights.
In the same month, the European Commission referred Hungary to the European Court of Justice over Viktor Orban’s “ongoing assault on political freedoms”.
Both governments have also met with criticism for refusing to take in refugees.
While the formal warning to Poland – which could strip the country of its EU voting rights, seems unlikely because it requires a unanimous vote of all member states, calls to make EU funds conditional on upholding the rule of law are more real.
Poland and Hungary are among the largest net recipients of EU funds. Countries such as Germany, France and the Nordic states support this approach.
Note EU-Digest: Like Britain, Hungary and Poland seem to think that you can have your cake and eat it also in the EU. "That is not the way the cookie crumbles".
Read more: EU’s biggest challenge for 2018: Poland, Hungary
11/24/14
Europe's Challenge: A 'Twilight Zone' in Russia's Shadow, or a 'World of Rules?' - Radek Sikorski
In Harvard Yard, on 5 June 1947, on the steps of Memorial Church, momentous words were said.
It is logical that the United States should do what it can to assist the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.
Our policy is not directed against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.
U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall set in motion the most profitable financial investment in human history: the reconstruction of Western Europe:
The Marshall Plan was part of a wider Western ambition after World War II. To create a World of Rules.
New global institutions were set up, led by U.S. leadership and generosity.
The United Nations. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The International Court of Justice.
Despite harsh Cold War ideological differences, these institutions took root. They grew and flourished.
Why? Because the world -- or at least a part of the world -- had agreed that explicit international military aggression had to stop.
Differences between peoples and nations should be settled by peaceful negotiation.
On one side of the line are countries and peoples free to choose their own democratic destiny.
On the other side are countries in a decaying Twilight Zone. A blighted, unhappy and unstable place outside the World of Rules.
If we get this wrong, our shared Western decades-long strategic ambition to create a Europe whole and free will falter.
Read more: Europe's Challenge: A 'Twilight Zone' in Russia's Shadow, or a 'World of Rules?' | Radek Sikorski
It is logical that the United States should do what it can to assist the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.
Our policy is not directed against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.
U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall set in motion the most profitable financial investment in human history: the reconstruction of Western Europe:
The Marshall Plan was part of a wider Western ambition after World War II. To create a World of Rules.
New global institutions were set up, led by U.S. leadership and generosity.
The United Nations. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The International Court of Justice.
Despite harsh Cold War ideological differences, these institutions took root. They grew and flourished.
Why? Because the world -- or at least a part of the world -- had agreed that explicit international military aggression had to stop.
Differences between peoples and nations should be settled by peaceful negotiation.
On one side of the line are countries and peoples free to choose their own democratic destiny.
On the other side are countries in a decaying Twilight Zone. A blighted, unhappy and unstable place outside the World of Rules.
If we get this wrong, our shared Western decades-long strategic ambition to create a Europe whole and free will falter.
Read more: Europe's Challenge: A 'Twilight Zone' in Russia's Shadow, or a 'World of Rules?' | Radek Sikorski
11/30/12
Europe’s challenge is to shake-off inertia before it becomes paralysis - by Richard Youngs
The good news is that European politicians are no longer in denial about the EU’s decline. But Richard Youngs warns that the bad news is that there are no signs of a strategy to reverse that decline.
A refrain that is all too familiar to chroniclers of European integration is that only when external challenges are really serious do EU governments overcome their petty squabbles and unite. Post-war reconciliation created the European Communities; American and Japanese competition drove the Single European Act; the Cold War’s abrupt end gave birth to the Maastricht treaty and, less resolutely, 9/11 and international terrorism prompted a deepening of security co-operation.
Now the EU faces the equally tough challenge of how to respond to its relative decline and the rise of Asia in a ‘post-Western world’. But so far there’s no sign of the spirit of “convergence-in-adversity”.
Or perhaps that’s not entirely fair. European leaders have committed to fashioning “strategic partnerships” with emerging powers, and EU defence ministers have agreed to share defence equipment by cutting out duplication. The EU is courting Asia more assiduously than before as diplomatic rapprochement with rising powers has become de rigeur. The EU has signed an usually far-reaching free trade agreement with South Korea, and trade talks with rising markets have helped return external trade flows to pre-crisis levels. If 2010 had any positive aspects it is that the penny at last dropped that the EU must more systematically confront and mitigate its decline.
Why, then, is Europe so disinclined to look beyond makeshift short-termism? Among the most oft-cited reasons for euro-sluggishness is the contention that this inertia is a result of the EU's institutional design. Its institutional processes undoubtedly need to be improved, and let's hope the Lisbon treaty's reforms start to yield concrete improvements. But institutional re-design will not be a magic wand for a smooth and effective EU foreign policy. Nobody believes that two or three EU governments hold in their hands superbly crafted plans for reacting to Europe's decline but are prevented from implementing by minority blocking votes.
Nor can Europe's policy inertia be attributed to a lack of awareness of how serious its plight has become. This may have been the case three or four years ago, but not now. Until then the very gradual nature of European decline meant that its seriousness had not fully registered, but today ministerial speeches and formal policy documents stress the urgency of an effective and assertive European response. Some Brussels officials may bristle at the hyperbole of declinists, but few still claim the EU is on a glide-path to superpower status. European leaders can no longer be accused of being in denial.
A broader concern is that the EU continues to lack a geostrategic blueprint. Although the EU shouldn't be aiming for an overly-simplistic strategic approach, it needs to engage in deeper thinking that could provide a geopolitical compass for its external policies. Such a geostrategy would need to be eclectic and should contain doses of co-operative realism, mixed with internationalism, the encouragement of transnational linkages and pinches of regionalism. It should also work at steering the U.S. towards a less hegemonic form of multi-lateralism.
American hegemony persists even in a world that is fast becoming more polycentric. The EU must work to remould U.S. power rather than situating itself as a pole equidistant between the U.S. and the rising powers. Eventually a rules-based world order must move from depending on U.S. oversight to enjoying a multiplicity of guarantors. The EU must work with the U.S. in influencing this trajectory, if the international order is to retain some degree of liberal internationalism even as it moves beyond the underwriting of U.S. hegemony.
At a European level, the EU now has little excuse for not moving up a gear. The Union needs to define its interests and mould its policy instruments accordingly, rather than maximising the number of ad hoc policy initiatives almost as an end in itself. There are no simple answers, so the EU will need to avoid both under- and over-reaction, but it needs simultaneously to correct over-ambition and introspection. It certainly is clear that a deepening of the EU's internationally-oriented strategic reflection is urgently needed before inertia mutates into terminal paralysis.
Read more: Article > Europe’s challenge is to shake-off inertia before it becomes paralysis
A refrain that is all too familiar to chroniclers of European integration is that only when external challenges are really serious do EU governments overcome their petty squabbles and unite. Post-war reconciliation created the European Communities; American and Japanese competition drove the Single European Act; the Cold War’s abrupt end gave birth to the Maastricht treaty and, less resolutely, 9/11 and international terrorism prompted a deepening of security co-operation.
Now the EU faces the equally tough challenge of how to respond to its relative decline and the rise of Asia in a ‘post-Western world’. But so far there’s no sign of the spirit of “convergence-in-adversity”.
Or perhaps that’s not entirely fair. European leaders have committed to fashioning “strategic partnerships” with emerging powers, and EU defence ministers have agreed to share defence equipment by cutting out duplication. The EU is courting Asia more assiduously than before as diplomatic rapprochement with rising powers has become de rigeur. The EU has signed an usually far-reaching free trade agreement with South Korea, and trade talks with rising markets have helped return external trade flows to pre-crisis levels. If 2010 had any positive aspects it is that the penny at last dropped that the EU must more systematically confront and mitigate its decline.
Why, then, is Europe so disinclined to look beyond makeshift short-termism? Among the most oft-cited reasons for euro-sluggishness is the contention that this inertia is a result of the EU's institutional design. Its institutional processes undoubtedly need to be improved, and let's hope the Lisbon treaty's reforms start to yield concrete improvements. But institutional re-design will not be a magic wand for a smooth and effective EU foreign policy. Nobody believes that two or three EU governments hold in their hands superbly crafted plans for reacting to Europe's decline but are prevented from implementing by minority blocking votes.
Nor can Europe's policy inertia be attributed to a lack of awareness of how serious its plight has become. This may have been the case three or four years ago, but not now. Until then the very gradual nature of European decline meant that its seriousness had not fully registered, but today ministerial speeches and formal policy documents stress the urgency of an effective and assertive European response. Some Brussels officials may bristle at the hyperbole of declinists, but few still claim the EU is on a glide-path to superpower status. European leaders can no longer be accused of being in denial.
A broader concern is that the EU continues to lack a geostrategic blueprint. Although the EU shouldn't be aiming for an overly-simplistic strategic approach, it needs to engage in deeper thinking that could provide a geopolitical compass for its external policies. Such a geostrategy would need to be eclectic and should contain doses of co-operative realism, mixed with internationalism, the encouragement of transnational linkages and pinches of regionalism. It should also work at steering the U.S. towards a less hegemonic form of multi-lateralism.
American hegemony persists even in a world that is fast becoming more polycentric. The EU must work to remould U.S. power rather than situating itself as a pole equidistant between the U.S. and the rising powers. Eventually a rules-based world order must move from depending on U.S. oversight to enjoying a multiplicity of guarantors. The EU must work with the U.S. in influencing this trajectory, if the international order is to retain some degree of liberal internationalism even as it moves beyond the underwriting of U.S. hegemony.
At a European level, the EU now has little excuse for not moving up a gear. The Union needs to define its interests and mould its policy instruments accordingly, rather than maximising the number of ad hoc policy initiatives almost as an end in itself. There are no simple answers, so the EU will need to avoid both under- and over-reaction, but it needs simultaneously to correct over-ambition and introspection. It certainly is clear that a deepening of the EU's internationally-oriented strategic reflection is urgently needed before inertia mutates into terminal paralysis.
Read more: Article > Europe’s challenge is to shake-off inertia before it becomes paralysis
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