The new Italian government, by promising to block all regular business at the EU summit, managed to achieve a new resolution on migration. Sputnik summarizes the agreement as follows:
According to a final statement made after 9 hours of talks, the leaders agreed to enhance screening migrants for asylum eligibility and set up "disembarkation platforms” in North Africa to discourage those fleeing to Europe from boarding smuggling boats.
The plan also stipulates the establishment of joint processing camps within the bloc and to restrict their movement across member-states.The second part of the last sentence should placate Merkel's coalition partner, the Bavarian CSU.
It brings an end to the Schengen Area of free travel because some form of border will have to be erected to keep registered migrants from moving between countries.
In the latest issue of New Left Review Stathis Kouvelakis argues in "Borderland" that it is the de facto system already in place. There are already detention centers in Africa and refugees are already barred from free travel within Europe. The new Brussel's deal is merely an official acknowledgement.
And it's not going to placate the ascendant ethno-nationalist parties, as Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold report in "E.U. Reaches Deal on Migration at Summit, but Details Sketchy":
Ms. Merkel’s pro-European stance and her decision to open Germany’s borders to more than 1.4 million migrants since 2015 have earned her a reputation as a defender of liberal values, while also making her the main target of far-right and populist forces across the Continent.
Her address in Parliament on Thursday was unusually combative, and it was frequently interrupted by heckling from representatives of Alternative for Germany. The noise level was so high at one point that Ms. Merkel stopped and said: “My God. Really?”
In Brussels, the Hungarian prime minister, Victor Orban, was characteristically harsh.
“I think the people really request two things: First is, no more migrants in,” he said. The second, he said, would be the deportation of those who are already in Europe but do not qualify as refugees.
“So that’s what the people want,” Mr. Orban said. “So I think in order to restore the European democracy, we have to move to that direction.”
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Hodeidah Update: There is no deal for the UN to take over control of the seaport because the Saudi-puppet president of Yemen Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi won't allow any Houthi militia to remain in the city.
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Janus Update: Calls are starting to come in from our public sector employers asking if any of our members are fee payers. These are people known as Beck Objectors, individuals who have resigned their union membership but continue to pay fees that amount to the cost of representing them. Now post-Janus, they won't have to pay anything.
There is a complex accounting that goes into determining what a union local can charge for representation. At our local because we only have one staff organizer and the political action committee is completely fire-walled from all other aspects of the union the chargeable rate is high, usually around 95%
Fortunately we have very few fee payers. I had the satisfaction of telling the county and the ferry system that we had no fee payers there. I asked the person from the ferries if she was experiencing any blow back from Janus. She said so far, no. But she still had to call the inlandboat union and the sheet metal workers.
My assessment is that there is no strong anti-union current of the Zeitgeist. If one surfaces then it will have to have been generated externally.
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