Home » Posts tagged 'schengen agreement'
Tag Archives: schengen agreement
Rabobank: Our Coronavirus Base Case Is Rapidly Shifting From “Bad” To “Ugly”
Rabobank: Our Coronavirus Base Case Is Rapidly Shifting From “Bad” To “Ugly”
Regular readers will know that our four projected COVID-19 scenarios were “Bad, Worse, Ugly, and Unthinkable”. Current news today suggests risks that the base case is rapidly shifting from “Bad”, meaning only China is impacted, to “Ugly”, where both emerging Asia and developed economies see soaring infection rates and deaths.
After all, following Vietnam, Iran now has eight deaths and an uncertain number of cases, prompting schools and universities to closed and the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan to be sealed from the other side. For an economy already being crushed by sanctions, this is all that it needed. More worrying for markets, South Korea (with a GDP of over USD1 trillion) has also been swamped by hundreds of new cases, a 20-fold leap in just five days, and, as in China, is seeing the highest-level emergency declared, cities on lock-down, gatherings and travel bans in place, and the national assembly additionally suspended. Samsung has had to shutter at least one factory, in the city of Gumi. The Asian economy, already reeling, it about to suffer another major kick.
Worse, in Europe there also are over 160 cases in a cluster in northern Italy, with three deaths so far, and the regions of Lombardy and Veneto, the industrial and financial heartlands, in both panic and lockdown. Venice’s Carnival has been cancelled, and so was a recent fashion show. Italy is 11% of Eurozone GDP, and those two regions are 30% of Italy’s GDP. For a Eurozone already close to recession, that shock could well be more than enough to generate a downturn.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Austria suspends Schengen agreement, steps up border control, tells EU to sort out migrant crisis
Austria suspends Schengen agreement, steps up border control, tells EU to sort out migrant crisis
“All refugees must be controlled, economic migrants must be sent to the countries of their origin,” Faymann said in an interview with Austria’s Oesterreich newspaper, to be published on Sunday.
The government is implementing a strict monitoring system for asylum seekers, the chancellor said, adding that, just like in neighboring Germany, its border controls are being tightened, and repatriations of refugees are carried out.
“Anyone who arrives at our border is subject to control,” Faymann said. A valid identity card will now have to be provided to authorities, and those who do not have a right to asylum or have been already rejected by Germany will be denied entry, as will those who don’t intend to apply for refugee status in Austria.
Consequently, the Schengen agreement on open borders is “temporarily cancelled” in Austria, the chancellor said.
“If the EU does not manage to secure the external borders, Schengen as a whole is put into question…Then each country must control its national borders,” Faymann told the newspaper, adding that if the bloc’s external borders are not secured in the near future, “the whole EU [will be] in question.”
“So far, the Schengen agreement does make provision for what they call exceptional measures. So this doesn’t mean that de jure there is yet a complete collapse of the Schengen. What it does mean is that we are seeing the beginning of a de facto collapse,” William Mallinson, a writer and former British diplomat told RT. “If this continues, Schengen will actually die,” he added.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Does the Migrant Crisis Represent the End of the European Union?
Does the Migrant Crisis Represent the End of the European Union?
An emergency effort led by Germany to force European Union member states to accept mandatory quotas of refugees collapsed in discord.
Berlin called for EU financial penalties against countries that refused to accommodate their share of migrants. A Czech official said such threats were empty but nonetheless “damaging”. Slovakia said they would bring the “end of the EU”.
In scenes with echoes of the Cold War, families with small children sat in fields beneath the former communist country’s new 3.5-metre (10 foot) high fence, which runs almost the length of the border, topped with razor wire.
The greatest migration to Western Europe since World War Two has also created an institutional crisis for the 28-member EU, with one of the bloc’s signature achievements, its Schengen system of border-free travel across much of the continent, unraveling this week under the strain.
– From the Reuters article: Hungary Shuts EU Border, Taking Migrant Crisis into its Own Hands
Although everyone watching has been convinced that Europe’s disastrous economy and related debt crisis would be the spark to unravel the European Union project, it appears history has its own plans.
While EU technocrats have demonstrated an uncanny ability to scheme, threaten, kick the can and lie their way around the debt crisis, the migrant crisis will prove to be a much graver threat to the project. Strikingly, all it took was a few weeks of unrelenting migrants crossing into EU borders to put an end what is essentially the only achievement of the European Union — the Schengen system of borderless travel.
Without that, what is the EU really? A collection of nation-states forced by bureaucrats to pretend they are part of an artificial fantasy superstate called Europe? An amalgamation of debt serfs and technocratic overlords? See what I’m getting at?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Germany & Austria Close Borders — Schengen Agreement Under Pressure — Will War Emerge?
Germany & Austria Close Borders — Schengen Agreement Under Pressure — Will War Emerge?
The Schengen Agreement was to be the cornerstone of the entire euro proposition. We just warned that this freedom of movement would begin to come under pressure with this turning point:“As the economy turns down very hard after 2015.75, we are more likely than not going to see the freedom of movement in Europe fragment and that will be the crack that signals the eventual risk of breaking up the EU idea of empire-building.”
Germany has closed its borders with Austria and in turn Austria has now closed its border with Hungary. We are starting to witness the turn. Obama praised Merkel for accepting so many refugees, but after Merkel boasted that there was no limit to the number of refugees Germany would accept, it set in motion a huge migrant crisis. All public buildings and stadiums are full. Germany cannot handle any more refugees and these people have to be fed. Besides that, the winter will be harsh and many could die from exposure. This is going to be a real crisis.
Then, the headlines in France yesterday declared in the latest polls that 56% of the French people are now in favor of war. We are looking at the economy turning down very hard and the blame will be directed at the immigrants fleeing because of ISIS. We will see war rise because of this issue, as they are blamed for the economic decline in Europe. With unemployment among the youth already at 50% on average in many areas, accepting this many migrants who will also be unemployed will topple the economic system in Europe. We are seeing the seeing for this turning point of 2015.75 unfold before our eyes. As always, domestic populations will blame the migrants for the economic decline.
