Month: June 2018

One of U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyers said Sunday he is advising him to not pardon anyone linked to the year-long investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election because it would “just cloud” the perception that there was wrong-doing.  

Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor and part of Trump’s legal team, told CNN, “You’re not going to get a pardon because you’re involved” in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. But he said that in the months to come pardons were “certainly not excluded” if Trump concluded “you’ve been treated unfairly.”

“The president has issued no pardons in this investigation,” Giuliani said. “The president is not going to issue pardons in this investigation.”

“And my advice to him, as long as I’m his lawyer, is not to do it,” he said. “Because you just cloud what is becoming now a very clear picture of an extremely unfair investigation with no criminality involved of any kind. I want that to come out loud and clear and not get clouded by anybody being fired or anybody being pardoned.”

Trump has pardoned several conservative icons in recent weeks, but Giuliani said no one being investigated by Mueller “should rely on it.”

Even so, he said, “When it’s over, hey, he’s the president of the United States. He retains his pardon power. Nobody’s taking that away from him. He can pardon in his judgment based on the Justice Department, counsel’s office, not me. I’m out of it. And I shouldn’t be involved in that process because I’m probably too rooted in his defense, but I couldn’t and I don’t want to take prerogatives away from him.“

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was jailed last week, prompting new questions whether Trump might pardon him. Manafort is accused of witness tampering in a criminal case that stems from his lobbying efforts for Ukraine years before he was a top Trump aide for nearly five months during the 2016 campaign.

Trump attacked Manafort’s jailing, saying on Twitter, “Wow, what a tough sentence for Paul Manafort …. Didn’t know Manafort was the head of the Mob…. Very unfair!”

There is no indication when Mueller’s investigation might end. He is probing whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian interests to help him win and whether Trump obstructed justice by firing former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey when he was leading the agency’s Russia investigation before Mueller, over Trump’s objections, was appointed to take over the probe.

In a new broadside against the investigation, Trump tweeted, “WITCH HUNT! There was no Russian Collusion. Oh, I see, there was no Russian Collusion, so now they look for obstruction on the no Russian Collusion. The phony Russian Collusion was a made up Hoax. Too bad they didn’t look at Crooked Hillary like this. Double Standard!” His reference to “Crooked Hillary” is his oft-repeated pejorative for his 2016 challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Giuliani called for investigation of the origins of the Mueller investigation, contending it was “premised on Comey’s illegally leaked memo” about the FBI’s director’s private conversations with Trump.

“There’s a lot of unfairness out there, but we don’t know the scope of it,” Giuliani said.

 
…

A woman crying “Allahu akbar” — “God is great” in Arabic — injured two people with a box cutter Sunday at a supermarket in southern France before she was detained.

A customer in the store in the maritime town of La Seyne-sur-Mer was injured in the chest and hospitalized. A woman working the cash register was hurt less seriously, French radio station Europe 1 quoted the prosecutor in nearby Toulon as saying.

Prosecutor Bernard Marchal said the suspect may have mental health problems. She has not been identified. Police were searching her home.

“It’s apparently an isolated case involving a person with psychiatric issues,” the prosecutor told Le Monde newspaper quoted the prosecutor as saying. However, that does not exclude the possibility that the suspect was radicalized, Marchal added.

“There is a presumption of attempted murder and … of a crime with terrorist implications,” Marchal was quoted as saying.

Regional newspaper Nice-Matin, which first reported the 10:30 a.m. attack, quoted an unidentified witness as saying that people in the store stopped the woman from cutting anyone else.

A sense of edginess has been with France since a murderous series of killings in 2015 in the name of the Islamic State group. Adding to concerns are the hundreds of French who have traveled to the Iraq-Syria war zone, or are returning as IS crumbles.

In March, an hours-long attack and hostage-taking in a supermarket near the southern French town of Carcassonne left four people dead. A man attacked people near the Paris Opera house in May, killing one person and injuring four, an action claimed by the Islamic State

Last week, a man who took hostages in a Paris building was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit.

 
…

A deep rift over migration policy between Angela Merkel and a rebellious interior minister is threatening to upend the German chancellor’s fragile governing alliance formed earlier this year after weeks of laborious talks.

The German chancellor’s 13-year rule will be on the line in the event Horst Seehofer, a member of the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union, a junior partner in the coalition government, defies Merkel by ordering border guards to turn back migrants arriving Monday at German borders.

Neither the chancellor nor minister appeared Sunday to be in any mood to compromise. Seehofer blamed the chancellor in remarks to German newspapers for the crisis, saying it is a consequence of her 2015 decision to adopt an “open border” policy that has allowed more than a million migrants and refugees to enter Germany.

CSU’s top official in Bavaria, Markus Soder, tweeted: “We must finally secure our borders effectively. This, of course, includes rejection. Asylum tourism must be terminated.”

Analysts say Merkel would likely have no choice but to fire Seehofer for his open revolt against her if he goes ahead with his threat to shutter the border for migrants, collapsing the coalition as a consequence and triggering likely elections.

Merkel fears an abrupt shutting out of asylum-seekers by Germany will prompt other EU countries to follow suit, imperiling an orderly negotiated EU-wide deal. The stakes are high not only for her, but also for the bloc as it searches to craft a migration policy all its fractious states can agree to, and for the CSU, which faces elections in October in its home region of Bavaria and fears the rising support for the far-right AfD party.

In her weekly podcast, Merkel acknowledged the need for changes, but said, “This is a European challenge that also needs a European solution. And I view this issue as decisive for keeping Europe together.”

At the moment the member states are anything but united over migration, and in the words of British commentator and historian Niall Ferguson, the EU melting pot is at risk of melting down.

The German crisis is playing against the backdrop of drama in the Mediterranean, where Rome is refusing to allow NGO ships carrying migrants rescued at sea to dock at Italian ports. It comes as the nationalist populist-led governments of Italy, Austria and Hungary are negotiating what they are terming an “axis of the willing,” an alliance of anti-migration member states that will adopt a hard collective line on asylum-seekers in order to provoke a confrontation with EU leaders later this month.

In 2016, 2.4 million migrants entered the European Union, bringing the total of the foreign-born population in the bloc to nearly 40 million.

Having ridden into power on a tide of anti-migrant sentiment, populists in Central Europe have been further galvanized by Italy’s coalition government formed by Matteo Salvini’s far-right Lega and Luigi Di Maio’s Five Star Movement (M5S).

The new Italian government increased the political temperature over migration earlier this month when Interior Minister Salvini announced a ban on humanitarian rescue ships docking at Italian ports after picking up migrants in the waters off Libya. Salvini argues the rescue ships are indirectly encouraging smugglers and migrants and are in effect in league with traffickers.

On Sunday three ships, an NGO vessel and two Italian naval ships, carrying more than 600 migrants docked in the Spanish port of Valencia. They were rescued a week ago off the coast of Libya and have remained at sea while the European Union insisted Italy had a duty to admit them. The ban prompted an exchange of insults between Paris and Rome.

Speaking Friday in Paris after meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime minister Giuseppe Conte said EU rules have to change with a re-writing of the Dublin Treaty that requires migrants to claim asylum in the first country they arrive.” The concept itself of the ‘state of first entry’ must be rethought,” he said. President Macron argued against any unilateral action by individual member state, saying there had to be an overall European response to migrants.

But Macron accepts change is needed, saying “the existing European response has not adapted.”

In Valencia, the Spanish Red Cross set up a reception center staffed by more than 1,000 volunteers and 400 translators.

More than 23,000 migrants have reached European shores this year, with about 42 percent arriving in Italy from Libya. Thirty-eight percent arrived in Greece from Turkey and 20 percent arrived in Spain from Morocco, according to the International Organization for Migration.
…

British Prime Minister Theresa May will pledge a cash boost to the National Health Service, to be funded partly from tax hikes and partly from money that will no longer be going to the European Union after Brexit, newspapers reported Saturday.

May will pledge to increase the NHS budget by 20 billion pounds ($26.6 billion) a year, or 384 million pounds a week, after Brexit, according to front-page reports in the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and Observer, which were published late Saturday.

The announcement, timed to mark the 70th anniversary of the NHS, which delivers care for free to everyone living in Britain, aims to foster unity in the government and the country after two years of bitter divisions over Brexit, the reports said.

An official spokeswoman from May’s No. 10 Downing Street said she did not have the details available. She said the reports were the result of unofficial briefings by special advisers.

Downing Street had earlier said May would deliver a speech about the NHS on Monday, giving no further details. Special advisers are known to sometimes brief the content of speeches to newspapers ahead of time for their own purposes. 

The NHS budget increase was expected to take place over five years, reaching the full amount in 2023-24, the newspapers said.

Britain’s official exit date from the European Union is March 29, 2019.

Pro-Brexit claim

During the 2016 referendum campaign on EU membership, the pro-Brexit camp claimed that Britain was sending 350 million pounds a week to the EU and should spend that money on the NHS instead.

The claim was controversial because the figure of 350 million pounds did not take into account Britain’s sizable rebate or the payments that were flowing back from the EU to Britain, so it was widely seen as overstating Britain’s

contribution to the bloc.

The newspapers said the 384 million-a-week pledge was politically significant from May — who campaigned against Brexit in 2016 and has been under pressure from hard-line Brexiters ever since to prove her conversion to the cause — because it went above and beyond 350 million.

Jeremy Hunt, the health minister who also campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU, was quoted by the Sunday Telegraph as saying that the new pledge “can now unite us all.”

The newspaper said the precise details of how the spending increase would be funded would be disclosed in a future government budget.
…

Pope Francis denounced abortion on Saturday as the “white glove” equivalent of the Nazi-era eugenics program and urged families to accept the children that God gives them.

Francis spoke off the cuff to a meeting of an Italian family association, ditching his prepared remarks to speak from the heart about families and the trials they undergo. He lamented how some couples choose not to have any children, while others resort to prenatal testing to see whether their baby has any malformations or genetic problems.

“The first proposal in such a case is, ‘Do we get rid of it?’ ” Francis said. “The murder of children. To have an easy life, they get rid of an innocent.”

Francis recalled that as a child he was horrified to hear stories from his teacher about children “thrown from the mountain” if they were born with malformations.

“Today we do the same thing,” he said.

“Last century, the whole world was scandalized by what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today, we do the same thing but with white gloves,” Francis said.

The pope urged families to accept children “as God gives them to us.”

Francis has repeated the strict anti-abortion stance of his predecessors and integrated it into his broader condemnation of what he calls today’s “throwaway culture.” He has frequently lamented how the sick, the poor, the elderly and the unborn are considered by some to be unworthy of protection and dignity.

He has also decried how women are often considered part of this “throwaway culture,” sometimes forced to prostitute themselves.

“How many of you pray for these women who are thrown away, for these women who are used, for these girls who have to sell their own dignity to have a job?” Francis asked during his morning homily Friday.

Francis has dedicated much of his pontificate to preaching about families, marriage and the problems that families today encounter. He is expected to highlight these issues during his August trip to Ireland, where he’ll close out the Catholic Church’s big family rally.
…

Following a red carpet arrival Saturday at the New Orleans Museum of Art, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain enjoyed music by a jazz group and a cultural performance by Mardi Gras Indians as they ended a visit to the city celebrating its tricentennial.

After a private lunch with New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell, Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser and other dignitaries and officials, the royals departed New Orleans for San Antonio, Texas, which is also celebrating 300 years of existence.

“It was a great and amazing weekend for the city, our residents and the king and queen for them to come back to a former Spanish colony,” said Trey Caruso, a spokesman for Cantrell’s office.

Musical connections

Clarinetist, music historian and Xavier University Spanish professor Michael White said he and his Original Liberty Brass Band played two pieces with a connection to Europe and New Orleans at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

The first piece was Panama, a march in the traditional European style.

“It was published in 1911, and all over the country it was played by and read by brass bands,” White said prior to the performance. “But in New Orleans they kind of threw away the sheet music and improvised, and therefore made it personal. I think it’s a good way to show the interaction between European culture and New Orleans culture.”

The second piece, Andalusian Strut, was one of White’s compositions. It combines a common flamenco structure and flamenco-type rhythms and melodies with classic New Orleans jazz style and improvisation, he said.

“That one went over really, really well,” White said after the event. “The king and all of the people there really loved it.”

White said their third song was When the Saints Go Marching In, which White described as “probably the most famous song in New Orleans history.”

“We surprised them by singing the chorus in Spanish,” he said.

The Mardi Gras Indians, groups of African-Americans who create elaborate feathered and beaded costumes in which they strut and dance through the streets on Mardi Gras, performed as well.

“Though the program was relatively short, I think overall it gave a good idea of New Orleans’ culture,” White said.

Arrived Thursday

Felipe and Letizia flew in Thursday evening to Louisiana, which was a Spanish colony from 1763 to 1802. They arrived at New Orleans’ airport at sunset and were greeted by several officials, including Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and Cantrell.

They saluted New Orleans’ centuries-old Spanish heritage at an event Friday at Gallier Hall, a former City Hall opened in 1853 and renovated for the city’s 300th anniversary. That evening, they visited two buildings erected under Spanish rule: St. Louis Cathedral and the Cabildo, the Spanish government seat in Louisiana.

On Monday they’ll go to Washington for a White House visit Tuesday with President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump.
…

The phrase ‘don’t mix politics and sport’ is often heard in Moscow these days. But it’s difficult to escape the unique circumstances of this year’s World Cup. As the tournament gets underway in Russia, the country remains subject to a range of international sanctions over its annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin sees the World Cup as an opportunity to break that isolation and present a different image of Russia.
…

After trading insults this week over the fate of a migrant ship, French and Italian leaders presented a more united front Friday, demanding an overhaul to Europe’s migration policies ahead of a European Union summit on the subject later this month.

As French President Emmanuel Macron hosted Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte in Paris, their rhetoric seemed very similar, even though they come from two very different political backgrounds. Their message: European policies for taking in migrants and sharing the burden aren’t working.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Conte at the French presidential palace, Macron said Europe’s collective response toward migration was not good, adding it was unable to respond to today’s challenges.

Macron outlined a number of areas that he believes need reform, from tougher patrolling and control of the EU’s external borders, to working more closely with countries of origin and transit, and more fairly sharing the migration burden within Europe — a concept that has so far not worked in practice.

Macron also tied migration reforms closely to eurozone reforms, which he is leading.

In remarks translated on France 24 TV, Conte also argued for the European Union to change direction on migration, including establishing hot spots to process asylum claims outside European borders.

“We have to establish centers of protection in Europe and the countries of origin and transit to prevent and accelerate processes of asylum seekers,” he said.

The show of unity was a sharp change from earlier in the week, when Italy’s new government demanded an official apology from Macron, who denounced it of being cynical and irresponsible’ for refusing to take in a roving migrant ship. The ship, Aquarius, is now heading to Spain. It is due to arrive in Valencia on Sunday.

Macron has also faced some domestic criticism for not taking in the Aquarius migrants, although the French government now says it may accept some asylum seekers. Hard-right politicians, in contrast, are sharply against the idea.

These divisions are reflected across Europe, where populist parties in Italy, Austria, and Hungary have adopted tough positions on migration. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her interior minister are also at odds on the issue.

Amid the disagreements, the number of migrants arriving in Europe has dropped sharply, from a high of 1.2 million in 2015 and 2016, to about 650,000 last year.
…

A leaked video of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vote sparked fears of possible vote rigging ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June 24.

The video shows Erdogan telling party officials to secure majorities on ballot box monitoring committees to “finish the job in Istanbul before it has even started.”

In the video, Erdogan also comments on the pro-Kurdish HDP: “I can’t speak these words outside [publicly]. I am speaking them with you here. Why? Because if the HDP falls below the election threshold, it would mean that we would be in a much better place.”

The HDP is hovering around the 10 percent electoral threshold needed to enter parliament. Failure to pass the threshold would result in HDP votes being transferred to the party’s chief rival in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, the ruling AKP. That would give the AKP around 60 parliamentary seats, which, analysts say, could prove decisive in the closely fought campaign.

The video of the closed-door Istanbul meeting held earlier this month was published on social media by an attending official. The official quickly removed the recording, but not before it went viral.

“AKP chairman Erdogan openly incites people to commit a crime. He plans to steal our votes by cheating and pressure to bring us below the election threshold,” tweeted the HDP.

​Pledge on election security

“I watched the video of Erdogan. I felt very sad for Turkey,” Muharrem Ince, the presidential candidate of the opposition CHP, said Friday. “He [Erdogan] hopes for a solution with these tricks because he has not internalized democracy; he does not believe in it. Because he does not believe in it, he thinks he can succeed by leaving certain parties below the threshold with tricks, but this time it will not work.”

Ince also pledged to ensure the security of voting. “We will protect the ballot boxes. … I don’t want my nation or people to feel any doubt about this,” he added.

Erdogan has so far refused to comment on the video, but analysts warn the controversy will only fuel existing concerns. “Already there are extreme doubts about the security of the polling stations,” political scientist Cengiz Aktar said. “The entire system has been redesigned to ensure Mr. Erdogan and his party will win the upcoming elections.”

Last year’s ballot proposal to extend presidential powers won narrow approval amid allegations of fraud. International monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe strongly criticized the vote, highlighting the use of ballots without an official stamp. Stamping is seen as an essential measure to prevent tampering.

Shortly before calling the June elections, the government pushed through electoral changes, including allowing the use of unstamped votes, relocating some polling stations and allowing security personnel at those venues.

The government said the measures ensured the security of the vote, in particular in southeast Turkey, which has been a center of fighting against Kurdish insurgents.

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch strongly criticized the move. “There are concerns that the decision is designed to — and will — prevent effective monitoring of fairness at the polls and that the presence of police and gendarmes could intimidate voters from voting for their chosen party if it is not part of the AKP alliance,” the rights group said.

​Voter suppression assertions

More than 140,000 voters will have to travel as far as 30 kilometers to reach polling stations that were moved in the predominantly Kurdish southeast. Critics say the areas affected are strongholds of the HDP and that the move is aimed at voter suppression, which authorities deny.

The monitoring of voter stations, particularly in the predominantly Kurdish region, is seen as key by the opposition to ensuring a fair vote. Sinan Ulgen of the Istanbul-based Edam research institution said voter security concerns are bringing together a traditionally factious opposition.

“The opposition now is better organized, compared to the past, even to [last year’s] referendum, especially the emergence of the Iyi and Saddet parties, which are part of the opposition. Because in the past, election monitoring by the opposition rested on the shoulders of the CHP in most of the country and the pro-Kurdish HDP in the southeast of the country,” Ulgen said.

Opposition cooperation over voter security has led to ideological barriers being broken down. The Iyi, a hardline Turkish nationalist party, and the pro-Kurdish HDP are now collaborating as part of a broader alliance to ensure a fair vote.

“They are in talks to coordinate their approach to prevent any election fraud. Whether it is sufficient, we shall see,” Ulgen said.
…

The Democratic Republic of Congo has one of the world’s largest populations of child soldiers. The U.N. Children’s Fund estimates up to 30,000 children are forced to serve various armed groups as soldiers, sexual slaves and laborers. Michel Chikwanine who is now refugee in Canada was one of them. Lisa Bryant caught up with him in Normandy, France and has this report for VOA.
…

Oxfam says French border police are mistreating migrant children who are seeking to enter France from Italy, sending them back to Italy in violation of French and European Union law.

“Some children even had the soles of their shoes cut off, before being sent back to Italy,” an Oxfam staff member says in a newly released report entitled “Nowhere But Out.”

“Police yell at them, laugh at them, push them and tell them, ‘You will never cross here,’” said one aid worker. “Some children have their mobile phone seized and the SIM card removed. They lose all their data and phonebook. They cannot even call their parents afterwards.”

Macron, Conte to meet

French President Emmanuel Macron and new Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte are meeting Friday amid tensions between the two countries about migrants.

Earlier this week, the French leader was critical of Italy after it turned away hundreds of migrants aboard a rescue ship, calling Italy’s behavior “irresponsible.” Italy’s new Interior Minister Matteo Salvini countered, saying France should be taking in more migrants and that Macron should move from “words to action.”

Macron said Thursday, “It’s time for collective action” and he never “meant to offend” Italy.

Oxfam report

According to the “Nowhere But Out” report, an estimated 16,500 refugees and other migrants have been staying in and around the small Italian town of Ventimiglia, seven kilometers from the French border. One in four of the migrants is an unaccompanied child.

The report says there are “no arrangements” in Ventimiglia to take care of the returned children. “Once off the train, they are left to fend for themselves.”

Adults and children are often forced to walk back to Italy.

“Along that road, we met people walking back under the rain or the burning sun,” Oxfam said in the report. “The last person we met was a very young Eritrean girl holding her 40-day-old baby in her arms.”

The report says the French police frequently change the paperwork of the unaccompanied children to make them seem older than they are and that they want to return to Italy. Many are attempting to reach family and friends in France and other European countries, the charity says.

The charity has urged Italy, France and all European Union members “to share responsibility for hosting asylum seekers more equally … so that the rights and needs of asylum seekers are addressed and links with family and relatives are given priority.”
…

World Cup fever hit the United Nations Thursday as ambassadors and staffers gathered to watch the opening match and celebrate the link between peace and sport. Our U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer was there.
…

Like prizefighters slugging it out this week, Italy’s populist leader Matteo Salvini clashed with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The immediate cause for the bout was Salvini’s closing of Italian ports to humanitarian rescue ships carrying migrants from Africa.

Few doubt, though, the cosmopolitan French leader and the iconoclastic Italian nationalist, who is the interior minister in Italy’s new coalition government and its driving force, will clash time and again in the coming months in a prolonged contest to shape the future of the European Union.

Both men defied naysayers and flouted conventional political norms to get where they are: Macron created a centrist political movement, Salvini transformed the regional far-right Northern League into a nationwide insurgency.

But they represent conflicting visions of Europe and are being seen as the key champions in a struggle for mastery between centrism and nationalist populism.

Their first-round clash this week was sparked when Salvini banned NGO ships carrying migrants, mostly African, rescued from the waters off Libya to dock in Italian ports, part of his hardline policy, popular in Italy, to curb new arrivals. Salvini also plans to deport more than 500,000 illegal migrants.

In the past five years Italy has taken in more than 640,000 mainly African migrants and says its EU partners must ease the burden.

France reprimanded Italy for closing the ports, focusing on the stranding at sea of an NGO ship carrying 629 migrants picked up in the Mediterranean, arguing it breached the rules agreed by EU member states.

Macron scolded the Italian government for “cynicism and irresponsibility,” triggering a tit-for-tat trading of insults with Salvini, with other ministers on both sides piling on.

“Saving lives is a duty, turning Italy into a huge refugee camp is not,” insisted Salvini. Instead he urged Malta to receive the migrants and suggested France could take them.

A spokesman for Macron’s party La Republique en Marche shot back, “The position, the line of the Italian government, makes you want to vomit. It is inadmissible to use human lives for petty politics.”

Salvini retorted in the increasingly ill-tempered dispute that Italy had “nothing to learn from anyone about generosity, voluntarism, welcoming and solidarity” and demanded a formal apology. Italy summoned the French ambassador to protest the French reprimand and cancelled a planned meeting between the Italian economy minister and his counterpart in Paris. It also threatened at one point to postpone a scheduled meeting Friday between Macron and the new Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte.

A “spat” was how many European newspapers described the clash, but it has widened the most dangerous fault-line in European politics over how to share the burden between EU member states for migrants from conflict zones and poor countries trying to enter the bloc or and whether they should be welcomed at all, while exposing divisions over the rights and prerogatives of nation states.

The populist governments of Hungary and Austria leapt to Salvini’s defense. Salvini told Italian lawmakers he is open to a possible “axis” with Germany and Austria, before an EU summit this month that will consider possible changes to asylum law.

Macron has pitched himself as the antidote to the “illiberal democracies” of Central Europe and the defender of the European Union threatened by populist-nationalists like Salvini. The French leader wants to reform and revive the bloc by increasing the political and economic integration of Europe.

The 44-year-old Salvini wants the opposite, not only a brake on further integration, but a reversal with the bloc being a looser grouping of nation states not ordered around by Brussels or too hedged by EU treaties.

Both embrace opportunism and are nimble. According to Davide Vampa, an expert in Italian politics at Britain’s Aston University, Salvini, nicknamed by supporters Il Capitano (the captain), has borrowed much from other populist leaders.

His language is direct and often guttural. “È finita la pacchia per i clandestini, preparatevi a fare le valige” (Illegals, the gravy train is finished, pack your bags), he announced earlier this month.

A graduate of France’s elite institutions Sciences Po and École nationale d’administration and a former Rothschild investment banker, Macron is more intellectual. “In the face of authoritarianism,” Macron told the European Parliament in Strasbourg in April, “the response is not authoritarian democracy, but the authority of democracy.”
…