Austria deports man with criminal conviction to Syria for first time since fall of Assad
'The deportation carried out today is part of a strict and thus fair asylum policy,' Austria's interior minister, Gerhard Karner, said in a statement.
The 32-year-old man, who was granted asylum in Austria in 2014, lost his refugee status in February 2019 because of his criminal record, his legal adviser Ruxandra Staicu said . She declined to specify the nature of his conviction.
The man received a negative decision on an asylum claim in April and had been awaiting a response on another decision.
Since the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, several European governments have called for the return of Syrian refugees who fled to Europe after the crushing of rebellion and outbreak of civil war that drove 12 million people from their homes, including 6 million abroad.
Austria, which hosts 100,000 Syrians, called for the 'orderly repatriation and deportation to Syria' of refugees the day after the dictator was ousted.
Separately, Germany's interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, revealed his government was seeking an agreement with Syria's new Islamist government to deport criminals of Syrian nationality. Germany has given refuge to nearly one million Syrians since 2015.
Germany resumed flying convicted criminals of Afghan nationality to their home country in August, after pausing deportations following the Taliban's takeover three years earlier.
Denmark's prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said on Thursday that migrants who commit serious crimes should be expelled from Europe, without making reference to any specific country. In a press conference to mark the start of Denmark's six-month EU presidency, she described the current asylum system as 'broken' with the consequences of 'uncontrolled migration' visible in European societies.
Migrants 'who commit serious crimes and do not respect our values and way of life - I don't think they have a place in Europe. And they should be expelled.' She added: 'We need new solutions that will lower the influx of migrants to Europe'.
Denmark revoked the residency status of some Syrians as early as 2021, when it deemed parts of the war-torn country safe to return to.
Nearly 10 years after the peak of the 2015-16 migration crisis, when 1.3 million people sought refuge in Europe, the EU has moved to tighten up its asylum and migration rules.
The European Commission also proposed faster procedures for returning people with no right to stay in the EU to their countries of origin, including the possibility of creating offshore 'return hubs' outside Europe.
Speaking alongside the Danish prime minister, Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, said she hoped to see progress on the returns proposals and another to create a common list of safe countries , which would allow fast-tracked asylum procedures - and potentially faster refusals, during Denmark's six months of chairing EU council meetings.
In a joint statement this week, 52 rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Danish Refugee Council, said the proposals risked 'seriously undermining people's access to fair and full asylum procedures in Europe'. The groups also raised concerns about potential human rights violations in offshore return hubs.
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BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Keir Starmer told me he'd met every challenge. But things look bad right now
Will Keir Starmer allow himself to celebrate his first anniversary as prime minister this weekend? Or will he be taking a long, hard look in the mirror and asking himself what went wrong?That is what is in my mind as he greets me in the Terracotta Room on the first floor of 10 Downing Street for a long-planned conversation about his first 12 months in office, this looks surprisingly relaxed, given that his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had been in tears sitting behind him in the Commons just hours earlier. That triggered fevered speculation about how long she would last in the job, moving markets to sell the pound and increase the cost of that is the impression he wants to convey to me as he shares a story about his photo opportunity with Formula One cars parked outside his front door - the most famous door in the is determined that the problems of recent weeks - and boy there's been a long list of those - will not overshadow the achievements he believes deserve just as much attention."We have done some fantastic things," he tells me, "really driven down the waiting lists in the NHS, really done loads of improvements in schools and stuff that we can do for children - whether that's rolling out school uniform projects, whether it's school meals, breakfast clubs, you name it - and also [brought in] a huge amount of investment into the country. And of course we've been busy getting three trade deals."It's clear that, given the chance, his list would go on. And yet, I point out, there is another long list - of things he's recently admitted to getting the last year, he's said hiring Sue Gray - Starmer's former chief of staff who left Downing Street in October - was wrong. He's also held his hands up about plans to end winter fuel payments, about rejecting a national grooming gang inquiry, and cutting benefits for disabled people. That's not even the full list, yet it's quite a number of things that he's admitting to being a prime minister thinks I've rather crudely summarised his personal reflections on what he might have done better. He challenges the idea, which is prevalent in Westminster, that changing your mind represents weakness, or a "humiliating U-turn".Listen: The inside story of Starmer's stormy first yearInDepth: Why Sir Keir's political honeymoon was so short-livedThis is the fourth time we've sat down for an extended and personal conversation for my Political Thinking podcast."You know this from getting to know me," he says. "I'm not one of these ideological thinkers, where ideology dictates what I do. I'm a pragmatist. You can badge these things as U-turns - it's common sense to me."If someone says to me, 'here's some more information and I really think it's the right thing to do', I'm the kind of person that says, 'well in which case, let's do it'."There is, though, no doubt that scrapping so much of his welfare reforms was a U-turn - a costly and humiliating one. Starmer and his chancellor have not only lost authority and face, they've lost £5bn in planned savings, something that will have to be paid for somehow, through extra borrowing, lower spending or, most likely, higher taxes."I take responsibility," he says, "we didn't get the process right". But somehow he implies that it might have been someone other than the leader of the Labour Party's responsibility to persuade Labour MPs to back his plans. He doesn't spell out what he means by getting the process right and, perhaps more importantly, he dodges my attempts to get him to spell out clearly what story he's trying to tell the country about Labour be on the side of disabled people and people like his own mother, who had a crippling disease that meant she eventually had to have a leg amputated? Or should they adopt her unwillingness to be written off, which he described to me the last time we spoke? When told by her doctors that she wouldn't walk again she refused to listen. Wounded by the events of the past week, Starmer refuses to even address that choice. But surely, I suggest to him, the nation doesn't just want a problem-solver, or a chief executive of UK plc? Voters surely want a leader who has a story to tell?Starmer clearly knew this question - or a variation of it - was coming. I've pushed him on it every time we've spoken at length. "It's about a passion, if that's the right word," he says. "But certainly a determination to change the lives of millions of working people and, in particular, to tackle this question of fairness.""It's almost like a social contract," he adds, "that people are getting back what they're putting in, that there is a fairer environment for them that supports them and respects them."That's a bit long to sew on to an election banner, to chant in the streets, or write in a post on X, but it is a theme. He is a self-proclaimed pragmatist who doesn't want there to be something that can be labelled as "Starmerism", but at least we can now say that his guiding principle is fairness. In truth, what matters more than anything else to him is not losing, something he tells me he hates, whether in politics or on the five-a-side pitch playing football regularly with his mates - as he still does and has done for decades.I tell him people think he is losing now - some say he is the most unpopular prime minister since records began. He reacts with the defiance of a man whose football-playing friend recently described him as a "hard bastard". A man who served in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet and then had him thrown out of the party; who stood to be leader on promises to keep much of Corbyn's agenda before tearing up those promises to win power; and someone who hired then fired Sue Gray as his first Downing Street chief of staff. "Every challenge that's been put in front of me I've risen to, met it, and we're going to continue in the same vein," he says.I end our conversation by reminding him what they say about failing football managers who have "lost the dressing room". Has he lost the Labour Party dressing room? His reply is emphatic."Absolutely not," he says. "The Labour dressing room, the PLP, is proud as hell of what we've done, and their frustration - my frustration - is that sometimes the other stuff, welfare would be an example, can obscure us being able to get that out there."Almost as an afterthought he adds: "I'm a hard-enough bastard to find out who it was who said that, so that I can have a discussion with him." Knowing Starmer I suspect he's much more likely to deliver a crunching tackle on the pitch than a quiet word off the prime minister's message is clear to me: Don't count me out, however bad it looks now. To pretty much everyone other than him it currently does look bad. Very bad.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Labour's chaos exposes Britain to a new economic shock
That is precisely what is happening at the moment. A series of about-turns on key policies have sent Reeves's financial plans into tailspin and shaken faith in Labour's competency. 'The changes we have seen ever since the first announcements from the Labour Party – and the intended changes they wanted to put forward – have subsequently been either watered down or changed. That's what the bond market does not like,' says Sonja Laud at L&G investment management. '[Markets] can't trust that what's been put forward will be put in place.' Simon French, the chief economist at Panmure Liberum, says constant flip-flopping on policy is starting to 'look like ineptitude'. He adds: 'The issue for the Prime Minister is that this ineptitude is rather deeper than scapegoating one person – even his Chancellor. This looks like a systemic problem within his own party.' Some in the City are already speculating about life after Reeves. 'Perhaps the markets were even thinking forward to the possibility of Angela Rayner as PM,' says one financier. 'They would view the current deputy PM as absolutely increasing the fiscal risks.' For now, the market reaction has been relatively muted. But El-Erian warns that bad news can quickly compound to trigger pyrotechnics in the bond market. 'That happened during the Liz Truss period when bond markets were already destabilised by what was happening in the US and then you got a UK-specific shock that amplified to a tremendous amount the move in yields,' he says. 'If you ask me what's the greatest vulnerability, it's when both of these things happen at the same time.' As the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has highlighted, it wouldn't take much to knock Reeves off course. Had the rise in gilt yields on Wednesday been sustained, it would have reduced the Chancellor's £9.9bn buffer by £3bn. That's before taking into account the cost of all of the welfare and winter fuel payments climbdowns. As it stands, much of the surge in gilt yields went into reverse after Sir Keir Starmer finally offered a full-throated endorsement of his Chancellor, saccharin as the love-in was. Yet borrowing costs are not back to where they were before Sir Keir gutted his benefit reforms to head off a rebellion. 'Wednesday's moves serve as a reminder of how parlous the UK fiscal situation is, and that it is testing investors' patience,' says Diana Iovanel, at Capital Economics. 'There is very little fiscal headroom, and all of the options available to Reeves are unappealing.' Shock waves from Trump's big beautiful bill are just one risk facing Britain. As the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, the UK is also vulnerable to global energy prices, and the recent US attack on Iran was a reminder that geopolitical tensions can quickly escalate. One of the clearest ways such events affect the British economy is through inflation. In an unstable world, things tend to cost more. The danger is that an inflation shock forces the Bank of England to keep interest rates higher for longer, further eroding Reeves's headroom and forcing her to find savings or raise taxes even further.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
After Labour's first year, Starmer could still learn from ‘one-term Attlee'
On the first anniversary of Keir Starmer's general election win, there will no doubt be much comment about what his government has achieved in its first year – and, more likely, where it has fallen short of expectations. The general feeling appears to be one of disappointment, with Starmer's net approval rating at a record low, after the first double-digit decline in public support since a general election since John Major's Conservative administration in the 1990s. Starmer's first year as prime minister has been characterised by a series of U-turns, following rebellion within his own ranks. But it is the following day, this Saturday, 5 July, that will mark a far more consequential anniversary: the general election of 1945, which – after a count lasting several weeks – made Clement Attlee the first Labour prime minister with a majority government. Eighty years on, it seems fitting to revisit that government – its style and achievements, as well as the qualities of Attlee – who was to lead the nation in succession to the great war leader, Winston Churchill. What, if anything, can Starmer and his team learn from that post-war administration? Although many people were surprised by Labour's success in July 1945, the writing had already been on the wall for Churchill's Tories. The monthly Gallup opinion poll which, while not scrutinised in the forensic way that polls are today, had consistently pointed to a strong Labour showing throughout the war years. And ideas of how to build a better post-war nation in areas such as health, welfare and education, dominated thinking and debate – not least among servicemen and women overseas. Attlee's Labour campaign offered a clear blueprint based on their manifesto, Let Us Face the Future, and the people voted for it. By contrast, in 2024, while nearly everyone expected Starmer's Labour Party to win last year, it was far less clear what Labour might be offering in government, except the rather nebulous concept of 'change'. Even before the election, Starmer had been criticised for abandoning many of the planks of the platform on which he won the party leadership. His government has, so far at least, struggled to articulate a clear vision and sense of direction. At times, Starmer, unlike Attlee, has even appeared to be blaming the system for the government's shortcomings, and using the allegation (also made by Tony Blair) that the supposed levers of power do not seem to be connected to anything. This is a poor substitute for looking to his ministers to roll up their sleeves, address the issues and deliver. The second factor in the success of the 1945 government was the quality of the team assembled and led by Attlee. The government front bench included many experienced political heavyweights with substantial ministerial experience gained during the wartime coalition – people like Ernest Bevin, the former trade union leader and wartime minister of Labour, who led the Foreign Office, and Herbert Morrison, who had been home secretary during the war. Attlee himself had been deputy prime minister to Churchill, with a wide-ranging brief. By contrast, Starmer, like Blair in 1997, arrived in No 10 with no ministerial experience whatsoever. And, of his cabinet, only three members – Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper and Ed Miliband – have ever been full cabinet ministers before. But the most striking factor of the Attlee government was its output. From day one, the government was relentlessly focused on the demobilisation of over 3 million returning servicemen and women, and their reintegration into post war life in Britain. The economy became far more centralised, with the nationalisation of the Bank of England only seven months after the election, and later of the 'commanding heights of the economy'. There were also big changes through expanding the social role of government, by implementing the recommendations of the 1942 Beveridge Report and, most notably, through the creation of the National Health Service by the health secretary, Aneurin Bevan, three years after the election. Add to that the Festival of Britain – Morrison's brainchild – which brought a sense of energy and enthusiasm to the country after the dark days of the war. The government even finally achieved universal suffrage, with the abolition of the university vote, which had given some people at certain universities two votes rather than one. All in all, it was quite a record of domestic policy which, so far at least, does not look like being matched by the current government. Internationally, Attlee's administration helped shape the post-war world, too. From the Potsdam conference to the new economic framework based on the Bretton Woods agreement, to the oversight of the transition to independence for India in 1947 his government was at the forefront. And, in 1949, Nato was founded with Bevin heading UK negotiations. This, coupled with Attlee's determination to procure a UK nuclear capability, designed the nation's post-war defence framework, which is now under such strains. Starmer so far seems much more comfortable operating on the international front, where his legalistic approach and attention to detail have worked in his favour. But it is on the domestic front where he needs to up his game. None of the achievements of the 1945 government would have been possible without Attlee's leadership: quiet, undemonstrative, yet ruthlessly efficient and intolerant of poor performance. The phrase about not suffering fools gladly could have been made for him. He was determined to raise living standards and respond to the aspirations of everyone. He was committed to abolishing the poverty that he had witnessed in east London some 30 years previously. He strove to build a new world order so that, never again, would young men have to fight – as he had done in the First World War – or to defeat Nazism as the nation had just done in the Second World War. Attlee was the leader who made this happen. Why, then, with such a body of achievement delivered in only six years, was Attlee defeated in 1951? On one level, his government simply 'ran out of steam'. There was no new programme of work designed for the 1950s. Most of his ministers were exhausted – some were ill or dying. Ellen Wilkinson, his education minister, and Bevin, both died in office. Nevertheless, in the 1951 election, Labour achieved the highest percentage vote of any party in post-war history, with 48.8 per cent. However, the Conservatives, with a smaller 48.0 per cent of the vote, won more seats in the House of Commons and Churchill returned as prime minister. By way of contrast, last year Keir Starmer's Labour Party won only 33.7 per cent of the vote. Had someone asked Attlee in 1946 what had been his successes and failures of his first year – a question that Starmer has faced – the election-winner of 1945 might have struggled to choose from his many achievements during his first 12 months in office. He would certainly have been very unlikely to have said that his greatest failure had been 'not telling our story as well as we should'.
