Latest news with #Brussels-based
Euronews
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Euronews
Family reunification for migrants in the spotlight in Belgium
The Brussels Immigration office is an imposing building, spread over twelve floors of a concrete block constructed in the 1960s. It's here where the fate of migrants and their families is decided. And now, one service in particular being offered at the centre is in the political spotlight. Last week, MPs passed a government bill restricting access to family reunification. This scheme allows legally resident foreign nationals to bring in one or more family members. Under the new guidelines, refugees will only have six months to submit their application. Beneficiaries of subsidiary protection, those who do not have refugee status, will have to wait two years before they can submit their application. The text also requires greater financial resources. The minimum income required to submit an application has been increased. Migrants now need to earn around €2,300 per month, compared with the €2,100 under the previous regulations. This amount is increased by 10% for each additional family member. "If someone wants to bring in their partner and two children, they have to earn €2,700 net per month," explains Thomas Willekens, policy officer for the Brussels-based NGO Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen. This sum "is enormous and I would say that the average employee in Belgium does not even earn this amount," he adds. A virtual impossibility without a name The Belgian Minister for Asylum and Migration, Flemish nationalist Anneleen Van Bossuyt, has defended these new measures. The minister who originally put forward the proposal said, "We need to reduce the influx of people. Our society is no longer able to bear this burden." The government wants to reduce the number of migrants arriving through family reunification. According to figures from the Immigration Office, last year 20,724 people from countries outside the European Union obtained visas for Belgium under this scheme. Belgian authorities have also decided to increase the application fee for naturalisation, up from €150 to €1,000. For Thomas Willekens, these new rules are above all a covert way of making family reunification impossible, at the risk of plunging these families into an even more dangerous situation. "The consequences for refugees in Belgium will be prolonged separation from their families, which will have an impact on their integration and inclusion in Belgian society. It's difficult to learn the language if you're worried about your partner in Afghanistan, for example," he explains. "As for refugees and countries of origin, while they used to be able to use this safe and legal route to come to Belgium, they no longer have access to it. They will therefore turn to smugglers to come to Europe." A European trend Belgium is not alone in Europe. Last week, Portugal also adopted more stringent measures for granting family reunification. German MPs approved the suspension of the family reunification scheme last month for people with "subsidiary protection," in other words those who do not have refugee status. While Austria has suspended family reunification for a period of six months. In practical terms, applications can be submitted to the Austrian authorities, but will not be processed.
L'Orient-Le Jour
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- L'Orient-Le Jour
Kinamania will help you create your own bag
The bag-making workshop launched by Kinamania will return to Lebanon for its second edition on July 31 and Aug. 7: A beautiful terrace overlooking the sea, a large table covered with leather scraps in every color and matching thread, snacks to nibble on and a mellow atmosphere. Those who have taken part in the experience are eager to do it again. The founder of Brussels-based Kinamania, which specializes in shoes, sandals and leather goods, Kristina Zouein, was also looking forward to reliving this moment with anyone willing to give it a try, after the success of her workshop last summer. In Ghbeleh, high above Adma in Kristina's family home, the view is stunning, the sun is radiant and the vibes inspire creation: a fitting atmosphere to design your own bag. No experience is needed to create one of the two proposed models: the Muse or the Carryall. The first is a structured trapeze-shaped bag with a shoulder strap, flap and a small contrast interior pocket. The second is a slouchy, unstructured tote with a shoulder strap and an exterior pocket for a credit card. Between sewing and lunch, four hours pass quickly, and you leave with the tremendous satisfaction of bringing home something that you fashioned to your liking. The leather is sourced mainly in Lebanon. The palette also includes metallized leathers for an evening look. "The idea of these workshops is to send a message of connection between Brussels and Beirut and to raise awareness about leatherworking with beautiful color combinations. Each person creates their own combinations. In Lebanon, we love color!" said Zouein. "The goal of this experience is to make participants proud. First, you gain awareness of craftsmanship. Then, you get to wear a bag that will draw attention, and you'll be able to say you made it yourself," she added. The Kinamania story began in Beirut at Johnny Farah's leather workshop in Saifi. It continued in Belgium, but it has never strayed from its roots in Beirut, with a showroom there and a collaboration with Cynthia Chamat (Boutique Hub). The aim is to offer work to Lebanese artisans while aligning with market realities. The creator's original idea was to make "minorquines," the traditional sandals of the Balearic Islands — called majorquinas in Majorca and minorquinas in Menorca, with a broad strap in the front and a strap at the back. Zouein, who trained in management and marketing at AUB, nevertheless became passionate about working with her hands, especially with leather. She finds obvious satisfaction in keeping her hands busy and developing her sense of geometry and measurement. This craft has also carried political messages and contributed to collective solidarity, sometimes providing work to Syrian refugee craftswomen and sometimes featuring the famous cross-stitch embroidery done by embroiderers in the Palestinian camps. "Making, acting, repairing" is the trilogy at the heart of this ethical brand, which will soon branch out into more sophisticated shoes, such as derbies and personalized bags. To experience this summer workshop set against the blue horizon, register by clicking this link or on WhatsApp at +961 3 68 69 36 to attend on July 31 or Aug. 7.
Egypt Independent
2 days ago
- Business
- Egypt Independent
NATO has promised a spending blitz. Can its European members afford it?
London CNN — The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the defense alliance of 32 countries, is on a spending spree, with plans to funnel billions into their militaries and security systems over the coming decade. But it's a splurge that some European members of NATO, grappling with huge and ballooning debt burdens, can ill-afford. 'It's something unprecedented in peacetime to have such a massive increase in spending on any item – in particular, on defense,' Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research or DIW, told CNN. Last month, NATO members agreed to boost their respective defense spending targets to five percent of gross domestic product by 2035 – more than double the current two percent target and the sort of major increase that US President Donald Trump has been demanding for many years. The pledge came as Europe's NATO members have to contend with an aggressive Russia and an America that has backed away from its long-standing role as the guarantor of the region's security. Governments have three options to meet the new spending target – cut other expenses, raise taxes or borrow more – but analysts told CNN that each is either politically unpalatable or unviable in the long term for heavily indebted European NATO countries. 'Many (European Union) countries face hard fiscal constraints,' analysts at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, wrote earlier this month. 'It is unrealistic to expect countries that have struggled for decades to reach a 2 percent defense spending target to embrace credibly an ill-justified, much higher target.' Hard choices Many NATO countries have failed to meet the previous, two percent target, set in 2014. Most have increased spending in recent years in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – so much so that the European Union's executive arm expects its 23 member states belonging to NATO to meet that target this year, based on their combined GDP. But they now need to go further. The new, five percent target includes a commitment by NATO member states to spend the equivalent of 3.5 percent of their annual GDP on so-called 'core' defense requirements, such as weapons, with the remaining 1.5 percent allocated to areas supporting defense like port infrastructure. For some nations, that will mean finding tens of billions of extra dollars a year. Frank Gill, a senior sovereign credit ratings analyst for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at S&P Global Ratings, thinks that meeting the 3.5 percent target alone will require European countries, including the United Kingdom, to borrow huge sums of money. Some nations may also cut or reallocate government spending to reduce the amount they need to borrow, he said, but that could prove difficult. Two older people walk in the garden of a retirement home in Potsdam, Germany, in July 2025. Fabian Sommer/dpa/picture-alliance/AP 'A lot of (European governments) are facing other fiscal pressures… not least aging populations, which are essentially leading to even higher pension spending,' Gill told CNN. 'Politically, (that) is very challenging to cut.' Fratzscher at DIW in Germany agrees. For most NATO countries, he argued, cutting spending is 'utterly impossible.' 'Europe is aging quickly,' he said. 'It's completely illusionary to believe that… governments in Europe could save on public pensions, on healthcare, on care more generally.' The only sustainable way to finance the 'kind of magnitude of extra (defense) spending' now pledged by NATO is to hike taxes, he argued. Yet there exists neither the political will nor the public support to spend 'in such a dramatic way in this direction… and actually accept the consequences.' Crushing debt Simply borrowing more is a similarly tricky option in Europe where a number of governments are already saddled with debts close to, or larger than, the size of their country's entire economy. All else remaining equal, meeting just the 3.5 percent 'core' defense spending target could add roughly $2 trillion to the collective government debt of NATO's European members, including the UK, by 2035, according to a recent analysis by S&P Global Ratings. That compares with combined GDP of $23.1 trillion for the EU – a proxy for European NATO members – and Britain, based on World Bank data for 2024. The extra debt would be particularly hard to swallow for countries such as Italy, France and Belgium. These NATO members had some of the highest public debt-to-GDP ratios at the end of 2024, at 135 percent, 113 percent and 105 percent respectively, according to the EU's statistics office. Countries such as France, where this photo was taken, are grappling with huge government debt burdens. Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP/Getty Images Those are already heavy burdens. On Tuesday, French Prime Minister François Bayrou said the EU's second-largest economy risks a 'crushing by debt.' He warned that, should nothing change, just the interest France pays on its debt will swell to €100 billion ($117 billion) in 2029, becoming the government's largest single expense. He still supports splashing the cash on defense, while reining in other government spending. The EU is trying to make it easier for member states to invest in their security. Brussels has exempted defense expenditure from its strict rules on government spending and pledged to create a €150 billion fund from which countries can borrow, at favorable interest rates, to invest in their defense. However, there is another option for EU NATO members, according to Guntram Wolff, a senior fellow at Bruegel. 'Just not doing it. Not spending more,' he told CNN. Already, Spain has said it will not meet the five percent target, arguing that doing so would compromise its spending on welfare. Last year, the southern European nation spent only 1.28 percent of its GDP on defense, based on NATO estimates. Wolff said the 'best predictor for the increase in defense spending is (a country's) distance to Moscow – much more than any pledges at the NATO summit.'
Business Insider
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Russia's high military recruitment bonuses are straining its economy
Russia's high recruitment bonuses to sustain its war effort in Ukraine are straining the country's economy, according to a recent report from the Institute for the Study of War. Costs have ballooned for the bonuses and the labor expansion in the defense industry, Last July, Putin signed a decree more than doubling the standard enlistment bonus from 195,000 rubles to 400,000 rubles — nearly five times the country's average monthly wage. The head count drive has placed the military in direct competition with civilian industries for labor, driving up wages and prices, particularly in services, while Russia continues to pour funds into its war effort. "Russia cannot indefinitely replace its forces at the current casualty rate without an involuntary reserve mobilization, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown great reluctance to order, nor can it sustain increasingly high payments to recruits, which the Russian economy cannot afford," wrote the ISW analysts. Russia has suffered over 950,000 injuries and deaths in the war, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in June. The ISW analysts warned that Moscow is "burning the candle at both ends" by loosening monetary policy to prop up growth and expanding wartime spending. The combination, they said, risks further destabilizing the economy. Russia's "unsustainably high" payments to soldiers are likely to erode consumer purchasing power, weaken the ruble over time, and deepen macroeconomic instability, the ISW analysts wrote. The cost of Russia's war-driven economic boom Putin's administration beat its recruitment goals last year, largely by offering lucrative bonuses. Some regional governments even offered bonuses on par with the US military's sign-on payments. That approach helped fuel short-term growth. Economists at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, wrotethat military spending and bonus-driven consumption were key drivers of Russia's GDP growth in 2023 and 2024. As the economy shifted toward war, the defense sector and wartime consumption benefited most. But by mid-2023, the economy began overheating, prompting the central bank to raise interest rates repeatedly. "Still, with much lending occurring at subsidised rates and the military-industrial complex shielded by public procurement, the rate hikes primarily impacted non-war-related sectors," the Bruegel economists added. Even the military-industrial sector showed signs of stagnation by late 2024. "The economy had butted up against its supply-side constraints," they wrote. With the Bank of Russia directing credit to military-linked sectors, other parts of the economy are increasingly being squeezed. Meanwhile, structural weaknesses in Russia's war economy persist even if it has appeared to be resilient so far, thanks to the influx of war-related spending. "Russia has lost major export markets for its defence products, faces rising costs from sanctions evasion and suffers from weak labour and migration policies — all of which compound its structural challenges," the Bruegel economists wrote.
Roya News
3 days ago
- Politics
- Roya News
Hind Rajab Foundation pursues 'Israeli' soldiers at Belgium music festival
The Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), in collaboration with the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), has filed urgent legal complaints with the Belgian Federal Prosecutor, demanding the immediate arrest and prosecution of two 'Israeli' soldiers attending the Tomorrowland music festival. The foundation says these individuals are implicated in grave international crimes, including war crimes and genocide, committed during 'Israel's' ongoing aggression against the Gaza Strip, leveraging Belgium's universal jurisdiction laws. The HRF's action was prompted by the alleged presence of young 'Israeli' soldiers at Tomorrowland waving the flag of the 'Israeli' Givati Brigade, a unit the HRF says is "extensively documented for its role in the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and for carrying out mass atrocities against the Palestinian population". The foundation asserts that the Givati flag has become a "symbol of impunity, destruction, and ethnic cleansing". The individuals are accused of direct involvement in crimes such as indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, use of torture and human shields, mass arbitrary detention, forced displacement, and deliberate infliction of conditions calculated to destroy the Palestinian population. The Hind Rajab Foundation, established in September 2024 and named after a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza, aims to challenge 'Israeli' impunity for alleged war crimes. Co-founded by Dyab Abou Jahjah, the HRF employs open-source intelligence (OSINT) to monitor social media posts by 'Israeli' soldiers for evidence of criminal activity, then files cases when subjects enter countries with universal jurisdiction. This strategy has led to reported instances of 'Israeli' soldiers fleeing countries like Brazil and Argentina to evade arrest, and an 'Israeli' cabinet minister canceling a visit to Belgium due to arrest risks. The 'Israeli' Foreign Ministry is aware of 28 such claims in eight countries, many attributed to HRF. While 'Israeli' officials publicly downplay the threat, the military has implemented new rules to protect troops' privacy and warned against social media posts that could lead to legal action abroad.
