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Austria has become the first country in the European Union to ban the Muslim Brotherhood as part of a new anti-terrorism law. The law bans the Egyptian-founded Muslim Brotherhood by adding it to a list of organisations linked to “religiously motivated crime”. It sets a punishment of a month in prison and a €4,000 (£3,407/$4,717) fine for those who propagate the group’s literature or disseminate its slogans. The law also allows the government to place electronic tags on convicted terrorists for monitoring . The ban comes as part of an anti-terrorism package the Austrian parliament passed and which was created...

France has called European Union to impose financial & trade sanctions on Turkey & Pakistan. French Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Jordan Bardella has expressed concerns over terrorism emanating from countries like Turkey and Pakistan.France demands EU sanctions after terror attacks in Paris, Nice & Vienna | Jordan Bardella

Austria’s Europe minister has said that the EU’s compulsory migrant redistribution scheme “has failed” and member-states should be able to choose whether to accept migrants or not. While some 150 non-governmental organisations have put pressure on Austria to accept Middle Eastern migrants stuck in Greece because of the worsening coronavirus pandemic, two government spokesmen have said that Austria will maintain its current policy and not accept any more asylum seekers. “It remains a no,” confirmed Claudia Türtscher, the spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), according to Kronen Zeitung. Ms Türtscher referred the...

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has lost a confidence vote in parliament, removing him from office over a political scandal that brought down his coalition government. The no-confidence motion on May 27 was backed by lawmakers from the Social Democrats and the far-right Freedom Party, which was in coalition with Kurz until the chancellor ended their alliance last week. The political crisis was triggered last week by a 2017 video purportedly showing his vice chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, offering contracts to a potential Russian benefactor in exchange for political donations. Strache, with the Freedom Party, announced his resignation from the government on...

An eight-day "ultimatum" for Venezuela's President Maduro to call fresh elections is set to expire in hours. Several EU nations are preparing to recognize Juan Guaido as interim leader, but Maduro remains defiant. Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro faces massive pressure to call for new elections before midnight on Sunday. Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium have said they will recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as president if Maduro fails to announce a second vote before the eight-day ultimatum expires. France's European affairs minister, Nathalie Loiseau, told LCI television on Sunday that "if by tonight [President] Maduro does...

Conservative Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has claimed that Europeans’ attitude toward mass migration has vastly changed since 2015 with advocates for demographic replacement having gone quiet. Chancellor Kurz made the comments this week on a visit to Switzerland where he met with the President of the Swiss Confederation Alain Berset. According to Kurz, “There are a lot of things that have changed,” and he noted the European Union’s recent drive to secure the Mediterranean border, broadcaster Radio Télévision Suisse reports. “A lot of people who said that (the migration of 2015), it is beneficial for Europe, it is necessary for...

Detailed proposals and recommendations for combating antisemitism in Europe were presented on Wednesday at a conference in Vienna arranged by the Federal Chancellery of Austria led by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. The recommendations, called the “Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism,” were drawn up by the European Jewish Congress with the assistance of academics from universities in Vienna, Tel Aviv and New York. “Antisemitism and anti-Zionism are getting blurred, but they are two sides of the same coin,” Kurz said during his opening address at the high level conference, titled “Europe beyond antisemitism and anti-Zionism – securing Jewish life in...

The flow of third world migrants must be brought to a halt, European leaders said over the weekend, with Sebastian Kurz calling for EU nations to begin blocking boats from Africa. Der Standard reported the Austrian Chancellor [pictured above, left] held a telephone conversation with Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, in which the pair agreed that the situation with migrants being ferried across the Mediterranean was not sustainable. “We are both of the opinion that the EU cannot just allow every ship to dock,” said Kurtz, urging other nations in the bloc to close their ports to boats carrying illegal...

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has made clear his strong stance on unlimited mass migration after he refused to take part in an EU-wide effort to distribute the migrants of a fishing boat that landed on an Italian island Monday. Calling on the nations of Europe to work harder to prevent illegal migration to the continent, Kurz also pointed to the fact that migrant ships could be sent to countries outside of the European Union to disembark their human cargo. The comments came after 450 migrants were picked up from a wooden fishing boat on Saturday, and brought to Sicily to...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria’s right-wing government plans to shut seven mosques and could expel dozens of imams in what it said was “just the beginning” of a push against radical Islam and foreign funding of religious groups that Turkey condemned as racist. The coalition government, an alliance of conservatives and the far right, came to power soon after Europe’s migration crisis on promises to prevent another influx and restrict benefits for new immigrants and refugees. The moves follow a “law on Islam”, passed in 2015, which banned foreign funding of religious groups and created a duty for Muslim organizations to...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly secured agreements with 14 European Union countries to rapidly return some asylum seekers as she seeks to end a schism in her government over migration policy. The countries included Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, which have all been harsh critics of Merkel's welcoming stance to migrants, as well as Belgium, France, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. Top CSU lawmaker Markus Soeder, Bavaria's governor, on Saturday praised the EU agreement as more than his party had expected, but at the same time suggested that it left open the...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has largely abandoned support for the European Union’s migrant quota system, instead, pushing for what she has termed “flexible solidarity” and a “Marshall Plan” for Africa to prevent illegal migration. Merkel made her remarks on Wednesday at a meeting of the European People’s Party, a European Union parliamentary group of which Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CSU) is a member, Le Point reports. “If we fail to provide a common answer to questions of illegal migration, the foundations of the European Union will be called into question. Action is really needed here,” she said. Merkel appeared to...

<p>BERLIN (AFP) - Leading German politicianson Tuesday called for the US ambassador to be expelled, after the staunch ally of Donald Trump was accused of meddling in domestic politics and aggravating already tense ties.</p> <p>Richard Grenell had taken up his diplomatic posting in Berlin on May 8, and immediately irked Germany when he tweeted on the same day that German companies should stop doing business with Iran as Trump quit the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.</p>

In an effort to stop migrants from crossing the Mediterranean, Austria's chancellor has said EU border patrol guards should be sent to northern Africa. Sebastian Kurz has made cracking down on immigration a priority.Frontex border control agents should be allowed to operate in northern Africa in order to prevent further migration to Europe, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said in an interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag,published on Sunday. Kurz's comments appeared to foreshadow the Austrian government's plans for when it takes over the EU Presidency for six months starting in July. Read more: Follow the money: What are the...

Warsaw’s controversial shake-up of its judiciary, which could force two-fifths of supreme court judges to step down, is causing increasing friction with Brussels. The country’s new prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, is braced for the EU to issue an extaordinary formal warning by triggering article 7.1, a procedure which could lead to member states having bloc voting rights suspended. He said: “As far as I understand, the decision has already been made that next Wednesday [December 20] the European Commission plans to start article 7.1…it will most likely be triggered.” This could pave the way for the suspension of voting rights...

Austria’s new chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said that the European Union’s migrant quotas have not worked and that he wants to change the “erroneous refugee policy”. Kurz has now joined forces with the leaders of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic; countries that have already refused to adopt the EU migrant quota scheme. According to Kurz it is “positive that Tusk (President of the European Council) and several European states are pressing first and foremost for decent border protection and spending more EU funds on this”. Earlier Tusk called the troubled scheme “ineffective” and “highly divisive” before an EU summit in...

SEBASTIAN Kurz is expected to clinch victory in the Austria elections, according to the latest projections, which could see him form an alliance with the far right in a crushing blow for the European Union.

Vienna (AFP) - Austria's political "whizz-kid" Sebastian Kurz was on course Sunday to become Europe's youngest leader, potentially in coalition with the far-right, after his conservative party looked to have triumphed in elections. Kurz's People's Party (OeVP) won 30.5 percent of the vote, followed by Chancellor Christian Kern's Social Democrats (SPOe) on 27.1 percent and the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) on 25.9 percent, projections on public TV showed. Kurz, 31, nicknamed "wunderwuzzi", ("whizzkid") took over the OeVP in May and managed to attract supporters in droves by depicting himself as a breath of fresh air, talking tough on immigration and...

The country of Haydn and Mozart has had a bellyful of the countries of Mohammed: Austrians profiting from the fastest economic growth in six years look likely to ditch their current coalition in favor of a new government backed by anti-immigration nationalists and headed by the world’s youngest leader. Polls suggest that Austria’s 31-year-old Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz will lead his conservative People’s Party to victory in Sunday’s election. That could set the stage for a coalition with Heinz-Christian Strache’s populist Freedom Party, unwinding a decade of Social Democratic-led administrations that revived the economy but struggled with issues over...