[Discussion] European Politics Discussion

Dutch election promises new era and shake-up in politics

Veteran anti-Islam populist leader Geert Wilders is set to win the Dutch general election, says an Ipsos exit poll.

If confirmed the result will shake Dutch politics, although he will struggle to find parties to join him in government and no single party can win enough seats to govern alone.

After 25 years in the Dutch parliament, his Freedom party is heading for 35 seats, well ahead of his nearest rival.

The left-wing alliance under Frans Timmermans is predicted to win 26 seats.

The Garda Commissioner has told a policing committee that the role of far-right online instigators is being investigated as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into the violence and riots in Dublin last week.

Drew Harris told the Dublin City Joint Policing Committee that the far right is "nebulous" and not like a transnational organised crime gang and that they are careful "not to cross the line".

He rejected assertions by city councillors that gardaí had been "caught out" last week.

Mr Harris said they already had additional public order officers on the streets in Dublin since September and that from 6pm last Thursday, there was a "huge mobilisation" and "a rapid response" with a tenfold increase in the number of public order officers.

The investigation into the 'Love Ulster' riots in 2006 took 18 months and 119 people were arrested, he said.

He said there "will be more perpetrators with this" when there is more digital evidence, but in the meantime, these individuals remain at large and still remain a risk of crime, disorder and hate crime.

Mr Harris said the investigation was threefold, one into the stabbing of the children and their carer, one into the violence on the streets and the third into the online activity.

Independent Councillor Mannix Flynn told the Commissioner that both he and the Minister owe the people of Dublin an apology.

He said the gardaí had been previously warned about the behaviour of criminals, racists and hate speakers and that "anyone from the gardaí looking at this stuff could have seen that".

Mr Flynn accused garda management of having "no leadership, no equipment," with garda cars parked "willy-nilly".

He said he was not looking for resignations but said "the people were left high and dry".

More than 200 years after they were torn from their country's most sacred landmark and shipped unceremoniously to the UK, the Elgin Marbles still scream injustice for the vast majority of Greeks.

Not that anyone around me would call them that: the Parthenon Sculptures being the name used time and again - in a rejection of the British claim of ownership of the ancient treasures perceived almost universally here to have been stolen by one Lord Elgin in a callous act of imperial theft.

In the bustle of central Athens there was the most predictable of consensus among those we spoke to, whether old or young.

"I mean, the Parthenon, the sculptures - they belong to Greece. Let's be fair, yeah?" said 21-year-old trainee pilot Melina Petrou.

"What the prime minster said about the Mona Lisa was a great example. You'd have half of it in the Louvre and half in another country and that's what the UK did in stealing the sculptures - so that's not fair at all."

But wouldn't the process of moving the friezes seriously endanger them, I ask? Aren't they better off at the British Museum, as the British government argues?

"I used to live in London and I remember one day I saw at the British Museum how the roof was leaking. And they say they need to stay in London because they'll be in a better condition! They need to come home to Greece."

At the foot of the Acropolis, you find a museum that was built specifically to house the missing marbles whenever their return may be. Fourteen years after it opened, they are still waiting for their centrepiece to be brought back.

Inside the building, the outline of missing parts of the Parthenon are highlighted - along with an explanation of where they currently reside. Other countries, including Italy, have said they are prepared to return some precious Greek antiquities but the British are yet to follow suit.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's cancellation of his meeting with Greek Prime Minster Kyriakos Mitsotakis has done nothing to boost affection for the UK.

If Mr Sunak thought calling off the talks at 10 Downing Street would be seen as just a diplomatic storm in a tea cup, he was mistaken.

"I felt offended and every Greek felt offended," cabinet minister Adonis Georgiadis told me on Tuesday evening.

Employees can be banned from wearing signs of religious belief such as the Islamic headscarf in EU member states, the bloc’s top court ruled on Tuesday.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said authorities in member states had a margin of discretion in designing the neutrality of public service they intended to promote.

However, this objective must be pursued in a “consistent and systematic manner” and measures must be limited to what is strictly necessary. It was for a national court to verify that these requirements are complied with.

The CJEU ruled for the first time on women’s wearing of the headscarf in 2017, when the Luxembourg court found that the garments could be banned, but only as part of a general policy barring all religious and political symbols.

The judgment also stipulated that customers could simply not demand that workers remove headscarves if the company they were working for had no policy barring religious symbols.

How gang violence took hold of Sweden – in five charts
Scandinavian country has second highest gun crime death rate in Europe, with poverty and inequality among driving factors

Viktor Sunnemark
Thu 30 Nov 2023 08.52 EST
Sweden is in the grip of a rise in gang violence and shootings that has taken citizens and leaders by surprise. In the words of the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, this year: “Sweden has never before seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this.”

Since 2013 the number of fatal shootings in the country has more than doubled, according to official statistics, and drug and gun crimes have steadily increased since the beginning of the 2000s. Kristersson’s remark about Europe was not wrong: the country is now among the continent’s worst when it comes to gun murders.

Much of the violence has taken place in the larger cities: Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Uppsala. The gun-murder rate in the Swedish capital was roughly 30 times that of London on a per capita basis in 2022. However, the unrest has spread to smaller cities.

Prominent members of the far-right Sweden Democrats, now the second-largest grouping in Sweden’s parliament (their support allowed the current centre-right government to take power in the 2022 election), have been quick to point the finger at migration.

However, the data shows a more complex picture, with the social fortunes of those living in areas most affected by crime falling behind the living standards of much of the rest of Sweden.