PrairiePundit

Legal Insurrection: Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic are in breach of the European Union law by refusing to take in migrants under the bloc’s mandatory migrant quota scheme, the top EU legal adviser says. According to Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston, who advises the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the members countries of the bloc have “no legitimate security grounds to reject the quota scheme” that proposes to settle hundreds of thousands migrants arriving in Europe. The eastern European countries are facing legal action at the top EU court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), for blocking the EU plan to assign each country with a quota of migrants to take in. The Eastern European countries have so far frustrated Brussels’ efforts to impose mandatory quotas on member states for the mass resettlement of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East swarming the continent through the Mediterranean route. Poland rejected the Advocate General’s statement citing the gove...

AFP: Czech President Milos Zeman on Saturday accused EU states of being "cowards" in their response to his US counterpart Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital. "The European Union, cowards, are doing all they can so a pro-Palestinian terrorist movement can have supremacy over a pro-Israeli movement," said Zeman, presenting himself as a defender of Israel. The 73-year-old Zeman, targeting a second term from January and who had Friday said he was happy at Trump's controversial move, made Saturday's comment before delegates attending the congress of the far right Freedom and Direct Democracy party, which opposes immigration and the EU. Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday in a move that outraged Palestinian leaders, but which was hailed as historic by Israel. Zeman said he had himself spoken in favour of Prague moving the Czech embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv on a visit four years ago -- a proposal w...

BBC: The EU's top court has rejected a challenge by Hungary and Slovakia to a migrant relocation deal drawn up at the height of the crisis in 2015. The European Court of Justice overruled their objections to the compulsory fixed-quota scheme. Hungary has not accepted a single asylum seeker since the measures were introduced two years ago. They were an attempt to ease the pressure on frontline countries such as Greece and Italy. But the ruling has sparked fury, with Hungary's foreign minister vowing: "The real fight starts now." Since 2014, about 1.7 million migrants have tried to make new homes in the EU - and the numbers peaked in 2015. In September that year, European leaders agreed to spread a total of 160,000 asylum seekers among member states over two years . Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Romania voted against the quotas. The issue was decided by a majority vote - usually followed on issues that do not affect national sovereignty. Hungary was asked...

Guardian: Russian alleged hacker arrested in Prague over cyber-attacks in US Czech police acted on Interpol warrant with cooperation from FBI Moscow demands suspect be handed over to Russia ... In a statement on Wednesday, the FBI said the man was “suspected of conducting criminal activities targeting US interests” but gave no more details. “As cybercrime can originate anywhere in the world, international cooperation is crucial to successfully defeat cyber adversaries,” it said. ... “The (Russian) embassy has been taking all necessary efforts to protect the interests of this Russian citizen. We are in contact with his attorney,” the embassy statement said. “Russia repudiates Washington’s policy of imposing its extraterritorial jurisdiction on all countries. We insist that the detainee is handed over to Russia.” ... The action of the Russian embassy makes it sound like the guy is one of their operatives.  The Russian argument on extraterritorial jurisdiction is b...

NY Times: For many Czechs, it is a historical reckoning that is 20 years too late. Two decades after the Velvet Revolution overthrew Communist rule here in 1989, a group of Czech senators is pressing to ban the Communist Party, the only surviving one in the former Soviet bloc in Europe and, to its many critics, a national embarrassment and aberration. “The Communists ruined this country and oppressed freedom and yet here they are 20 years later in our Parliament,” said David Cerny , the iconoclastic Czech artist, who in 1991 painted a Soviet tank pink , transforming a memorial to the liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Red Army in 1945 into the equivalent of a large toy. “It is a national disgrace. The Communists are endangering the country. The Czechs need to wake up.” This month senators took the first step, petitioning the government to file a legal complaint with the Supreme Administrative Court, the country’s highest electoral authority, for suspension of the Communist Party’s ac...