EU investigates Polish government's controversial new laws

Executive body is formally inspecting legislation to establish whether it has breached EU democratic standards

                                                        European commission vice-president Frans Timmermans. 

The European Union has launched an unprecedented inquiry into whether Poland’s new nationalist government has breached EU democratic standards in taking more control of the judiciary and public media.

“Today we have decided that the commission will carry out a preliminary assessment of this matter under the Rule of Law Framework,” EU commission vice-president Frans Timmermans told a news conference after an unusually lengthy weekly meeting of the EU’s executive body in Brussels.

EU officials had previously indicated that the commission might prefer to hold off for now on launching formal procedure that was set up two years ago in response to criticism that it had done too little to curb authoritarian moves by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban over the past several years.

However, Timmermans, who in his previous role as a centre-left Dutch foreign minister was one of the architects of the new Rule of Law Framework, insisted and said it would allow for a “structured dialogue” with Warsaw. He and the commission would review Polish responses by mid-March, after working with the Council of Europe, the pan-European human rights watchdog.

A Polish government spokesman played down the launch of the process, describing it as “standard procedure”.

Critics accuse Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Prime Minister Beata Szydlo’s Law and Justice party, of rolling back judicial independence and freedom of speech.

Supporters say the government is entitled to uphold Catholic and national values and show its independence from Brussels.

Since its election in October, the government has ignored existing rules to pack the constitutional court with its appointees and changed the court’s voting system to curb its ability to censure legislation. It has also passed a law giving it direct control over the appointment of public media chiefs.

Fifa sacks suspended secretary general Jérôme Valcke with immediate effect

Valcke dismissed by Fifa for the second time in his career 
• Frenchman facing nine-year ban over several alleged offences

                      Jérôme Valcke, the suspended secretary general of Fifa, has been sacked with immediate effect.

Jérôme Valcke, the suspended secretary general of Fifa and Sepp Blatter’s long-time associate, has been sacked with immediate effect.

The Frenchman is facing a nine-year ban after an ethics investigation considered several alleged offences, including being connected to the black market sales of World Cup tickets. He denies wrongdoing.

The ethics committee’s investigatory chamber recommended a nine-year ban and a 100,000 Swiss francs (£67,500) fine as it passed the case to the adjudicatory arm, headed by the German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, for a final decision.

In December Blatter and Michel Platini, the Uefa president who was his heir apparent, were banned from football for eight years following an investigation into a £1.35m “disloyal payment”. Both men protested their innocence.

Valcke has been suspended since 17 September, but Fifa’s emergency committee has now decided to dismiss him from the organisation.

Fifa said in a statement: “The employment relationship between Fifa and Jérôme Valcke has been terminated … The provisional suspension … extended on 6 January 2016 continues to be valid. The duties of the Secretary General will continue to be assumed by the Acting Secretary General, Dr Markus Kattner.”

It is the second time Valcke has been dismissed by Fifa. In 2006 a New York judge said Valcke, as head of marketing, had “lied repeatedly” to potential sponsors, with a lawyer saying that among Fifa’s “white lies, commercial lies, bluffs, pure lies, straight untruths and perjury, Mr Valcke even lied when testifying about his lies”. Blatter rehired him eight months later.

Swedish prime minister reveals 'great anger' over reports of sex attacks

Stefan Löfven speaks out after boy charged with assault at festival and police accused of withholding information about attacks

                                    Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven (right): ‘Those guilty must be punished.’

Sweden’s prime minister has said he feels “a great anger” over reports of a string of sex assaults at a teenage music festival, widely likened to similar attacks blamed on male refugees in Germany.

A 15-year-old boy has been charged with assault and sexual assault at the We Are Stockholm festival after police were accused of withholding information about a number of attacks. It has emerged that a total of 38 reports of rape and sexual assault were filed after the festival in 2014 and 2015.

The prime minister, Stefan Löfven, told Swedish lawmakers on Wednesday that girls and women should be able to move around freely at night without fear of being assaulted, but did not blame the attacks on refugees.

“If assaults occur, society has to stand with the victims,” he said. “I felt a great anger as I learned about the reports from both Cologne and Stockholm. Those guilty must be punished.”

Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the rightwing anti-immigration party Sweden Democrats, pressed the prime minister to comment on whether cultural differences played a part in the attacks, given that police have said suspects were described as foreigners.

“Whatever the motive we have to work more with attitudes among young men,” Löfven said. “It’s never OK to grope or harass women.”

Internal police memos obtained by the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter referred to “so-called refugee youths, specifically from Afghanistan”. The national police commissioner, Dan Eliasson, has promised a full investigation into the events at the festival.

Sweden Democrats have accused police of timidity over the cultural background of the attackers. “If they [the police] have taken any political stand in what they are reporting then obviously that’s completely devastating,” Paula Bieler, the party’s spokeswoman for integration and equality for women told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“This is a new scale, it comes from a completely different view of women than we have in our country. We now have a huge inflow of young men from countries with a completely different view of women, from wars where we know that rape and sexual harassment is a way of relaxing … and also from the countries where they have a very patriarchal, Islamist culture where women are respected if they stay at home but not if they are in public.”

Bieler called for an educational programme for refugees to teach them about Swedish values. “We have said that those who don’t want to accept it, if you want to bring your old values of women only being there for men’s sake, then that view is not welcome here in and in that case neither are you,” she said.

Brazil dam disaster: judge freezes assets of miners BHP and Vale

Brazilian government holds the mining giants responsible for one of the nation’s worst ever environmental disasters, and is demanding $5bn

Brazil is demanding $5bn in compensation from BHP Billiton and Vale SA over one of the worst environmental disasters in its history. 

A judge has frozen the Brazilian assets of mining giants BHP Billiton and Vale SA after determining their joint venture Samarco was unable to pay for widespread damage caused by the bursting of a dam at its mine last month.

In a ruling issued late on Friday, the judge in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais determined that Vale and BHP could be held responsible for the disaster at the iron ore mine, for which the government is demanding 20bn reais ($5bn) in compensation.

Vale and BHP each said they had not yet been notified about the decision. The companies are able to appeal.

The dam rupture , which turned into Brazil’s worst ever environmental disaster, killed 16 people, left hundreds homeless and polluted a river 800km (500-miles) long that flows across two states.

Despite the scale of the crisis, Vale had argued Samarco, as an independent legal entity and a sizeable company in its own right, was wholly responsible for the accident and the subsequent damage and fines.

But federal judge Marcelo Aguiar Machado disagreed. “I understand to be correct the allegation that Vale and BHP, as controllers of Samarco, can be classified as indirect polluters and as such responsible for the environmental damage caused,” he wrote in his 19-page judgment.

The judgment did not specify the value of assets that had been blocked, but mentioned prosecutor estimates that Samarco did not have the funds to cover more that half of the 20 billion reais being sought in damages.

Machado imposed a number of other requirements, among which Samarco must make an initial deposit of 2bn reais within 30 days to cover the clean-up process. If the deadline is missed, the companies will face a fine of 1.5m reais for each day the balance remains unpaid.

The companies must map out an extensive clean-up plan and work out how to stop mud from contaminating sources of mineral water.

Samarco, BHP and Vale must also contract within 10 days a company to evaluate the contamination to fish caused by the mud slide, and the possible risk to humans who might consume them.

Failure to meet these deadlines, and others listed in the judgement, face a daily fine of 150,000 reais.