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The government said the Citizenship Amendment Act has been adopted by thorough democratic means.

India is facing a major diplomatic backlash from the European Union (EU) parliament on the Citizenship Amendment Act and the clampdown on Jammu and Kashmir ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Brussels for the India-EU summit in March.

As many as 600of 751 members of the European Union parliament have moved six resolutions on both the issues, their greatest concern arising over the likelihood of the controversial citizenship law creating the "largest statelessness crisis in the world".

Government sources reacted by saying that the CAA -- as the citizenship law is widely referred to -- is a matter that's "entirely internal to India" and has been adopted through "due process and democratic means" after a public debate in both houses of parliament.

The six groups of European Union parliamentarians who moved the resolutions are the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats with 154 members; the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) with 182 members; European United Left and Nordic Green Left with 41 members; Greens/European Free Alliance with 75 members; Conservatives and Reformists with 66 members; and the Renew Europe Group with 108 members.

While the resolution moved by the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats denounced "the fact that India has incorporated religious criteria into its naturalisation and refugee policies", the one by the European People's Party expressed concern over "the CAA and the wide range of negative consequences that it might have for India's international image and internal stability".

The government, however, took exception to the move to pass the draft resolution on a matter that is "entirely internal" to India. "Every society that fashions a pathway to naturalisation contemplates both context and criteria. This is not discrimination. In fact, European societies have followed the same approach," a source said, hoping that those backing the draft would engage with the government to get a "full and accurate" assessment of the facts before proceeding any further.

"As fellow democracies, the EU Parliament should not take actions that call into question the rights and authority of democratically elected legislatures in other regions of the world," the source added.

Over 150 lawmakers had earlier demanded that the European Union insist on a "strong human rights clause with an effective implementation and suspension mechanism" during any trade agreement with India. The resolutions -- expected to be tabled during the plenary session of the European Parliament starting in Brussels next week -- come days after the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked India 10 places lower in the Democracy Index over the CAA and the Jammu and Kashmir clampdown.

The European Union lawmakers were just as critical of the BJP government's handling of the Jammu and Kashmir situation, and more so of the invite it had extended to a few of their colleagues last October. "We denounce the use of this trip to legitimise PM Modi's nationalist agenda and the human rights violations carried out under his authority," the European Free Alliance group said.

The Nordic Green Left, on the other hand, condemned the political detentions and Internet blackout imposed on Kashmir as well as the scrapping of its special status on August 5.

Many across the world had criticised the private visit by mostly right-wing members of the European Union parliament as a "PR stunt". The European Union skipped a visit to Jammu and Kashmir organised for foreign diplomats earlier this month, with sources telling NDTV that the envoys did not want a "guided tour" of the region.

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India's Strong Reaction To European Union's 6 Resolutions On CAA, Kashmir - NDTV News

Britain calls time on almost half a century of European Union (EU) membership this week, striking out alone in a historic move that has bitterly divided the country. At 11pm on 31 January, the UK will become the first country to leave the 28-nation EU, the worlds largest single market area that it joined in 1973.

Nothing will immediately change, owing to a transition period negotiated between London and Brussels to allow both sides to agree a new future partnership.

Britons will be able to work in and trade freely with EU nations until 31 December, and vice versa, although they will no longer be represented in the blocs institutions.

But legally, Britain will be out.

The exit process has been tortuous, with the years since the 2016 EU referendum marked by bitter arguments that paralysed the government and forced two prime ministers to quit.

Four years ago, 52% of Britons backed Brexit but 48% wanted to stay, and the country is still split between Leavers" and Remainers". The political chaos came to an abrupt halt last month when Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a decisive victory in a general election with a promise to Get Brexit Done".

The British parliament this week finally ratified the exit terms agreed with Brussels, and Johnson called on the country to move on. Next Friday marks an important moment in the history of our United Kingdom," he said.

No matter how you voted in 2016, it is the time to look ahead with confidence to the global, trail-blazing country we will become over the next decade and heal past divisions."

The next stage of Brexit will also be a challenge, however.

Johnson wants to negotiate Britains new relationship with the EU, covering everything from trade to security cooperation, by the end of the year. But Brussels says this is an impossible ask, arguing that London must either limit its ambitions or request more time. He has been an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit since leading the 2016 campaign, but he is wary of inflaming divisions with the celebrations. Official events on Friday will be limited to a special prime ministerial address and a light display in Downing Street.

Ten million commemorative 50 pence coins will also be issued in the coming months, bearing the words Peace, Prosperity and friendship with all nations". Previous batches had to be destroyed after Brexit was delayed three times due to political wrangling in London.

Some eurosceptics had pressed for parliaments famous Big Ben bell, which is being renovated, to be brought back into action to ring out on Brexit night. But it was dropped after concerns about the cost. Johnson initially asked for public donations, only for officials to admit this was not possible. A countdown clock will instead be projected onto the black bricks of Downing Street, while Nigel Farage, another key figure in the 2016 campaign, will hold a rally in nearby Parliament Square.

Britain has always had an uneasy relationship with Brussels and refused to join either the EUs single currency or the Schengen free travel area.

A minority of politicians have campaigned for decades to free Britain from what they see as an overly bureaucratic and unaccountable institution. Concerns grew as large numbers of EU citizens moved to Britain to work, while for many, Brexit was also a protest against a political establishment they felt was ignoring them.

Yet for others across the continent, Brexit day will be a traumatic moment, ending any lingering hopes that the break-up could somehow be stopped.

See the original post here:
Over and out: Britain finally readies to leave the European Union - Livemint

Britain calls time on almost half a century of European Union membership this week, striking out alone in a historic move that has bitterly divided the country.

At 11:00pm (2300 GMT) on January 31, the UK will become the first country to leave the 28-nation EU, the worlds largest single market area that it joined in 1973.

Nothing will immediately change, owing to a transition period negotiated between London and Brussels to allow both sides to agree a new future partnership.

Britons will be able to work in and trade freely with EU nations until December 31, and vice versa, although they will no longer be represented in the blocs institutions.

But legally, Britain will be out.

The exit process has been tortuous, with the years since the 2016 EU referendum marked by bitter arguments that paralysed the government and forced two prime ministers to quit.

Four years ago, 52 per cent of Britons backed Brexit but 48 per cent wanted to stay, and the country is still split between Leavers and Remainers.

The political chaos came to an abrupt halt last month when prime minister Boris Johnson won a decisive victory in a general election with a promise to Get Brexit Done.

The British parliament this week finally ratified the exit terms agreed with Brussels, and Johnson called on the country to move on.

Next Friday marks an important moment in the history of our United Kingdom, he said.

No matter how you voted in 2016, it is the time to look ahead with confidence to the global, trail-blazing country we will become over the next decade and heal past divisions.

The next stage of Brexit will also be a challenge, however.

Johnson wants to negotiate Britains new relationship with the EU, covering everything from trade to security cooperation, by the end of the year.

But Brussels says this is an impossible ask, arguing that London must either limit its ambitions or request more time.

Johnson has been an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit since leading the 2016 campaign, but he is wary of inflaming divisions with the celebrations.

Official events on Friday will be limited to a special prime ministerial address and a light display in Downing Street.

Ten million commemorative 50 pence coins will also be issued in the coming months, bearing the words Peace, Prosperity and friendship with all nations.

Previous batches had to be destroyed after Brexit was delayed three times due to political wrangling in London.

Some eurosceptics had pressed for parliaments famous Big Ben bell, which is being renovated, to be brought back into action to ring out on Brexit night.

But it was dropped after concerns about the cost. Johnson initially asked for public donations, only for officials to admit this was not possible.

A countdown clock will instead be projected onto the black bricks of Downing Street, while Nigel Farage, another key figure in the 2016 campaign, will hold a rally in nearby Parliament Square.

Britain has always had an uneasy relationship with Brussels and refused to join either the EUs single currency or the Schengen free travel area.

A minority of politicians have campaigned for decades to free Britain from what they see as an overly bureaucratic and unaccountable institution.

Concerns grew as large numbers of EU citizens moved to Britain to work, while for many, Brexit was also a protest against a political establishment they felt was ignoring them.

Yet for others across the continent, Brexit day will be a traumatic moment, ending any lingering hopes that the break-up could somehow be stopped.

We still love you, tweeted Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council, this week after the divorce treaty was formally signed.

Many of the estimated 3.6 million EU citizens living in Britain, and one million Britons elsewhere in the bloc, fear an uncertain future.

Brexit has also severely strained ties between the four nations that make up the United Kingdom.

The devolved assemblies in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales all rejected the terms of the divorce, although for different reasons.

In Scotland, where pro-European sentiment remains strong, the nationalist government is pressing for a second referendum on independence.

Many in Northern Ireland meanwhile are concerned about special trading arrangements intended to keep open its land border with EU member Ireland.

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Britain readies to leave European Union - newagebd.net

Britain will not align with European Union rules after Brexit, the UK's Home Secretary has insisted, as the country prepares to leave the bloc on Friday.

Priti Patel said Britain would take back control of its laws, money and borders and will diverge from EU rules as it carves out free trade agreements.

The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has warned that the UK's access to the single market would be weakened if it diverged from Brussels' rules.

But Ms Patel, in an interview with Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday, said: "In terms of divergence, we are not having alignment. We will be diverging. We want to take control of our laws, money and our borders.

"And to do that we will not be rule-takers - we will be setting our own laws and that is a fundamental feature of leaving the European Union."

However Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay appeared to adopt a softer approach, saying the UK would not diverge "just for the sake of it".

He told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show: "We're coming out of the single market, we're coming out of the customs union. We're not just going to diverge just for the sake of it - we need to look at where the opportunities are.

"But it is true that we are going to have control of our approach to regulation and that's the very essence of Brexit: that we can do things differently, particularly where, for example, there is innovation, there is new technologies, there's things where we want to move quickly.

"Brexit at its very core is that we will have control of our laws, our regulation and that is why we can't be a rule-taker: we need to have that opportunity."

He said the UK's objective is to have a zero-tariff, zero-quota, ambitious trade policy - but to do that in "parallel in our talks with the rest of the world - and in particular with the US".

Read more:Negotiating post-Brexit trade deal will be challenging - McEntee

Business groups have raised concerns about the prospect of divergence from the single market, after the Chancellor Sajid Javid said last weekend there would not be alignment.

Their comments came as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Britain will become a global, trail-blazing country after it leaves the EU and unveiled the government's full plans to mark Brexit day.

Mr Johnson said he will "look ahead with confidence" to the future on Friday when the UK formally leaves the bloc - nearly four years since the referendum.

He will deliver a special address to the nation to mark the historic day and Downing Street will be illuminated with a light display designed to symbolise the strength and unity of the UK's four nations.

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Britain will diverge from EU rules after Brexit - Patel - RTE.ie

The UKs longest-serving MEP has said the country will not rejoin the EU in his lifetime and may never return to the bloc.

David Martin, who represented Scotland in the European Parliament from 1984 to 2019, said that even if a pro-EU government was elected, the UKs favourable membership terms would not be offered in new accession talks, making it politically impossible to rejoin.

The former Labour MEP, who lost his seat in the partys disastrous final EU election result last year, also warned that the case for allowing a second Scottish independence referendum in the wake of Brexit was almost unquestionable.

There is no going back, and I think we are now, for at least the rest of my life and possibly forever, a third country as far as the European Union is concerned, Martin told Scotland on Sunday.

I dont think anybody could kid themselves that theres a quick way back in. Once youre out, youre out, and all the benefits, if they were benefits of not being part of the euro, having a budget rebate, not being part of Schengen none of these things will we get again if we were to renegotiate.

So I think even if theres a change of government in five years time with a more pro-European view, membership is not going to be negotiated, so thats gone.

Martin was one of the leading voices in the European Parliament on trade, serving as the lead representative for the Socialist & Democratic party group on the International Trade Committee, and acting as the parliaments rapporteur on the EU-Singapore trade deal, which came into force at the end of last year.

Singapore took nine years from start to finish to negotiate a trade deal, he said. That was a fairly straightforward trade deal. Its naive in the extreme to think that the UK can do it in nine months.

My fear is were heading for a series of many deals to, as it were, literally keep the planes flying between Britain and Europe, to keep goods moving.

Martin said an agreement on foreign policy cooperation could be struck quickly, predicting that if Donald Trump remains in the White House, maybe the UK and the EU will actually be closer on foreign policy issues and multilateral institutions like the WTO than they will be to America.

But he added: I think the business side, the trade side is looking extremely, extremely negative if there are a series of small trade deals, actually the momentum in terms of getting a big deal will disappear and it could be a long time, if ever, before you get a deal.

Rather than the trade deal between Brussels and Canada, which Boris Johnson has said is his preferred model, Martin compared the situation facing the UK which has just 11 months to negotiate its future relationship with the EU before the end of the transition phase in December 2020 to the collapsed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and Washington.

There were a number of issues that the EU and the US could have signed off on in relation to bits of TTIP. Neither side wanted to do that because they thought if you took the low hanging fruit, the incentive to get the bigger deal would disappear I think the exact same argument applies with a UK-EU deal.

Martin added: No deal in a pure sense was never a possibility in relation to Brexit. No deal in terms of trade is a possibility because some things have to happen if theres not going to be mutually assured destruction.

But once these essentials happen, as I say, the motivation to carry on negotiating could diminish.

The UK government insists there will be no alignment with European trade regulations as part of a deal with Brussels, setting up a clash with the EU over its calls for a level playing field.

Martin predicted Brussels demands would be completely unacceptable to the UK, making a comprehensive trade deal impossible.

Manufacturing, which has already been in trouble in the UK, will continue to decline, will continue to have to compete with one arm tied behind its back if it doesnt have full and free access to its largest market, he said, adding that the downturn in investment since 2016 will begin to be felt over the next three years as British factory floors find themselves less efficient than European rivals.

As an MEP, Martin helped develop the EUs regional policy which saw billions of pounds invested in rapidly deindustrialised areas of Scotland, northern England and Wales. Consultation on a replacement for EU Structural Funds is more than a year overdue.

Within about six weeks of me being elected in 1984, West Lothian had real unemployment of almost 50 per cent because British Leyland left, Plessey left, Levi Jeans left, Polkemmet Colliery left, the mining jobs left, and the place was decimated.

The British governments basic attitude was, the market will take care of this and will regenerate it, Martin recalls.

It was the European Union that invested millions in the former coalfield areas, and regenerated those coalfield areas.

If you look around places that are very close to Edinburgh, like Newtongrange and Bonnyrigg and parts of Midlothian, villages could have literally died if it hadnt been for the investment that came from the European Union.

UK services will also struggle when competing for contracts in the EU if there isnt an agreement on free movement, because shifting staff to the continent will become more costly and difficult, Martin warned.

He said there was a risk to international cultural events like the Edinburgh festivals through increased immigration bureaucracy.

And with opposition parties sounding the alarm over the future of the Erasmus student exchange programme, and EU students facing the possibility of having to pay tuition fees in Scotland in future, Martin added: Im not sure how some of our universities can continue to thrive, actually. I think itd be a very serious blow to our universities.

With the next year set to be dominated by demands for a second Scottish independence referendum, Martin said the UK needs to change the way in which it respects the views of the nations if it is to survive.

My view has been for a while, leaving the EU is a fundamental change of circumstances and the once-in-a-generation argument does not apply in that situation, because we are in a different ballgame, he said.

Im still in the position where, because there are so many uncertainties, I have no idea what I would do in such a referendum. But the right to hold it and to have that national debate is now almost unquestionable.

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David Martin: No way back to the European Union in my lifetime - The Scotsman