Military conflicts

Italy’s interior ministry has announced that it will strengthen its anti-mafia task force in the city of Foggia after the increasingly powerful local mob tried for the second time to blow up a key trial witness.

Minister Luciana Lamorgese’s office said she was sending extra police forces to the southern province in the Puglia region, the heartland of the Sacra Corona Unita (SCU), and opening a special office of organised crime investigators.

Thursday’s attack targeted a home for the elderly run by a cooperative managed in part by Christian Vigilante, a witness in a major trial against alleged mobsters, according to local police reports. No one was injured.

“The state, and citizens of Foggia, will not be cowed,” Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte said on Twitter.

“Investigators are already at work, and we will not give respite to those who think they can use violence to banish legality, freedom and justice. We will win this battle together,” he wrote.

The explosion followed a bomb attack two weeks ago that destroyed Vigilante’s car and damaged six others. The first attempt on Vigilante’s life prompted 20,000 people to march through Foggia in a protest organised by the anti-mafia group Libera.

“We will not back down in the face of yet another bombing, but will move forward even more forcefully,” it said on Thursday.

The bombings came on the heels of the year’s first murder, when a 50-year old shot in his car by gunmen on a scooter.

Lamorgese said she was “utterly determined” to wrench back control of the territory from the mob, and said she was counting on “the mobilisation of all civil society … to respond to criminal attacks without fear”.

The Foggia crime syndicate is a branch of the SCU that was established in the 1980s. It remained under the radar for several years, quietly extending its reach until around 80% of local businesses were paying protection money, according to Italian anti-mafia author Roberto Saviano.

The SCU is commonly known as Italy’s “fourth mafia”, after the historic Cosa Nostra in Sicily, and the immensely powerful ’Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Camorra in Naples. Formed in the 1970s, it initially specialised in gunrunning and drug trafficking, investigators say, and had links with several international crime organisations.

As the UK prepares for its formal exit from the EU on 31 January, politicians, experts and voters all wonder what will be the implications of this historic shakeup.

One group is often forgotten in the UK: British citizens living in the EU27. On the frontline of Brexit, they face real uncertainty over their future rights because Britain’s future relationship with the EU is yet to be negotiated.

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The UK’s food security is to be regularly assessed by parliament to ensure minimal disruption to supplies after the country leaves the EU and while new trade deals are sought.

The commitment will be part of the biggest shakeup of British agriculture in 40 years and requires a regular report to MPs outlining supply sources and household expenditure on food, as well as consumer confidence in food safety.

The move reflects concerns over potential disruptions post-Brexit, as more than a quarter of Britain’s food comes from the EU and nearly a fifth from other countries.

The revision is one of a handful to the agriculture bill, introduced to parliament on Thursday more than a year after the previous government was forced to abandon the legislation amid Brexit turmoil.

Other changes include a stronger emphasis on the soil, at risk from overuse, erosion and nutrient loss; farmers are to receive help maintaining healthy soils, as well as with improvements to the tracing of livestock movements between farms. There will be powers to regulate fertiliser use and organic farming after Brexit.

Missing from the bill is a binding commitment to prevent trade deals allowing the import of food produced to lower standards than those to which British farmers must adhere. This has been a key demand of farmers concerned that after Brexit they will be undercut by cheap imports from the US and Asia, with lower food safety and animal welfare regulations.

Theresa Villiers, secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs, called the revised bill “one of the most important environmental reforms for many years” and said it would protect nature and biodiversity and help meet goals on the climate crisis.

“[This] will transform British farming, enabling a balance between food production and the environment which will safeguard our countryside and farming communities for the future,” she said. “We will move away from the EU’s bureaucratic common agricultural policy and towards a fairer system which rewards our hard-working farmers for delivering public goods, celebrating their world-leading environmental work and innovative, modern, approach to food production.”

At the heart of the bill is a shift away from the EU system, where farmers receive subsidies based on the amount of land they farm, to a process whereby farmers are paid for the public goods provided, including clean water, clean air, healthy soils and habitats for wildlife.

There will be a seven-year transition period for farmers to move from the current regulations under CAP, the EU’s common agricultural policy, to a system of environmental land management contracts. Under these contracts, individual farmers will agree with the government a tailor-made set of goals with details on the measures they will take to manage their land and protect the environment.

For the duration of the current parliament, subsidies at the same rate as the EU – about £3bn a year – will be paid to farmers from taxpayer funds, but some of the richest farmers who benefit most from the system can expect to lose out when the new contracts are phased in.

Farming leaders were disappointed at the lack of a legal commitment to ensure trade deals did not allow entry to cheap, low quality, imports.

Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union, said: “Farmers across the country still want to see legislation underpinning the government’s assurances that they will not allow the imports of food produced to standards that would be illegal here through future trade deals. We will continue to press the government to introduce a standards commission as a matter of priority to oversee and advise on future food trade policy and negotiations.”

Organic farmers were also concerned, saying the bill did not go far enough in supporting farmers to tackle climate and ecological emergencies.

Gareth Morgan, of the Soil Association, said: “Much more is necessary to bring the radical changes our farming sector needs. Small tweaks to the status quo will not suffice. It is disappointing that the bill still does not commit to support farmers to adopt nature friendly agro-ecological farming, like organic, or environmental action across the whole farm, rather than in small areas. Nor does it signal support to enable the radical shift away from artificial fertiliser and pesticides needed to restore nature and soils capable of storing carbon.”

The specific attention paid to soils was welcome, but more detail would be needed on how to implement measures to protect soil health, said Matthew Orman, director of the Sustainable Soils Alliance. “The commitment for all soils to be sustainably managed by 2030 is now 10 years old. For this to be achieved, an ambitious strategy linking all the policy mechanisms – education, regulation, assessment and incentivisation – with clear milestones for delivery, is urgently needed.”

Vicki Hird, farm campaign coordinator at Sustain, an NGO coalition, highlighted new provisions in the bill to improve oversight of the supply chain. Under these changes all sellers of agricultural produce will qualify for protection from abuse by business purchasers, which she said would help drive out unfair practices and protect farmers and could also aid reduction of food waste.

The leader of Germany’s Friday for Future climate protests has said she turned down a seat on the board of Siemens’ new energy business amid growing anger over its role in a controversial coalmining project in Australia as she feared she would lose the right to criticise the company.

Luisa Neubauer, 23, the German face of the campaign group inspired by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who has campaigned alongside her, said on Monday the position would jeopardise her independence if she had taken up the offer from its chief executive, Joe Kaeser, made at a meeting in Berlin on Friday.

The two met as protests by Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion were held in 40 cities across Germany, including outside Siemens’ Munich headquarters, against a central Queensland coalmine that will open up one of the world’s biggest untouched coal basins. Neubauer had hoped to persuade Kaeser to withdraw from the project, for which Siemens has won an €18m contract to provide the rail infrastructure.

At the meeting in Berlin, Neubauer was offered a position by Kaeser in either the supervisory board or leadership council of Siemens Energy, a spin-off business which hopes to head a new generation of energy-efficient technology. It is due to split from the main company in the spring and to go public in September on Germany’s Dax index.

She said on Monday she had turned down the offer. “If I were to take it up, I would be obliged to represent the company’s interests and could never be an independent critic of Siemens,” she explained. “That is not compatible with my role as [a] climate activist.”

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The Carmichael mine was approved by the Austalian government in June and will be run by the Indian company Adani. It has become a cause for climate protesters who disapprove of a project which will contribute to global heating – especially at a time when large parts of Australia are already being wracked by bushfires blamed on the climate crisis.

Kaeser, who has made much of the company’s pledge to become carbon neutral by 2030, last month tweeted his recognition of the activists’ complaints about the mine, promising he would “diligently look into the matter” and “get back” to the protesters. He pointed out a decision would “not be easy” due to the various interest groups involved, including shareholders, customers and the public.

But on Sunday, following an extraordinary meeting of Siemens management, Kaeser announced the company was to go ahead with the project as it was legally obliged to remain committed to it, adding that at the same time it would become increasingly watchful of environmental concerns.

“We have evaluated all the options and have concluded that we must fulfil our contractual obligations,” he tweeted. He promised the company would improve its future management of “protecting the environment” by establishing what he called “an effective Sustainability Board”.

Activists say the coalmine project will produce an annual 27.5m tonnes of coal and will contribute to global heating. They also point to the vast amounts of water it will require, as well as destruction of habitat and the need to transport the coal via the Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef in the world.

The Australian Conservation Foundation called the decision “disastrous”, and pledged to continue its protests against the mine. It added: “With this decision, the company is showing its true face … its climate change strategies have been revealed to be meaningless and hollow.”

Neubauer has referred to the Siemens’ project as an “inexcusable mistake”.

She told the news agency DPA: “We asked Kaeser to do everything possible to stop the Adani mine. Instead he will now profit from this disastrous project.

“This is so last century, and Joe Kaeser is making an unforgivable mistake,” she added, emphasising that Siemens’ decision threatened climate goals to reduce the rise in global warming by two degrees.

The Irish border could yet snag Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, with experts saying it will be impossible to deliver the computer systems for the special arrangements for Northern Ireland by the end of this year. Failure to implement the new systems will risk legal action by the European commission against Britain, the Institute for Government says.

In a new report, it says: “The [Brexit] deal has the support of no Northern Irish political parties and it looks almost impossible to complete the practical changes, for government and business, by the end of the year. Failure to comply with the withdrawal agreement could see the European commission begin infringement proceedings and the UK ending up at the ECJ [European court of justice].”

Johnson’s government remains adamant that there will be no checks or new reporting systems on trade crossing the Irish sea, despite Ireland and the EU insisting that those would have to be in place to protect the Irish border.

The prime minister’s intention to establish a trade deal with the EU by the end of December 2020 was also dealt a blow by Simon Coveney, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, at the weekend as he indicated the bloc would be in no rush to work to Johnson’s timetable.

In a blunt assessment of the likelihood of satisfying Johnson’s “ambitious” vision, he said the fact that Britain had put the timescale for a trade deal into law did not mean the other 27 European countries would fall in line. “In my view, it’s probably going to take longer than a year,” he said.

The IfG’s report says HMRC has previously stated similar systems to the proposed customs arrangements for Northern Ireland would take five years to develop and implement.

Part of the problem is that until the new trade deal between the UK and the EU is struck, the details of the Northern Ireland arrangements cannot be finalised.

The complicated system for Northern Ireland involves the region effectively staying in the single market but in the UK customs zone. This potentially means tariff charges and rebates, paperwork and physical checks on certain fresh foods and live animals going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

In the new report, “Getting Brexit done: what happens now?”, the IfG says Brexit will be far from done on 31 January when the UK formally leaves the EU with the expected ratification of the withdrawal agreement ending the article 50 process.

“The UK will formally leave the EU at the end of January, and in that sense Brexit will be done, but many of the biggest Brexit jobs will be far from over,” it says. “It will continue to dominate government for years to come. The prime minister may hope to end Brexit’s dominance in the public debate after 31 January, but in Whitehall it will continue to be the biggest and most challenging task faced by a government in decades.”

Under the deal sealed by Johnson with the EU last October, animals and fresh food going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will be subject to some physical checks, with a tariff and tariff rebate system operating for the first time. These are there to protect any substandard goods seeping into the EU’s single market through smuggling over the Irish border into the Republic of Ireland.

While all sides recognise the complexities of the new system, little public attention has been paid to the fact that new computer systems cannot be designed by either HMRC, ferry companies, or manufacturers or suppliers like Tesco until the trade deal with the EU is done.

The report says: “With the details of how the border will operate still unclear – and likely to be so for some months – and no preparatory work having happened for checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the 11-month timeline is almost certainly undeliverable.”

It notes that Sir Jon Thompson, a former chief executive of HMRC, said that a similar customs systems involving rebates could take up to five years to develop and implement.

Coveney issued his warning on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show, saying the deal to be struck between the UK and EU over their future relationship was vast, encompassing security, data, aviation and trade.

He said: “When people talk about the future relationship in the UK in particular, they seem to only talk about a future trade agreement. Actually, there’s much more to this than that … I know that Johnson has set a very ambitious timetable to get this done – he’s even put it into British law – but just because a British parliament decides that British law says something, doesn’t mean that that law applies to the other 27 countries of the European Union.

“And so the European Union will approach this on the basis of getting the best deal possible, a fair and balanced deal, to ensure that the UK and the EU can interact as friends in the future. But the EU will not be rushed on this just because Britain passes a law.”

The Sardines, an Italian movement that has emerged in response to the far-right politics of Matteo Salvini and his allies, is gearing up for a major demonstration ahead of crucial elections in the leftwing stronghold of Emilia-Romagna in late January. The movement, founded in mid-November by a group of four friends from Bologna in response to Salvini’s threat to “liberate” Emilia-Romagna from the left, has attracted a huge following, with thousands of supporters cramming into piazzas across the country in recent months.

The next show of strength is planned for Bologna next Sunday, a week before a regional election that is seen as an important test for the stability of the national government coalition between the centre-left Democratic party (PD) and the Five Star Movement (M5S). The precarious alliance came together last summer after Salvini’s League party was forced out of government following his failed attempt to force snap elections.

Support for the League has dwindled but it is still Italy’s biggest party, and winning in Emilia-Romagna would be a major coup for Salvini and his regional partners, the smaller far-right party, Brothers of Italy, and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.

The coalition’s candidate, Lucia Borgonzoni, is polling slightly behind Stefano Bonaccini, the incumbent president from the PD. If Bonaccini manages to maintain that lead in a region where the League has galvanised support in many areas, mostly because of disillusionment with the left, then much of it would be due to the influence of the Sardines. “This is the main importance of the Sardines, to mobilise people and build the fight against Salvini,” said Massimiliano Panarari, a politics professor at Rome’s Luiss University.

The debut Sardines demonstration in Bologna attracted an estimated 15,000 people, and quickly spread across the country, culminating with a national rally in Rome in December that brought an estimated 40,000. A host of other events have taken place in smaller towns and cities.

How the movement develops will depend on the outcome of the vote in Emilia-Romagna. A meeting of national representatives is planned after the elections, leading many to believe it could become a political party, despite denials by Mattia Santori, one of the founders.

“If Salvini’s coalition wins in Emilia-Romagna, which would mean a political earthquake for the PD, then there could be the possibility of the Sardines transforming themselves into an organised structure as the PD’s failure would leave a void in the left,” said Panarari. “If the PD is able to resist, and thanks also to the Sardines’ ability to mobilise voters, I think the leaders of existing leftwing parties could invite the most prominent Sardines members to join them.”

Belgium’s federal police have fallen foul of tighter emissions controls that come into force at the start of the year, with some of its cars and vans now too dirty to enter the cities of Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent.

The force said it was unable to afford to renew its entire fleet of several thousand vehicles and had already told the authorities about the situation.

A spokeswoman declined to say how many vehicles failed to comply with the new regulation. Some exceptions have been made for those clearly marked as for police use.

Other vehicles have been shifted to duties outside the major cities. Belgium also has local police forces, six of which cover Brussels.

The EU introduced rules in 1992 to reduce emissions from new cars, with an initial set of standards known as Euro 1.

Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent have now introduced the Euro 3 standard, which covers vehicles registered between 2001 and 2005.

The standards govern the emission of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and particulates.

Human rights groups and lawyers have criticised French police restraint techniques after a 42-year-old delivery driver died after being held on the ground during a police check near the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

France’s citizens’ rights ombudsman, Jacques Toubon opened an inquiry into the case of Cédric Chouviat, a father of five, who was stopped on Friday by police and died in hospital 48 hours later.

Police reportedly stopped Chouviat because they believed he had been looking at his phone while on a scooter. Video footage taken by mobile phone appeared to show Chouviat being held face down on the ground by officers, while his legs were shaking. The autopsy showed that when he died 48 hours later in hospital, there were signs of asphyxiation and a fractured larynx.

Paris prosecutors have opened their own preliminary manslaughter investigation to determine the exact circumstances of the police arrest. They will look at whether or not police holding Chouviat on the ground with the pressure of their weight on his torso might have played a role. The police watchdog is also investigating the case.

Lawyers for Chouviat’s family accused the authorities of trying to cover up heavy-handed police tactics.

The lawyer William Bourdon, said the death was the result of a “culture of impunity and denial that encourages police and absolves them of responsibility.”

An Amnesty International spokesperson said that particular restraint technique of applying weight and pressure to a person’s torso as they are held face-down on the ground was outlawed in several other countries because it carried a fatal risk, but France continued to practise it.

Arié Alimi, one of the family’s lawyers, said Chouviat was held down with force for three minutes.

The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said the case raised legitimate questions and called for “transparency”.

An account by Paris police, obtained by AFP, said Chouviat’s behaviour had been “provocative” so they had proceeded to arrest.

Lawyers for the police involved said the case was a tragedy for the family and for the officers, and said the officers had the “absolute and total support of their hierarchy”.

Police restraint techniques have regularly been criticised in France. A group campaigning for justice for Adama Traoré, a young man who died in police custody in 2016, commented that Traoré had died after being subject to the same form of restraint and they were still fighting for the truth in the case. The group, La Vérité Pour Adama, said: “Adama Traoré’s last words were ‘I can’t breathe.’”

The British government has been accused of “behaving like a bunch of cowboys” after a confidential report revealed it had allowed illegal copying of an EU database.

The issue, discussed publicly for the first time on Thursday, threatens to sour talks on the post-Brexit relationship between the UK and the EU, despite hopes on both sides for close ties in fighting crime and terrorism.

Sophie in ’t Veld, a Dutch liberal MEP, told the European parliament’s justice and home affairs committee that a leaked EU report revealed “deliberate violations and abuse” by the UK of the Schengen Information System, a vast database used by police and border guards across the EU’s border-free Schengen zone.

While the UK is not a member of the border-free travel area, it has negotiated access to the database, where authorities across Europe share more than 76m items of information on criminal suspects, missing people or contraband goods.

“This is a country that is not a member of Schengen because it doesn’t want to be a member of Schengen,” In ’t Veld told MEPs. “It doesn’t want to be a member of the European Union. Nevertheless, in the kindness of our hearts we have given them access to the Schengen Information System and they behaved like a bunch of cowboys.”

The MEP, who has tabled a complaint to the European commission, said “one of the most astonishing” features of the leaked report was “the lack of reciprocity” from British authorities to act in the interest of EU counterparts.

“What the report says is that [British authorities] are basically only interested in people coming into the UK,” she told the Guardian. “People going out of the UK – if there is an alert, they are not warning the European authorities, so we are not safer.”

The leaked EU report states that British border guards only act on alerts “the UK considers to be important”, meaning some checks on people and documents requested by other member states are not carried out. Another charge is that the UK “does not always take action” if someone wanted for arrest is leaving the UK. British police, according to the report, are trained only to seize contraband goods relating to crimes committed on UK soil, not those in other EU member states.

The document, first reported by the EUObserver website in 2018, is based on visits by EU inspectors to 22 sites, including Metropolitan police HQ, Heathrow airport and the Folkestone checkpoint. Nine of the total were surprise visits to police units across the UK, as well as British Transport police.

Following those visits in November 2017, the EU concluded that British authorities had made “unlawful” full or partial copies of the SIS database. The report said “major deficiencies in the legal, operational and technical implementation of SIS” in the UK that had not been remedied, despite concerns first raised in 2015. The litany of problems pose “serious and immediate risks to the integrity and security of SIS data”.

An official responsible for information systems, borders and security at the European commission’s Home Directorate, Marc Sulon, told MEPs that an evaluation on how to respond to the report’s findings was put “temporarily on hold in October 2018” because of Brexit negotiations and no-deal planning.

EU member states, he said, had decided in June 2018 not to disconnect the UK from the database but give British authorities “the opportunity to propose a plan for remedial action”. The commission’s evaluation had resumed as the UK would remain part of the database until at least the end of 2020 under the Brexit transition period.

Sulon dismissed claims that the US government had access to the EU database via the UK’s illegal copies. US companies working for the UK government are suspected to have made the copies, but Sulon said the rules allowed “cooperation with contractors … subject to compliance with all provisions of the legislation”.

MEPs reacted with fury to the commission’s handling of the affair, including a missed deadline to respond to a European parliament question raising the alarm. Calling for an inquiry, an Irish independent MEP, Clare Daly, highlighted concerns from the commission that “other member states have challenges in this area”. She said: “I think the commission needs to come clean about how bad things actually are.”

The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on Wednesday reiterated her call for “a new comprehensive security partnership” between the EU and the UK “to fight cross-border threats, ranging from terrorism to cybersecurity to counter-intelligence”.

But any wide-ranging agreement on data-sharing will almost certainly have to be approved by the European parliament.

Asked whether the database issue could be a problem for Brexit negotiations, In ’t Veld said: “I very much hope so,” adding that the report showed “violation upon violation”. She added: “If [in 2015, the UK] didn’t care about the rules then, how are we going to make them respect the rules if they are not in the EU any more?”

Neither was she persuaded by the commission’s reassurances that the US government did not have access to the data via a British backdoor. “Yeah and pigs fly … The UK is part of the Five Eyes [intelligence network]. The US lay their hands on anything they can lay their hands on.”

A UK government spokesperson said: “We have some of the highest levels of data protection safeguards globally and are fully committed to meeting our legal obligations. We have a very close security partnership with EU countries, providing information on thousands of alerts every year.”

Boris Johnson and the new European commission president have had a positive first meeting about the next round of Brexit talks in which they discussed their aspirations for a deal based on friendly cooperation, shared history and interests and values, Downing Street has said.

Both sides made a concerted effort to put the bitter divisions of the past three years aside, with Ursula von der Leyen describing the meeting as the start of a new era of “old friends and new beginnings”.

She called on both sides to focus on mutual interests and both leaders agreed there could be common ground on climate change, human rights and security.

A spokesperson said Johnson made it clear in the meeting that the UK would not be requesting an extension to the transition period at the end of December.

Echoing Johnson’s electoral theme about his rush to “get Brexit done”, he told the commission leader that he wanted to seal “a Canada-style free trade agreement as soon as possible after January 31”.

“He said the UK wanted a positive new UK and EU partnership, based on friendly cooperation, our shared history, interests and values.

“The PM reiterated that we wanted a broad free-trade agreement covering goods and services, and cooperation in other areas,” said the spokesperson.

However, in a speech earlier in London Von der Leyen said it would be impossible for the UK to negotiate a comprehensive deal covering all aspects of Brexit within the timeframe set by Johnson.

Unless Britain accepted a level playing field in the UK and the EU’s trade positions after Brexit, there would inevitably be barriers for British manufacturing, she said in a speech at the London School of Economics before the summit.

At the same event, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, warned in an impromptu exchange that leaving the EU was not a simple process and involved the renegotiation of “600 international agreements” as well as a new free-trade agreement.

Von der Leyen said: “It is basically impossible to negotiate all [of the areas].”

She also warned that tariff, quota-free access to the single market came with strings attached and Britain would have to agree to level playing field rules on workers’ rights, the environment and anti-dumping measures.

She warned against a fantasy in which the UK has a hard exit but retains all the benefits.

“The more divergence there is, the more distant the partnership has to be,” Von der Leyen said. “Without an extension of the transition period beyond 2020, you cannot expect to agree on every single aspect of our new partnership.

“Without the freedom of movement of people, you cannot have the free movement of capital, goods and services. Without a level playing field on environment, labour, taxation and state aid, you cannot have highest-quality access to the world’s largest single market.”

Johnson has already indicated he wants to break with EU rules and regulations to achieve the clear sovereignty for which he believes Brexit supporters voted.

Von der Leyen said the EU was ready to negotiate “a truly ambitious and comprehensive new partnership” with the UK and would work “day and night” to make best use of the time the two sides had.

With the prime minister ruling out any extension to the transition period, Von der Leyen said that in practice the UK had “nine to 10 months at most” to get a deal in time for it to be ratified by 31 December.

“Therefore it is not an all or nothing [in the trade talks], it is a question of priorities,” she said.

In addition to laying out the EU’s position, she mounted a charm offensive, telling the audience how she loved her time as a student at the LSE and loved Britain and its humour.