The entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh, an unrecognized autonomous region located within the borders of Azerbaijan, could flee the enclave in the coming hours and take refuge in Armenia, the United Nations refugee agency believes. The organization announced that it is preparing to receive up to 120,000 refugees in Armenia after the lightning offensive carried out by Azerbaijan in Karabakh, which caused a mass exodus of the ethnic Armenian population..

“The initial planning figures were between 70,000 and 90,000 refugees, but they need to be updated,” Kavita Belani, UNHCR representative in Armenia, said at a press conference.. The attack forced the Karabakh authorities to agree to lay down their arms and begin talks on the integration of the Karabakh population. After falling under the control of Baku, the unrecognized authority of Karabakh announced yesterday the dissolution of its state institutions. Azerbaijan has promised guarantees to the ethnic Armenian population who decide to stay in the region and has reiterated that it will treat them as full citizens just like Azerbaijanis..

However, the majority of the population doubts Baku's promises and fears retaliation against the population.. Since last Sunday, an endless line of vehicles has formed on the Lachin highway, the only one that connects Karabakh with Armenia, of thousands of families trying to find shelter in the neighboring country.. Last Monday, an explosion occurred at a gas station on this road, at a very busy time when hundreds of people were queuing to fill their tanks to reach Armenia.. At least 170 people died and more than a hundred were seriously injured by the explosion, the origin of which is still unknown.. Some 93,000 refugees have crossed the border so far, 75% of the population, according to data from the Armenian authorities.

Precisely this Lachin road was blocked by the Azerbaijani authorities in January, preventing the entry of food, medicine and gasoline to the Karabakh enclave.. These nine months of scarcity seriously worsened the living conditions of the inhabitants of the enclave. “People are very tired. This is a situation they have lived in for nine months. “When they enter (Armenia) they are full of anxiety, they are afraid and they want answers about what will happen next,” described UNHCR's Belani.. “The situation often affects families who arrive with children so weak that they have fainted in their parents' arms,” Hicham Diab, a representative of the Red Crescent, said in a press conference.

Azerbaijan declared today that it will allow a group of UN experts to enter the territory in the coming days, to monitor its treatment of the ethnic Armenian population.

Another unknown that is expected to be resolved in the coming days is what will happen to the 2,000 Russian soldiers deployed in the enclave as part of a ceasefire agreement between Azerbaijan and the Karabakh Armenian forces after the 2020 war.. “Since the mission is now on Azerbaijani territory, this will be a topic of discussion with the Azerbaijani side,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters.. Although Moscow had deployed its forces to ensure the cessation of hostilities in the enclave, Armenia has criticized its inaction during Azerbaijan's latest military offensive. Peskov assured that Russia had no legal reasons to intervene and noted that he sees “no direct reason” for the ethnic Armenian population to flee Karabakh.

For months Nicolas suffered insults and humiliation at school. Finally, he told them that there were three boys who harassed him in class.. They sent a letter

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, proposed this Thursday to give limited autonomy and “within the Republic” to the island of Corsica, so that it can have regulatory capacity over transferred powers, and the history and “particularity” of the island within the French Constitution.

In a two-day visit to the island, Macron has shown himself in favor of granting this autonomy, with conditions: it must be “fully Corsican” (without influence from other “Mediterranean territories”) and it will not be done “without the State or against the French State,” said the French president in a speech in Ajaccio before the Assembly, controlled by a nationalist majority.

This movement, which would require a reform of the Constitution, would recognize in the text the “insular, historical, linguistic and cultural community” of Corsica. Macron said: “Let us have the audacity to build autonomy for Corsica”. Also that “the status quo would be a failure for everyone.”

The president's maneuver, which he described in his speech before parliamentarians as a “historic moment”, improves the current status of the island, but he also does not give in to the key demands demanded by the nationalist parties, such as recognition of resident status, the co-official status of the Corsican language and the inclusion of the notion of the Corsican people in the Constitution.

Corsica is the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean, Napoleon Bonaparte was born there in 1769, and it has gone from being part of a region with Marseille to achieving a special status. Since January 2018, Corsica is considered a territorial community, and manages new competencies such as sports, transport, culture and the environment.

The island Executive has been led since 2015 by Gilles Simeoni, who heads a coalition of nationalist parties. He was re-elected in 2021 and defends this statute as “an aspiration of the Corsican people”. The statute of autonomy that we demand is part of the French Republic,” Simeoni told the president.. The right-wing opposition limited itself to demanding an adaptation of French laws to the specificity of the island. According to Bruno Retailleau, from the conservative group The Republicans, the nationalists' requests “cross red lines.”

Regarding the demands of the nationalists, Emmanuel Macron has recognized the need to promote the Corsican language, but it will not be recognized as a co-official language. “With this unprecedented constitutional recognition, I hope that the Corsican language can be better taught and placed at the center of the life of every Corsican,” said the president.

The political scientist André Fazi said in the pages of the newspaper Libération that Macron “plays to find a difficult balance. From a symbolic point of view the nationalist majority will remain disappointed by the lack of advances on the Corsican language or the notion of Corsican people”. From a practical point of view, “it gives those elected some normative power”, such as that enjoyed by some overseas territories.

It gives Corsica the possibility of adapting the law or repealing it in some aspects within some transferred powers, under the control of the Constitutional Council, but without the need to go through that of the French Parliament. Macron has not specified what these powers would be, although they could be “in areas such as urban planning, transport or agriculture,” according to Fazi.

Macron was in favor of “going through a new stage” in relations between the island and the State and at the same time “fully anchoring Corsica in the Republic”. Tensions with Paris grew after the death in prison in March 2022 of the militant Yvan Colonna, a symbol for nationalists, sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1998 murder of the prefect Claude Érignac. His death sparked a wave of riots.

The Government and authorities of the island have been working on the creation of this statute for a year. The road until, as Macron intends, this Corsican specificity is included in the Constitution is long and uncertain, since it implies a reform of it.

The president has given the island's politicians six months to work on a proposal (he said “without red lines”) on the new status of Corsica. “It is your wish, I share it and make it mine,” he said.. This document will have to be validated by the Government.

Afterwards, it will have to be voted first in the National Assembly and the Senate. To move forward, you need a majority in both chambers. It should then be adopted by referendum or voted on by a three-fifths vote in Congress.

The only limit that Macron has placed on the Corsicans in the drafting of this statute, he said, is “the ideal of the Republic, which must be strong enough to know how to better accommodate the aspirations and uniqueness of Corsica.”

Macron also participated in a tribute to the Corsican resistance, as this year commemorates the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the island from Nazi occupation, in October 1943.. Thursday is the fourth visit that Macron has made to Corsica. In 2018, the president already proposed mentioning the island in the Constitution, but the idea did not go ahead. This Thursday, unlike his other visits, he ended his speech with “long live Corsica”, “long live France” and “long live the Republic”.

Italy is the one that started it, the one that is on the ropes, the one that has made the issue a political priority, the one that has turned the issue into an open battle with Germany, the one that has the most demands and the one that, in the end, has decided stop, once again, the negotiation. The arrivals of immigrants and asylum seekers to the country's coasts have skyrocketed in recent months, arrivals, shipwrecks and deaths are multiplying, political pressure is multiplying, and the Government of Giorgia Meloni has preferred to get up from the table this Thursday, and leave his partners temporarily hanging, than to accept an agreement on the regulation of migration crisis management, because he knows that it would have been presented as a concession, a defeat.

After noon, Minister Matteo Piantedosi, who did not even intervene in the session, got up from the table in Brussels and took the plane back early, while the rest of the EU Interior Ministers continued with the agenda.. Rome was not going to get what it wanted, it had become clear, and rather than assuming a series of relatively minor changes in the regulations that are being fought these days, it opted for the most abrupt exit.. Meloni has to show that he is being implacable, that he does not compromise, that his demands will be heard. And today it couldn't, since the last compromise text had come to fruition after Germany imposed a series of modifications.

The text of the regulation is practically closed, there is a “large, very large majority” to move it forward, according to the Spanish Fernando Grande Marlaska, who chaired the meeting.. And given that “there are no major political obstacles, it will be approved in the coming days” by the ambassadors of the 27, as promised by the Spaniard and the Interior Commissioner.. Ylva Johansson, at the end of the Council.

All sources consulted agree. Italy needed to throw a punch to be able to assure at home that it had stood. The EU is negotiating the Migration and Asylum Pact, which is legally articulated around five different regulations. The first two, on Eurodac (fingerprint comparison system used to help determine the Member State responsible for studying an asylum application) and common procedures and guarantees, were approved some time ago and are in fact almost completed in the negotiation with the European Parliament. The next two, on Asylum and Migration Management and a Common Procedure on International Protection, were agreed upon by a qualified majority in June, with the vote against and the furious opposition of Poland and Hungary, as it speaks of mandatory reception or economic compensation. of up to 20,000 euros per rejected person, who do not accept.

The fifth remained, that of crisis management. In July it was Germany that stopped him, considering that he did not adequately respect human rights. And this summer the position on arrivals and treatment of refugees and NGOs has caused a tough, ugly and recurring fight between Berlin and Rome. On Wednesday, after many discussions, the Spanish presidency presented a compromise text that satisfied the German demands, but which has been unpalatable for the Meloni Government..

There are two main points. The first, the complete rewriting of article 5 of the regulation, which spoke of a relaxation of the minimum “standards” with which asylum seekers must be treated when arriving in countries during a crisis.. Summarized and simplified, it means that Italy demanded that in the face of a serious and rapid crisis, in the face of massive arrivals, standards could be lowered, in terms of type of accommodation, space requirements, assistance, etc.. The new document excludes that possibility.

The second factor is the so-called “instrumentalization”. The spirit of the regulation seeks to persecute and punish the “instrumentalization” of arrivals, but it is considering whether a third country, or a specific organization, intends to play with the lives of the desperate to put pressure on or destabilize a European country.. Italy wanted NGOs that rescue people to be included, after having had repeated clashes with them, arresting their crew members and accusing them of collusion with the mafias that traffic. With the new wording that would also disappear.

The facts are that there is a sufficient majority to pass the text, but no one wants to approve them without Italy, it would not make sense when it is the country that is experiencing these crises and arrivals the most.. The feeling of European colleagues is that Meloni needs to sell it at home. “We need time to study the text,” said the head of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, who is precisely in Berlin to meet with his counterpart.. They hope it will be quick, that within a few days, at the level of ambassadors and without so much pressure from the cameras, she will be able to argue that she has managed to turn around again and present herself as victorious, without substantially modifying what seems good to the rest..

Italian sources believe that the agreement will be complicated in a few days. It is not a technical issue, but a very political one.. And next week the heads of State and Government of the 27 will meet in Granada, so Meloni could try to take the issue to the highest level.. “A lot of progress has been made, we are almost at the goal. There is only a difference in nuances, which concern us all, I do not want to individualize it in a single country,” said Marlaska.. “We have lacked a little time, but the satisfaction with the work done remains intact and we are convinced that in the coming days there will be a mandate from the Council to be able to negotiate with Parliament all the legal instruments of the Migration Pact. We are so convinced that I pledge my word that shortly, in a few days, we will have this crisis regulation,” the Spanish minister ventured..

The reference to the negotiation with the European Parliament is relevant. To put pressure on this issue of crisis management, the MEPs have in turn blocked the agreement on the first two in the so-called trilogues. Everything is agreed, but without a definitive green light. If the Council established its position on the regulation, the last step could begin now. And it is not trivial, because the legislature ends in a few months.

The European Union has been trying for years, decades, to push forward a new Migration and Asylum Pact, a divisive, delicate, very hot issue. It is the issue that generates the greatest friction and clashes and therefore a deep, transformative consensus has been impossible. It was not achieved during the savage crisis of 2015 and 2016, which almost destroyed Schengen, the free movement area. And it hasn't been achieved since then either. Technically, or formally, it is close, but the reality is very different. If in June it was Poland and Hungary that imposed the veto, now it is Rome. The Pact can move forward by qualified majority, but experience shows that this is very dangerous. There is no issue more sensitive, more politically explosive, than what affects the arrivals of African migrants, the identity issue and border management.. Approving it and someone not wanting to apply it, ending up in European Justice and while there is chaos, controls, suspicions and confrontations is potentially devastating, as has been seen..

The German Government has announced these days that it will reinforce mobile controls against human trafficking, especially on the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic, while waiting for consensus to be reached on the common European asylum system.. Slovenia and Austria are also experiencing enormous friction. Not to mention Italy and France themselves, or Greece that asks for more aid for new flows.