Immigrant-on-immigrant xenophobia

Italians were shocked yesterday to learn that a Northern Italian teenager who had recently gone to the UK to study and find work had been beaten to death over the weekend. Joele Leotta, 19, was brutally attacked by a group of young men who accused him of “stealing English jobs”, the Italian papers reported.

The Italian papers were quick to make a connection to increasing anti-European and anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Conservative government in the UK. Some intitial reports in Italy mentioned the new campaign by the government to send vans into certain neighbourhoods telling illegal immigrants to “go home” in big letters.

The initial press coverage prompted Hannes Swoboda, the leader of the Socialist (S&D) group in the European Parliament, to issue a press release saying the murder was the result of the xenophobic climate created by the government. "The xenophobic, aggressive climate inflamed by populists such as UKIP and by the rhetoric of the Conservatives in government is now leading to murder in the streets of Britain,” said Swoboda in a statement. “Campaigns such as vans with slogans telling immigrants to 'go home' and continuous negative rhetoric against foreigners – including EU citizens – are creating an ugly mood in Britain, which has long prided itself on being an open-minded and tolerant nation.”

Commission laments 'rising xenophobia' as Schengen unravels

The June summit of EU leaders has wrapped up here in Brussels – the blockades are being removed from the streets and the whirl of helicopters overheard is slowly starting to dissipate. As expected, the council voted to establish a "safeguard mechanism" in the Schengen passport-free travel zone that would allow member states to reintroduce internal EU border controls in exceptional circumstances.

The final text adopted today says the border checks should only be reintroduced "as a very last resort" in a "truly critical situation where a member state is no longer able to comply with its obligations under the Schengen rules as concerns the prevention of illegal immigration of third country nationals."

Such a mechanism was demanded by Italy and France earlier this year when the two got into a row over illegal immigration happening as a result of the Arab spring. France accused Italy of deliberately sending Tunisian migrants to France and issuing them bogus identity cards because they wanted to get them out of Italy as soon as possible. France said it should be allowed to set up border controls with neighboring countries who are failing in their duties to protect the EU external border. But existing rules forbid member states from imposing border controls at internal EU borders. Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi wholeheartedly agreed, as if to say "Yes, we're completely incompetent. Please allow France to set up protections against us."

The white sheep win in Switzerland

Despite the "foreigner-friendly" win in Poland, the weekend saw a very different election result just a thousand kilometers away in Switzerland. The right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which has gained infamy in the past few months for running what many see as a blatantly racist ad campaign, won 29% of the vote this weekend and gained seven seats on the National Council. That makes SVP Switzerland’s largest party by a long shot.

Meanwhile Switzerland’s second-largest party, the center-left Social Democrats, had a disastrous weekend. They lost nine seats and had a 4 percent drop on its showing in 2003 elections. The party now has 43 seats on the 200-person National Council compared to the SVP's 62. SVP is led by the populist Christoph Blocher, who is one interesting character, let me tell you.

The news is highly disturbing to many in Europe because the result means that the party’s overtly racist campaign advertising was a huge success. The party had run a series of ads depicting three white sheep grazing on a Swiss flag, kicking a black sheep off of it. The ads were accompanied by the slogan, "for more security.”