The Mercury08.06.2012

No. 02

02 No.

Returning 3rd country illegal na-tionals to their home countries has become a hot topic today in the Par-liament. After it was briefly presented by the Commission, followed by a small Q&A session, a fierce discussion among members of the parliament evolved.The MEPs formed several opposing

camps and mainly discussed infrin-gement of the human rights that the regulation with its current specifics causes. Such main points as the need to impose certain changes to the re-entry ban have been addressed by the

ALDE faction, as well as the need to soften policy with temporary custo-dy and imprisonment if immediate return is not possible. The last point was also supported by the Greens and S&D.A further point was made specifically

to the EFD with a request to con-centrate on interests of all the mem-ber countries instead of sovereign countries, as for example the United Kingdom, suffering heavily from ille-gal 3rd country nationals insisted on prolonging the re-entry ban.It is definitely of advantage to think

about the human rights within the European Union but softening the directive might have a negative effect on the unemployment rate within the European Union itself. Therefore, instead of trying to defend interests of 3rd parties it might be more useful to concentrate on the rights of EU citi-zens.Last but not least, a point that was

not explicitly addressed but deserves somewhat more publicity is the finan-cing required to return 3rd country illegal nationals to their homeland. Currently, countries facing this prob-

Editor in Chief: Julia Eigendorf

Editor: Lacza Gabór Willy Hug Mariya Pavlova Marjolein Selten Mihals Sapovalovs

Proofreader: Anna-Lena Kirch Layout: Benjamin Doll

Impressum

lem also face the associated expense, a pity is that the financial situation of these countries is not always the best one. Therefore, more attention should be paid to a question of creating a common fund across the European Union to cross-subsidize expenses of e.g. such countries as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, who suffer from illegal immigrants from various Afri-can and countries from the Near East. (msa)

Human rights vs. sovereign interestsFirst sitting of the European Parliament about the 3rd country illegal nationals repatriation directive.

French kissingThe next German ¿love? story

In the next Issue you can read everything about Mellande!

2 08. Juni 2012The Mercury, No. 02Daily News

One of the current major topics in the debates of the Council of Minis-ters is the Passenger Name Record (PNR). The system was established at the United States to prevent terrorist attacks like 11 September 2001, but this system is very useful for disco-vering drug trade routes or yet unk-nown dangerous persons.This method collects the main data,

like name, gender, nationality, living place, date of birth from all the flight passengers, which is given to authori-ties against crime to analyze it. But the law emphasizes, that sensitive data, like religion, race or sexual orientati-on will not be collected.But the United States pushed the

other countries, especially the Euro-pean Union, to introduce this system. The United Kingdom already intro-duced the PNR, while some member countries, e.g. Denmark, France and Sweden are testing the system. The statistics show, that with this method the revealing of these crimes was in-creased. According to these facts, the-

re are some advises about putting the PNR system for the whole European Union under common control.The European Commission (EC) has

discussed the issue on 7 June, 2012. The directive can be checked on the website of the European Union, but the member countries can reflect on it in one minute speeches. They reveal, that the recommendation is welco-med by the majority of the member states. Some of them already use this method, but the others see the op-portunity and the increased security against organized crimes and terro-rism of the PNR. However, they re-commended some changes to the ori-ginal text, what makes it stricter.One of the most important recom-

mendations was that the original text only concerned flights between EU member states and third-party coun-tries, but many experts advised to ex-tend this system to intra-EU flights. As with the negative example of the slaughter in Norway 2011, the argu-mentation was that the threats come

not only from outside the Union’s border, but there is a possibility that e.g. radical groups from one member state harm another one.The second opinion was not only to

monitor flight routes and collect the data, but also to include the sea and land traffic at the borders. In one way it is welcomed, but the big question is if the involved countries use it in a common directive or should leave it to the member states. (That topic is strictly connected to the new Euro-pean law against illegal incomings).The last important addition to the

original text was the increased pro-tection of data handling, especially regarding the third party countries. They want to obtain these data in ex-change, but it could cause a lot of pro-blems (especially if the PNR of intra-EU flight routes are included), if they do not handle these information with a proper security method. (lg)

One step against organized crime and illegal citizensThe Council of Ministers has welcomed the use of strict monitoring of the flight routes.

The press conference revealed sever-al curious details about today’s work in the European Parliament and the Council. A minor progress on the questions of PNR sensitive data and about the 3rd country illegal nationals was to be seen. A general agreement about an idea of creating a common fund to financially support such coun-tries as Greece, Italy, Spain and Portu-gal where the main share of the repa-triation costs arise has been reached. But such important questions as what

We make the fu-ture of the Euro-pean Union!Young people from around the world came for Model European Union Mainz

Games with a metal lighter were de-finitely not of a professional manner and disturbed both, journalists and other representatives of the European Parliament and the Council. (msa)

___________________

In the press conference with the Re-presentatives from the EP the conflict over the Proposal on common stan-dards and procedures in EU Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals between the EFD and the other factions of the EP becomes obvious. Meanwhile the S&D, the EPP, ALDE ant he Greens were confident about reaching a com-promise, Laurence Hendry, the spea-ker of EFD, was heading for confron-tation. His faction wanted to extend the length of the re-entry ban from 5 to 10 years. The members of the EFD put the idea of the European Integra-tion into question in general. During the conference Hendry often threate-ned to burn the European Flag. (wh)

will be the main source of financing of this fund and why should the Eu-ropean Union pay for repatriation stayed untouched. It is speculative to say but this will be presumably taxpa-yers’ money that will be used to cover the budget of the fund, as well as that neither the violator nor his mother-land will ever cover the arisen costs. A further curious happening was the behavior of an EFD representative, which seemed to be a little bit distur-bing to a normal course of such event.

No Final Decision Reached but Work in ProgressA first overview of the progress in the European Parliament and the Council with regard to the PNR topic and the direc-tive that deals with the repatriation of 3rd country illegal nationals.

On 7 June 2012 a lot of young men and women filled a big hall at the Uni-versity of Mainz. Everybody looked very nice: men wore suits and women wore elegant clothes. The reason was the opening ceremony of the 3rd Mo-del European Union Mainz (MEUM), which started officially on that cloudy (but later sunny) day.The first speaker was Dr. Wolfgang

Muno, Senior Lecturer at the Uni-versity, who welcomed officially the participants of the MEUM. He em-phasized the roles of the journalists, but he mentioned for everyone, that after these few days we would be thin-king differently about the European Union.After him Prof. Dr. Arne Niemann,

an expert for international relations at the University of Mainz, went to the pulpit, and gave a speech about the opportunity of modeling the EU. He mentioned the peace bene-fits of the European Union, used the German-French relationships as an example: seventy years ago the two countries still fought against each other, but today they live peaceful-ly together. (Note: about the current German – French relations you can read more on the front page.)The third speaker was Jürgen Creutz-

mann, who is currently a member of the European Parliament. He spoke a lot about his private history and tasks as a MEP. He emphasized that he was the first liberal politician from the re-gion in the European Parliament, and as an example he referred a lot to the topic of online gambling. At the end there was an opportunity to ask him questions.After the ceremony, the participants

had some preoperational meetings referring to their tasks, then after the nice pizza break the group photo of this year’s MEUM was taken: young men and women staying on the stairs of the university, and smiling for the coming days’ task. (gl)

308. Juni 2012The Mercury, No. 02

I was very excited about the traveling and arriving at Germany, but I was hoping that the weather would be bet-ter, that it would be warm and sunny like in Spain. Unfortunately I arrived late yesterday and I didn’t have time to see the city but I hope that I can do it tonight. Unfortunately, I took with me only clothes appropriate for the summer and now I have to cope with one pair of clothes all the time.

Piero is an Italian student from Sa-lerno. Last year he participated at the MEU in Strasbourg. This year he takes part in Mainz. “The number of the participants here are much less than in Strasbourg, so it`s more simple to get to know other people”, that was his first impression. He is comfortable with his apartment, but in the mat-ter of pizza, coffee and cars Germany isn`t as good as Italy. (wh)

Yike comes from Heidelberg. In the recent years he participated at the Model United Nations in Vancouver and Milan. He was surprised by the large number of different nationali-ties represented by the participants in Mainz, because according to his opinion Mainz is a very small city. His accommodation is very tiny, however he is enjoying the role play here in Mainz. (wh)

First ImpressionsStart of the simulation - three students to one topic

Laia Paula Garcia, Minister of Nether-lands

Piero Milione, MEP for EPP Yike Guo, Minister of Italy

card signed by the princess.After that many people went to sleep,

because the next day everything would get serious – not like in the fai-ry tale of Snow-white and the Seven Dwarfs. (lg)

melt the ice with wine, but the event was successful: the participants and organizers of MEUM were getting closer to each other, and started to share their knowledge about the other countries and languages, specially the word for “Cheers!”. After a few glasses more and more people started smi-ling, and some of them had the post-

kinds of wine to the participants. But next to the drinks there were some pretzels, which could be dipped in a salty cream and some sliced baguettes.The first four were dry white wines,

mainly from Riesling grape. The very first one had so much carbon-dioxide, that it tasted rather like champagne than a sparkling wine, but the forth one got a very good feedback, be-cause the consumers felt the fruits in it. Afterwards, there were three kinds of red wine, and finally a white again, but this time a sweet one. With every new drink a small presentation took place, but after a while the interest of the people declined…Well, it is an uncommon method to

To start a small time project, it is always very important to get the par-ticipants closer to each other at the beginning. It is usually achieved by so called ice-breaking games, but the organizers of MEU Mainz did it in another way, and connected people with a promotion of local culture and products (what is nowadays a very popular topic around the European Union).In line with these ideas, they hosted a

wine tasting evening, where the par-ticipants of MEUM were able to taste some wines, produced in the Rhine-region. The guest star was Natalie Bockius, the Princess of Rheinhes-sen 2011/2012, who presented eight

The Princess and the eight bottlesPeople around the world tasted the wines from the Rhine region

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