News stories by Emma Bonino

ROME, Feb 26 (IPS) - Exclusion of Greece from the European free travel zone established by the Schengen Agreement is pending. The European Commission has ruled that the Athens government has "seriously neglected its obligations to control its own borders," and if the deficiencies are not corrected within three months, the other member states of the Schengen area may exclude it from the agreement.

Emma BoninoIn 2015, some 850,000 people seeking asylum and work in northern European countries passed through Greece, and the influx is continuing.

ROME, Dec 31 (IPS) - The appalling crisis ravaging the Middle East and striking terror around the world is a clear challenge to the West, but responses are uncoordinated. This is due on the one hand to divergent analyses of the situation, and on the other to conflicting interests.

ROME, Feb 27 (IPS) - When I am asked whether Europe is still a relevant "protagonist" in the modern world, I always answer that there is no doubt about it. For a long time now the continent has been shaken by financial crises, internal security strategy crises – including wars – and instability within its borders, which definitely make it a protagonist in world affairs. 

ROME, Nov 17 (IPS) - In just a few days, a meeting is scheduled that will be decisive for the security of the Middle East and of the whole world.

ROME, May 30 (IPS) - Since 2004, the Independent Commission on Turkey (ICT) has watched closely developments within Turkey and between Turkey and the European Union (EU). On April 7 the ITC launched its third report, Turkey in Europe: The Imperative for Change.

ROME, Mar 03 (IPS) - Until the late 1970s, only 16 countries had abolished the capital punishment for all crimes. Today, abolitionist nations are the overwhelming majority. More than two-thirds of nations, over 150 of the 193 members of the United Nations, have now rejected the death penalty or do not carry out executions.

ROME, May 14 (IPS) - The recent agreement for the normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo has confirmed that the European Union (EU) is still acting as a "magnet", attracting its external neighbours and transforming and integrating them. Thanks to its prospects for EU membership, the whole Balkan area has become more stable and secure. Unfortunately, this virtuous magnetism no longer exerts the same force of attraction on our own citizens.

There are clear indications that the world is moving away from capital punshment: the legal abolition of the sanction in recent years in many states of the US -which saw a drop in executions from 52 in 2009 to 46 in 2010-, the drop that is apparently occurring in China, the reduction in the number of capital offenses in China and Vietnam, and the thousands of death sentences commuted in Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Burma, writes Emma Bonino, Vice president of the Italian Senate and a leader of the Radical Party.

This is a very delicate period for Egypt. Confrontations between the secular-liberal front and the Islamist front, broadly understood, are growing increasingly polarised and often violent. A not always visible rift has opened between the student movement and the military, which is now often seen not as the guarantor of the people's demands for freedom and justice but as part of the old regime fighting for its survival. Peaceful protests are now banned and the press is muzzled, write Emma Bonino, vice president of the Italian Senate, and Saad Eddin Ibrahim, founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies.