Australia and Canada next in line after UK for defence deal with EU
The EU and Australia announced on Wednesday they will start talks for a defence and security pact, with the bloc expected to strike a similar deal with Canada next week, a first step that could eventually allow both NATO allies to take part in the EU's €150 billion programme to boost military production.
"I very much welcome the EU's offer for a Security and Defence Partnership and Australia will warmly take it up and commence work immediately," Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a joint statement released following a meeting on the sidelines of a G7 summit in Canada.
"This will open the door to joint defence procurement opportunities and will benefit both our industries and our security," he added.
Brussels and Canberra emphasised their cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, where China's military is increasingly active and assertive, and which has become a key pillar of Washington's foreign policy.
"In a time of rising tensions and strategic competition, trusted partners must stand together," von der Leyen said in the same statement. "Europe and Australia's enduring friendship enters a new chapter today."
The EU and Australia are also currently negotiating a Free Trade Agreement but the talks for the SPD will remain separate.
A Security and Defence Pact (SPD) - like the one the EU signed with the UK last month - is one of the likely deliverables of the EU-Canada summit to be held on Monday in Brussels between European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, European Council president Antonio Costa, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Striking an SPD is the first required step for third countries to take part in the EU's €150 billion SAFE programme to boost joint procurement.
The instrument, part of the EU's Readiness 2030 plan to strengthen the bloc's defence sector and capabilities, includes a so-called European preference under which some 65% of the weapon systems bought must be made in the EU or by a third-country manufacturer provided they have an SPD with the bloc.
A second agreement, allowing for the third country's participation in SAFE, will also be required.
SAFE was approved by member states late last month and governments now have a few months to submit to the Commission the joint procurement projects they want to take part in. The EU executive could then start releasing money to fund these projects before the end of the year.
France announced on Tuesday that Bulgaria had joined its initiative for joint acquisitions of THALES radar intended to strengthen aerial surveillance.
"Other countries have already shown a strong interest in this approach and, with the support of the initial partner countries, are expected to join the cooperation in the near future," the French ministry for the armed forces said.
Police officers in England and Wales will be required to collect ethnicity and nationality data in cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation after a review found the issue had been 'shied away' from.
The UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that this would become a mandatory requirement as she accepted all 12 recommendations made by Louise Casey in her audit on group-based child sexual abuse on Monday.
Casey noted that the term 'group-based child sexual exploitation' sanitised what the victims – some as young as 11 – had suffered, with abused children suffering beatings, gang rapes, being impregnated by their abusers and having children removed from them at birth.
The perpetrators targeted girls from vulnerable backgrounds, including children in care, children with physical and mental disabilities, and children who had suffered neglect or abuse.
The recommendation to collect targeted information was made after the review found that there was a paucity of data nationally concerning the ethnicity of perpetrators of group-based child sexual abuse – sometimes known as 'grooming gangs' – and their victims.
It stated that this meant there was insufficient information to draw conclusions on the national level.
However, Casey found that in three local policing areas – Greater Manchester, West and South Yorkshire – there was sufficient evidence to show that there were 'disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation'.
This is the case for group-based child sexual exploitation in the local data examined, the review noted, while more broadly across child sexual exploitation cases, the ethnicity profile is much closer to that of the local population.
The issue of ethnicity is the most sensitive and controversial aspect of the audit, and Cooper said she had requested that this be the focus of the analysis.
'While much more robust national data is needed, we cannot and must not shy away from these findings, because, as Baroness Casey says, ignoring the issues, not examining and exposing them to the light, allows the criminality and depravity of a minority of men to be used to marginalise whole communities,' Cooper said.
'The vast majority of people in our British, Asian and Pakistani heritage communities continue to be appalled by these terrible crimes and agree that the criminal minority of sick predators and perpetrators in every community must be dealt with robustly by a criminal law.'
As well as failing victims, neglecting the possible role of the factor of ethnicity 'plays into the hands of groups with divisive political agendas not to examine or deal with these issues conclusively,' Casey wrote in the review.
Perpetrators groomed vulnerable girls with gifts and attention before passing them to other men to rape and using alcohol, drugs and violence to keep them compliant and control them.
The audit noted that 'the grooming process is now as likely to start online, and hotspots might have moved from parks to vape shops and the use of hotels with anonymous check-in facilities'.
Too often, child victims were blamed for their own abuse and 'criminalised for offences they committed while being groomed,' Casey said.
She recommended that the law be tightened to clarify that children cannot consent when they have been raped, so that adults who penetrate a child under 16 (the UK age of consent) receive mandatory charges of rape.
While this already is the case for children below 13, she noted that cases are sometimes dropped or charges downgraded if the 13 to 15-year-old is said to have been 'in love with' or 'had consented to' sex with the perpetrator.
Among other recommendations, Casey also called for the gathering of ethnicity and nationality data in child sexual abuse cases be made mandatory, and the review of criminal convictions of victims of child sexual exploitation.
The scandal from more than a decade ago returned to the political agenda after Elon Musk made a series of social media posts about it in January, wading in after it emerged that the UK safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, rejected a request for a government-led inquiry, instead saying it should be commissioned locally.
It is an issue that has been examined before, with a report by Professor Alexis Jay in 2014 estimating that some 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by men of Pakistani descent.
That report identifies failings by authorities and the police, and also cites local authority officials describing their 'nervousness' at identifying the 'ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist.'
Labour initially rejected calls for another inquiry, as successive Conservative governments had implemented none of the recommendations made in the last national inquiry.
The government has now bowed to pressure to launch another national inquiry, despite Jay saying in January that victims "want action" rather than another inquiry.
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