Tag Archives: Europe

Greece vows to improve conditions in overcrowded migrant camps

Refugees and migrants line up for food distribution at the Moria migrant camp

By Angeliki Koutantou

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece, a frontline country for migrants fleeing to Europe from war and poverty, vowed on Wednesday to improve living conditions in its overcrowded island camps.

The number making the sea crossing from Turkey to Greece has fallen sharply this year under a European Union deal with Turkey. It stipulates that people arriving after March 20 are to be held on five Aegean islands and sent back if their asylum applications are not accepted.

According to figures from U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, 173,208 people have reached Greece this year, down from 856,723 in 2015.

Some 60,000 migrants, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, are still scattered across the country, which is struggling to emerge from a debt crisis.

About 15,000 are in overcrowded island camps that have grown violent as the slow processing of asylum requests adds to frustration over living conditions.

“We are planning to have new, small venues on the islands, either by setting up small, two-storey houses, in order to empty the tents, or by finding other places … to improve conditions,” Greek Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas told reporters.

“It will need time but we will do it.”

He said authorities would also set up small detention centres and boost policing.

Mouzalas acknowledged that slow processing of asylum requests was an “Achilles heel” but said Athens was hiring more staff to speed it up.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

Mediterranean death toll is record 5,000 migrants this year

A wooden boat, used by migrants and refugees, is abandoned at a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos November, 2015. The writing on the boat reads "Aegean zero hour"

GENEVA (Reuters) – A record 5,000 migrants are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea this year, following two shipwrecks on Thursday in which some 100 people, mainly West Africans, were feared dead, aid agencies said on Friday.

Two overcrowded inflatable dinghies capsized in the Strait of Sicily after leaving Libya for Italy, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said.

“Those two incidents together appear to be the numbers that would bring this year’s total up to over to 5,000 (deaths), which is a new high that we have reported during this crisis,” IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a Geneva briefing.

The Italian coast guard rescued survivors and had recovered eight bodies so far, he said. IOM staff were interviewing survivors brought to Trapani, Italy, he added.

Just under 3,800 migrants perished at sea during all of 2015, according to IOM figures.

An Algerian migrant stands in front the Mediterranean Sea in Spain's north African enclave of Ceuta, Spain,

An Algerian migrant stands in front the Mediterranean Sea in Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta, Spain, December 10, 2016. REUTERS/Juan Medina

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said the “alarming increase” in deaths this year appeared to be related to bad weather, the declining quality of vessels used by smugglers, and their tactics to avoid detection.

“These (reasons also) include sending large numbers of embarkations simultaneously, which makes the work of rescuers more difficult,” he said

The UNHCR appealed to states to open up more legal pathways for admitting refugees. Resettlement programmes, private sponsorship, family reunification and student scholarships would help “so they do not have to resort to dangerous journeys and the use of smugglers”, Spindler said.

IOM figures show 358,403 migrants and refugees had entered Europe by sea in 2016 up to and including Dec. 21, arriving mostly in Greece and Italy.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams and John Stonestreet)

Europol warns of IS attacks, says dozens of militants may be in Europe

An Islamic State flag is seen in this picture

THE HAGUE, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Islamic State is likely to launch more attacks in Europe, the EU police agency Europol warned on Friday, with several dozen militants already in place and more possibly arriving as IS faces setbacks in Syria and Iraq.

In a report on the threat the Islamist group poses to the 28-nation bloc, Europol said the most probable forms of attack would be those used in recent years, from the mass shootings and suicide bombings seen in Paris and Brussels to stabbings and other assaults by radicals acting alone.

Car bombs and kidnappings, common in Syria, could emerge as tactics in Europe, it said, while protected sites such as power grids and nuclear power stations were not seen as top targets.

Essentially the entire European Union is under threat as almost all its governments back the U.S.-led coalition in Syria, the agency said, warning that IS was likely to infiltrate Syrian refugee communities in Europe in an effort to inflame hostility to immigrants that has shaken many EU governments.

“If IS is defeated or severely weakened in Syria/Iraq by the coalition forces, there may be an increased rate in the return of foreign fighters and their families from the region to the EU or to other conflict areas,” Europol said in a statement.

It said Islamic State was also likely to start planning attacks and sending militants to Europe from Libya and that other groups, including al Qaeda and its affiliates, also continue to pose a threat to the continent.

Europol Director Rob Wainwright said EU states had stepped up their security cooperation in the wake of IS attacks in the last couple of years, allowing more plots to be thwarted.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “Today’s report shows that the threat is still high and includes diverse components which can be only tackled by even better collaboration.”

(Reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels; Editing by Janet
Lawrence)

Expect more bird flu cases in Europe and in the U.S

A car drives past the town sign in the northern German village of Grumby, Germany, with the "Bird Flu - off limits area" warning notice

By Sybille de La Hamaide

PARIS (Reuters) – More outbreaks of a severe strain of bird flu in Europe are likely to occur in the next few weeks as wild birds believed to transmit the virus migrate southward, the deputy head of the world animal health body said on Tuesday.

North America, especially the United States where bird flu last year led to the death of about 50 million poultry, should also prepare for new cases, said Matthew Stone, Deputy Director General of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Eight European countries and Israel have found cases of the highly contagious H5N8 strain of bird flu in the past few weeks and some ordered that poultry flocks be kept indoors to avoid the disease spreading.

Most outbreaks involved wild birds but Germany, Hungary and Austria also reported cases in domestic duck and turkey farms where all poultry had to be culled.

“From the level of exposure that we have seen to date I would expected more detections, hopefully only in wild birds but it is certainly possible that the presence of this virus in wild birds will create an opportunity for exposure in domestic poultry,” Stone told Reuters in an interview.

“The OIE is very concerned for the impact on our member countries and particularly those where there has been exposure of domestic poultry and where significant control operations are underway,” he added.

Wild birds can carry the virus without showing symptoms of it and transmit it to poultry through their feathers or feces.

The H5N8 virus has never been detected in humans but led to the culling of millions of farm birds in Asia and Europe in 2014.

REDUCING RISKS

In the United States the bird flu crisis last year sent egg prices to all-time highs because of the losses and dozens of countries imposed total or partial bans on U.S. poultry and egg imports.

It would be “no surprise at all” to see new detections in wild birds in North America, Stone said, adding that he hoped the biosecurity framework set up by the U.S. industry and the government would reduce the risk of large-scale outbreaks.

“At this stage we have to take history as our best indicator of what may well play out over the next few months,” Stone said.

Bird flu cannot be transmitted through food. The main risk is of a virus mutating into a form that is transmitted to and between humans, potentially creating a pandemic.

As well as Germany, Hungary, Austria and Israel, Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Croatia have also reported outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N8 avian influenza, more commonly called bird flu, in recent weeks.

Denmark and the Netherlands have ordered farmers to keep poultry indoors and Germany is considering to do so to protect them from wild birds.

Switzerland said it plans to extend to the entire country precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the virus.

France, which saw its foie gras industry devastated by other strains of the virus earlier this year, has been spared by H5N8 so far but called poultry farmers to increase controls and biosecurity measures.

Since an outbreak of the H5N1 crisis in 2003 when the virus passed on to humans, killing hundreds of them in Asia and Egypt, the OIE’s 180 member countries are bound to report all new occurrences of the disease to the Paris-based organisation.

(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Gareth Jones)

At odds over Brexit, UK nations hold ‘frustrating’ talks on common stance

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa

By Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May tried to persuade the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on Monday to work with her government on a common Brexit negotiating position, but the Scottish leader dismissed the meeting as “deeply frustrating”.

May says that while the devolved governments of the UK’s three smaller nations should give their views on what the terms of Brexit should be, they must not undermine the UK’s strategy by seeking separate settlements with the EU.

“I don’t know what the UK’s negotiating position is because they can’t tell us,” Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said after talks at May’s Downing Street office.

“I can’t undermine something that doesn’t exist, it doesn’t appear to me at the moment that there is a UK negotiating strategy,” she told Sky News television.

While England and Wales voted for Brexit in a June referendum, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU, setting the devolved governments in Edinburgh and Belfast on a collision course with the UK’s central government in London.

This could lead to a constitutional crisis, and potentially to Scottish independence and renewed political tensions in Northern Ireland.

At the meeting with Sturgeon and the Welsh and Northern Irish leaders, May proposed setting up a new body to give the three devolved governments, which have varying degrees of autonomy from London, a formal avenue to express their views.

“Working together, the nations of the United Kingdom will make a success of leaving the European Union — and we will further strengthen our unique and enduring union as we do so,” May said in a statement after the talks.

But Sturgeon struck a very different tone as she emerged.

“What I’m not prepared to do … is stand back and watch Scotland driven off a hard Brexit cliff edge because the consequences in lost jobs, lost investment and lower living standards are too serious,” she said.

CONFLICTING PRIORITIES

The British government, which has promised to kick off formal divorce talks with the EU before the end of March, has said it will negotiate a bespoke deal on behalf of the whole United Kingdom with the bloc’s other 27 members.

Sturgeon said she would make specific proposals over the next few weeks to keep Scotland in the single market even if the rest of the UK left, and that May had said she was prepared to listen to options.

“So far those words are not matched by substance or actions and that is what has got to change,” Sturgeon said.

Sturgeon, head of the Scottish National Party, has said her government is preparing for all possibilities, including independence from the UK, after Britain leaves the EU. She wants each of the UK’s four assemblies to get a vote on the proposed negotiating package.

In Northern Ireland, there are fears that Brexit could undermine a 1998 peace deal and lead to the reintroduction of unpopular and cumbersome controls on the border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member.

Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster said the devolved nations had to be at “the heart of the process” so that issues relevant to them could be tackled as they arose.

Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones said it was difficult for the devolved administrations to influence the process when there was so much uncertainty over what the government was seeking.

Jones said he had argued very strongly for “full and unfettered access” to the EU’s single market, which is in doubt because EU leaders say it would require Britain to continue to accept EU freedom of movement rules.

One of the central planks of the pro-Brexit campaign was that exiting the EU would give Britain greater control over immigration and help reduce the numbers arriving in the country.

(Additional reporting by Elisabeth O’Leary, William James and Kate Holton; Editing by Estelle Shirbon and Robin Pomeroy)

More than 6,000 migrants plucked from sea in a single day, 22 dead

Migrants in a dinghy await rescue around 20 nautical miles off the coast of Libya,

ROME (Reuters) – About 6,055 migrants were rescued and 22 found dead on the perilous sea route to Europe on Monday, one of the highest numbers in a single day, Italian and Libyan officials said.

Italy’s coastguard said at least nine migrants had died and a pregnant woman and a child had been taken by helicopter to a hospital on the Italian island of Lampedusa, halfway between Sicily and the Libyan coast.

Libyan officials said 11 migrant bodies had washed up on a beach east of the capital, Tripoli, and another two migrants had died when a boat sank off the western city of Sabratha.

One Italian coast guard ship rescued about 725 migrants on a single rubber boat, one of some 20 rescue operations during the day.

About 10 ships from the coast guard, the navy and humanitarian organizations were involved in the rescues, most of which took place some 30 miles off the coast of Libya.

Libyan naval and coastguard patrols intercepted three separate boats carrying more than 450 migrants, officials said.

Monday was the third anniversary of the sinking of a migrant boat off the Italian island of Lampedusa in which 386 people died.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, around 132,000 migrants have arrived in Italy since the start of the year and 3,054 have died.

Most depart from Libya, where political chaos and a security vacuum have allowed people smugglers to act with impunity.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Andrew Heavens)

Swiss voters likely to back new law on surveillance: survey

Camera looking over Swiss resort

By John Miller

ZURICH (Reuters) – Voters in Switzerland on Sunday are likely to back a law extending the spy service’s authority to monitor internet traffic, deploy drones and hack foreign computer systems to combat militant attacks, a survey shows.

Switzerland’s system of direct democracy gives citizens final say on the law passed in September 2015 which will give new powers to the Federal Intelligence Service, along with rules on when the agency can use them.

In a survey last week by polling group gfs.bern on behalf of Swiss state television, 53 percent were in favor of the law, with 35 percent opposed. Twelve percent were undecided, gfs.bern said.

Though neutral Switzerland has not been targeted by the sort of militant Islamist attacks seen elsewhere in Europe, the Swiss government contends previous intelligence laws are outdated and ill-equipped to tackle threats that have intensified as militants deploy new technology in a tight-knit global network.

“The Federal Intelligence Service will get modern information-gathering tools, including for surveillance of telephone calls or internet activities,” the government said. “These can only be deployed under strict conditions.”

For instance, the agency must get the government’s go-ahead before deploying software to penetrate foreign computer networks. When gathering information, its agents must “employ methods least likely to intrude on the targeted person’s civil rights”, according to the law.

Across Europe, countries including France have expanded spy agency powers, following Islamist attacks that have shifted some governments’ priorities from privacy to security.

Switzerland has prosecuted several people it contends aided Islamic State and sought to strip citizenship from a man suspected of traveling to Syria to fight with the group.

(Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Brexit not the end of European Union, Juncker says

EC President Jean-Claude Juncker

By Alastair Macdonald and Robin Emmott

STRASBOURG (Reuters) – The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, sought on Wednesday to rally support for the European Union, saying the bloc battered by the UK Brexit referendum was not about to break up despite its existential crisis.

In setting out the Commission’s plans for the first time since the UK voted to exit the EU on June 23, Juncker highlighted the British referendum as a warning that the EU faces a battle for survival against nationalism in Europe.

“The European Union doesn’t have enough union,” Juncker told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, noting his own executive was limited in its response to problems by division among states that was the worst he had seen in three decades in EU politics.

“There are splits out there and often fragmentation exists,” he said. “That is leaving scope for galloping populism.”

But he underlined he believed the world’s biggest trade bloc was still an important force. “The EU as such is not at risk.”

Proof of that, Juncker said, was the success of a new European investment fund that the former Luxembourg premier proposed to double to 630 billion euros ($707 billion) by 2022 to help with a sharp fall in spending since the global financial crisis, helping projects from airports to broadband networks.

The 48-minute speech drew a standing ovation from the main parties in an assembly dominated by supporters of closer European integration, but there was scorn from eurosceptics, including Marine Le Pen, the French National Front leader, and Nigel Farage, the triumphant Brexit campaigner from UKIP.

The pro-Brexit British Conservative leader, Syed Kamall was also dismissive: “Today was billed as a relaunch, but sadly it’s fundamentally the same mantra we’ve heard year after year,” he said, criticizing plans for more EU military cooperation — something long blocked by Britain, whose voice no longer counts.

AFRICA FUND

Juncker also wanted to extend the fund to the private sector in Africa to help curb emigration to Europe, starting with a pot of 44 million euros that could also be doubled later on.

An Africa fund was part of Juncker’s efforts to stress a more positive agenda, particularly over the migration crisis that has deeply divided the European Union. He also had veiled criticism of eastern European countries unwilling to take in refugees from North Africa and the Middle East.

“Solidarity must come from the heart. It cannot be forced,” Juncker said.

But the Juncker address offered few clues to the talks with London that the EU insists cannot start until Prime Minister Theresa May formally sets starts a two-year countdown to British departure. Juncker urged that to be done quickly and reiterated the EU negotiating position that Britain could not retain its full EU market access if it blocks free immigration from the EU.

“There can be no a la carte access to the single market,” he said of British hopes to cut immigration and keep free trade.

A summit of the 27 EU leaders in Bratislava on Friday is also unlikely to shed much light on the Brexit issue. Juncker will travel there to urge national leaders to remember the big picture and stop their “bickering”.

“What are we instilling in terms of values in our children. Is this a union that has forgotten its past, has no vision for the future? Our children deserve better,” Juncker said, speaking of his own father, a war veteran who died last month.

BORDER GUARDS

With Germany and France both facing major elections in the coming year, major changes in the Union are unlikely, but EU officials are concerned that left-right political tensions over fiscal policy in the euro zone or divisions over taking in refugees will jeopardize the cohesion of the bloc.

Juncker also urged states to complete the setting up of a European Border and Coast Guard, a project driven by last year’s chaotic arrival of over a million migrants and refugees, and proposed new cooperation among EU armies, as well as pushing for an acceleration of capital markets union.

Claiming success in fostering investment by the application of seed capital and guarantees from the EU and national governments, the Commission has put the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI) at the heart of its economic policy.

Set up last year to run for three years until 2018 with a target of mobilizing 315 billion euros of investment, the current EFSI target is based on 21 billion euros of EU money being leveraged 15 times by other investors.

However, as the EU’s current, seven-year budget program ends in 2020, the total target will rise to 500 billion euros for five years and the Commission will call on member states to add to their contributions.

Brussels says the fund could also serve to bolster Internet connectivity across the bloc.

“We propose today to equip every European city with wireless internet,” Juncker said, revealing the kind of project he hopes can help build some love for the EU among ordinary voters.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, Alissa de Carbonnel, Jan Strupczewski, Marilyn Haigh, Francesco Guarascio, Foo Yun Chee and Robin Emmott in Brussels; Writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Warnings of swelling migration flows as autumn draws in

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban attends a news conference in Budapest, Hungary

By Thomas Escritt and Aleksandar Vasovic

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Flows of migrants seeking safety in Europe via the Balkans could swell to the levels seen last autumn, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Monday, warning Brussels of conflicts to come if it sought to prevent Hungary from defending its borders.

Speaking after a meeting in Belgrade with his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic, Orban also said an upcoming referendum on whether to accept Europe-wide asylum quotas would strengthen his hand in upcoming legal disputes with Brussels.

“The very moment when it became impossible to cross into Europe by sea, the Balkan route swelled up again, and we have no reason to believe the same won’t happen this year,” Orban told reporters at a press conference, offering Serbia help to secure its borders.

Last year, vast flows of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa stretched authorities around the continent as they struggled to deal with Europe’s largest migrant flows since World War Two.

Over the summer, many migrants have attempted the sea crossing from North Africa to countries such as Italy. But as autumn brings more unsettled seas, the land route through the Balkans may see a revival of activity.

The migration crisis fueled has support for anti-immigration and anti-EU populists in many countries.

Orban, Hungary’s prime minister since 2010, has been at the forefront of opposition in Europe to the humanitarian position taken by Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel, who has said Europe has an obligation to take in refugees.

“We don’t want to change the character of our country,” Orban said. “We want to remain Hungarian, to keep our religious and ethnic composition. That view isn’t popular in Europe nowadays, at least among politicians.”

A clear referendum result would help to convey that message to Brussels, he said. “They want to force rules on member states that are in conflict with their interests, including Hungary’s. We are preparing for a conflict,” he added.

Vucic welcomed offers of Hungarian support to police its borders. An earlier agreement to deploy Hungarian police officers to Serbia’s border with Macedonia would be extended to the Bulgarian border, he said.

“Every help in terms of technical assets and manpower is welcome,” Vucic said.

(Reporting By Thomas Escritt and Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Europeans turn to weapons in growing numbers after attacks

Handguns and sporting guns are displayed at Wyss Waffen gun shop in Burgdorf

By John Miller and Caroline Copley

ZURICH/BERLIN (Reuters) – Europeans in a number of countries are seeking to arm themselves with guns and self-defense devices in growing numbers following a series of attacks by militants and the mentally ill.

Some weapons sellers also link their increased business to the arrival of huge numbers of migrants in Europe, although a German police report stated that the vast majority do not commit crimes of any kind in the country.

The picture is patchy, with no up-to-date data available at a European level, leaving national and regional authorities to release statistics that are far from comprehensive and not always comparable. Reasons also vary for civilians to own guns legally, including hunting and sport as well as self-protection.

Nevertheless, applications for gun permits are climbing in Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic. Their larger neighbor Germany has not followed the trend in lethal firearms, but permits for carrying devices designed to scare off assailants, such as blank guns and those that fire pepper spray, have risen almost 50 percent.

FACTBOX on trends in weapons permits:

Little research into the reasons for the recent apparent trend has yet been published, but the assumption is that attacks in the past year including in Paris, Brussels, Nice and Munich have stirred fear among some citizens.

“There’s no official explanation for the rise, but in general we see a connection to Europe’s terrorist attacks,” said Hanspeter Kruesi, a police spokesman in the Swiss canton of St. Gallen.

Kruesi advised against buying weapons, saying they did little to improve citizens’ security while presenting problems over safe storage and raising legal questions over their proper use in a conflict. “People could actually make themselves criminally liable,” he said.

After he spoke to Reuters, the canton was the scene of an attack aboard a train this month. The suspect and a woman victim died later, although police said his motive was unclear.

One Swiss resident who has just bought his first ever weapons – a pistol and a pump-action shotgun – pinned his decision on a feeling of insecurity created by the attacks combined with criminality that he blamed on north Africans, as well as concern over recent break-ins in his neighborhood.

“Buying weapons for self-defense won’t protect you from terrorist attacks,” said the 55-year-old who lives in a town near the capital, Bern.

“Nevertheless these attacks are contributing to a subjective sense of threat, as is the rising pressure from migration and the high crime rate among migrants from the Maghreb,” he said, requesting anonymity due to concerns about his safety.

Figures are hard to come by on whether the rate of crime, serious or petty, is higher among migrants than the general population in Europe.

The report from the BKA federal police in Germany – where more than a million people fleeing violence and poverty arrived last year – said migrants committed or tried to commit about 69,000 crimes in the first quarter of 2016. However, it did not say how this compared with the overall number of crimes.

‘THE SUM OF THESE EVENTS’

Like Kruesi, authorities in Europe – where levels of gun ownership are comparatively low and controls are often tight – have avoided encouraging their citizens to buy weapons.

But Czech President Milos Zeman broke ranks after an 18-year-old with a history of mental illness killed nine people in Munich in July. “Citizens should be able to arm themselves … in order to be able to act against these terrorists,” he told TV Nova.

Czechs may already be doing so. Gun permit holders grew by almost 6,000 to close to 300,000 in the first five months of 2016 after several years of declines.

In Switzerland, the land of the legendary crossbow marksman William Tell, a rising trend emerged last year. Of the country’s 26 cantons, the 12 that responded to a Reuters inquiry all reported higher 2015 applications for permits entitling people to buy guns. Interim 2016 figures show a further rise.

While those from people with serious criminal convictions or suffering from mental illness are rejected, most are granted.

“Nobody says directly: I’m buying a gun because of the attacks in Nice or Munich,” said Daniel Wyss, president of the Swiss weapons dealers’ association who runs his own gun shop. “But the sum of these events has fostered a general feeling of vulnerability.”

Switzerland’s defense relies heavily on tens of thousands of citizen soldiers who store their automatic rifles at home, but almost no civilians have the right to carry loaded guns in public.

Some people want this changed. Jean-Luc Addor, a parliamentarian and member of the Swiss gun lobby, aims to introduce legislation in September to ease the restrictions.

Addor contends that more armed civilians mean safer streets. “The state is not equipped to guarantee public safety,” he said. “Sometimes citizens – not every citizen, but those who have appropriate training – should be given means to protect themselves and their families.”

AN EROSION OF TRUST?

Suggestions that governments might be falling short in their duties have also surfaced in Germany.

Ingo Meinhard, head of the German association of gunsmiths and specialist gundealers, said demand for blank guns and pepper spray jumped after sexual assaults on women at New Year in the city of Cologne. These were blamed largely on migrants.

Meinhard said demand subsequently fell off but rose again after three fatal attacks in July, including by an Islamic State sympathizer who detonated a bomb near a German music festival. “We’re now noticing high demand in urban areas,” he added.

Police drew heavy criticism for failing to prevent the Cologne incidents, since which an Iraqi and an Algerian have been convicted of sexual assault.

German permits for firearms possession have fallen marginally in the past year, while those for scare devices jumped 49 percent in the year to June to 402,301.

No permit is required for pepper spray aerosols marketed as a protection against animals such as aggressive dogs, though officials say anyone who uses them on humans could get into trouble with the law.

Dagmar Ellerbock, a history professor at Technische Universitaet Dresden, said the New Year incidents may have prompted Germans to question the authorities’ competence.

“This trend towards self-defense could be a reason to worry if it signals an erosion of trust, that citizens who experienced the assaults in Cologne no longer feel safe or protected by the state,” she said.

Gun sellers said weapons interest grew in Austria after large numbers of migrants arrived in the country at the northern end of the now closed ‘Balkan Route’. “Fear is very much a driving force,” said Robert Siegert, a gunmaker and the weapons trade spokesman at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce “That’s what we keep hearing from salespeople in shops.”

AMERICAN MINDSET

Gun ownership remains low in Europe. According to the Geneva-based group Small Arms Survey, the United States easily surpasses the continent in per capita terms.

There are over 100 guns per 100 U.S. residents, more than twice the figure for Switzerland and three times that for Austria, Germany and France.

France requires background checks for those seeking a weapon for the two purposes it considers legitimate: hunting or joining a shooting club. This scrutiny can take more than a year.

Consequently, it is unlikely that legal French gun ownership has changed much since 2015, said Thierry Coste, secretary general of the Comité Guillaume Tell (William Tell) lobby group.

“Gun ownership is extremely regulated, getting there is like an obstacle course,” he said. “We don’t have the same mindset as Americans.”

Gun control laws in Britain, which has also experienced a number of Islamist militant attacks in recent years, have been strict since a school massacre in 1996. Licensed firearms numbers in England and Wales have remained relatively stable in the past year.

Even in the self-defense business, some doubt the benefits of a personal arsenal. Marco Schnyder, who runs a training center in Zurich, said knowing how to restrain an assailant was better.

“I have people in my shooting classes who want to protect their families or themselves,” he said. “They would be better served getting a watchdog or an alarm system. I tell them that, too.”

(Additional reporting Violette Goarant in Stockholm, Matthias Blamont and Michel Rose in Paris, Jan Lopatka in Prague, Francois Murphy in Vienna and Giles Elgood in London; editing by David Stamp)