The Guardian reported last week that Papa Wemba, the world music star known as the King of Congolese Rumba Rock, will be tried in France in October for allegedly smuggling at least 150 people into the country by claiming they were members of his band. According to the article, Wemba faces similar charges in Belgium, where some of the undocumented immigrants arrested last February said they had paid $3,500 (£2,000) to get to Europe. Under police investigation since December 2000, Wemba admitted to French and Belgian police that he obtained visas for a few dozen of his fellow-countrymen, but insisted he was acting for humanitarian reasons. The singer, who spent three months in prison last year before being released on bail, is scheduled to appear in court on October 25 and will be charged with aiding illegal immigration, forgery, fraudulently obtaining official documents and criminal association. He faces up to 10 years in jail and a fine of €750,000 (£500,000).

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The Telegraph reported this week that Fritz Bolkestein, a European Single Market Commissioner incited many when he claimed that Turkey’s accession into the European Union would put Christian civilization in jeopardy if 70 million Turkish Muslims were allowed to join the union. 

The former leader of the Dutch liberals declared that the European Union’s hopes of a ‘fully integrated European superstate’ would fail if the fragile system tried to absorb the citizens of Turkey into the union.  Bolkestein compared the EU’s controversial predicament to the late Austrian-Hungarian empire, which took in so many culture that it was eventually ungovernable, in a speech at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The question of whether to let Turkey into the European Union as a member is also a controversy in public opinion in France and Germany today.