Tag: German politics
Can anybody stop Ursula von der Leyen? – POLITICO
BRUSSELS
For a brief moment last year, it looked like Ursula von der Leyen’s bid for a second term as European Commission president just might be in trouble.
In an unscheduled trip to Israel in October, she had stood next to Benjamin Netanyahu and expressed unreserved solidarity in the country’s battle against Hamas.
Her statement would not have been out of place in the mouth of a U.S. president or, indeed, a German politician (which is, after all, what von
Bavarian conservative chief spends €180K on professional photos – POLITICO
BERLIN — Smile! Bavaria’s state leader Markus Söder just loves a professional photograph.
The conservative chief’s state chancellery splurged almost €180,000 on freelance photographers in 2022 alone; a huge rise on Horst Seehofer’s final year as Bavarian boss in 2017 during which roughly €11,000 was spent on freelancers.
In total, the spending of taxpayer money on photographers has increased more than twentyfold since Söder’s leadership. On top of the freelancers, more than €36,000 a year is spent on a permanently
German far right picks EU lead candidate, wants European anti-migrant ‘fortress’ – POLITICO
Germany’s increasingly popular far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party elected the controversial MEP Maximilian Krah as its lead candidate for next year’s European Parliament election, while vowing to challenge the EU from the inside and turn it into a “fortress” against migrants.
More than 65 percent of the about 600 AfD delegates at a party gathering on Saturday in Magdeburg, in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, voted for Krah as their lead candidate for the European Parliament election, which
Germany faces 5 tough years, economy minister warns – POLITICO
Germany faces five difficult years of green industrial transition that “will put a burden” on people, Economy Minister Robert Habeck warned — while urging his government to approve fresh subsidies to safeguard the country’s industrial base.
Reacting to a new report by the International Monetary Fund that projects Germany’s economy will shrink 0.3 percentage points this year, Habeck told German public broadcaster ARD on Wednesday evening, “The data certainly isn’t good.”
Germany’s statistical office had already warned in May that
What genocide? Volkswagen’s morally expensive bet on China – POLITICO
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BERLIN — The blowback came in the form of cake.
An annual meeting of Volkswagen shareholders in Berlin in May was disrupted by protesters, one of whom hurled the creamy confection at the assembled executives, forcing Chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch to flinch out of the way.
Among the subjects of their ire: A car plant some 3,500 miles away in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, where Beijing has carried
German government’s first year in office — rated – POLITICO
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BERLIN — A historic coalition set out ambitious goals for reforming Germany. Then the war hit.
The storied tradition of consensus-building in the German government reached a new level over the past year, as the EU’s most-populous country struggled to lead Europe after Angela Merkel’s tenure of 16 years.
One year ago, Olaf Scholz was elected as the ninth German chancellor since World War II, leading an unprecedented “traffic-light
12 Germans who got played by Putin – POLITICO
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BERLIN — Russia’s war against Ukraine has thrust Germany’s establishment into the throes of a tortured process of introspection, self-doubt and recrimination.
After years of lecturing the West that a bit of Ostpolitik was all that was needed to keep Russia in check, Germany’s political, media and academic elites are now obsessing over a new question: How could we have been so wrong?
Rarely has a country’s confidence about itself and its place