For your forty-four hour stay in Greenland.
Hope you had a nice Tikittarfik back home.
„Thank you, Germans“
Tag Archives: European Union
15,000 German military personnel set to arrive in Greenland
No, wait a minute. That’s going to be more like 1,500.
Sorry. We’re going to have to settle with 15 (fifteen).
But that’s still way more than the Dirty Dozen.
German military personnel set to arrive in Greenland – Germany said that the European mission in Greenland was there to counter “threats” from Russia and China. The German team is among the groups of European military personnel who are scheduled to arrive in Greenland.
American colonialism bad!
European, not so much.
Greenland’s colonial past could be Washington’s way in – Greenland’s legacy of Danish colonialism, forced relocations and cultural trauma may now become the opening Donald Trump needs to pull the island away from Europe’s orbit.
When US President Donald Trump first mused about a Greenland takeover, the initial reactions were a blend of disbelief, bemusement and nervous laughter. It felt like yet another outlandish flourish, and marginally more realistic than annexing Canada.
But beneath the jokes sat a truth few confronted: Greenland’s position within Europe is fragile. The island bears deep scars from Danish colonialism, depends heavily on Danish funds and exists in a constitutional limbo: tied to Denmark, yet outside the EU’s political system. Those unresolved tensions leave Greenland politically unanchored, and exposed.
Which Europe is he talking about?
If the future of the world is being shaped in Europe then the future looks pretty dim indeed.
The future of the world is being shaped in Europe, says German Chancellor Friedrich Merz – In his speech to his party’s youth wing on Saturday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) clearly distanced himself from the far-right AfD and stressed the importance of Europe and the European Union.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) on Saturday stressed Europe’s strategic importance, saying that the future of the world is being shaped on the continent.
Speaking to the German youth at the Young Union (Junge Union)’s Germany Day conference in Rust, Baden-Württemberg, Merz said this was not just about the European Union but the principles guiding the coexistence of people on the continent.
German Nationalism Shows Its Ugly Face
By wanting to protect its citizens from incompetent, unelected European bureaucrats.
That’s not very nice. What about European solidarity or, whatever they call it these days? We should all die at the same rate. Equally. I know: We’ll call them rotten Nazis!
Merkel Ally Urges Germany to Circumvent EU on Covid Shots – A senior member of Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc took a swipe at the chancellor’s vaccine strategy, calling for Germany to purchase shots at the national level because the European Union is too slow.
At the current rate, Germany will need 2.8 years to inoculate 75% of the population with a two-dose vaccine.
German Of The Day: Wiederaufbaufonds
That means reconstruction bonds. Or Eurobonds/Coronabonds light. Or Germany breaking a taboo and knuckling under to France to share debt with other EU countries, if you prefer.
It’s hard to keep up with them. Politicians just can’t burn money fast enough these days.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel broke with her country’s longstanding opposition to raising money together with other – often poorer – EU countries. But the proposal made with French President Emmanuel Macron is limited in scale and duration, which could help her sell it to skeptics back home.
It consists of 500 billion euros ($550 billion) in loans and grants to help countries through the recession, and is viewed by some as a step toward stronger EU ties as the 27-country union faces challenges not just from the virus crisis, but from populist forces in member countries Hungary and Poland who want to loosen the bloc’s ties.
Werteunion ruft zu Widerstand gegen Merkel auf.
“Incomprehensible” And “Meaningless”
Are the previous court decisions ruling that the European Court of Justice can have primacy over national law in Germany. It’s also “incomprehensible” that it took so long for everybody to figure this out. I sure hope that this latest ruling won’t be ruled out as “meaningless” later but I’ve had my hopes dashed before.
Germany’s constitutional court sent shockwaves through Europe last week by ruling that the German government and the EU’s top judges failed to properly scrutinise the European Central Bank’s bond-buying programme.
The judgment threatens to turn the European Commission against Germany, the EU’s biggest member state. It raises doubts over the primacy of the European Court of Justice over national law. It also risks driving a wedge between the ECB and its biggest shareholder, the Bundesbank.
Germany’s highest court dismissed an earlier ECJ ruling in ECB’s favour as “incomprehensible” and “meaningless”. That bombshell decision opened the door to potential legal challenges against the EU from other countries, such as Poland and Hungary, whose authoritarian governments are already at odds with Brussels.
I Got Your Quantitative Easing For You Right Here, Pal
Imagine that. A nation state (member state) ought to have a say in how its money is spent. What a radical new concept.
Germany’s top court has ruled that the European Central Bank’s mass bond-buying to stabilise the eurozone partly violates the German constitution.
The ruling relates to government debt worth €2.1 trillion (£2tn; $2.3tn) bought by the ECB since 2015, but not purchases in the coronavirus crisis.
The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe says there is not enough German political oversight in the purchases…
The plaintiffs are a group of German academics, including a former leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Bernd Lucke. They argue that the purchases violate the EU ban on one eurozone member subsidising the debts of another.
It is now up to the ECB to explain how its mass bond-buying programme is “proportionate”. The Bundesbank could pull out if it is not satisfied, in three months’ time – which would be a big blow to the eurozone.
Dis Is Our Disinformation
Not China’s.
“The Chinese are already threatening with reactions if the report comes out.”
Well, we certainly don’t want that in ze Europe.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief is facing questions over allegations that a report about Chinese disinformation over Covid-19 was watered down in response to pressure from Beijing…
The report was published on the EU’s monitoring website EU vs Disinfo on Friday. A survey of disinformation and misinformation about Covid-19 around the world, the report largely summarises and analyses publicly available information. It notes a “continued and coordinated push by some actors, including Chinese sources, to deflect any blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and highlighting bilateral assistance”, as well as “significant evidence of covert Chinese operations on social media.”
EU findet Propaganda aus Peking – China will Herkunft des Coronavirus verschleiern.
“A Bulwark No Longer”
For the last ten years, German elites successfully used EU membership to accrue political and economic benefits while offloading costs to Germany’s partners and avoiding the responsibilities and costs of European leadership. The irony is that the success of this strategy has now engendered the kind of divides inside Germany that it had forced upon most of the rest of the EU…
Germany is now entering a period of party system fragmentation, electoral volatility, unstable coalition governments and social polarization, all features of the politics of most other European countries.
Observing Hermann 