Polish PM Challenges Meddling EPP Chief to Debate
Morawiecki blasted Manfred Weber for subverting Polish democracy over recent EU rule of law debates.
Morawiecki blasted Manfred Weber for subverting Polish democracy over recent EU rule of law debates.
FROM THE SUMMER 2023 PRINT EDITION: In Europe, populists were permanently marginalised—or so it was claimed by hostile observers. However, since pandemic policies ended, unresolved problems have returned to the forefront of political debate, giving a boost to right-wing populist parties everywhere.
“Anyone who incites hatred against parts of the population and attacks the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously scorning, or slandering a group or part of the population is liable to be prosecuted,” Thuringia’s AfD chief Björn Höcke wrote on Twitter after filing the complaint.
Warsaw is putting its foot down. “We will not pay for the mistakes of European multicultural policy. We know how to distinguish solidarity from coercion and dangerous ideological projects,” Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki said.
Younger members feel that Green Party top brass have conceded on the immigration issue.
The directive is likely to come into effect before next year’s EU elections and facilitate decoupling from regimes such as China on human rights grounds.
Right-wing populists and socialist anti-war MEPs spoke out against the anti-disinformation report.
While the number of reported rapes in North Rhine-Westphalia—Germany’s most populous city—increased 25% in 2022 compared to the previous year, the number of rapes involving more than one perpetrator jumped by 43%.
Although U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has claimed that Beijing may be considering providing lethal aid to Moscow, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the EU has received “no evidence” from the U.S. that verifies this claim.
Compared to last year, a significantly larger number of Germans fear being pulled into a war with Russia, according to The Security Report 2023.
For the first time in many decades, German politicians must learn to think, rather than feel— and to assert Germany’s vital national interests.
After evading numerous requests by Ukraine for heavy weapons, the German governing parties have now acquiesced and voted for a parliamentary proposal for such a delivery, alongside training offers for Ukrainian soldiers on German soil.
A letter by the director of the German health insurer BKK ProVita caused a ruckus among medical associations for claiming that negative side effects of COVID vaccinations were severely under-reported. Now, the director has been fired.
Currently, Germany annually spends upwards of €45 billion, or around 1.5% of its GDP–well below the 2% required by NATO.
The considerable uptick observed, according to the security authorities, was not caused by an increase in extreme-Left or extreme-Right activity, but by an increasingly tense social climate which—amid the COVID-19 pandemic—has taken hold of German society.
It is unclear exactly how Merz will pivot from the CDU’s former centrism and remain distinct from rightist-populist competitor AfD.
For decades political parties called themselves ‘Christian’ and felt obliged to defend those values. Nowadays in Germany, only the AfD remains in this tradition.
“Anyone who says nationalism isn’t too bad is now labeled far-right,” says Nicolaus Fest MEP (AfD), speaking about the upcoming elections and the political realities of Germany.
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