This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
Additionally, for Germany:
Last year, the governing coalition retroactively repurposed funds amounting to 60 billion €, originally meant to compensate for damages caused by the COVID pandemic, from the 2021 budget to fund various climate measures. Yesterday, the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, BVerG) ruled that this was an unconstitutional breach of the Debt Brake (Schuldenbremse), which was meant to strictly limit state spending to prevent the accumulation of greater debt. The court found that the government had not provided sufficient justification for in how far spending on climate would offset the negative consequences of the pandemic, such justification being required by the Debt Brake clause of the constitution.
The Left is now calling for the Debt Brake to be removed altogether because money is a spook (*), the Greens want it to become more flexible since to them the justification is good enough, the liberal FDP and conservative CDU call it Working As Intended, and to be honest I don't know what the others said so far.
(*) My words. Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
As always, the BVerG is a bit of a wild card. I haven't heard of anyone having predicted this, and the last time they were big in the news was when they rubber-stamped (or duly supported, depending on your point of view) whatever the government did in the name of pandemic measures.
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