Posting this a day early because I won’t be around tomorrow.
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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Germany.
Following last week's oopsie in which the federal constitutional court deemed the current government's repurposing of special funds from pandemic recovery to climate projects to be in violation of constitutional anti-debt stipulations (https://www.themotte.org/post/762/transnational-thursdays-26/160460?context=8#context), the government, a coalition of SPD, FDP and Greens, is now looking for ways to make do with a 60 billion euro hole in their budget. The austerity-minded liberal FDP has so far blocked the other parties' attempts to soften or remove the so-called Debt Brake, and insists on cutting spending instead. Such cuts would most likely need to be made within the many welfare systems, a thought quite abhorrent to the social democrats of the SPD. Interestingly any talk of cutting climate projects comes not from politics, but from conservative media - does this threatening of the one's holy cows instead of the other's point to a weakness of the SPD relative to the Greens? Certainly, the key role the FDP plays at present does not reflect its own weakness in the polls. More ominously, there are rumors that the government may attempt to announce a state of emergency in order to be able to ignore some of the rules that currently constrain their budgetary wishes, but it is unclear how exactly this would be justified.
In other news, following many antizionist demonstrations, mostly attended by muslims, there have also been several raids on muslim associations suspected of supporting Hamas. Results are unclear so far. The visibility of this antizionism has also fueled debates on immigration restriction, but while the center and right parties have offered numerous suggestions to the point, the fundamentally pro-immigration government has so far not acted on any of them. The Federal Ministry of the Interior holds a recurring conference on Islam, in which they outlined what behavior they expected of Muslims in Germany and what measures they suggest to the government. Naturally, both Muslims and the Government ignore the conference.
Also in the papers lately: The Christian churches of Germany are doing very poorly, losing members at alarming rates, and while the remaining German Protestants are increasingly turning to woke politics, the Catholic remnants are instead trying to democratize their institutions against the instructions of Pope Francis himself.
And as for Sahra Wagenknecht and her party, there are no news of significance, but apparently her leaving the leftist Die Linke party has caused a small loss of members, but also a larger influx of new ones. This may help tide the party over the rough times now coming with the dissolution of their Bundestagsfraktion or federal parliamentary caucus following the defection of several representations along with Wagenknecht.
More options
Context Copy link