Eu politics

Monday

Fraser Nelson

The collapse of coalition talks in Germany makes a ‘no deal’ Brexit a little more likely

The Cabinet is expected to resume talks about Brexit today, reportedly nudging towards a £40 billion offer ahead of a meeting on Friday – but is there much point? Germany still has no government with Angela Merkel’s coalition talks having collapsed. The chairman of the Free Democratic Party ended talks with Merkel last night and her old coalition partners, the Social Democrats, refuse to enter a deal as this would confer opposition status on the populist AfD and thereby augmenting the progress they made in the recent federal elections. All of a sudden, Merkel’s fourth term has been thrown into question, and there’s talk of her doing a Theresa May

Thursday

Ed West

It’s nonsense to claim Russia influenced the Brexit vote

Q: How many Remainers does it take to fix a light bulb? A: Why should we fix it? It’s Russia’s fault it’s broken An old joke; I think the original concerned Arabs and Israel, but then there are numerous parts of the world where all manner of events are attributed to historic enemies. I remember a few years ago, after reading an article about how Poles tended to think the Russians were behind everything bad, a journalist explaining that this is the historic result of being ruled by tyrannical regimes, low social capital and little trust in government. That’s eastern Europe for you; luckily we north-west Europeans, with our long history

Wednesday

Jonathan Miller

Emmanuel Macron looks shiftier and less likeable by the minute

One of the must-have applications for smartphones in France is called C’est la Grève, which helpfully shows all the strikes ongoing at the moment, and those to come, with useful regional breakdowns. It’s indispensable for le planning and proof that French developers understand how to tailor digital products to local market demands. At the moment at the top of the list on my C’est la Grève app is a national and general strike this Thursday, which promises to be a key moment in what looks like an increasingly desperate effort to bring down Jupiter, Emmanuel Macron, president of the republic. The French left, when they are not ripping each other to

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

Will the government’s EU withdrawal bill pass unscathed? Don’t bet on it

Brexit means Brexit, but unfortunately the EU withdrawal bill – which actually does the legislative job of taking Britain out of the EU – is somewhat trickier to get to grips with. The original bill is 60 pages long, and there are now 470 amendments – running to some 200 pages – and counting. The House of Commons library predicts the bill will be ‘one of the largest legislative projects ever undertaken in the UK’. All of this will keep MPs – and the government, as it fights off the backbench rebels – very busy indeed over the coming weeks. Two days each week for the next month have been set aside

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: It’s time for Britain to up its Brexit bill offer

It once seemed a near certainty that Brexit talks would progress on to the next stage by Christmas. Now, it seems somewhat less likely: David Davis reportedly told business leaders it was a 50-50 chance of making a breakthrough by December, according to Bloomberg (although Davis denies saying this). So what explains the latest hold-up? The Brexit bill remains the big sticking point, says the Financial Times. Theresa May made an ‘opening offer’ of €20bn – and while she ‘may be frustrated’ that her bid was ‘not met by any reciprocal concession from Brussels’, she should not be surprised, says the FT. ‘The reality is,’ says the paper, ‘that the

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Even Michel Barnier says it’s time to prepare for ‘no deal’ on Brexit

Today’s Guardian has an odd splash headline, denouncing as ‘Orwellian’ a letter that Michael Gove and Boris Johnson sent to Theresa May warning her that some parts of her government are unprepared for ‘no deal’. I’m not quite sure what’s Orwellian about that, or even so controversial. Here’s the leaked extract of the letter. ‘Your approach is governed by sensible pragmatism. That does not in any way dilute our ambition to be a fully independent self-governing country by the time of the next election. If we are to counter those who wish to frustrate that end, there are ways of underlining your resolve. We are profoundly worried that in some

Thursday

Morgan Meaker

We are the people! How the German right repackaged unification

‘Wir sind das Volk’ – ‘We are the people’ – has become the slogan of Germany’s disaffected. The phrase is the rallying cry of Pegida, the country’s anti-Islam protest movement. At one of the group’s first rallies in Dresden, back in 2014, it was taken up as a popular protest chant. In the disenfranchised east, it is a phrase which has gained currency since then, with Pegida and Alternative for Germany (AFD) keen to use it to exploit the widespread feeling of dislocation from central government and ‘Wessis’ (west Germans), who continue to be richer than their eastern neighbours. A recent government report found that, in the east, GDP proportionally was 66 per cent that in

Saturday

William Cook

Germany remains a nation divided between East and West

On the left bank of the Rhine, on the leafy outskirts of Bonn, there’s a building that encapsulates the Bundesrepublik’s best and worst of times. For 44 years, the Villa Hammerschmidt was the official residence of the German President, Germany’s equivalent of the White House. No longer. Now, the German President resides in the Bellevue Palace in Berlin, 300 miles away. Architecture reveals a great deal about the shifting psyche of a nation, and these two contrasting buildings sum up the difference between the Bonn government of the Cold War and today’s government in Berlin. The Villa Hammerschmidt here in Bonn is ornate yet modest – the Bellevue Palace is

Thursday

Jake Wallis Simons

Carles Puigdemont’s descent into mockery is complete

It was the question that many journalists were asking: what had become of Mrs Puigdemont and the two little Puigdemonts? Well, yesterday afternoon we found out. After a bit of elementary detective work, we photographed her driving home with her two children in the car. In other words, doing the school run. Now, Marcela Topor – she uses her maiden name – has long stood four-square behind her husband in his quixotic battle for independence. For all we know, she could have no objection to him leaving her holding the babies (she did not respond to my request for an interview). But as I caught sight of the harassed expression

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The EU helped bring peace to Ireland. Will violence now return?

The 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg is as good week as any to examine the power of sectarianism. Here in Britain we do not need to look far. Northern Ireland ought to be in crisis because a hard Brexit will wreck its economy. The Republic exported €18bn-worth of services to the UK in 2014, and €11.4bn went back. In 2015, it exported €15.6bn of goods. Britain exported €18bn in return. Meanwhile millions from both countries crossed borders we fondly thought were now just lines on the map to see the sights as holidaymakers, or visit their friends,

Sunday

Jake Wallis Simons

Catalonia’s ‘silent majority’ does not want independence from Spain

Barcelona I was roaring through central Barcelona on the back of a motorcycle, in the midst of a pack of unionist riders adorned with Spanish flags, all sounding their horns with reckless abandon, when it hit me: this was the voice of the silent majority. Catalonia does not want independence from Spain. But let me begin at the beginning. Yesterday afternoon, the word was put out on Twitter that a group of unionists were intending to parade through Barcelona on two wheels before riding out to the port, where a battalion of national police were barracked in a ship. There they planned to serenade officers and shower them with flowers

David Goodhart

Europe remains remarkably free of racism

This book is an exercise in crying wolf that utterly fails to prove its main thesis: that Europe is abandoning its core liberal values under threat from a resurgent populist right. It is a largely fact-free polemic that passes itself off as an open-minded work of interview reportage. Yet if you can ignore the author’s sly interventions on behalf of his left-liberal premises, he does introduce the reader to a fascinating cast of characters, mainly from the European populist right. And, at least for someone (like me) who is predisposed to an interest in the subject, he also provides real insight into the internal debates about immigration and national identity,

Saturday

Jeremy Norman

Daphne Galizia’s brutal killing and Malta’s dark secret

Malta is, by and large, a safe country where people don’t lock their doors. This month’s car bombing, in which Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered, has forced me to reconsider the benign opinion of the island I know and love. The dark echoes of Belfast during the Troubles, where personal and political opponents often met a violent end are difficult to ignore. Galizia’s assassination has worrying echoes for the whole of Europe. No one can yet say who killed Galizia, but there is little doubt that her fearless journalism made her many enemies over the years. Malta’s Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, has vowed to hunt down those responsible. Some have pointed

James Landale

The EU needs to ask itself some searching questions about Brexit

I have come to Greece in search of sanity over Brexit. Ostensibly it is a symposium to discuss relations between Britain and Greece. But it is also an excuse to step away from the minutiae of the negotiations to think about the future of Europe. It was from Greece, of course, that our continent derived its name — from the mythological Europa who was ravished by Zeus and bore a future king of Crete. One contributor notes dryly that Greece is also not a bad place to think about the rise and fall of empires, the follies of politicians, the failings of institutions and what happens to elites when they

Friday

Enea Desideri

Catalonia’s quest for independence should serve as a warning to the EU

The Spanish Senate has just triggered Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution to impose direct rule over Catalonia. The decision, which Madrid claims is necessary to restore constitutional order, was taken following the escalation of tensions since the 1st October referendum. That resulted in a declaration of independence that was initially suspended but then activated this afternoon. The situation is currently extremely tense. The Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has called an extraordinary Council of Ministers this afternoon, which will sign off the implementation of measures under Article 155, including forcing the Catalan leader Puigdemont and his ministers to step down. It is difficult to predict how things will unfold, although

Diego Zuluaga

The damage is done in Catalonia. Now it’s time to restore the rule of law

If you have seen images from earlier today when the rump Catalan parliament – vacated by the non-separatist MPs, about half of the chamber – voted to unilaterally declare independence, you may have wondered about the serious look on parliamentarians’ faces. Why the sombre visages, if this is the defining moment in their careers: the birthday of their long-craved republic? Perhaps they are worried about the uncertainty of what comes next, and the expectation that it will not be good. The Spanish government has, after all, just obtained a mandate to enforce constitutional provisions by which it will temporarily take control of the Catalan administration. The aim is to restore

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Britain back Madrid for the sake of Brexit?

Theresa May’s official spokesperson has just issued a statement on Catalonia’s declaration of independence that will please Madrid. It makes clear that the ‘UK does not and will not recognise the Unilateral Declaration of Independence’. It says that the declaration is ‘based on a vote declared illegal by the Spanish courts’. It concludes by saying that ‘we want to see the rule of law upheld, the Spanish constitution respected, and Spanish unity preserved’. What is telling about this statement is that it doesn’t even included the kind of diplomatically phrased call for restraint that Donald Tusk’s tweet did. Now, you can say that the UK statement is not that dissimilar to

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The Catalan crisis has exposed what the EU really stands for

The Catalan Parliament has voted for a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain. President Carles Puigdemont had toyed with taking the decision but in the end left it up to the legislature. It is now not a question of Madrid deposing him; it will have to shut down the whole operation. Direct rule is all but inevitable. Madrid held out this nuclear option in the hope of dissuading the nationalists from taking the leap but the bluff has been called. After the scenes that greeted the October 1st referendum on independence, only an optimist would expect the Spanish imposition to be a bloodless affair. Most Catalans did not want to

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Catalonia’s crisis deepens further

The Catalan crisis deepens by the day. This afternoon, the region’s parliament backed a declaration of independence from Spain. Here is the moment Carme Forcadell, president of the Catalan parliament, announced the outcome of the vote: The country’s senate did not take long to react by voting to impose direct rule in Catalonia. This triggering of Article 155 in the Spanish constitution, which allows the government to take charge in the Catalan region, has never been done before and it amounts to something of a nuclear option (the country’s former foreign secretary Jose Manuel Garcia once likened the Articl to ‘an atomic bomb’). Both sides, it is now clear, will

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The Czech election shows the march of the populists isn’t over

The Czech election was something of a shock to those who thought the ‘march of the populists in Europe’ is over Andrej Babis – who ‘shares the anti-migrant stance and hatred for EU refugee policy of Hungary’s premier Viktor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s ruling party’ – was the ‘clear winner’, says the FT. What’s more, the paper points out, the ‘far right’ won 11 per cent of the vote in the country’s election. Yet for all the comparisons, ‘the tycoon insists he is no Mr Orban’. Although he was against the euro, Babis says he ‘is not anti-EU’. But this does not mean the Czech Republic’s EU partners won’t need