Social Democratic Party (Germany) - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

Germany’s left-wing socialists — leading election voter polls — are ready for power, former leader says

Holly Ellyatt — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 19:57:33 +0000

One of the big surprises in the run-up to the German federal election later this month has been the sharp increase in support for the Social Democratic Party.
The SPD is now a firm contender to lead the next coalition government in the country.
The center-left party is already a part of the incumbent coalition government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is leaving office after 16 years of leading Europe’s largest economy.

One of the big surprises in the run-up to the German federal election later this month has been the sharp increase in support for the Social Democratic Party, making it a firm contender to lead the next coalition government in the country.

The center-left party is already a part of the incumbent coalition government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is leaving office after 16 years of leading Europe’s largest economy.

The latest opinion polls show a steady rise for the SPD since August. As it stands, polls show the party ahead of rivals and seen with 25% of the vote, which takes place on Sept. 26. In second place, with 21% of the vote, is Merkel’s conservative alliance made up of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union.

In third place are the Greens, who themselves saw a bounce in the polls earlier this year, with 17% of the vote, according to Politico’s poll of polls.

The SPD’s lead means its candidate for chancellor, the current Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, could fill the shoes left by Merkel and lead Germany into a new political era. It’s still very likely that the next government will be a coalition, with no one party set to win enough seats in the Bundestag (or parliament) to govern alone.

Martin Schulz, the SPD’s former leader, told CNBC that he wasn’t surprised by the SPD’s rise in popularity and that Scholz was well positioned to lead the country.

“The position of the German people is strongly influenced by the question of who is able to lead Germany, the biggest member state of the European Union … And this is neither Annalena Baerbock nor Armin Laschet, but Olaf Scholz. And for me it was quite clear that the moment people started to consider that Merkel is leaving and who could replace her, then Scholz would become the leading person,” he told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach on Wednesday.

Who’s who

Scholz is a seasoned politician given his roles in government and as a former mayor of Hamburg and former deputy leader of the SPD. He’s seen as a stability candidate, a steady pair of hands at a time of political transition in Germany.

© Provided by CNBC Olaf Scholz, chancellor candidate of the German Social Democrats (SPD), speaks at an election campaign rally on September 05, 2021 in Leipzig, Germany. Scholz currently has an ample lead over his main rival, Armin Laschet of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), ahead of federal parliamentary elections scheduled for September 26.

The rise of his popularity, and that of the SPD, has come as support for the CDU-CSU – led by Laschet – and the Greens, whose candidate for chancellor is Baerbock, has waned with the popularity of both leaders hit by several controversies and questions over their suitability to lead.

The CDU’s Laschet, in particular, has seen his ratings dive due to a disappointing campaign trail and lackluster performance on the public stage. Being caught on camera laughing during a visit to a German town hit by devastating floods, for which he later apologized, did nothing to boost his public persona either.

For her part, and knowing her party looked to be in peril ahead of the election, Merkel used an address to the Bundestag on Tuesday as an opportunity to promote Laschet, saying he stood for “stability, reliability, moderation and centrality.”

She also took a thinly-veiled swipe at Scholz in an address to the Bundestag on Tuesday, appearing to refer to Scholz’s comments on Covid vaccinations last week, when he had said that the roughly 50 million fully vaccinated Germans had effectively served as “guinea pigs” for those who were skeptical, in effect demonstrating that the shot was safe.

“If we want to convince people [to get a vaccine] it must be with arguments and not images of guinea pigs,” Merkel told lawmakers, news agency Deutsche Welle reported, although she didn’t refer to Scholz by name.

Schulz disagreed with the notion that the SPD’s nominee for chancellor was a continuity candidate that would continue similar strategies and policies to the outgoing Merkel.

“It’s the other way around. When you listen carefully to Angela Merkel’s speech [on Tuesday] it was strongly against the Social Democratic leadership in government.”

“In my opinion the most important figure in [opinion] polls is that 46% of Germans consider social justice as the most important item for the future. [That was] higher in their ranking than climate change, the fight against climate change, and Olaf Scholz is representing a kind of new political style. Instead of either/or [he represents] both.”

SPD focus

Giving a glimpse of what an SPD-led coalition government could look like, Schulz said the main three focuses of the party were Europe, respect and infrastructure investment.

The aim of the party would first be “to increase European activities, to deepen European integration and to make the European Union safer, because we are in competition with other systems in the world, not only an economic competition but this is also a pollical competition.”

Secondly, he said the party’s goal was to achieve “mutual respect.” “Peaceful societies depend on the mutual respect of individuals’ respect for each other … Refusing the strategy of some parties, especially those on the extreme right-wing, [and telling them] that from the highest government level we say we are a society sticking together instead of excluding minorities.”

Lastly, Schulz said Germany “needed an enormous amount of money to invest in infrastructure in Germany, not only real estate but our railway system, for example, which much become much faster, and our digital infrastructure.”

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/germanys-left-wing-socialists-e2-80-94-leading-election-voter-polls-e2-80-94-are-ready-for-power-former-leader-says/ar-AAOhFGy

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Germany Won’t Enlist in Macron’s European Army

Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg News — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 01:34:07 +0000

GRANSEE, GERMANY – JUNE 19: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron address the media during a joint press conference at Schloss Meseberg governmental palace during German-French government consultations on June 19, 2018 near Gransee, Germany. Merkel, Macron and a selection of their government ministers are coming together today for a day of talks. (Photo by Michele Tantussi/Getty Images) , Photographer: Michele Tantussi/Getty Images Europe

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Now that German leaders have responded to French President Emmanuel Macron’s provocative remarks concerning the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an unusually wide public rift has emerged between France and Germany. At its root, it’s about France’s leadership ambitions, to which Germany is opposed without itself wanting to lead.

“We do want a strong and sovereign Europe,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas wrote in an op-ed article in the weekly Der Spiegel on Sunday. “But we need it as part of a strong NATO, and not as a substitute.”

That doesn’t just mean Maas is keen to preserve Europe’s, and Germany’s, transatlantic alliance regardless of U.S. President Donald Trump’s relative lack of interest in it — simply because Europe cannot defend itself without U.S. help today. Maas insisted that “when Europe is one day able to defend its own security, we should still want NATO.” And, directly answering Macron’s musings about improving relations with Russia as the alliance with the U.S. erodes, the German minister declared that “Germany will not tolerate any special arrangements, not vis-à-vis Moscow and not on any other matters,” because it takes the security of Poland and the Baltic states to heart.

These are strong statements, especially coming from Maas. He’s a member of the Social Democratic Party, which is less pro-U.S. and pro-NATO than its senior partner in Germany’s governing coalition, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. But on the points Maas made in his article, the German government appears to be united. Merkel, too, has criticized Macron’s vision more sharply than on any other matter since his election in 2017, calling it a “sweeping attack.”

“We must bring the European part of NATO closer together,” Merkel said on her regular Sunday podcast. That, she added, was what the European Union defense project, known as Permanent Structured Cooperation, or Pesco, is all about.

That’s an approach radically different from Macron’s. To him, the EU defense project is about strategic sovereignty. To German politicians, it’s largely an efficiency project aimed at harmonizing European countries’ defense industries, cutting the number of different defense systems used by member states’ armies, and centralizing the development of new weapons such as warplanes and tanks.

This German visio is consistent with the Framework Nations Concept, adopted by NATO in 2014. It’s a mechanism for voluntary defense cooperation built around specific nations’ projects, such as Germany’s own idea of coordinating the development of defense capabilities, or the U.K.’s work on a multinational rapid response force. Under the concept, pretty much any cooperation projects, even those including non-NATO members such as Sweden and Finland, can take place under NATO’s umbrella.

With NATO providing such a flexible platform, it’s often not obvious why any other defense cooperation programs are necessary. NATO and the EU have agreed to coordinate their activities, anyway, and it’s evident from progress reports on that effort that this creates a lot of duplicative bureaucratic activity such as cross-participation in working groups. The same exercises under the program get two different names, one for the EU and one for NATO.

But especially from the French point of view, NATO isn’t the best platform for joint procurement programs, because outside it, Europeans can keep out U.S. competition. Involving NATO also means dealing with the U.S. as the organization’s military leader. France, as the country with the strongest military in the EU, likes to exercise leadership, too. Which is perhaps the best explanation for Macron’s European Intervention Initiative, an attempt at coordinating European countries’ strategic thinking that isn’t even part of EU defense cooperation.

Germany doesn’t have France’s military ambitions. It’s a low defense spender because higher expenditure is politically unpopular. The Bundeswehr’s combat readiness is constantly in question, and there’s all the weight of history on the shoulders of German leaders. So German politicians see their function in maintaining European security differently than Macron does, even if they, too, refer to “leadership.”

“As a country at the centre of Europe, Germany must play a central, mediatory and balanced role – within Europe and vis-a-vis the United States,” Maas wrote. “If we do not assume this leadership role, nobody will.”

Being a mediator, though, is not the same as being a leader. An unambitious, compromise-minded Germany won’t compete with Macron’s cocky France, but it’ll be a drag on Macron’s security strategizing, getting in the way as he tries to provoke the U.S. with talk of strategic autonomy or flirt with Russia. It’ll provide the reliably boring alternative, and that’s probably for the best: Any machine in which Macron designs the sporty engine needs German-made brakes.

To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.

Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/germany-won-t-enlist-in-macron-s-european-army-1.1346425

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Nationwide register for anti-Semitic offenses in Germany – commissioner

Deutsche Welle — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 07:08:04 +0000

Germany’s incoming anti-Semitism commissioner is to establish a central register for anti-Jewish crime. Meanwhile in the Bundestag, MPs condemned anti-Semitism and stressed Germany’s friendship with Israel.

Felix Klein, Germany’s first anti-Semitism commissioner told public radio that in order to better understand anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish sentiment establishing a central register is to be a priority when he takes office on May 1.

“There has always been anti-Semitism in Germany, but it is more blatant now, more aggressive,” he told rbb public radio.

He stressed that there were already good regional initiatives, but that a nationwide register would help get “a good overview” of anti-Jewish offenses in Germany.

His comments come just a day after thousands of people took to the streets of Berlin wearing Jewish skullcaps, known as kippas, to protest anti-Semitism and the attack on an Israeli by three Arabic-speaking men last week.

Anti-Semitism ‘at heart of society’

Klein said that while there are concerns about anti-Semitism among some Muslim migrant, he is most worried about what he termed “secondary anti-Semitism, which lies at the heart of society…people who are prejudiced; supposedly funny jokes at the dinner table.”

“That’s a challenge for our society, which can only be solved medium-to-longterm,” he told rbb.

He also said he wants to improve cooperation with Germany’s Muslim associations, whose response to anti-Semitism, he says, could be “more coordinated.”

Bundestag debate on Israel

Meanwhile, MPs in the German parliament, the Bundestag, marked the 70th anniversary this year of the founding of the State of Israel, with some lawmakers wearing kippas for the occasion.

The Bundestag approved a motion brought by the CDU and CSU, the FDP and the SPD on Germany’s historical responsibility and future friendship with Israel.

All parties agreed that “anti-Semitism must never again be part of Germany” and that Germany must be “Israel’s guarantor,” as Green politician Katrin Göring-Eckardt put it.

The Left’s parliamentary party leader, Dietmar Bartsch, called the fact that there was any anti-Semitism at all “shameful.”

Migrants and anti-Semitism

SPD chair Andrea Nahles said that Germany was responsible for the killing of millions of Jews in World War II and that that “responsibility does not simply end, neither for subsequent generations nor for those who come to our country,” alluding to anti-Jewish sentiment among some of the recent migrants to Germany from Muslim countries.

“We will always and categorically defend Israel’s right to exist,” she added.

Conservative CDU MP Volker Kauder stressed that anti-Semitism in Germany had been there long before the recent arrival of Muslim migrants after populist AfD politician Alexander Gauland said that “anti-Semitism should not turn into collateral damage of a misguided refugee policy.”

Source: http://www.dw.com/en/nationwide-register-for-anti-semitic-offenses-in-germany-commissioner/a-43545539

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Want to Understand What Is Wrong With Europe? Look at Italy

Helen Thompson — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 03:30:09 +0000

Luigi Di Maio, of the Five Star Movement, celebrating victory with his supporters in Pomigliano D’Arco, Italy, on Tuesday. CreditCiro Fusco/European Pressphoto Agency

CAMBRIDGE, England — Italy’s election this week has destroyed any remaining hope that the center in European politics can prevail.

On the same day that members of the Social Democratic Party in Germany gave reluctant blessing to another “grand coalition” in Berlin, Italians went to the polls and delivered more than half their votes to anti-establishment parties. The center-right coalition that emerged when Silvio Berlusconi formed Forza Italia is now led by the League, a far-right party that threatens thousands of migrants with deportation. And as in nearly every recent European election, the principal center-left party lost a large number of voters. Given these results, the only possible government that can emerge in Rome will contain at least one of the two insurgent populist parties: either the League or the Five Star Movement, the single largest party in Parliament.

Italy’s situation is particular, but not unique. Across the Continent, the old politics has shattered: The once-dominant parties of the center right and center left have been unable over the past two decades to secure support for policies generated within the context of the European Union and the euro single currency.

Since the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992, establishing the European Union and laying the groundwork for the creation of the euro, policy on a range of issues from budgets to asylum have been taken beyond the control of democratically elected national governments. An increasing number have become subject to majority-voting within the Council of the European Union, as with immigration. Sometimes, policy is just dictated by Germany’s sheer exercise of power, as in the case of the refugee and migrant crisis.

At the same time, participation in the eurozone has required governments to forsake policy tools that their predecessors had used during times of economic crisis. Since 2010, eurozone membership can also demand acquiescence to the European Central Bank, which can essentially ask for and veto national economic legislation.

The result? Much of Europe has become nearly ungovernable. As voters across the Continent see their ability to influence policy taken away, they have lashed out, neutering the traditional center and giving rise to disruptive populists. Italy’s election, in other words, says much about everything that’s wrong with the European Union.

The center left has been hit especially hard. Germany’s Social Democrats, France’s Socialists and most recently, Italy’s Democratic Party have lost millions of voters. Part of this is driven by a rejection of the immigration and refugee policies over which centrist governments have presided. In eurozone countries, voters have had extra reason to lose faith: Despite their rhetorical commitments to social welfare and redistribution, these parties have overseen cuts in welfare spending, loosened labor laws and reformed pensions. Over the past two decades, center-left parties have justified the elevation of a technocratic European ideal over the claims of both democracy and the actual, daily economic experience of millions of Europeans.

Italy is the epicenter of the problems facing establishment European politicians for both recent and more historical reasons. The external immigration pressures that have roiled politics are especially acute in Italy, which is the first point of entry for migrants and refugees coming from North Africa. Consequently, the League surged from 4 percent of the vote in 2013 to about 18 percent this week, thanks in large part to the party’s campaign slogan: “Italians First.”

Above all, though, have been Italy’s particular tribulations with the euro, which have struck at the heart of the country’s democracy. In the fall of 2011, the European Central Bank wrote to Mr. Berlusconi, then the prime minister, saying that its purchase of Italian bonds was conditional on legislative reforms. When Mr. Berlusconi refused to cut pensions, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany encouraged the Italian president at the time, Giorgio Napolitano, to end Mr. Berlusconi’s premiership. Germany essentially strong-armed the president into appointing a cabinet of technocrats led by Mario Monti, a former European commissioner. Since then, Italy has not had an elected politician as minister of economy and finances. The role has been taken by Mr. Monti himself, a former central banker and former official at the International Monetary Fund.

In the 2013 election — the first after Mr. Monti was installed as prime minister at Germany’s insistence — the Five Star Movement, which presents the entire Italian political class as undemocratic and corrupt, took the single largest share of the vote. It had only formed four years earlier.

Italy’s eurozone trials are nothing new. Before Italy had even joined the common currency area in 1999, its attempts to qualify for membership — by introducing the required “fiscal discipline” — had resulted in nearly a decade of rising unemployment. Moreover, no Italian government was ever in a position to exercise a meaningful choice about whether it was wise to join the eurozone. Unless Italy ended its membership in the European Union, it was politically bound to take on the currency by treaty obligations over which it had no consequential say.

Now Italian voters have responded by putting into office politicians who do not accept the legitimacy of European Union-wide rules.

Of course, this voter rebellion is in part mirrored by the election that brought the Syriza party to power in Greece in 2015. The eurozone and the European Union survived that experience. But the fate of Italy matters much more for the European project than that of Greece. Syriza gambled on a threat of Greek secession when Greece already faced the risk of expulsion. An eventual crisis over an Italian exit would be an entirely different proposition.

In 1997, while making the case that Italy should join the eurozone, the prime minister at the time, Romano Prodi, said it was “impossible to think of Europe cut off from its great Latin culture.” He had a point — the country is an integral part of Europe. So when the next government in Rome, deliberately or not, pushes Italy ever closer to a decision about leaving the eurozone, in all likelihood it will take the European Union to its own precipice.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/opinion/italy-europe-election.html

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