Brussels says German court ruling contradicting ECJ sets ‘dangerous precedent’ for integrity of EU law
Brussels has launched a legal case against Germany over an alleged breach of “the principle of the primacy of EU law” by the country’s constitutional court.
The “infringement proceeding” is the result of a ruling last year by the German federal constitutional court in Karlsruhe which it is claimed undermined the pre-eminence of the European court of justice (ECJ).
Continue reading...Analysis: Armin Laschet’s campaign to succeed Angela Merkel is copying her strategy of skirting around hard political choices
Angela Merkel’s method of winning elections has earned its own phrase among German political scientists: “asymmetric demobilisation”, the art of running a campaign that skirts around hot-button issues in order to present voters with a choice between personalities rather than policies.
Three and a half months before Germany goes to the polls, Merkel’s aspiring successor Armin Laschet seems to have taken her strategy to heart. With a campaign that has so far failed to tackle the country’s hard choices on carbon emissions, digitisation, eurozone integration and military spending, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its candidate for chancellor may get away with it too.
Continue reading...Red Army soldier David Dushman used his T-34 Soviet tank to mow down the electric fence of the Nazi death camp
David Dushman, the last surviving soldier who took part in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1945, has died at the age of 98.
He died in a Munich clinic on Friday night, the city’s Jewish IKG cultural community said on Sunday, describing him as a liberating “hero of Auschwitz”.
Continue reading...Conservative win in Saxony-Anhalt seen as last big test ahead of national election in September
Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) fought off a challenge from the far right in a state election on Sunday seen as the last big test for Germany’s political parties before a national vote in September that will end the chancellor’s 16 years atop German politics.
In exit polls the CDU, whose current leader, Armin Laschet, will vie for the top job in September, improved on its 2017 performance to gain 36% of the vote in the eastern state – a result the state premier, Reiner Haseloff, said symbolised “a clear demarcation against the far right”.
Continue reading...Victory for the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt would be a devastating blow for Armin Laschet’s CDU
Germans in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt headed to the polls on Sunday, with the far right posing a tough challenge to Angela Merkel’s conservatives in the final major test before the first general election in 16 years not to feature the veteran chancellor.
Saxony-Anhalt is one of Germany’s smallest states with a population of 2.2 million, but with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union running neck-and-neck with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) there, the stakes could not be higher for the regional vote.
Continue reading...Reinhard Marx tells pope he wants to share responsibility for church’s failure to deal with abuse by clergy
Cardinal Reinhard Marx, one of Germany’s most senior Catholics, has offered his resignation to the pope over the “catastrophe” of sexual abuse by clerics and other church members.
Marx, the archbishop of Munich and Freising and a prominent liberal, said in a letter to Pope Francis that he wanted to share responsibility for the abuse that had taken place over decades and the failure of the church to deal with it.
Continue reading...France, Germany, Italy and Spain increase pressure for an end to loopholes that enable multinationals to pay minimal tax
The EU’s four biggest economies have raised the pressure for a landmark agreement to curb tax abuse by multinational companies to be reached at G7 meetings in London on Friday.
Sending a united message in a letter in the Guardian, the finance ministers of France, Germany, Italy and Spain said a critical moment had been reached to strike a blow against tax avoidance as governments around the world attempt to rebuild from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue reading...The 90-year-old German American director, who completed a trio of documentaries during lockdown, reflects on his career, his black activism and asking his father difficult questions about Nazi occupation
Manfred Kirchheimer, the US’s least-known great documentarian, may be 90 years old, but his memory is as sharp as a knife. “I wasn’t always a film aficionado,” he recalls. “Then, in 1949, I was at Manhattan’s City College and the students were on strike against two professors – one antisemite, the other anti-black. I saw someone filming a police horse and I asked him why. He said: ‘I’m making this for the film department.’ I had signed up for chemistry, but I didn’t like chemistry. So I went to the office of its head – the film-maker Hans Richter – and I said, ‘Professor, are there any opportunities in film?’ He said, ‘Yes – opportunities are plenty. But no jobs!’ I went anyway.” He chuckles fondly.
Kirchheimer was born in 1931 in Saarbrücken, Germany. His Jewish parents, sensing which way the winds were blowing, moved to the US five years later, eventually landing in New York’s Washington Heights, where they joined a close-knit and prosperous community peopled by so many exiles it was sometimes known as Frankfurt-on-the Hudson. Kirchheimer might have stopped practising the faith in his early 20s, but across the decades, his films all benefit – rely, even – on his migrant eye. They’re endlessly curious about how his adopted city works, searching for its often-overlooked architectural or environmental details, alive to its marginal voices.
Continue reading...So far nearly 45 million people fully vaccinated, 4.7% of India’s adult population; Sinovac is second Chinese vaccine approved as safe by WHO
The Coachella music festival will return to the US in April 2022, organisers have announced.
The 2020 event was scheduled for April of that year before being pushed to October.
New infection control guidance to help keep NHS workers safe from Covid-19 “falls short”, leading nurses in the UK said.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said that the updated official Covid-19 infection prevention and control guidance “focuses too much on aerosol generating procedures as the main risk”. But doctors have welcomed the new guidance as a “step in the right direction”, PA reports. Concerns were raised early on in the pandemic that medics were not able to get access to appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) amid a worldwide shortage.
The guidance, issued jointly by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) as well as public health agencies across the UK’s four nations and NHS England, has been updated to “strengthen existing messaging”, it states.
Continue reading...Deadline set for all 27 EU countries to accept digital passport in time to enjoy a ‘safe and relaxing summer’
The starting pistol has been fired on a “relaxing” summer holiday season for people living in the EU from 1 July, as Brussels proposed lifting all quarantine obligations on those who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
From Tuesday, a system will be ready to allow member states to issue a digital Covid passport to citizens proving their status and freeing them up to travel.
Continue reading...Honest examination of French colonial record in Africa and responsibilty in Rwanda key to new strategy, though critics say little has changed
With the golden winter sun slanting across the palm trees and yellow sandstone, the scene was perfect. Emmanuel Macron and his host, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, walked down the red carpet of the Union buildings in Pretoria as the Marseillaise resonated through the clean, crisp air.
The historic setting was apt. Since taking power in 2017, the French president has sought a broad reset of national strategy, relations and intervention in Africa. He has chosen a very contemporary way to do this: by re-examining the past.
Continue reading...It is understood the text of the joint declaration will call German atrocities ‘genocide’ but omit the words ‘reparations’ or ‘compensation’
Germany has to agreed to pay Namibia €1.1bn (£940m) to fund projects among communities affected by the Herero-Nama genocide at the start of the 20th century, in what Angela Merkel’s government says amounts to a gesture of reconciliation but not legally binding reparations.
Tens of thousands of men, women and children were shot, tortured or driven into the Kalahari desert to starve by German troops between 1904 and 1908 after the Herero and Nama tribes rebelled against colonial rule in what was then named German South West Africa and is now Namibia.
Continue reading...Analysis: left-of-centre parties struggle to cut through as survey shows ‘everyone thinks they are middle class’
It is a country with levels of wealth inequality more similar to the United States than France, and one where the richest 10% of the population already owned two thirds of the national wealth before the pandemic further widened the gap.
Yet the inequality of German society and how to fix it is likely to play a minor role in the race to September elections this year, with those parties expected to offer solutions – the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the leftwing Die Linke – struggling in the polls.
Continue reading...Investigators examining letter from group claiming to be behind fire at Grünheide ‘Gigafactory’ site
German police are investigating whether a fire that broke out overnight at the construction site of Tesla’s first European Gigafactory had a political motive, after far-left activists claimed responsibility.
The fire at the site in Grünheide in the eastern state of Brandenburg early on Wednesday morning damaged several power cables, said a spokesperson for the LKA state criminal investigation office.
Continue reading...France joins Germany in restricting travellers from Britain amid fears over spread of variant
France will impose a compulsory quarantine on travellers arriving from the UK amid mounting concern over the rapid spread of the coronavirus variant first found in India, the government’s spokesperson has said.
Gabriel Attal told reporters after a weekly ministerial meeting on Wednesday that the government would announce “in the coming hours” exactly when the decision, which was widely expected, would come into effect.
Continue reading...Find out who is leading the polling to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor of Germany
Germans will vote on Sunday 26 September to elect a new Bundestag, or federal parliament. The result – after coalition negotiations likely to involve two or three parties – will decide who will succeed Angela Merkel, who is standing down after 16 years as chancellor.
Some recent polls have put Germany’s Green party in the lead, as Merkel’s successor at the conservative CDU, Armin Laschet, struggles to inherit her appeal. German federal elections are proportional, so the share of vote given by polling companies should be read as translating fairly directly into share of seats in the resulting parliament. Only parties with less than 5% of the national vote, or one directly elected constituency seat, are not awarded parliamentary seats.
Continue reading...EU’s 27 heads of state call for the immediate release of opposition blogger Roman Protasevich
EU leaders triggered new economic sanctions against Belarus and punitive measures against its national airline as a dissident taken from a “hijacked” Ryanair flight was paraded on the country’s television news apparently confessing to crimes against the state.
In a summit communique swiftly agreed in Brussels on Monday night, the EU’s 27 heads of state and government condemned the forced landing of flight FR4978 in Minsk and called for the immediate release of opposition blogger Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega.
Continue reading...More than 700 people have died in the Mediterranean this year. But Sea-Eye, a German charity, is fighting hard to save lives
Amani clutches her son, Mohammed, as she is pulled from an unstable wooden boat in the Mediterranean. “Please help. My baby is soaked in water and freezing,” says the 23-year-old Syrian refugee.
It’s shortly before 2am, last Monday and about 80 miles (130km) from the Libyan coast a group of maritime emergency responders from the Sea-Eye 4 are on patrol.
Continue reading...Berlin wary of setting legal precedent as talks near completion on reconciliation deal for atrocities against Herero and Nama tribes
Germany has categorically ruled out financial reparations forming part of a planned formal apology to Namibia for colonial atrocities at the start of the 20th century, amid fears such payments could set a legal precedent for further claims.
Angela Merkel’s government has since 2014 negotiated with Namibia to “heal the wounds” of what historians call the first genocide of the 20th century, when between 1904 and 1908 tens of thousands of indigenous people were shot, starved, and tortured to death by German troops as they put down the rebellious Herero and Nama tribes in what is now Namibia.
Continue reading...Case in Paris was brought by 2,700 women over implants made by French company and certified as safe by German firm
Thousands of victims of the PIP breast implant scandal, including 540 British women, will receive compensation after a Paris appeals court ruling.
The case in Paris was brought by 2,700 women who said they had suffered long-term health effects after receiving implants manufactured by a French firm which were filled with cheap, industrial-grade silicone not cleared for human use.
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