Jacobin Magazine: The Pandemic Is Making the European Union More Integrated — And More Unequal

 During the last ten years, this vision has suffered some major challenges. Instead of continuous uninterrupted progress, the modern European Union has had to follow the path of crisis management. The Great Recession led to the sovereign debt crisis, then the Portuguese crisis, the Spanish crisis, the Irish crisis, and, of course, most drastically, the Greek crisis. The talk of a “Grexit” — the possibility of the other countries booting Greece from the Union — smoothly transferred to talk on the crisis over Brexit, as the British right actually split their country from the union. This, at the same time as the mounting environmental crisis, the so-called refugee crisis, the crisis of democracy caused by right-wing populism in countries like Hungary and Poland. But from crisis to crisis, the Union lurches forward, and the solution is always the same — more integration. [...]

The knights don’t go into the lair alone, of course. Another thing the press likes to do is to divide Europe into convenient blocs. Populations of countries like Finland are, time and again, led to believe that the problem with the European Union is that there are too many Mediterranean countries in it, that everything would be okay if the EU could just somehow drop or at least ignore the Southern countries for their profligacy. The name of choice for the Northern nations for the negotiations was the “frugal four,” part of the former “New Hanseatic League.” This group set out to oppose the package, eventually getting some concessions, but in the end having little effect on the basic forms of the package itself. [...]

This isn’t really a matter of the so-called political families within the European sphere. In the “Northern” group, the Austrian conservative Sebastian Kurz joined the Dutch liberal Mark Rutte and the social democrats in Nordic countries, such as Finland’s Marin, to oppose the social democrat Pedro Sánchez in Spain, the conservative Angela Merkel in Germany, and — stretching the meaning of the word quite a bit — the “liberal” Macron in France. The one country in the EU that currently has the far right in government is Estonia, where the nationalist EKRE party has talked tough about the EU and federalism. But in the end, it presented no effective opposition to the package, after Estonia was promised a windfall of EU subsidies as a result. Other right-wing populists, like Matteo Salvini in Italy, muted their criticisms even longer ago. [...]

Even a federal Europe would not, as such, alter the underlying economic systems leading to more and more environmental destruction in search of personal and national profits. Indeed, once one looks under the hood of the European liberalism’s internationalist rhetoric, the practical work of European integration is often advanced by the same inward-looking arguments as nationalism always has been: the idea of a continent threatened by, say, China or Russia, or international terrorism. Indeed, when looking at Macron talking about the “cultural vitality” (though not the values) of Hungary and Russia as a model for his preferred European “civilization state,” or Belgian liberal Guy Verhofstadt — for decades almost the living personification of the EU — literally referring to an “EU empire,” one wonders whether the idea of a European federation guided by the values of the Polish or Hungarian governments is as far off as one might think, even now.

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Foreign Policy: It’s a New Europe—if You Can Keep It

 The lockdowns that stopped the virus in Europe have had a devastating economic impact. Again, the American habit of dramatizing data by means of annualizing rates of change disguises the fact that economic implosion in Europe has been every bit as bad, if not worse. The U.S. economy fell 9.5 percent in the second quarter of 2020. Germany’s contracted by 10 percent. In Spain, the collapse was twice as bad, at 18.5 percent. (If Spain reported its data in the American style, it would be down 65 percent on the year.) [...]

In the process, the more conservative voices of Northern Europe extracted serious concessions. Unfortunately, those came at the expense of some of the more progressive and innovative budget elements, including spending on joint efforts in the areas of health care and green investment. Thankfully, the package is up for debate in the European Parliament, which is, step by step, asserting leverage over Europe’s politics. Earlier in the crisis, the Parliament favored a far more expansive plan, and hopefully it will make adjustments to the July compromise. [...]

This summer, there was certainly nothing inevitable about the way the deal was done. It did not seem likely. Credit goes to the European Commission for raising the stakes, upping the original suggestion by Merkel and Macron to an ask of 750 billion euros, on top of the regular 1.1 trillion euro ($1.3 trillion) multiyear budget. (It was the Commission’s officials who dug up the legal precedent that would allow the EU to justify massive borrowing.) Among national governments, one has to admire the Spanish and Italians, who began the long march toward a constructive European response back in March and suffered through the demeaning objections of Northern Europeans without walking away. The best that can be said for the Dutch and the Austrians is that they gave way in the end. Perhaps the shameless defense of the narrowest conception of national interest by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz will serve some useful purpose in dampening criticism from their domestic populists. [...]

It was not by accident that as the crisis deepened, the French government started its latest approach to Berlin not via the chancellery but by working its connections to the Social Democrats in the German Finance Ministry. In a desperate effort to revive the flagging political fortunes of the Social Democrats and his own chances of party leadership in 2019, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz had become the leading German proponent of European reform, pushing ideas both for unemployment insurance and banking. Both had been met by stony disapproval from the CDU and a nein from the chancellery.

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Slate: In Europe, Green Is the New Red

When Green parties throughout Europe saw unprecedented success in European Parliament elections last year, it was clear that voters were responding to concerns about the climate crisis as well as a loss of confidence in the big mainstream parties that have dominated politics for decades. But EU elections are often favorable for protest votes and fringe parties, and there were questions about whether the enthusiasm would last. “People were already starting to flirt with us. Now they have had a one-night stand. Whether this is a permanent relationship is totally unclear,” Sven Giegold, a leading German Green MEP told me last June. Judging from recent election results, the infatuation hasn’t faded. In fact, in several countries the greens appear on the verge of eclipsing old-school socialist or social-democratic parties as the main electoral voice of the left. [...]

The coalition deal was approved by an overwhelming 93 percent of the Green Party’s membership. Writing in the American socialist magazine Jacobin, activist Teresa Petrik suggests we shouldn’t be surprised by this. “Some Green voters might identify as left-wing,” she writes, “Yet most of the party’s base are highly educated and financially well off. They are not the people who will suffer from continued welfare cuts and the neoliberal policies the new government is pushing forward.”

Austria’s strange new government is more troubling evidence of just how easily environmental concerns can be wedded to a hard-line anti-immigration agenda. But on the other hand, it’s also a sign that the climate issue has become so mainstream in Europe that even the bona fide right-wingers are embracing it. The U.S. is not quite there yet.

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Bloomberg: Populist Voters Don’t Mind Putin’s Help

As in February, there’s still no evidence that the deal actually took place, that the League received any Russian money or that Salvini even knew about the negotiations. An Italian lawyer, Gianluca Meranda, has since come forward claiming that he’d been present at the meeting and that the transaction hadn’t been completed. And Salvini has said that he’s “never taken a ruble, a euro, a dollar or a liter of vodka in financing from Russia.” [...]

As I’ve written before, European populists are perfectly aware of the toxicity of accepting Russian money in any form. In some countries, Italy among them, political slush funds are not unheard of – but Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has drawn so much attention, including from intelligence services, that accepting the Kremlin’s financial aid increases the probability of getting caught. That explains Salvini’s obvious caution – and that of Brexit campaign funder Arron Banks, who apparently turned down offers of lucrative Russian deals. [...]

The League’s polling numbers are on the rise despite the Russia scandal. It’s conceivable that populist voters simply don’t care about the Kremlin scare, either because they’re generally sympathetic toward Russian President Vladimir Putin (who cleverly echoes hard right rhetoric as he seeks allies in Europe) or because they write off media reports of Russia scandals as fake news. The more Russia scandals hatch and pass without consequences, the more the latter perception will be reinforced: one can’t cry wolf too many times. Voters also know these parties have a harder time gaining funding and may simply be willing to ignore such freelancing if it helps their larger anti-establishment cause.

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The New Yorker: A Scandal in Austria and the Far Right’s Fortunes in Europe

In France, for example, President Emmanuel Macron called the potential victory of his main opponent, Marine Le Pen, and her National Rally (formerly National Front), an “existential threat” to the E.U. Le Pen, in return, predicted that her victory and those of her kindred parties—in Italy, Poland, the U.K., and Hungary, among other places—would be a “historic feat.” Such either-or narratives, as might have been anticipated, proved cheap. Le Pen came in first on Sunday, and she picked up half a million more votes than she received in the 2014 European election. But she earned a slightly smaller proportion of the over-all vote, and her party will actually lose two seats in the Parliament. In his young party’s second-ever election, Macron, facing exceptionally low approval ratings at home and besieged by a popular uprising that has changed the course of his Presidency, came in behind Le Pen by less than a point. His La République En Marche! party will now enter the European Parliament for the first time, with a mandate to further his “European Renaissance” agenda. Because the Party will be centrally positioned, and therefore able to make alliances with the left and the right, it may end up having more power than anyone anticipated.

The Brexit Party won in the United Kingdom, but it did so in an election that wasn’t supposed to happen, and for a governmental body that the country was no longer supposed to be a part of. Right-wing parties also won in Poland and Hungary, but these were hardly insurgent campaigns—nationalists are a part of the political establishment in both countries. But the continued erosion of the stronghold of traditional parties was evident on the left as well. In France, the Green Party doubled its number of seats, thanks, in part, to young voters. In Germany, the Green Party, which entered the national Parliament for the first time in the nineteen-eighties, came in second and doubled its results from five years ago; one in three first-time voters in Germany chose the Greens. Over all, the nationalist block in the European Parliament fell short of winning a third of the seats, as many leaders (and Steve Bannon) claimed it might. Instead, it will hold about fifty-eight seats out of seven hundred and fifty-one. Across Europe, liberals and greens gained more seats than the right-wing populists and nationalists did; pro-European parties won two-thirds of them. [...]

For the past two years in Austria, Kurz, youthful and brash, was held up by conservatives as someone to emulate. “Up until last week, many people on the center right in Europe saw Kurz as a kind of hero,” Jan-Werner Müller, a professor of politics at Princeton, told me. This idea extended beyond Europe: Trump’s Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, made clear, after arriving in Berlin last spring, that he was more interested in meeting the “rock star” leader of the small country next door than the vastly more powerful Chancellor of the country in which he was being paid to behave diplomatically. Kurz brought the F.P.O., a party founded in 1956, and whose first chairmen were former S.S. officers, into his government promising to tame them. “If you ask people today, what does the center right stand for, I think most people could not really give you an answer,” Müller told me. “And this vacuum of ideas has made it easier for the center right, in a very opportunistic way, to mainstream the far right as a kind of desperate measure.”

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Politico: Orbán defiant as conservative critique grows

EPP leaders were outraged this week when the Hungarian government unveiled a taxpayer-financed campaign attacking Juncker, along with the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, and accusing Brussels of plotting to impose migration policies that go against Hungary's interests.

So far, party chieftains, including the EPP president, Joseph Daul, have protected Orbán, mindful that the 12 seats Fidesz holds in the European Parliament are important for the EPP's majority and its future election prospects. According to EPP rules, the suspension or exclusion of a member party can be triggered by “seven ordinary or associated member parties from five different countries.”

Earlier Friday, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he found the wording of Orbán’s campaign “unacceptable,” according to local media reports.

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The Atlantic: A Nonbinding Migration Pact Is Roiling Politics in Europe

The United Nations Global Migration Compact, signed this week by 164 countries, has been years in the making, and includes relatively uncontroversial goals like improving data collection. In a sign of its import, German Chancellor Angela Merkel—whose legacy will likely be defined by her decision to allow more than 1 million refugees into her country in 2015 and 2016—flew in to Marrakech, Morocco, for the signing ceremony, arguing that it was “worth it to fight for this pact.” [...]

More than half a dozen other European countries have also questioned whether to join the pact in the lead-up to this week’s UN gathering. The first domino to fall was Austria, which pulled out of the agreement in October despite negotiating it on behalf of all European Union countries (except Hungary). The country’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, leads a coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) and has shifted his country sharply to the right on migration since taking office a year ago. Since then, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia have all said they will not sign it, either. [...]

Why is the UN compact, which is non-binding, so controversial? Arguments against it include the idea that it will ultimately lead to a “human right to migration” and that domestic courts could use it in deciding immigration cases. That it explicitly states that it upholds national sovereignty and has no legal standing has done little to assuage those concerns. [...]

As the debate in Germany shows, rhetorical pressure from the far right has forced mainstream parties to talk differently about migration issues—and to debate things like this compact that previously might have been taken for granted.

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The Atlantic: How One 'Political Wunderkind' Is Outmaneuvering the Far Right

One year later, that assessment still looks valid: Kurz remains popular among the Austrian electorate and, were another election to be held today, polls indicate that his ÖVP may even fare better than it did last October. What’s more, the coalition Kurz built with the far-right FPÖ last December is remarkably stable despite a string of scandals implicating top FPÖ ministers and politicians. Somewhat paradoxically, Kurz seems to have figured out how to simultaneously keep the peace with his far-right partners and make it clear that he and his party are completely separate from the more unsavory elements of their rhetoric. [...]

It helps that, on what is perhaps the dominant political issue in Austria these days—migration—the ÖVP and FPÖ are essentially in lockstep. Over the course of the year, they’ve proposed initiatives and discussed the issue on the European level in a way that makes it clear they are in agreement, far more than the ÖVP was with the SPÖ in the last government. In fact, apart from a debate over a proposed ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, which did briefly cause some tensions between the two earlier this year, there aren’t many issues that divide the coalition partners, policy-wise. “There should be, but there aren’t any,” said Christian Rainer, the editor in chief of the Austrian news magazine Profil. “We don’t really get the feeling that there are any fights between those two parties, not even behind the scenes.”

The idea that the government speaks with a single voice, however, only goes so far. When a new scandal involving an FPÖ minister or politician has come up—and there have been several this year—Kurz and his ÖVP have made it clear that this was the FPÖ’s problem alone. In January, when the FPÖ’s top candidate in Lower Austria was found to have ties to a Nazi-era songbook that featured lyrics about murdering Jews, Kurz said on Twitter that the government would have “zero tolerance” for anti-Semitism and racism, but otherwise didn’t comment much. This summer, Interior Minister Herbert Kickl accepted a gift of two police horses from Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, a controversial move given criticism of Orbán’s illiberal reforms back home. Then, in August, Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl (also nominated by the FPÖ) caused controversy when she gave a warm welcome to Russian President Vladimir Putin at her wedding, hitting the dance floor with the Russian leader. (Kurz, too, attended the wedding; he even caught a ride back to the airport with Putin.) [...]

The Kickl situation highlighted the inherent contradictions in Kurz’s strategy: For the first time, it seemed like he had no choice but to speak out against an FPÖ minister within his own government. At the same time, though, political observers I spoke with in Vienna seemed to believe this was hardly a sign of the government’s imminent demise. In large part that’s because there’s arguably no truly viable alternative for voters who want to oppose Kurz’s government. The center-left SPÖ has spent the past year more involved in an internal identity crisis than focused on mounting a real opposition to Kurz; the Peter Pilz List, headed in the elections by the ex-Greens MP Peter Pilz, was rocked with sexual-harassment scandals that forced Pilz himself to resign; the Greens fell out of parliament last fall, giving them little platform nationally to oppose the government. “There is no opposition within the parliament,” Rainer said. “There’s no one anyone could turn to, so people are still very much in favor of both [the ÖVP and FPÖ].”

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Politico: Sebastian Kurz: Keep Viktor Orbán in conservative fold

“I don’t believe it would make sense to create another new party of Eastern Europeans, who are unevenly matched when it comes to morals,” Kurz told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper in an interview published Sunday.

Earlier this week, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “no longer has a place” in the European People’s Party. The grouping — the largest in the European Parliament — counts Juncker’s Christian Social People’s Party and Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats among its ranks.[...]

Last month, the European Parliament declared that Hungary is at risk of breaching the EU’s core values, citing concerns about judicial independence, corruption, freedom of expression, academic freedom, the rights of minorities and migrants, and other issues in the country.

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The Atlantic Putin’s Weekend of Trolling

As Putin looks to sow disunity across Europe, the juxtaposition of his two stops serves as a reminder of the increasingly divergent political paths the two German-speaking neighbors are taking, on Russia and otherwise. The rise of the 31-year-old immigration hardliner Kurz and his coalition government with the far-right, anti-refugee FPÖ have brought Austria into stark contrast with Germany on migration issues, inching Austria closer, at least rhetorically, toward illiberal neighbors like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. “You can consider both visits strategic investments,” Jan Techau, head of the German Marshall Fund’s Europe program, told me. “One is a strategic investment of convenience that Putin does with the Austrians, and the other is a strategic investment of necessity which he does with Merkel because he understands that Merkel is a powerful player.” [...]

The Russian leader’s visit to Berlin, announced Monday, comes amid increasingly tense relations between the two countries. Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert named the ongoing conflict in Syria, violence in east Ukraine, and the progress of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline as the primary three topics the two leaders will discuss. These are all issues on which both sides have clearly defined positions, and on which foreign-policy observers in Berlin see little chance for significant progress. Russia remains Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s strongest ally on the world stage; Germany has strongly condemned Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons and said her country would stand with its Western allies (non-militarily) should they choose to take action against him. In eastern Ukraine, Putin supports pro-Russian rebels; Germany has worked with France to coordinate a ceasefire there, though the violence has continued. And while Russia is on board for Nord Stream 2, the pipeline’s construction remains controversial in Germany. [...]

Austria, however, is another story. Unlike Germany, which under Merkel has positioned itself as a counterweight to Putin and his attempts to influence Europe, Austria has long regarded itself as a “bridge-builder” between East and West. And the new government, run by Kurz and the far-right FPÖ, has positioned itself as Russia-friendly. Where previous governments have been more subtly tolerant of Russia, the FPÖ, at least, is not quiet about its pro-Russia views: Party leader Strache traveled to Moscow back in 2016 to sign a cooperation agreement with Putin’s United Russia party. The idea that the Russian president would attend the wedding of Austria’s foreign minister, even given the ties between her party and the Kremlin, sends a strong message about how close the FPÖ wants that relationship to be.

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Social Europe: Are Europe’s Populists Calling The Shots?

But now the boot is on the other foot. An extraordinary populist coalition comprising Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini, and German Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer is threating to oust Merkel over her migration policies. [...]

But the Meseberg summit itself looked more like a Franco-German conclave than a relaunch of the European project. Macron is trying to protect Merkel from the rebellious forces within her own governing coalition, and both leaders are acting like they are still the masters of the universe. Yet for all their talk of transforming the European Stability Mechanism into a European Monetary Fund and reining in the Italian government’s behavior on refugees, one gets the sense that it is the populists who are calling the shots. [...]

Earlier this month, just as Merkel and Seehofer’s dispute was heating up, Kurz made an appearance in Berlin, where he called for Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Germany – or, at least, Germany’s interior ministry – to form an “axis of the willing” on migration. Kurz also tried to undercut Merkel in early 2016, when he was serving as Austria’s foreign minister. Appearing on live German television, he declared that he would close the Balkan route for refugees fleeing Syria for Northern Europe. [...]

But the key difference between then and now is that the US government no longer has an interest in a strong, united Europe – or in global stability, for that matter. After the annexation of Crimea, Merkel could count on then-US President Barack Obama’s support. The same cannot be said for President Donald Trump or Richard Grenell, his chosen ambassador to Germany, both of whom are actively undermining Merkel’s domestic credibility.

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Haaretz: Angela Merkel Is Losing to the Orban-Trump-Netanyahu Camp

It was a showdown that Merkel, backed up by Germany’s economic might and a near consensus among EU leaders, was winning. In early 2015, she visited Budapest and forced Orban to cancel a tax his government had levied on German companies. But two weeks later, the Russian president visited Budapest as well, and Merkel should have read the signs. She was about to make a series of decisions that would lead to her current predicament.

Throughout 2015, she led the EU’s tough line against the cash-strapped Syriza government in Greece. Merkel insisted on severe austerity measures in return for a bailout. She broke Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, despite the referendum in which a large majority of Greek voters rejected the EU’s terms. The price was bolstering her domineering and coercive image, and that of the EU. A year later, things would end very differently in another referendum. [...]

In 2016, in a series of meetings with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Merkel refused to grant any concessions on the EU’s freedom-of-movement principle for immigrants. Without her support, Cameron had no chance with the EU, and though he continued to support remaining in the union, immigration was to become a main issue used by Brexit-supporters, motivating 52 percent of British voters to support leaving on June 23. [...]

In three years, Merkel has gone from leader of Europe to being almost isolated. Even French President Emmanuel Macron, nominally her ally, has been discreetly distancing himself. The photograph of Merkel at this month’s G-7 summit confronting Trump made liberal hearts soar across the Western world, but it also underlined how the West is now divided into two camps. And the Orban-Trump-Netanyahu camp is swiftly gaining ground.

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Social Europe: Austria’s Right-Wing Government At Six Months: What’s The Record So Far?

Last year, not only the FPÖ, but also the ÖVP put restrictive positions on immigration and integration at the centre of its electoral campaign. The parties of the left proved unable to respond effectively – the Social Democrats (SPÖ) lost the chancellorship, while the Greens were voted out of parliament completely. The ÖVP and FPÖ agreed on a coalition agreement that focuses on liberal economic policies and measures to reduce immigration. The two parties did not have a tough time finding common ground – quite different from some other recent instances of government formation in Western Europe. [...]

As expected, both parties continued to keep the issues of immigration and integration salient. In some instances, this focus was directly linked to welfare state measures. For example, the coalition agreed to lower minimal social security for individuals with limited or no German language skills. Moreover, parents who work in Austria will soon receive family allowances that are dependent on the living costs in their children’s places of residence. For many Eastern European citizens working in Austria this will lead to a substantial decrease in their disposable income. The government also reduced funding for integration measures. In addition, the ÖVP and FPÖ decided to shut down seven mosques which were accused of being close to ‘radical’ political Islam, and announced plans to ban children from wearing head scarves in kindergarten and elementary school.

Beyond immigration and integration, the ratification of CETA, an economic agreement between the EU and Canada, has been a surprisingly salient issue in Austrian politics. Even though the FPÖ had vehemently opposed the treaty while in opposition, in government the party voted in favour of ratification. What the FPÖ could push through instead was a stop to a smoking ban in restaurants, which had already been agreed on by the previous SPÖ/ÖVP coalition. The government also, at least temporarily, stopped a programme targeting the long-term unemployed above the age of 50. The coalition also agreed on an expansion of the state’s capacity for online surveillance – even though months before the last election, the FPÖ had compared similar proposals to Erich Mielke’s Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, in the German Democratic Republic. [...]

After six months in charge, poll numbers indicate stability for the new government. Currently, Austria’s three biggest parties remain close to their election results from last year. The ÖVP is ahead, with more than 30 percent, while the SPÖ and FPÖ are close to each other, in most survey clearly below 30 percent. The individual politician who enjoys the greatest public trust is chancellor Kurz.

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Politico: ‘He does not understand what the role of an ambassador should be’

Liebich was far from alone in his assessment of Grenell’s first few weeks on the job. Martin Schulz, the former chancellor candidate and leader of the center-left Social Democrats, said Grenell sounded more “like a far-right colonial officer” than a diplomat in his Breitbart interview; Sahra Wagenknecht, leader of Liebich’s Die Linke, called for Grenell’s expulsion from Germany. Things started off rocky behind closed doors, too, as Grenell clashed with top Foreign Office officials in his first days in the job. The ambassador is, however, reportedly willing to learn from his mistakes and has since worked to tone down his Trumpian rhetoric: He apologized for the Breitbart controversy in a meeting with officials from the Foreign Office, according to someone with knowledge of the encounter, and has kept a lower profile in the weeks since the controversy. Even his Twitter feed has, it seems, been tamer in recent weeks. But here in Berlin, Germans are still watching him very closely [...]

What Germans resented even more, it turns out, was an interview with the alt-right Breitbart published a few weeks later. When Grenell said in the multi-installment interview that it is his goal to “empower” conservatives across Europe, Berlin political types took those comments to refer to far-right populist parties like the Alternative for Germany. In the same interview, Grenell issued strong praise for Austria’s Kurz, whose hard-line immigration policies often put him at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Germany’s Foreign Office soon asked for “clarification” from Grenell, and German politicians began crying foul, calling the interview at best undiplomatic and at worst a fireable offense. Grenell later said his comments had been misconstrued: “The idea that I’d endorse candidates/parties is ridiculous,” he wrote on Twitter. “I stand by my comments that we are experiencing an awakening from the silent majority — those who reject the elites & their bubble.” (The State Department also came to Grenell’s defense, with spokeswoman Heather Nauert saying, “Don’t we as Americans have the right to free speech?”) But even the choice of outlet — Breitbart has made no secret of its admiration for far-right populist parties across Europe — sent a clear message about the kind of audience Grenell seemed to want to reach in his new role. [...]

Since the furor over his Breitbart interview, Grenell has kept a somewhat lower profile, prompting those in Berlin who have met with him since to say he truly seems interested in learning from his early mistakes. Another meeting with Michaelis and others at the Foreign Office earlier this month, shortly after the Breitbart interview came out, was ultimately quite amicable, according to the Foreign Office official. Grenell apologized for the interview, the official said, and explained that he had not intended to cause such a stir. Peter Beyer, a member of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats and the transatlantic coordinator in parliament, described the atmosphere at the meeting as “friendly and constructive,” but added that it included its fair share of “contentious issues.” What’s most important, Beyer says, is sitting down and discussing things face-to-face: “For me, speaking with each other instead of tweeting at each other is the right way to work together in partnership.”

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Haaretz: The One Place Europe's anti-Semitic Far Right Is Confident of Winning the Jewish Vote

Last week, the German, Austrian and Italian ministers of the interior initiated an "axis" of states aiming at stopping immigration to Europe, confirming their commitment to an already thriving reactionary nationalistic trend in both eastern as well as western Europe. [...]

It was the Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, who after his short visit to Israel last week (re)coined the term "Axis" for the Berlin-Vienna-Rome anti-immigrant alliance, a term which even people with relatively crude historical antennae will recognize for its historical resonances.

That was straight after getting an enthusiastic "kosher certification" from Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanks to Kurz's speech in Jerusalem, in which he admitted that Austrians were not only victims but also perpetrators during WWII. Seemingly, having paid his dues to the past, he felt free to move on with an ethnocentric policy without risk of an unfavorable reaction from Israel. [...]

We should not forget: Not long-ago Netanyahu supported Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s anti-Semitic anti-Soros campaign (because of Soros’ support for the Israeli "enemies" of Netanyahu) thus overruling the deep, explicit opposition of Hungary’s Jewish community to this campaign. [...]

Far right populist parties in Europe use their support for the current Israeli government policies to gain legitimacy, as they simultaneously restate their commitment to a racist and anti-democratic agenda that is in marked contrast to the founding values of the European Union.

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Politico: Macedonia name deal is only end of beginning

Broadly speaking, there are two camps in the EU debate. One, led by France and the Netherlands, argues the bloc should focus on reforming itself after Brexit before considering new members. These countries also worry that inviting in countries from the Balkans, with its legacy of war and deep-seated problems of organized crime and corruption, would be a gift to populist opponents of the EU in next year’s European Parliament election. [...]

The pro-enlargement camp includes top European Commission officials, senior German politicians, and governments from Central and Eastern Europe. They argue the EU must keep Balkan countries in its orbit to counter increased influence in its southern backyard from rival powers. [...]

The deal is meant to finally resolve a 27-year-old dispute, which began when Macedonia seceded from the disintegrating communist Yugoslavia. Greece asserted that the new country’s name implied a claim on a region of northern Greece of the same name and also falsely laid claim to ancient Greek culture. Athens vowed to block Skopje from joining the EU and NATO until the dispute was settled. [...]

Macedonian President Ivanov could block the deal if it gets through parliament. Although he would in theory be compelled to approve it if lawmakers backed it for a second time, he could nevertheless still withhold his signature.

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Spiegel: Increasing Headwinds for Angela Merkel

Merkel's leadership is currently being questioned on all sides, with adversaries and potential rivals flooding out of the woodwork. U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to rein in Germany's economic power, French President Emmanuel Macron is backing her into a corner with his vision of a reformed Europe and back home, the SPD is hardly able to focus on governing, as concerned as it is about its own survival. On Wednesday in parliament, when Merkel took questions from German lawmakers, the Social Democrats were more aggressive in their stance toward the chancellor than some members of the opposition. [...]

Merkel's favored strategy of waiting and watching seems to have outlived its usefulness. Her ability to take into account the interests of all and to forge a compromise no longer works because she no longer has the elbow room she once did: In Berlin, she is trapped in the coalition with the SPD; in Brussels, she is hemmed in by incompatible interests; and on refugee policy, she is a prisoner of her own past. [...]

Trump has identified Merkel as one of his primary adversaries on the world stage. He watched as she got the better of one male world leader after the other - and he wants to put an end to it. He is no longer willing to provide the discounted security that he believes Germany continues to enjoy thanks to America's military might. He wants to slow down Germany's export machine and dictate to Berlin from whom it should purchase its natural gas. And Merkel still has not found a way to dissuade Trump from pursuing his crusade. [...]

Merkel's opponents, both in Germany and abroad, are closing ranks. On Wednesday evening, Marcus Söder, the governor of Bavaria and certainly not a fervent Merkel supporter, held an event in the Antiquarium in the Munich Residence, one of the most important examples of the Renaissance in Germany. Kurz, who ended Merkel's open border policy in early 2016 by closing down the Balkan Route against the German chancellor's will, was also there.

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Politico: 5 takeaways from EU’s big Balkan get-together

But French President Emmanuel Macron struck a skeptical note, insisting the EU should first focus on reforming itself before embarking on any more enlargement adventures. And a boycott by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy over the presence of Kosovo, which Madrid and four other EU capitals do not recognize, was a reminder of other divisions over the region.  [...]

Some leaders went further than the official text. Angela Merkel, who has emerged as a champion of the western Balkans, talked about “a clear membership perspective” and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz spoke about progress on the countries’ “path into the European Union.” But Macron preferred to talk about “anchoring” the western Balkans to Europe.[...]

Asked what she thought of the 2025 goal, Merkel was blunt. “I don’t think anything of this target date,” she told a news conference. “Membership must be based on factual progress. It’s not about a time horizon, it’s about what’s been achieved — on rule of law, on fighting corruption and other conditions such as border disputes.”

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Jacobin Magazine: Fidesz’s Two-Thirds

The plan had been brewing for some time. Various political and civil organizations, united under the umbrella of “Country for All Movement,” ran a series of surveys to determine the strongest anti-Fidesz candidate in the most competitive districts; the weaker candidates were then supposed to step aside. This call for tactical voting sparked much discussion both inside and outside the country, with liberal editorialists like Cas Mudde even suggesting that in order to overcome the Orbán regime, the liberal opposition should join forces with the Jobbik party, an extreme-right formation that has tried, like Marine Le Pen in France, to clean up its image and present itself as more moderate. [...]

Aside from anti-corruption rhetoric, opposition parties offered nothing new to voters. The election program of the ostensibly socialist party — as well as that of its liberal spin-off, Democratic Coalition — contained little progressive content. Discredited due to past betrayals, lacking a strategy to expand beyond partisan die hards, these parties failed to offer voters a credible left-wing alternative. Their opposition was stylistic, rather than substantive. [...]

Orbán is a liberal at his core, topped off with some colorful nationalism and racism. The same could be said of Italy’s Berlusconi or France’s Sarkozy or, more recently, Austria’s Sebastian Kurz. Has Western Europe already forgotten Italy’s anti-immigrant Bossi Fini law, or France’s ban on face-covering (which Kurz is now considering implementing)? Do we really have to remind aghast liberals that Switzerland voted for a constitutional amendment, proposed by the far-right Swiss People’s Party, to ban the building of minarets?  

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Social Europe: How To Tackle Populism: Macron Vs Kurz

The re-branding of his Austrian People’s Party forestalled a tougher stance on immigration, while he borrowed the far-right’s polemical rhetoric on EU ‘Zentralisierung’, or ‘centralisation’. By the end of the campaign, the dividing lines between the centre-right and far-right were sufficiently blurred for one to ask: which is the populist? The subsequent announcement of a coalition government involving the far right is a cause for great concern.

Emmanuel Macron used different tools. His counter-vision approach involved debunking the tenuous promises made by his populist adversary Marine Le Pen, while offering attractive alternative arguments. This is the harder of the two to pull off. It requires an individual of political skill and personal charisma with the courage to confront the populist head-on, without fear of disturbing the ideological balance of one’s party. In his presidential election campaign, Macron offered a text-book example of how to deploy the counter-vision. He directly attacked Le Pen and her anti-euro arguments – and skilfully exposed their paucity. In so doing, he provided a convincing defence of France’s role in the European Union, while appealing to French patriotism. [...]

On the other hand, the Kurz strategy is a dangerous one. When a figure – and party – of the so-called establishment adopts the policies and rhetorical devices of an extreme opponent, and where electoral considerations trump sound policy making, the outlook promises to be grim. The Kurz approach, if followed by others, will equate to a gentle ‘hollowing out’ of the European Project from within. Europe might be spared the Austrian Freedom Party, or indeed the Front National in power. But, if the Austrian and French centre-right adopt their policies anyway, what difference does it make? [...]

A new vision and set of EU objectives must reflect features of international cooperation that today inspire and are of most value to Europeans. It must centre on extending the benefits of greater connectivity – digital, technological, mobility-related – to more Europeans. It must build on the theme of greater opportunity – where the EU makes more people more prosperous, keeping the best, while protecting citizens from the worst aspects of globalisation. It must also highlight the principle of solidarity – an EU demonstrating a social and humanitarian dimension, across member states and civil societies.  

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