euronews: Denmark calls for EU ban on all diesel and petrol cars by 2040

Denmark made headlines in October 2018 when its government announced that it would ban the sale of all fossil fuel-powered cars by 2030 but it subsequently scrapped the idea because this would have breached EU rules. [...]

Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and several other countries, however, suggested that more must be done to stop the "carbon leakage" of selling second-hand autos from western Europe to the eastern region.

Jorgensen said it was important to communicate the bloc's long-term policy directions to carmakers and that Denmark's next step was to set up an alliance with the 10 member states that support its proposal.

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euronews: Government restrictions on religion rising in Europe — Pew Research Centre study

It highlighted that although religious restrictions remain higher in the Middle East-North Africa region, the biggest increases over the last decade have been in Europe and in sub-Saharan Africa.

It flagged, for instance, the growing number of European governments placing limits on Muslim women's dress. In 2007, there were five countries reported to have such restrictions in Europe, by 2017, that number had quadrupled to 20. [...]

Pew also flagged Spain as having experienced the largest increases in its score for government limits on religious activity. Catalonia introduced bans on the burqa and niqab, while religious groups such as Latter-day Saints and Jehovah's Witnesses have faced restrictions on public preaching and proselytising.

Social hostilities related to religious norms also rose dramatically in Europe. Four countries in 2007 reported having individuals or groups who used violence or the threat of violence to try and force others to accept their own religious practices and beliefs.

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Politico: Three out of four Europeans say the euro’s a good thing

A big majority of people in all 19 eurozone countries support the common euro currency and think it’s a good thing for the bloc, an annual Eurobarometer survey found — as first reported by Brussels Playbook.

Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Spain are the leading euro supporters, with 80 percent or more of respondents saying it’s a “good” thing for their country. Italy, Cyprus, Belgium and France are the least convinced. [...]

In Italy, 70 percent of respondents no longer convert euros back to the lira — up 4 points from last year. In France and Germany, 60 percent and 58 percent, respectively, have weaned themselves off their old francs and marks.

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Jacobin Magazine: In Search of an Alternative in Slovenia

SDS is not a new party; party leader Janez Janša led governments in the past. The international media outcry was not so much about Janša being a nationalist, anti-immigrant, or a representative of harsh neoliberal reforms, but about his open political alliance with Orbán’s Hungary. Rather than becoming a new Switzerland, Slovenia is looking more like authoritarian Hungary. [...]

In the small and richer republics, the political representatives of the Slovenian and Croatian League of Communists used to complain during the 1980s that their efforts for a “fairer” (which meant more neoliberal) distribution of wealth were thwarted by Belgrade and central institutions that privileged the periphery. Rather than addressing the class question, rising unemployment, and the implementation of the IMF’s structural adjustment programs, the Yugoslav political class translated social issues increasingly into nationalistic terms. In this respect, the Yugoslav crisis of 1980s speaks directly to the crisis of the European Union today. [...]

Behind the ideological affiliation lies a naked agenda of economic interests: the Slovenian “silk road,” which consists of building additional railway infrastructure between the coastal port of Koper and the interior. This would extend the traffic of port cargo. Thanks to an agreement with Orbán, this would also become Hungary’s corridor to the Adriatic Sea. Orbán’s government would not only receive profits from tolls on the infrastructure and a return on credit, but also become the owner of this strategic infrastructure.

The electoral results show that only 52 percent of all eligible voters actually voted. From those that voted, a predominant amount favored the authoritarian SDS, with 25 percent (twenty-five seats in the parliament), and the second new center party — the one-man show Marjan Sarec, came in second with 12.5 percent (thirteen seats). All other seven parties gained between 4 percent to 9.9 percent of the vote, speaking to the fragmented nature of the political crisis and the collapse of ideological hegemony.

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Jacobin Magazine: Against Janša, Against Brussels

Miro Cerar’s party presided over, nominally speaking, an extremely successful economic era, with economic growth among the highest in the EU. High economic growth, however, came at the cost of growing precarization among young people and unending austerity. Discontent festered below the positive headlines, and union activity increased in both the private and public sectors, as well as in previously nonunionized areas. Then in March of this year, at the very moment when negotiations between the state and the public sector unions had reached a deadlock, Cerar stepped down, bringing an abrupt end to his three-and-a-half-year tenure. [...]

And what, then, of the Right? The base of SDS is quite different from, say, those who attend Hungarian Guard marches. Still, this election marked the first time an SDS leader openly supported far-right organizations (for example, the Slovenian branch of Generation Identitaire / Generacija identitete, a racist movement originating in France). Another new development is the public and financial support from Hungary’s ruling far-right party, Fidesz, and the media companies around the prime minister, Viktor Orban. Orban and SDS leader Janez Janša started their friendship in January 2016, when Orban was visiting Slovenia on official business. After meeting with then-Prime Minister Cerar, he proceeded to a closed-door conference with Janša. Hungarian investments into SDS media outlets followed. Today, three Hungarian media companies connected to Orban own 45 percent of SDS’s media-company shares. Hungarian media also owns 52 percent of Nova Obzorja, which publishes a SDS newspaper, and Nova24tv.si (SDS TV) and New Horizon share the same address. Hungarians have so far invested over 2.2 million euros into SDS media, some of it in the months leading up to the elections. If there was any question of their tightening relationship, Orban also took part in the SDS Congress in May, where he declared his full support for Janša’s party. [...]

During the election campaign, Janša’s party emitted right-wing rhetoric on a whole host of topics, including the migrant crisis, women’s and LGBT rights, and the credibility of mass media. At the same time, the election results do not amount to the so-called Orbanization of Slovenia. SDS won 220,000 votes on June 3, 70,000 less than in 2011, when it came in second. For a party with an especially stable voter base (86.6 percent were return voters), this was a mediocre finish. The success of SDS is always in direct correlation to the amount of broken promises and lack of alternatives coming from the centrist and left-of-center parties. Slovenian society is culturally rather left wing, and can be mobilized against the Right — but it has to consider left parties worthy of support.

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Politico: Slovenian survivor targets victory à la Orbán

Janša, 59, is campaigning not just as an ally of Orbán but also as a political survivor. Almost 30 years ago to the day, Janša and three others were arrested for spreading military secrets, when Slovenia was part of communist Yugoslavia. The arrests catalyzed the so-called Slovene Spring protest movement, a key episode in the disintegration of Yugoslavia. [...]

Leading in opinion polls, Janša has run a campaign based on his anti-communist past and promising a future free of migrants, with a dose of rhetoric suggesting powerful nefarious forces are ranged against him — much as Orbán often does. Like Orbán’s Fidesz, the SDS is part of the European People’s Party center-right grouping in the European Parliament. [...]

Orbán came to stump with Janša in mid-May at a rally in the eastern town of Celje, declaring, “If Europe surrenders to mass population movement and immigration, our own Continent will be lost … The aim is to settle among us people who do not belong to our culture, and who will want to live here according to their own religions and customs.”

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Political Critique: European Union LGBT activism in the Western Balkans: a regional fight for rights

One of the fundamental conditions for a gay and lesbian movement to emerge in the region was the decriminalization of homosexuality, which first occurred in Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro, as well as Serbia’s autonomous province of Vojvodina, in 1977, as part of wider legal reforms in Yugoslavia. [...]

The first notable LGBT activism in the region was organized in Ljubljana in April 1984, when the students’ cultural center, SKUC Forum, put on the Magnus Festival that included films, exhibitions of gay publishing, and lectures and discussions on gay culture. Later that year, a group called Magnus, which embraced both gay men and lesbian women, was constituted as a section of the SKUC Forum, becoming the first LGBT group in the region. [...]

“When the war started some women backed away for personal reasons, some because of the wartime conditions,” Pamukovic said. “It just wasn’t possible to pursue that kind of political activism.” [...]

EU mechanisms that have been used in the precession phase such as insistence on reformed legislation have also been accused of putting form before substance, as once a country has joined the EU the rights of LGBTI persons are left to the whims of its government.

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Social Europe: Globalisation, Migration, Rising Inequality, Populism…

Then they have noticed that, of course, some people at the top have done extremely well over that time. I believe that it was realisation of this issue that brought inequality to the fore. Now, why is inequality in general important? I think it is important, even for economic growth. Let me just put it in very simple terms. We know that in societies, where inequality is extremely high, we have a cementing of privileges across generations. We don’t have intergenerational mobility. We have lots of people who are never able to contribute to society by working, or by studying or anything else, because, simply, they don’t have money to actually engage in that.

Very high inequality is clearly not good. On the other hand, we have the example of formerly socialist economies that actually reduced inequality to such an extent that there was no incentive to even work harder or to study. That low level of inequality was unsustainable too and bad for growth. Clearly, I think, that we have to realise that not only there is some kind of optimal level of inequality, but there are two different types of inequality. Just like there are two different types of cholesterol. There is an inequality which is good, which actually, prompts us to take risks, work hard or study. There is inequality, which is bad, which essentially enables an elite to maintain its position without contributing much to society. [...]

We see inequality increase after the crisis in particular in Spain, Greece, Portugal. Then central European countries, that used to be and remain countries with relatively low inequality, but they are also small countries, very homogeneous in terms of education, ethnically as well. Like, Hungary, Austria, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Slovenia, they are countries with relatively low inequality. [...]

On the other hand, migration might lead to increases of inequality in some countries, as migrants actually put further pressure on wages, domestically. It might lead to political problems. Basically, there is a trade-off there. We cannot opt, I believe, for the extreme solutions. Free migration would not be politically feasible and then cutting migration to zero, I think, would be economically self-destructive, even for the countries that do do that.

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Slate: Trump’s Wall? Also Terrible for Animals, Conservation, and Scientific Collaboration

Bears and humans have been in conflict in Texas since, well, pretty much as long as we’ve kept track. By the time the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted the first organized survey of Texas mammals in the 1890s, black bears were in decline after having been persecuted for more than half a century. They were trapped, poisoned, hunted, and pushed out of their habitat by development and agriculture. By the mid-20th century, they were nearly extirpated throughout West Texas. [...]

By militarizing the border—building walls and fences, Border Patrol outposts, spotlights and service roads and clearing vegetation—we sever the connections that wildlife relies on. We cut animals off from habitats, resources, and breeding partners and block migration routes, just as climate change and habitat loss makes every bit of land ever more important. We know how bad this kind of fragmentation is ecologically—scientists have seen the consequences of constructed barriers on farms, ranches, and national parks, as well as across international borders in Europe and Central Asia. They also know that once the barriers are built, it becomes even harder for conservationists to work to protect animals just when they need it the most. [...]

In order to get a better sense of the problem, we can look to Europe, where there are roughly 18,000 miles of border fences and walls, many hundreds of which have gone up just since the start of the refugee crisis last year. In Slovenia, for example, new security fences erected late last year cut through range of one of Europe’s largest populations of gray wolves, isolating packs on either side of the Slovenia-Croatia border. The same fence goes through the habitat of a small, threatened population of Eurasian lynx, and a recent study led by ecologist John Linnell argues it may be “last push for the population to spiral down the extinction vortex.”

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