CityLab: Europe’s Capital Cities Keep Getting Richer and Younger

Per-capita GDP has risen most sharply in capital regions across the continent, with the biggest leaps coming from the Dublin region, followed by Inner West London, and the regions around Bucharest, Warsaw, and Bratislava. [...]

Meanwhile, further west there are causes for concern as countries tend to polarize between poorer and richer regions; the U.K. in particular shows an especially patchy growth map. While some sections of London remain extremely (if unequally) wealthy, per capita GDP has dropped immediately to its north, above all in most of the sprawling Yorkshire region, where an ongoing journey from an industrial economy decimated in the 1980s towards a service-oriented one seems to be neither complete nor entirely successful. [...]

Germany’s east side isn’t alone when it come to the aging of its small cities and countryside. The regions north of Hamburg and the rural districts that sandwich the heavily industrialized Ruhr region both have notably high average ages, suggesting that here too, the countryside is being drained of young people, pushing these regions towards becoming agricultural and retirement communities with little urging younger locals to stay. [...]

Another key map in the report highlights just how much Europe’s regions are diverging. The image below relates the GDP of urban regions to their national averages, with blue shading showing rates above national averages and orange showing rates below. Again the U.K. shows cause for concern, with the London region powering ahead of the national average and almost all of its former industrial heartland in central and northern England falling behind. Poland’s contrasts are also notably sharp, with Warsaw far wealthier than the national average while its rural hinterland just to the south is far poorer.

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UnHerd: Will the Catholics bring down Merkel?

This relationship holds even after controlling for other factors such as education, income, unemployment, and the share of migrants in the region. Alexander Roth of the Bruegel Institut ran such an analysis and found “a positive correlation between Catholic church membership and AfD voting in Bavaria, controlling for numerous other factors”. So we have a curious anomaly: Germany’s most Catholic party, one that recently passed a law mandating that crosses be posted in all government buildings, is losing support among Catholics. [...]

Bavaria’s high number of Catholics almost certainly includes many for whom Catholicism is a cultural heritage rather than something that is a center of their lives. Only about 10% of German Catholics regularly attend mass, according to 2016 figures from the German Bishop’s Conference. These people may, like their American brethren, be afraid of Islam and migrants but be unconnected enough with the Church to pay attention to its stances on “Islamophobia” and migration. [...]

That cultural identity may also combine with isolation from formal institutions to create a warm climate for anti-Islam fears. Data from Germany’s past and America’s present again reinforces that view. The vote share for the Centre Party and the BVP was relatively stable throughout the rise of Nazism: those Catholics close enough to the Church to vote for the Church’s party did not waver despite the Depression’s pressures. So, too, did more nominal Catholics who voted for parties with ties to strong unions such as the Social Democrats or Communists. But those who voted for other parties, presumably those without active membership in strong institutions, switched en masse.

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Politico: The man who lost Bavaria

Barring a minor miracle, Söder’s Christian Social Union, which has dominated Bavarian politics for decades, will suffer an epic thrashing in state elections on Sunday. Recent polls put the CSU at just 33 percent, nearly one-third below where it finished five years ago. [...]

There’s some truth to Söder’s argument that the CSU’s troubles reflect the reality of the age of populism, in which old standards for measuring political success and failure no longer apply. But that’s only part of the story. More than anything, Bavaria’s politics have been upended by a groundswell of popular dismay over the party’s handling of the migration crisis. [...]

At the same time, the CSU’s aggressive rhetoric on migration has disenchanted its liberal supporters, many of whom have fled to the Greens. The latest polls put the AfD, which is running in its first Bavarian election, as high as 14 percent, while the Greens are expected to finish second with 18 percent, more than double their last showing. [...]

Given that the CSU’s sway on the national stage rests solely on its strength at home, a drop of support for it in Bavaria could make the party, already a difficult partner, even more unpredictable. For decades, the CSU has sold itself at home by arguing that it alone can ensure Bavaria can influence national politics, a claim the migration crisis has shown to be exaggerated. [...]

While there’s no doubt that Seehofer — whose clashes with Merkel over migration this summer nearly brought down the government — bears much of the blame for the CSU’s image problem, whether Söder can survive is another question. His biggest selling point may be that most Bavarians can’t think of a better alternative.

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Political Critique: Romanians didn’t show up to an anti-LGBT referendum. But the battle for equality continues

A statement published by MozaiQ claimed the result shows “that Romanians have rejected hatred and division in society and have not identified with a political act aimed at stigmatising and discriminating against the LGBT community.” The result was hard-won. Ahead of the vote, activists reported an increase in homophobic and transphobic hate speech. [...]

The timing of this referendum provided a government under attack from anti-corruption protests with a chance to deflect attention from their own problems. By allowing the referendum, MozaiQ argued, “the political class has shown that it is disconnected from the daily realities” of Romanian people. The third thing to note is that voters rejected outside interference in their democracy from international ultra-conservative anti-LGBT groups. [...]

The ballot box defeat of their agenda suggests that outside groups determined to undermine LGBT rights around the world have been rejected in Romania. It also suggests that the influence of the Orthodox Church – whose Patriarch urged Christians to go and vote on Sunday – has been overestimated.

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Politico: Life wouldn’t neccessarily be worse without EU, survey finds

The survey, commissioned by Friends of Europe, a Brussels-based think tank, found that 64 percent of the nearly 11,000 respondents weren’t sure their lives would be worse without the EU. Almost half (49 percent) reckon the bloc is “irrelevant.”

Younger respondents, however, have a more positive view of the EU, with 41 percent of under 35-year-olds thinking life would be worse if there were no Union. [...]

However, Europeans don’t want “less Europe,” the study found, with 90 percent of respondents saying the EU should be more than just a single market. Eighty-one percent of those surveyed said they do not think the EU should prioritize leaving more decision-making to national governments, which the think tank said “suggests that national sovereignty isn’t an issue for the majority.”[...]

Additionally, the survey found that more than a third of Europeans want more transparency from the bloc, particularly on issues such as budget spending, and 41 percent would welcome having a bigger say, for instance, in voting on EU-wide policy decisions.

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