GERMANY: EU law blocked & more – 15th Feb 2024

Hallo from BA! This is the Rorshok Germany Update from the 15th of February twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Germany.

In the past weeks, all over Germany hundreds of thousands have been protesting against the Alternative for Germany, or AFD, a right wing extremist party, and this weekend wasn’t the exception with huge protests happening all over the country.

The spreading outrage is starting to show some effect. For example, on Friday the 9th, the train station bookshop chain Press & Books announced that they will no longer sell the magazine Compact. Compact is known for spreading hate and conspiracy ideologies and is ideologically very close to the AFD. The chain of bookstores is not the first to take Compact out of circulation, but it’s the biggest chain of bookstores to do so for now.

Moving on to Berlin: Almost 80% of the voting districts of Berlin had to repeat the national election for the national parliament from three years ago on Sunday the 11th. The election needed to be repeated due to severe irregularities in the organization of the original election. Overall, the seat distribution didn’t change much, but some trends have become clearly visible. The biggest loser is the Free Democratic Party (or FDP), the small neoliberal party which is part of the government coalition. Social Democrats and Greens lost only slightly while the AFD and the christian democrats secured small gains. While some commentators see this as a prediction for the several state elections that will be held this year, others point out that the capital has historically voted differently than other major parts of the country.

In a surprising move the FDP announced on Friday the 9th that they will be withdrawing their support for the EU supply chain act. The law will force companies to make sure that along their supply chain economical standards and human rights are respected. Although the liberals were on board with the European plans and actually helped write the law, now, suddenly, they claim it includes too many bureaucratic hurdles for the affected companies. .

In twenty twenty-one Germany passed its own supply chain law, but their version is considerably less strict than the European version. For example, the European supply chain act applies to smaller businesses than the German equivalent.

But for now the passing of the supply chain act is halted, since the German government announced to abstain from the vote in the European council, which would be almost the same as voting against the law.

One company that could be forced to make changes if the supply chain act is passed is Volkswagen. The automobile manufacturer has come under great pressure to move one of their factories out of the Chinese province of Xinjiang. The Xinjiang is notorious for being a province where the Chinese government operates Re-education camps and uses the local Uigur minority as forced laborers.The Uigurs are a local muslim minority in this north-eastern province of China.

Volkswagen has come under pressure after doubts have been raised whether forced laborers were employed during the building process of their production plant. The German chemical giant BASF recently already seized operations in the province due to similar accusations. Until now Volkswagen are refusing a withdrawal and claiming that they never came in contact with forced labor at any point.

Back to local production methods, the farmers that are protesting all over Europe and in Germany as well, have begun targeting the press and with it press freedom. Several regional newspapers with minimal circulation (under 100.000 per year) have become the victim of the farmer’s rage because the farmers didn’t like what they were reading about themselves. In consequence, they decided to blockade the printing presses of these small regional newspapers. Some farmers at these blockades have gone on record spouting conspiracy ideologies, so it’s no surprise that they don’t like the power of a free press.

A new study, conducted by the co-leader of the party The Left, has shown how online platforms like Booking.com evade taxes. The online platform Booking.com is situated in the Netherlands and is able to use a tax called the innovation box tax. Typically this tax would be applied if a company makes profits after a big innovation or discovery. Booking.com though has been using this tax for years to pay a reduced percentage in taxes. The study estimates that between twenty eleven and twenty twenty-two the company was able to save around three billion Euros in taxes.

The weapons producer Rheinmetall has started building a new munitions plant in Lower-Saxony. The first step to the building process began on Monday the 12th and Chancellor Olaf Scholz and minister of defense Oskar Pistorius were present.

Also present were several hundred protesters that are against the growing militarization of Europe and Germany. Rheinmetall announced that this new plant would be able to produce 200.000 artillery shells each year and that it plans to expand production capacities to up to 700.000 shells each year.

Staying with defense spending, Germany has, for the first time in years, reached the 2 % target of NATO. The Alliance has a standard for all member nations that at least 2 % of GDP should be spent on defense. Germany, one of the biggest economies in NATO, hasn’t been able to reach the goal since the early 90s. This year, it seems Germany will actually spend 2 % of its GDP on defense, according to what NATO secretary Jens Stolenberg said on Wednesday during a summit in Brussels.

On Sunday, a artistic reading of the German philosopher Hanna Arendt by the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera was disturbed by pro-palestinian protesters. According to the artist, she was assaulted and spat on. The reading was supposed to go on for 100 hours, an artistic protest that she was able to complete in Cuba while under house arrest.

The vice president of the parliament and politician of the Green party Katrin Göring-Eckhart has visited Kjiv, where she expressed her concern over the lessened support from the US and stressed that the European Union has to do everything in its power to support Ukraine.

She used the opportunity to comment on the changing sentiment in the Ukrainian population, which, according to her, is very worried about the declining support from the US.

To finish off this week some less serious news, although Rhineland-Germans take Karneval very seriously. On Rose-Monday the 12th, Karneval kicked into full gear. As mentioned, for the Rhineland, the western part of Germany with cities like Cologne, Aachen, and Mainz, Karneval is a major holiday.

The Rhineland will be celebrating until the 19th of February. All major cities in the Rhineland have costume processions and the city life will be transformed into a huge party.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

Last week we asked you to fill in a survey to get to know you and we got quite a few replies, thank you so so much ! We are very excited, tons of great ideas! We’ll be sharing the link to the survey in the shownotes one more time this week in case you didn’t see it. All respondents will be entered in a lottery to win a cruise in the Mediterranean… just kidding, it's in the South Pacific, but we would love to hear from you! Don’t be shy!

Ciao!