GERMANY: AFD Candidate & more – 23rd May 2024

Hallo from BA! This is the Rorshok Germany Update from the 23rd of May twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Germany.

Maximilian Krah, the leading candidate of the Alternative for Germany, or AFD, in the next European parliamentary elections, is considering resigning from his post in the party's national leadership and will not be doing any campaigning events two weeks ahead of the European elections.

The party leadership banned him from public campaigning events because of an interview he gave the right-leaning, Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Friday the 17th, in which he said “not everybody in the SS was a criminal”. The SS was an organization in Hitler’s Third Reich responsible for the organization and guarding of concentration and extermination camps, among other things, and was declared a criminal organization at the Nuremberg trials. Following these statements, the French right-wing radical Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National, or RN, has distanced herself from the AFD. Now, Maximilian Krah and Petr Bystrom, both leading candidates for the EU elections in two weeks, have been forbidden by their own party to hold any campaigns.

Following the distancing of the RN from the AFD, other European right-wing extremists have followed suit. On Thursday the 23rd, the AFD was officially kicked out of the right-wing Identity and Democracy (or ID) group of parliamentarians. In the EU parliament, the parliamentary groups are made up of several parties from different countries, but act in unison in the legislative body. For the AFD, the loss of its membership means that they might be crushed between the two far-right parliamentary groups in the European Parliament.

Moving on, on Saturday the 18th, the news magazine Der Spiegel published a piece, saying that the publication had access to an internal report of the finance ministry. In this report, the ministry lays out its plans to cut back on around 20 Billion Euros in social welfare spending to pluck the gaps in the government’s budget. The Ministry of Finance has denied the existence of such plans. However, the report seems plausible, as the alleged plans would be in line with the last strategy to cut welfare spending of the Free Democratic Party, or FDP, and of Cristian Lindner, the Minister of Finance.

Talking about ministries, on Sunday the 19th, Boris Pistorius, the Minister of Defense, asked for an additional 3.8 Billion Euros to aid Ukraine. Germany has allocated 7.1 Billion Euros for military aid. While normally Christian Lindner fights tooth and nail against any increases in spending, when it comes to Ukraine, he is more than willing to supply the funds. However, he has also said that he won’t take on extra national debt and will instead look for ways to get the funds from the government’s budget and see where to cut. Probably, social spending will be the first on the chopping block.

After several days of very loud silence, yesterday, the chancellor sent his condolences to the families of the ones who died in the helicopter crash in Iran near the border with Azerbaijan. In this crash, Ebrahim Raisi, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran, died. Some call him the butcher of Teheran for his role in putting down the feminist uprising that sparked last year due to the killing of the Kurdish woman Jina Amini. Many European leaders refrained from sending their condolences, and many Iranian activists called for the German government not to offer their condolences. After Josep Borrell, the vice president of the EU, expressed his condolences on behalf of the EU to the Iranian Regime, the Hashtag NotInMyName trended on Twitter.

Since Friday the 17th, heavy rain has hit the southwest of Germany and caused minor to severe flooding in several regions of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, Bavaria, and Hessia states.

Authorities have said that the situation is under control and that nobody is expecting floods as catastrophic as last year’s. In the spring of twenty twenty-three, floods ravaged big parts of Germany, causing billions of euros worth of damages and several thousand people to be displaced. The current floods have only caused Millions in damages and few towns had to be completely evacuated.

Continuing with natural disasters that can be connected to climate change, the state of Brandenburg is in the middle of forest fire season. On Friday the 17th, in at least four locations, minor fires were sighted. In all parts of the state, the forest fire risk warning is at the highest level, but the head of the department for forest security is optimistic. He said that there are fires in small areas and he doesn’t them expect to spread much.

Still on climate change, environmentalists have won another victory in court against the federal government. In November twenty twenty-three, the activists sued the government for not pursuing its own goals to combat climate change effectively enough.

Again, the conflict revolves around the climate target of the government sectors regarding emissions. Recall that the executive put a cap on the amount of CO2 the sectors can emit. German climate policy is based on a law from twenty twenty-one, in which a climate program sets goals for each government sector (basically each ministry).

The current coalition has already agreed to a new bill, focusing on the reductions of emissions of the government as a whole, instead of sector goals. Once again, the court ruled that until parliament passes the new draft law, the old one will still be in effect. The court also said that the sector plan the coalition’s government is currently using is not extensive enough and does not fulfill the obligations under the currently active law. The government will appeal the court's decision so the case hasn't closed yet.

On another note, the local council of the municipality of Grünheide, Brandenburg, on Friday the 17th, voted in favor of a controversial expansion of the local Tesla Gigafactory. In March twenty twenty-two, the first European Tesla Gigafactory opened in Brandenburg, just outside of Berlin. The factory was put into question as it is built on a water and environment protection area, and there are fears over the incredibly high water consumption of the plant. Also environmentalists exposed illegal pollution by the US-American car manufacturer, and investigative journalists have uncovered the horrendous working conditions in the plant with almost daily unreported heavy accidents of workers.

Up next, on Tuesday the 21st, several professors held a press conference to defend an open letter that was published at the beginning of this month in defense of the protests against the Israeli war in Gaza. For the last two weeks, students have occupied university campuses and have been heavily repressed by the police. Now, professors of these universities have defended the protests and the students’ right to dissent.

On Thursday the 23rd, the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier gave a speech to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the country’s constitution. He called on all citizens to protect democracy and said that every single person bears a responsibility to keep democracy alive. During the festivities in Berlin also former chancellor Angela Merkel said a few words.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Ciao!