GERMANY: Nicaragua vs Germany & more – 11th Apr 2024

Hallo from BA! This is the Rorshok Germany Update from the 11th of April twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Germany.

We are starting this week with news from the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, in The Hague: Nicaragua is suing Germany for supplying weapons to Israel. The aim of the totalitarian government from South America, a long ally to the Palestinian cause, is for Germany to seize its support for Israel immediately. The suit argues that Germany, with its weapon supplies, is aiding Israel's alleged genocide in Gaza. On Tuesday the 9th, Germany delivered its defense. The country’s lawyers argued that Germany is only supplying a small amount of training and support equipment to the Israeli armed forces, and that the ICJ has not yet ruled on whether Israel’s actions are considered genocide, so how can Germany support a genocide when it’s not even clear if one is happening?

Moving on, one major project of the Green Party in this legislative period has been to combat child poverty in the country. The Basic child security reform was supposed to make a big step in that direction, but severe setbacks have hampered its prospects.

Christian Lindern, the liberal minister of finance and head of the Free Liberal Democrats party, or FDP, has denied the needed monetary means. Now the FDP is criticizing again one major change this new legislation would bring: Families would no longer have to ensure they ask for the aid they’re entitled to, but the state would need to provide it automatically.

The liberals are also worried about a few thousand extra state employees needed to make this work. As it stands now, the Basic child security legislation’s impact will not even be close to the impact the Greens were hoping when they proposed the law.

Staying on family matters, the constitutional court has ruled in favor of biological fathers. German family legislation only allows two legal parents. The social familiar father can be the biological father, a stepfather or the new partner of the mother. If the biological father is not the social familiar father, then the social familiar father has more chances of being recognized as the legal father of a child than the biological father. The court has now strengthened the biological fathers' rights and demanded changes to the legislation. The court also opened the possibility of including more than two legal parents. But the minister of justice, who is in charge of proposing this law change, is not in favor of it.

In more law-news: The government coalition has agreed on a final draft of a new law to introduce payment cards for migrants. The law aims to make it impossible for migrants to send money to their home countries. The payment card is a hugely controversial issue, because the government has so far been unable to provide numbers on how much money is actually leaving the country this way. Human rights activists and experts point out that a payment card will only serve to alienate and stigmatize migrants even more, since they will only be able to use them to receive welfare from the state, and they won't be able to withdraw cash. They can be used in limited stores, as some states are planning to introduce heavy restrictions on where these cards can be used, thus curtailing the freedom of movement for migrants.

Still on migration: The Christian Democrats, or CDU, are worried about migrant criminality because the national crime statistic has been released, and the number of foreign suspects has increased by around 13% compared to last year. The national crime statistic is a statistic of policing, which shows only what the police saw. So it is not a reliable source of information about who committed crimes because it has been scientifically proven time and again that, policing in mainly migrant and poor neighborhoods is much stricter, and individuals tend to call the police more on people who don’t look like them. Progressive observers and politicians are pointing out that the debate around the crime statistics tends to take on racist undertones every year.

Continuing with conservative politicians, as we reported last week, Andreas Scheuer, the former minister of transport of the Christian Social Union, or CSU, has left the national parliament. Now we know where he’s going next! He already owned a business consulting firm, and now he is working in consulting for the car industry. As always, when another official moves more or less directly from their political mandate into the private sector, a debate about corruption starts, and as always, the government does not have any plans to tighten regulations.

Since we mentioned transportation, sales of electric cars are dropping, and the major car sharing provider Miles has announced that it will not add any more electric cars to its fleets. New registrations of electric cars were down by a quarter compared to last year. This is bad news for Germany’s plans to have 15 million electric cars uo and running by twenty thirty. As of January twenty twenty-four, there were only around 1.5 Million.

Last week we told you about the Deutschlandticket, which allows people to use all public transport, both regional and municipal, all over Germany for one month for forty-nine euros. Well, apparently this is a major reason why there has been a 7% increase in twenty twenty-three compared to twenty twenty-two in the number of users of public transport.

On another note, Germany has started deploying troops to the eastern NATO border in Lithuania as part of the alliance’s efforts to strengthen its borders with Russia. As of now, there’s only a small group of twenty soldiers being sent to Lithuania ahead of the main brigade which will follow the group in the coming three to five years. Germany is planning to station around 5,000 troops in Lithuania.

Moving on to European politics: The re-election campaign of Ursula von der Leyen, the sitting president of the European commission and a member of the CDU, launched with some controversies. She took to polemic decisions: She appointed Markus Pieper, a friend and party colleague, as representative for small and medium companies, which four EU-commissars have objections to because she could have picked someone equally qualified who didn’t have personal ties with her. She also put chief of staff Björn Seibert in charge of her re-election campaign. The move was also called into question as, in his current position, he gets paid with EU funds and the Union’s election rules don’t allow her to use any EU funds or assets for her campaign. Seibert therefore had to take an unpaid leave from his chief of staff position to work in the campaign.

The European Central Bank. or ECB, has announced that they will lower the key interest rate this June from 4.5 %, the highest it has been in decades, to a yet undefined lower value. This move comes as inflation across the Euro-zone is sinking. This means that loans will become cheaper again and rates on savings will drop. Bad news for all those who have big amounts of money in savings, good news for everybody else, as money will become cheaper and European economies hopefully will pick up steam again.

To finish off this week’s episode, a European parliamentarian of the Alternative of Germany, or AFD, has lost his immunity after an assembly on Thursday the 11th. The public prosecutor in Düsselfdorf had accused Gunnar Beck of stealing and resisting arrest. In October, Beck was caught stealing in a Mall in Neuss, a small city in the state of North Rhine Westphalia. When the police arrived he reportedly resisted the officers, but the public prosecutor has not yet released any further details. Now that his immunity is rescinded, nothing stands in the way of a trial. It would be his second in his political career, after he was convicted in twenty twenty-two for assuming a title that wasn’t his: he called himself professor, but he is not one.

And that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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Ciao!