Category Archives: European Union

France’s Macron says sees no legitimate successor to Syria’s Assad

Reuters reports: President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday he saw no legitimate successor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and France no longer considered his departure a pre-condition to resolving the six-year-old conflict.

He said Assad was an enemy of the Syrian people, but not of France and that Paris’ priority was fighting terrorist groups and ensuring Syria did not become a failed state.

His comments were in stark contrast to those of the previous French administration and echo Moscow’s stance that there is no viable alternative to Assad.

“The new perspective that I have had on this subject is that I have not stated that Bashar al-Assad’s departure is a pre-condition for everything because nobody has shown me a legitimate successor,” Macron said in an interview with eight European newspapers.

“My lines are clear: Firstly, a complete fight against all the terrorist groups. They are our enemies,” he said, adding attacks that killed 230 people in France had come from the region. “We need everybody’s cooperation, especially Russia, to eradicate them.” [Continue reading…]

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America in retreat, Europe en marche

Sylvie Kauffmann writes: As British conservatives licked their wounds a week ago, and French voters were electing hundreds of rookies to Parliament to strengthen the hand of President Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainians at last had a reason to celebrate — and they did, partying by the thousands in Kiev. For them, June 11 was the dawn of the long-awaited era of visa-free travel to Europe. One local magazine called it “Ukraine’s Berlin Wall moment.”

This event, little noticed in the midst of so many political upheavals, is a fresh sign that Europe is moving forward. Giving some 45 million Ukrainians the right to travel freely through the 26 countries of the Schengen area is something of an achievement at a time when, across the European Union, the word “immigration” sounds like a recipe for electoral disaster.

Don’t expect European Union leaders to boast about it; that is not something they are good at. Yet a new mood is taking hold in Brussels and other European capitals these days, a wind of hope and optimism rarely felt in the last two decades.

After so many existential crises, believers in the European Union are suddenly waking up to realize that the reports of its death were greatly exaggerated. The eurozone has not collapsed. Britain’s exit, which shocked and destabilized the union a year ago, is now perceived as an opportunity for the 27 remaining members to regroup. [Continue reading…]

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Outside Britain, the mood in the EU is on the upswing

Natalie Nougayrède writes: That Helmut Kohl, the man who oversaw the reunification of Germany and was for so long a giant on the European stage, should die on the eve of negotiations leading to Britain’s withdrawal from the EU seems symbolic. The former German chancellor made the best of the extraordinary circumstances and public mood that followed the collapse of communism and the opening up of eastern Europe.

Today’s European leaders are, by contrast, confronted with an especially adverse set of circumstances. Trump, Putin, Erdoğan, terrorism, unprecedented flows of migration, unemployment, the rise of populism and, of course, Brexit. But, just as Kohl and his French contemporary François Mitterrand relaunched the European project in the early 1990s, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron are, as Britain prepares to leave, readying their ambitions and vision for the continent.

At stake is no less than Europe’s role in defending liberal democratic values and a rules-based international order at a time when – as one former Obama administration official put it to me recently – Trump’s America is “missing in action and the UK is disappearing into oblivion”. The words may be harsh, but they underscore that Britain’s central weakness lies not only in its internal political confusion – but also with a dangerous ignorance of what its European neighbours are setting their sights on.

The Franco-German engine is not focusing on Brexit but rather on consolidating the 60-year-old European project through further integration and cooperation. At the heart of this stands an emerging Macron-Merkel deal, intended to act as Europe’s new powerhouse. On 15 May, the French and German leaders met and spoke of a new “roadmap” for the EU. The thinking goes like this: in the next two to three years, as France carries out structural economic reforms to boost its credibility, Germany will step up much-needed European financial solidarity and investment mechanisms, and embrace a new role on foreign policy, security and defence. [Continue reading…]

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France polls: Macron’s party wins clear parliamentary majority

BBC News reports: French President Emmanuel Macron’s party has won a clear parliamentary majority, results show, weeks after his own presidential victory.
With nearly all votes counted, his La République en Marche, alongside its MoDem allies, won more than 300 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly.

The winning margin is lower than some expected, with turnout down from 2012.

The party was formed just over a year ago, and half of its candidates have little or no political experience.

The result has swept aside all of the mainstream parties and gives the 39-year-old president a strong mandate in parliament to pursue his pro-EU, business-friendly reform plans. [Continue reading…]

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France’s new president won’t be shy about using military power

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writes: Macron has given many more signals that he intends to be a hawkish commander-in-chief, and one that will act first and seek alliances later. Alongside trade, the first item on the agenda of his first bilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was strengthened defense and nuclear cooperation, a move that reflects France’s strategic ambitions in the Pacific (where it has a significant presence through its overseas territories) rather than its NATO or EU commitments.

But the most telling sign came in a little-noticed moment during his joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin after their first meeting. Asked about the use of chemical weapons in Syria, Macron responded, “there is a very clear red line on our side,” a blatant dig at Barack Obama’s refusal to enforce that red line. What’s more, he added, “any use of chemical weapons will be met with reprisals and a counterstrike, at least from the French.”

The message wasn’t just intended for Moscow and Damascus, but for Washington, Brussels and Berlin as well: France will act when it must, alone if it must. [Continue reading…]

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Emmanuel Macron says door to remain in EU is open to Britain

The Guardian reports: The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has claimed the door to the EU will remain open to Britain during Brexit negotiations that get underway next week.

In remarks that will be taken as an encouraging sign by opponents of a hard Brexit that there may be room for compromise, the newly elected French leader said the decision to leave the EU could still be reversed if the UK wished to do so.

Speaking in the gardens of the Élysée Palace in Paris in a joint press conference with Theresa May, Macron made it clear that he respected the sovereign decision of the British people. However, he added: “Until negotiations come to an end there is always a chance to reopen the door.”

And Macron suggested that time was of the essence, saying: “As the negotiations go on it will be more and more difficult to go backwards.” [Continue reading…]

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Emmanuel Macron’s parliamentary victory marks the return of the experts

Hugo Drochon writes: In putting together a government that includes ministers from the left, centre and right, Macron has stuck to his mantra of being beyond “left and right”. He also achieved his goal of gender parity, although Sylvie Goulard is the only female senior minister, in charge of defence, and her task will be to deepen EU military co-operation, which has already been met with some success.

Goulard, a pro-European centrist MEP and one of the first to rally to Macron, was tipped to be his Prime Minister after Macron had hinted that he would have liked a female PM. But in the end, Macron appointed the Mayor of Le Havre, Edouard Philippe, a moderate right-winger close to the former Republican PM Alain Juppé. Like Goulard and the economics minister Bruno Le Maire, Philippe speaks fluent German – a clear signal to Berlin that Macron wants to renew the Franco-German axis. Like Macron, Goulard, Philippe and Le Maire went to the elite school of national administration.

Another goal was to have half his cabinet drawn from civil society, something Macron also succeeded in doing. Perhaps his biggest catch was the environmental activist Nicolas Hulot, who became the minister for the environment – a position he had previously refused under previous presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande. But it also includes a former health authority chief Agnès Buzyn as health minister, the head of a French publishing house, Françoise Nyssen, as culture minister, and an Olympic fencing champion Laura Flessel, from the French island of Guadeloupe, as sports minister. [Continue reading…]

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Macron’s takeover of French politics is all but complete

The Associated Press reports: Emmanuel Macron’s takeover of French politics is all but complete. The newly elected French leader’s gamble that voters wanted to throw out old faces and try something new is paying off in full — first by giving him the presidency and, on Sunday, the crucial first step toward securing the legislative power to deliver on his pledge of far-reaching change.

As when voters turned the previously unelected Macron into France’s youngest president last month, Sunday’s first round of voting in two-stage legislative elections again brought stinging black eyes to traditional parties that, having monopolized power for decades, are being utterly routed by Macron’s political revolution.

His fledgling Republic on the Move! — contesting its first-ever election and fielding many candidates with no political experience at all — was on course to deliver him a legislative majority so crushing that Macron’s rivals fretted that the 39-year-old president will be able to govern France almost unopposed for his full five-year term.

Record-low turnout, however, took some shine off the achievement. Less than 50 percent of the 47.5 million electors cast ballots — showing that Macron has limited appeal to many voters.

Macron intends to set his large and likely pliant cohort of legislators, all of them having pledged allegiance to his program, to work immediately. He wants, within weeks, to start reforming French labor laws to make hiring and firing easier, and legislate a greater degree of honesty into parliament, to staunch the steady flow of scandals that over decades have eroded voter trust in the political class.

With 94 percent of votes counted, Macron’s camp was comfortably leading with more than 32 percent — putting it well ahead of all opponents going into the decisive second round of voting next Sunday for the 577 seats in the lower-house National Assembly.

Macron’s prime minister, Edouard Philippe, confidently declared Sunday night that the second round vote would give the assembly a “new face.”

“France is back,” he said.

Pollsters estimated that Macron’s camp could end up with as many as 450 seats — and that the opposition in parliament would be fragmented as well as small. [Continue reading…]

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Theresa May is a ‘dead woman walking,’ says former chancellor George Osborne

The Guardian reports: George Osborne has called Theresa May “a dead woman walking” and suggested the prime minister would be forced to resign imminently.

The former chancellor said the campaign had undone the work of himself and former prime minister David Cameron in winning socially liberal seats such as a Bath, Brighton Kemptown and Oxford East, now lost to Labour and the Lib Dems.

“She is a dead woman walking and the only question is how long she remains on death row,” the editor of the Evening Standard said, defending his paper’s attacks on May as speaking from a “socially liberal, pro-business, economically liberal position” that he said had been consistent as editor and chancellor. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour will invite parties to defeat the government and vote for Labour’s manifesto in a “substantial amendment” to the Queen’s speech, as well as suggesting the party would also kill off the ”great repeal bill”.

“We are ready and able to put forward a serious programme which has great support in this country,” he said, though the Labour leader conceded his party “didn’t win the election”.

“We are going to put down a substantial amendment to the Queen’s speech which will be the main points of our manifesto so we will invite the House to consider all the issues we’ve put forward – jobs-first Brexit, policies for young people and on austerity,” he said. [Continue reading…]

Bloomberg reports: U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s hopes of clinging to power were dealt a fresh blow after her office was forced to admit that it hadn’t, after all, reached a deal to govern with the support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, hours after announcing that it had.

May’s office said at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday it had “agreed to the principles of an outline agreement” in which the DUP would back the Conservatives on some key votes, ensuring the premier has a majority in the House of Commons. At midnight, the DUP said the talks would continue next week, and a half-hour later, the premier’s office issued another statement, saying that the accord hadn’t yet been finalized. [Continue reading…]

 

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Drop hard Brexit plans, demand MPs

The Observer reports: Senior Tory and Labour MPs called on Theresa May to forge a new cross-party approach to Brexit as fears grew that the prime minister’s weakness could lead to the imminent collapse of talks on the UK’s exit from the European Union.

In a dramatic demonstration of May’s loss of authority, as a result of Thursday’s general election – which stripped her of a Commons majority – the MPs demanded that she in effect drop her own Tory “hard Brexit” plans in favour of a new “national” consenus, that would be endorsed by members from all sides of the House of Commons.

The proposal, if adopted, would throw open the debate on what kind of Brexit the country wants, with just a week to go before May is due to lead the country in formal negotiations with the EU on the terms of exit.

It comes as senior EU figures expressed their concerns that the process could collapse because of May’s lack of authority in what are bound to be many months of tough and complex talks. A leading Christian Democrat ally of the German chancellor Angela Merkel – the MEP Elmar Brok – told the Observer that the chances of a collapse in the talks had significantly increased. “The British people saw through her [May]. The negotiations have become more difficult because Britain has not got a government of real authority,” he said.

May went to the country asking for a mandate on Brexit only to lose her Commons majority. In an intervention that will alarm hardline pro-Brexit Tories, the former foreign office minister Alistair Burt, backed by ex-education secretary Nicky Morgan and other pro-EU Tories, said Brexit could only be agreed and delivered if the Conservative minority government built cross-party support behind a plan that would unite politicians and the country. [Continue reading…]

The Observer reports: Theresa May had set Britain on a course for a hard Brexit, prioritising sovereignty at the expense of close economic ties. Nevertheless, most EU governments had hoped she would win big on 8 June, so that she would be strong enough to face down the Tory right in pushing through painful compromises. They now face a prime minister whose authority is crumbling. Yet the general election makes the prospect of a softer Brexit plausible.

May’s instincts are probably to keep pushing for the hard Brexit that her right wing desires. But there is no parliamentary majority for a hard Brexit. Just a few pro-EU Tories could join opposition MPs to defeat May. If she wants to pass the Brexit deal – and the many Brexit-related laws that are required – she will have to collaborate with Labour and other opposition MPs.

Such a volte-face would be uncharacteristic of May. But if she doesn’t reinvent herself as a soft Brexiter, it is hard to see how she can stay in office. And if she falls, her successor will find that survival means working with the opposition to achieve a softer version of Brexit. [Continue reading…]

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Theresa May and the revenge of the Remainers

Anne Applebaum writes: Theresa May had a plan: Steal the policies of Britain’s “far right” — the U.K. Independence Party — and then steal their voters, too. Since she took office about a year ago, the formerly moderate British prime minister attacked foreigners, jeered at the European Union and held Donald Trump’s hand. In April, she called an early general election, confident that UKIP voters would now endorse her “hard Brexit” and her watered-down English Tory populism.

Never mind that the moderate centrism of her predecessor, David Cameron, won a Conservative Party majority only two years ago. Never mind that she herself has offered few details about Brexit and what it will mean: May called this a “Brexit election,” declared herself the “strong and stable” candidate, promised tough negotiations with Europe and clearly expected to win a larger majority.

Yes, May had a plan — but it was a plan designed for her base. She ignored the 48 percent of the country that did not vote for Brexit, calling them “citizens of nowhere.” She ignored the anxiety that Brexit has created and the economic consequences that are now just beginning to bite. She ignored younger people, who preferred to stay in the E.U. last year and now prefer the Labour Party to the Tories by a huge margin, 63 percent to 27 percent.

May also assumed that the centrists and moderates who had voted Conservative in 2015 and to “Remain” in Europe in 2016 would have to vote for her because they would have nowhere else to go. They couldn’t possibly vote for Jeremy Corbyn, the quasi-Marxist, left-wing Labour Party leader who campaigned on high taxes for the rich, heavy spending and deep skepticism toward Britain’s traditional defense and foreign policies. They couldn’t possibly prefer a Labour Party that is itself divided over Brexit. But as the campaign went on, as May grew stiffer and more prone to error, as her “strong and stable” tagline wore thin, a lot of people in the floating center looked at Corbyn and thought, “Is he really that much worse?”

And the result? Remainers’ revenge. [Continue reading…]

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Conservatives successfully resist the drive for Scottish independence

Reuters reports: Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has delivered the party’s biggest success in Scotland in a generation, leading a dogged charge against independence from the United Kingdom that has left the nationalist movement reeling.

Davidson, whose colourful humour and approachability has won her many fans, notched up the Conservatives’ best result since 1983 north of the border. She may yet prove key to choosing a new leader to replace the party’s nationwide leader, Prime Minister Theresa May, whose future is now in question.

With an easy, raucous laugh, she is a self-described “shovel-faced lesbian”, a literature graduate and a former journalist who says the army taught her the art of leadership when she was a reservist.

Davidson, 38, has unapologetically stood up for the United Kingdom.

“I’ve never been afraid of debate and clash and think that’s part of it. It’s important that the Conservative voice isn’t delegitimised,” she told Reuters prior to the election.

In Britain’s constantly shifting political landscape, she has reached Scottish voters by sticking to a message they not only understand but care about, as well as being more ordinary than the elite associated with her party 400 miles (644 km) down south in London.

“I’m proud to be Scottish and British and female and gay and Christian and Conservative and a Fifer and fond of chips, a fan of “Hamilton” the musical and to prefer dogs to cats,” she told an audience at the Orwell Foundation last month. [Continue reading…]

 

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Ruth Davidson planning Scottish Tory breakaway as she challenges Theresa May’s Brexit plan

The Telegraph reports: Ruth Davidson is to defy Theresa May’s plans for a hard Brexit and tear her Scottish party away from English control after the UK Tories’ disastrous General Election result.

Amid a growing clamour among senior Tories in London for Ms Davidson to be given a top position in the UK party, her aides are working on a deal that would see the Scottish party break away to form a separate organisation.

It would maintain a close relationship with the English party – they have been joined together as part of the United Kingdom Conservative and Unionist Party since 1965 – and its 13 MPs would take the Tory whip at the Commons.

Although it has been mooted for some time, the imminent split between the Scottish and English parties is a direct result of a dramatic deterioration in relations between the Scottish Tory hierarchy in Edinburgh and 10 Downing Street.

Fresh from her success in winning an extra 12 Scottish seats in Thursday’s election, at the same time as the Prime Minister was losing 21 constituencies in England, Ms Davidson also vowed to use her Commons votes to prioritise the single market over curbing immigration.

This is certain to split Tory ranks as Mrs May has pledged to take the UK out of both the single market and the EU customs union as part of her Brexit negotiations, which begin next week. [Continue reading…]

Interesting report — although Davidson’s succinct response calls into question the report’s accuracy:

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Theresa May’s Brexit strategy lies in ruins

Simon Jenkins writes: The clock is ticking on the two-year Brexit countdown, with just 10 days to go to fiendishly urgent talks on its modality. May’s tactic appeared to be to enter those talks armour-plated against domestic trouble from both her right and left, or at least from advocates of hard and soft Brexit. That tactic, however plausible, lies in ruins.

How the EU’s negotiators will react is hard to predict. They must be dismayed at the prospect of weakened British negotiators vulnerable to constant carping and second-guessing by a hung British parliament. Some are already suggesting a postponement of the talks. It is hard to see that helping.

Meanwhile it is likely that in coming months a “remainist” or perhaps “softest” fifth column will open up across parliament and among the lobbyists. The collapse of Ukip and the probable increase in emboldened remain MPs clearly undermines whatever May’s “hard Brexit” stance was meant to achieve. In the Commons there should now be a majority behind Corbyn’s view, that no deal is worse than a soft deal.

The British team’s absurdist machismo in advance of talks has never rung true – and would appear to have cut little ice even with a post-referendum electorate. Coupled with the result itself, this should tilt the balance towards a more accommodating approach on both sides. The EU and Britain must clearly compromise, to honour last year’s referendum yet without the manifest shambles of a negotiating failure.

Common sense indicates that, at the day’s end, Britain must somehow stay within the regulatory regime of a European customs union. Since that would leave migration as the chief bone of contention, and since some deal on the movement of workers is vital for British industry, it is now possible to see negotiations slithering towards a “Norwegian” version of a single market. If so, this election could prove a blessing, albeit in heavy disguise. [Continue reading…]

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A case for Jeremy Corbyn

Roger Cohen writes: For a long time I could not bring myself to write about the British election. Trump-coddling, self-important, flip-flopping Theresa May, ensconced at 10 Downing Street without ever being elected prime minister, was going to sweep to her hard-Brexit victory and take the country down her little England rabbit hole.

There were more important things to think about, like the end of the American century in 2017, one hundred years after the Bolshevik Revolution. A boorish clown named Donald Trump brought down the curtain.

In Britain, anyway, there was no story: The June 8 vote was a formality. The Labour Party was in meltdown, having exited the Blairite middle ground for leftist orthodoxy under Jeremy Corbyn. The British, their ludicrous vote to leave the European Union gradually sinking in, had morphed into sheep. May would get her mandate to do her worst, with Boris Johnson, a foreign secretary who long since forsook any claim to be taken seriously, cheering her on.

Then came two unspeakable terrorist attacks, one in Manchester and one in London. As I’ve argued before, the Islamic State should be driven out of Raqqa, whatever it takes (and if you have any doubt, watch Matthew Heineman’s new movie “City of Ghosts” about the citizen-journalist group “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently.”) Iniquity has its capital. From there it will emanate until crushed.

Of course Trump tried to make cheap political capital from the blood on London’s streets. He quoted London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, out of context in a flurry of tweets aimed at buttressing the case for his bigotry. The president of the United States just felt like insulting a prominent Muslim.

Trump bears about the same relationship to dignity as carbon dioxide to clean air. And this is the man May and Johnson have coddled, in the name of offsetting the Brexit debacle with increased U.S. trade.

Johnson, by the way, assured the world a couple of months back that British seduction of Trump had been so effective that efforts to convince the president not to quit the Paris climate accord “will succeed.” After all, Trump had been offered a state visit, horse-drawn carriage, the queen; all that British pomp for His Neediness. We know what the word of Johnson, who was for the European Union before he was against it, is worth. It’s worth zilch. No wonder Trump’s finger-to-the-planet Paris decision prompted scarcely a British whimper. [Continue reading…]

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Canada is now openly questioning the future of U.S. leadership

The Atlantic reports: First European Council President Donald Tusk described Donald Trump as a threat to European unity. Next German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that Germany could no longer “completely depend” on America, noting that “We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.” Then, in vowing to “make our planet great again,” French President Emmanuel Macron seized the leadership role on climate change vacated by the United States.

Now signs of tectonic shifts in the Western alliance are cropping up across the Atlantic. On Tuesday—against the backdrop of Trump’s condemnation of NAFTA, withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, and chilly summit with NATO leaders, all three of which have put the U.S. at odds with its northern neighbor—Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland delivered a remarkable address in the House of Commons. At times, it almost sounded like she was bidding farewell to a retiring superpower, even as she held out hope that the superpower would agree to stay on a while longer. She never mentioned Trump by name. But the speech was a forceful rebuttal to Trump’s view of how the world should work.

Many American voters in last year’s presidential election were “animated in part by a desire to shrug off the burden of world leadership,” Freeland told Canadian lawmakers. “To say this is not controversial: it is simply a fact.” [Continue reading…]

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Angela Merkel hopes to forge an international alliance against Trump

Der Spiegel reports: Many had thought that Trump could be controlled once he entered the White House, that the office of the presidency would bring him to reason. Berlin had placed its hopes in the moderating influence of his advisers and that there would be a sharp learning curve. Now that Trump has actually lived up to his threat to leave the climate deal, it is clear that if such a learning curve exists, it points downward.

The chancellor was long reluctant to make the rift visible. For Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, the alliance with the U.S. was always more than political calculation, it reflected her deepest political convictions. Now, she has — to a certain extent, at least — terminated the trans-Atlantic friendship with Trump’s America.

In doing so, the German chancellor has become Trump’s adversary on the international stage. And Merkel has accepted the challenge when it comes to trade policy and the quarrel over NATO finances. Now, she has done so as well on an issue that is near and dear to her heart: combating climate change.

Merkel’s aim is that of creating an alliance against Trump. If she can’t convince the U.S. president, her approach will be that of trying to isolate him. In Taormina, it was six countries against one. Should Trump not reverse course, she is hoping that the G-20 in Hamburg in July will end 19:1. Whether she will be successful is unclear.

Trump has identified Germany as his primary adversary. Since his inauguration in January, he has criticized no country — with the exception of North Korea and Iran — as vehemently as he has Germany. The country is “bad, very bad,” he said in Brussels last week. Behind closed doors at the NATO summit, Trump went after Germany, saying there were large and prosperous countries that were not living up to their alliance obligations.

And he wants to break Germany’s economic power. The trade deficit with Germany, he recently tweeted, is “very bad for U.S. This will change.”

Merkel’s verdict following Trump’s visit to Europe could hardly be worse. There has never been an open break with America since the end of World War II; the alienation between Germany and the U.S. has never been so large as it is today. When Merkel’s predecessor, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, refused to provide German backing for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, his rebuff was limited to just one single issue. It was an extreme test of the trans-Atlantic relationship, to be sure, but in contrast to today, it was not a quarrel that called into question commonly held values like free trade, minority rights, press freedoms, the rule of law — and climate policies. [Continue reading…]

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