This is good news. I’m honestly surprised at how positive the last few pieces of news from Moldova usually are. It’s obviously up to the people of Moldova and the people of Romania, but I would welcome Moldova into the EU via reunification with Romania at some point in the future.
As someone who was born outside of Germany but now lives here (with no immediate plans for going anywhere else) I regularly ask myself this question. Obviously many Germans seek economic opportunity in Switzerland, but the Swiss seem to really have about enough of all these immigrants. Then there might be other destinations that some people also bring up like Denmark, Sweden or Norway, but these fail to even break the top 20 destinations statistically.
In 2024 most emigrations seem to be in the context of people returning to their other European home countries. Out of the statistical top 20 only Spain/Italy (climate, retirement) Switzerland (economic opportunity) and the United States (again, economic opportunity, but recently with more people moving from the United States to Germany than the other way around) sound like plausible targets for German emigration at scale.
In all likelihood this could just be part of the general “mopiness” that seems to be prevalent in German culture.
I believe the specific law is from 1977, but I agree with your point in general, that service shouldn’t discriminate based on gender.
From my knowledge this rule was supposedly active for decades before Germany discontinued conscription and nobody really followed it then. Why there is a need to reactivate a law that will not be followed by the vast majority and that has no enforcement mechanisms associated with it really beats me. It’s probably a mix of incompetence and “we’ve always been doing things like this”.
The United States are rapidly becoming unreliable even as an arms supplier. Once they start stealing payments from clients without supplying the agreed upon goods, countries will start looking elsewhere, even if that means delays and perhaps different capabilities. I see great times ahead for defense products made in Europe.
All that needs to happen now is for the countries of Europe to unify and St. Lucia loses this incredibly important title!
TIL there is a Eurovision for trees.
That being said, I am an elm enjoyer. I have an elm in my garden (Ulmus × hollandica), which is the most beautiful tree in the entire neighbourhood.
The only country to ever invoke Article 5 was the United States. As things stand there is no scenario whatsoever in which Europeans will once again agree to fight and die in a futile American war in the Middle East. Let the Americans sort out their own mess. Perhaps we should even consider trying to find a solution to resuscitate the world economy together with China, India, Iran and other involved parties in the region.
If everyone was as positively weird as this gentleman the world would likely be a better place.
I used to live in Wiesbaden and can confirm that there are many Americans there. They should qualify as suspicious.
No, you seem to be (willingly?) misrepresenting what I’m saying. There is no long term plan. There is no strategy. There simply is a situation in which the actions of Europeans in the past have caught up with Europeans in the present and we are now stuck between a rock we failed to move decades ago and a hard place we built ourselves. What our current crop of “leaders” seems to be doing is (once again) hoping this all blows over in a decade, because we’re all out of other good options. While this is a fatalistic point of view, I believe it is warranted. Building some degree of strategic autonomy will take years, maybe decades. Until then we remain dependent on the hegemon and cannot face it head first on any and every issue. Had we collectively done what le Général had told us to do back in the 1960s, we’d be in a better position, but we didn’t, so we aren’t.
I started to realise how much furniture is still manufactured in Europe, when you start to look for quality and not simply for the cheapest product available. My personal favourite has to be Müller Small Living. After our move we ditched our old and broken bed for a new one and got one of their folding work stations for working from home. Both are amazing, both in terms of design and quality of the furniture. They are all made in Germany as well.
It’s not about 5D Chess at all, in my opinion. We’re unfortunately at a point where decades of inaction and lethargy have left the EU largely dependent on the US for many things, ranging from defense to energy security to digital infrastructure. The hole we dug for ourselves is so deep that confronting the hegemon, the US, is not realistic any time soon. Therefore I believe it’s more about recognising where we have to use our limited ability to resist and where we can get away with nodding along, while knowing that this is bullshit. I believe the threat to Greenland for example was much more concrete and dangerous and rightly led to Europeans using some of their limited ability to resist to put a foot down. This current threat to Spain seems vague and unenforceable, given the structure of the EU. With the realities being as they are it seems unwise to use what little power we have to resist for a pointless threat that will be forgotten in two weeks. The alternative is a head on collision like the one that Zelensky experienced that may not be forgotten.
What the Europeans should have done is to build an independent power base and maintain that, even if it costs effort and money. Unfortunately we didn’t and now we are where we are.
While I really don’t like the guy, I feel like he understands that the best way of dealing with a narcissist that you’re powerless to confront head on is to just let him talk.
I believe he understands that you need to choose your battles wisely. I’m convinced that it takes a lot of effort to keep a straight face when this big baby goes on one of his rants. We all know that cutting trade ties with Spain is all but impossible, given the structure of the EU. By this time next week Mango Mussolini will have forgotten all about this episode. The only way to escalate is to give him more fuel for his fire, for example by directly challenging his lies. Unless you happen to have enough power to do so, like China, that’s not a good option in my opinion.
This must be this freedom of speech, that is supposedly under attack.
Thank you for this great answer! It’s something I intuitively felt but couldn’t put my finger on with the same surgical precision you just did.
It must have been a terrible experience serving on one of these. The death rates were also very high.