Displaying items by tag: Europe

Alternative for Germany (AfD), founded in 2013, is a right-wing populist and Eurosceptic political party. In 2016 it made an alliance with the Freedom Party of Austria, with both party leaders saying border control officers should use armed force if necessary to protect the border. By May 2017, the AfD had gained representation in 13 of the 16 German state parliaments. Now it has become the third largest party in the German parliament, partly because immigration was the main election issue. Postwar Germany is multicultural, tolerant and liberal: abhorring war, and defending the environment, human rights and international teamwork. BUT the influx of over one million Muslim migrants, Russia’s dramatic resurgence, and Europe’s rolling financial problems are arousing other feelings and aspirations. These emotions don’t square with the desire to be tolerant and multicultural. Many are saying that a more powerful, more assertive, more terrifying Germany is coming.

The German elections have weakened Chancellor Merkel’s leadership authority. Weeks of Brexit talks will be lost while Germany forms a government that can command a majority in its parliament. In the UK there are disagreements between Westminster and the leaders of the devolved parliaments/assemblies over which powers should eventually be ‘taken back’ from Brussels and the continuing failure to reach a Northern Ireland border agreement. Much more could be written, but the key thing for us all is to keep praying for those involved in the Brexit negotiations. May they make agreements that will speedily remove the fear and uncertainty faced by UK citizens in Europe and EU citizens in the UK, and bring clarity to businesses employing thousands who need to plan ahead for the next twelve months and beyond.

The UN has accused Russia of committing grave human rights violations in Crimea. There is a need for accountability. Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, after that country's leader was overthrown. The UN report has documented random arrests, detentions, disappearances, torture, and at least one execution. There have been ‘intrusive law enforcement raids of private properties’, and the human rights situation has ‘significantly deteriorated’, with hundreds of prisoners illegally transferred from Crimea to Russian jails. Civil servants have been forced to renounce their Ukrainian citizenship or face losing their jobs, and Moscow has replaced Ukrainian laws with Russian ones. Education in Ukrainian has all but disappeared from Crimean schools. There was no immediate response from Russia to the report's accusations.

In what will be seen as a kick in the teeth to Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, Emmanuel Macron insisted that the EU should set goals for the next ten years and enforce treaty changes, or risk other member states following Brexit. The French president urged ‘new ambition’, or the Brussels bloc would face the ‘dismantling of Europe’. His comments followed Mr Juncker’s state of the union speech, which included his master plan for greater integration without treaty change. Speaking in New York, Mr Macron warned of difficult months and years ahead for the bloc if it could not shake off its image of overbearing bureaucracy; he said that other countries which are not comfortable with this will leave. Juncker had called for EU integration in the face of rising populism and elections in Italy, Sweden, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, where Eurosceptic parties are gaining momentum.

On 21 September, the day before Theresa May delivers her first major Brexit speech in Florence, she met with her Cabinet to discuss her terms for Brexit. The last time she addressed the EU was in January, at Lancaster House, when she set out her original vision for Britain outside the EU. Now, with negotiations deadlocked over the ‘Brexit bill’ and the role of the EU courts, Europe is looking for a major policy intervention. Boris Johnson says the media is talking 'nonsense' about MPs having split allegiances while he and Philip Hammond, at opposite ends of the soft/hard Brexit debate, attempt to present a choreographed show of unity. However, some believe Friday's speech will not generate 'an immediate breakthrough' in Brexit talks.

Angela Merkel has been chancellor since 2005. Her Lutheran faith (she calls it an inner compass) expresses itself in her unflashy style and her instincts - debt is bad; helping the needy, good. She thinks ethically, not ideologically. ‘I’m a bit liberal, a bit Christian-social, a bit conservative’, she said in 2009. Her years in office have made her a familiar figure to Germans and to the world. However, Germany needs reform. The lowest-paid 40% of German workers are earning less than 20 years ago. Foodbank use is up. The rate of investment has been dropping since 2012. Bridges creak and potholed roads challenge even the best-engineered suspensions. The economically crucial car industry has been tainted, as has the country’s air, by emissions from the diesel engines it favours (a scandal it tried to cover up). Dirty coal is filling gaps left by closing nuclear plants, and the country’s carbon-dioxide emissions are up.

Pablo leads a small indigenous ministry. He says Syrian refugees are frustrated with Islam, and when we begin to show the love of God in our actions and tell them about God in the Bible, they say they had never heard anything like it. When they start coming to church one of the brothers begins visiting them in their apartment, and explains that, as Christians, they are expressing God's compassion and kindness. The refugees become Christian. Every six months the EU sends 150 refugee families to this ministry for assistance to get resettled. Every month its human and financial resources are stretched. But they do whatever God tells them to do.

French unions are famously radical and resistant to reforms. On 12 September rail workers, students and civil servants protested in cities from Paris to Toulouse against loosening labour regulations, seen as a key public test of the president’s reformist resolve. Police said there were 24,000 protesters in Paris; stone-throwing activists clashed with police, who responded with tear gas. Four thousand strikes were called around France by the country's biggest public sector trade union, the CGT. The numbers were, however, well below protests against another labour reform last year.

The following declaration is from Passion for the Nation: ‘We declare over our Parliament, over the EU and over all those involved in Brexit negotiations, that the Lord God is the Master Planner of heaven and earth. His plans are for good and not for evil, greater than every plan of man or the enemy to bring confusion, division or hopelessness. We come into agreement with His word, He is “the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist”. We stand as Your Ecclesia, and in the Name of Jesus we call forth the strategies of heaven over all matters concerning Brexit. We declare they will be seen, heard, endorsed and enacted by those called to policy-making at this time’.

The impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland - and its border with the Republic of Ireland - is one of the key issues being discussed in the early stages of UK-EU negotiations. Some feared a return to border checks that could undermine the Good Friday peace agreement and damage the economy. On 7 September the BBC reported that the EU wants Northern Ireland to have a different Brexit deal from the rest of the UK. The document says the UK should take responsibility for finding a ‘unique solution’ so that people can work, go to school or get medical treatment either side of the Irish border. The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier will publish details later. He said ‘a lot more substantive work’ is needed on the border issue.