Author: staff

Bis kommenden Montag will die Spitze der SPD nun endlich entscheiden, ob es einen Kanzlerkandidaten, Scholz oder Pistorius, geben wird. Wie nicht alle, aber die wichtigsten Zeichen für Scholz stehen, fasst Gordon Repinski zusammen. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview spricht der Juso-Vorsitzende Philipp Thürmer über die Streitpunkte mit dem Kanzler, warum auch Pistorius nicht für Jubelstürme unter den Jungsozialisten sorgt und wie aus Juso-Sicht ein Wahlkampf mit einem wenig geliebten Kandidaten aussehen wird. Die ZEIT veröffentlicht erste Auszüge aus den Memoiren von Angela Merkel. Was darin steht, hat Rasmus Buchsteiner für euch bereits gelesen. Und: Das sonst so trockene Jahressteuergesetz erfreut voraussichtlich Hobby-Bierbrauer.…

Consider Anca Gheorghe, a 23-year-old Roma woman from Romania. She attended a poorly resourced school with unqualified teachers and faced unfair discrimination, leaving her with limited opportunities. Left with virtually no other options, she joined an EU-funded vocational program to train as a hairdresser, hoping for financial independence. Yet, there are already enough hairdressers in her small town, leaving her without work in her field. Gheorghe’s experience highlights broader issues. First, many EU training programs are not aligned with the realities of local job markets. Training alone isn’t enough if it doesn’t lead to real opportunities. Draghi recently underscored this,…

The fiscal straitjacket has already helped to bring down Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition, making an election likely on Feb. 23. The coalition collapsed earlier this month largely because Finance Minister Christian Lindner’s proposals to keep the deficit within limits all proved unacceptable to his coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens. After Scholz fired Lindner, his fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP)  left the government, paving the way for an election in February, seven months earlier than scheduled. Recognition of the need for a major overhaul is growing. This month, the government’s Council of Economic Advisers floated a…

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a trained medical doctor, put her skills to use mid-flight on Wednesday after a passenger suffered an emergency during her return to Brussels from the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. The Commission president stepped in to provide medical assistance to a passenger who “needed medical attention,” after airline staff called for help on a flight from Zurich to Brussels, Commission spokesperson Arianna Podesta confirmed. “As happens in these cases, the airline personnel onboard asked if any passenger had medical knowledge,” Podesta said. “The president therefore assisted the passenger in need until we…

A trough of low pressure has settled over Central Europe, with polar cold air and high-altitude currents flooding the region. Snow has begun falling across parts of Central Europe as a front of polar cold air sweeps across the continent.In Belgium, Tuesday’s heavy rain and gale force winds turned frosty, forming a layer of snow on the peaks near the Signal de Botrange.The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium has issued a yellow warning for ice and snow in the provinces Hainaut, Liège, Luxembourg and Namur, as temperatures drop to around or below zero degrees.Snowfall is also expected on the Ardennes…

Since September, von der Leyen has carefully curated her 26 commissioners (one from each of the European Union’s 27 member countries; she is Germany’s commissioner), to consolidate her own hold over the Commission and the EU’s policy-making. She assigned six executive vice presidents (Estonia’s Kaja Kallas, Italy’s Raffaele Fitto, Romania’s Roxana Mînzatu, France’s Stéphane Séjourné, Spain’s Teresa Ribera and Finland’s Henna Virkkunen) to manage the “regular” commissioners.  The decision to include right-winger Fitto as her minister of EU affairs upset the European Parliament’s second-largest group, the Socialists and Democrats, who rebuked von der Leyen’s center-right European People’s Party for giving…

“He judged everything from the perspective of the property entrepreneur he had been before politics,” she wrote of Trump. “Each property could only be allocated once. If he didn’t get it, someone else did. That was also how he looked at the world.” “For him, all countries were in competition with each other, in which the success of one was the failure of the other; he did not believe that the prosperity of all could be increased through co-operation.” Merkel’s comments are notable because of the high level of respect she commanded among European political leaders, even as her reign…

Updated: 20/11/2024 – 22:04 GMT+1 Gangs attacked Pétionville, an upscale district of Port-au-Prince, early Tuesday, led by Jimmy Chérizier, a gang leader also known as “Barbecue.” Residents and police joined forces, killing 28 suspected gang members. Gangs attacked Pétionville, an upscale district of Port-au-Prince, early Tuesday, led by Jimmy Chérizier, a gang leader also known as “Barbecue.” Residents and police joined forces, killing 28 suspected gang members.The attack is part of an escalating spiral of violence, with gangs now controlling 85% of the capital and displacing over 20,000 people. Despite the presence of a Kenyan UN-backed mission, the situation has…

In exchange for supporting Italy’s hard-right commissioner nominee Raffaele Fitto, which the socialists initially refused to do, S&D and Renew demanded that the EPP commit to sticking with the centrist mainstream majority, rather than turning to a right-wing majority in the Parliament. But the agreement falls short of that, and does not add a new dynamic to the relationship among the three groups. The watered-down declaration merely focuses on broad objectives for the coming five years, drawing from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s June investiture speech.   The three groups “agree to cooperate,” and “reaffirm” their “pledge to…

The fact that the coordinators of the political groups are being instructed to meet is a strong signal that a deal to unblock the deadlock is in the offing. However, senior lawmakers such as Manfred Weber, Iratxe García and Valérie Hayer smiled and remained tight-lipped when entering a closed-door meeting in the Parliament this afternoon, refusing to confirm if they had reached a deal. Fitto was nominated by Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and would oversee policy areas such as agriculture and transport. Ribera would hold arguably the second-largest portfolio, covering competition and climate policy. The meeting comes eight…