Monthly Archives: October 2020

The health minister tested positive for COVID-19 after meeting with colleagues. Officials implore Germans to stay home for their communities — but often fail to practice what they preach, writes DW’s Rosalia Romaniec.

When the news that Health Minister Jens Spahn had tested positive for the coronavirus was made public last week, many in Germany expected that half of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet would have to isolate as well. In the morning on the day he tested positive, Spahn participated in a meeting of government ministers. There was certainly a vocal exchange — possibly loud at times — and maybe even some laughter. Not everyone present would have worn masks the entire time. And is a meeting like that even safe? It’s the federal government, after all.

There is a risk wherever people meet. And these are German leaders who are accompanied by security personnel and government staff to several meetings a day as part of their job governing a country of 83 million people.

Even more concerning is that nobody decided to isolate after hearing of Spahn’s positive test — not even as a precautionary measure. In the end, a single minister decided to have herself tested.

On the day Spahn’s infection was confirmed, his spokesperson said the health minister had had “no fever,” but that “cold symptoms” were present. Excuse me? Did Spahn go into the Cabinet meeting with cold symptoms? The reassuring answer came two days later: no — in the meeting, Spahn had just noticed a hoarse throat, but the cold symptoms didn’t come until later, which is why he decided to test that very day.

Precaution ‘whenever possible’
Merkel did not recommend that all who were present at the meeting be tested — but her spokesperson did clarify the hygiene policies of the chancellery and noted that the meeting had been held in a large open room with modern ventilation. That which is not wrong, is not automatically right, of course. Possible doubts could quickly have been clarified. A government that is urging Germans to follow strict measures could have offered a helpful display of caution.

Perhaps Merkel is tired of the pandemic. The otherwise-disciplined chancellor even allowed herself a small slipup last week. “Whenever possible,” Merkel said on her weekly podcast, “please stay home.” Shortly after, she was spotted shopping in Berlin — though with a mask.

Some people who see the otherwise-admonitory Merkel in line for the register might simply think it’s nifty to have caught the chancellor out shopping. Others might decide that the pandemic is not so dangerous, after all, if Merkel thinks shopping is still safe. It’s not an easy time for politicians, but they may be underestimating the value of setting an example.

Who’s the spreader?
Up until the beginning of summer, the only people wearing masks at the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament, were the facility’s staff and journalists. Politicians walked the halls as if they were immune. For the first months of the pandemic, the Bundestag was its own universe. Masks have only been required in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, since October 6.

Which brings us back to Spahn. Last week, he met with several people. From whom he caught the coronavirus could not be traced. It seems odd that Berlin’s city-state health officials would say the matter is back under control. For a while, they have not been able to promptly inform people who need to isolate. In fairness, several leading German politicians have self-isolated out of concern for the people around them, including Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

On Twitter, Spahn told the people whom he had encountered during the period that he hopes they “stay healthy.” In April, he had offered a bit of foreshadowing when he said: “We are likely going to have to forgive each other for a lot.” He was so right.

(25. 10. 2020 via dw.com)

Polish President Andrzej Duda is on Monday expected to attend a summit of Three Seas Initiative countries in Tallinn, Estonia.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 5th Summit of the Three Seas Initiative, a Polish-led regional drive by European countries between the Black, Baltic and Adriatic Seas, will mostly take place online.

Leaders from across Central and Eastern Europe as well as German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are due to take part remotely.

The debates will be led by Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid, and, apart from Poland’s Duda, only the Bulgarian head of state, Rumen Radev, will be physically present in Tallinn.

Margrethe Vestager, a deputy head of the European Commission, is scheduled to join the talks, according to Krzysztof Szczerski, chief of staff to the Polish president.

‘Euro-Atlantic unity’

In a statement for the press ahead of the summit, Szczerski underlined the importance of the meeting, saying that three conditions were crucial to defining the future of the Three Seas Initiative region: the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and its socioeconomic impact; decisions affecting “the future financial frameworks” of the European Union; and the outcome of the upcoming presidential election in the United States.

Szczerski said that “the Three Seas states should be unanimous in their reactions, with a focus on Euro-Atlantic unity.”

The Polish presidential minister also told the media that Monday’s meeting would be an opportunity to sum up the achievements of the regional drive, such as the setting up of the Three Seas Initiative Investment Fund and the launch of a joint business forum and a business council by the member states.

The Polish-led Three Seas Initiative aims to boost infrastructure, energy and business ties among 12 countries between the Black, Baltic and Adriatic Seas.

The initiative brings together Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The initiative’s key partners are Germany, the European Union and the United States.

Polish, US to sign nuclear energy deal

During the summit, Poland’s Secretary of State for Strategic Energy Infrastructure Piotr Naimski is scheduled to hold talks with US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette.

The talks are expected to culminate in the signing of an intergovernmental deal between the two countries to work together in developing nuclear energy and a civil nuclear power industry in Poland.

Under the document, within 18 months, Poland and the United States will aim to come up with a joint report on the basis of which the Polish government will make a final choice of partner to carry out a programme to develop nuclear energy in the country.

Bilateral talks on the sidelines

While in Tallinn, the Polish president is scheduled to hold separate meetings with his Estonian counterpart Kersti Kaljulaid and the country’s Prime Minister Juri Ratas to discuss bilateral relations and economic ties as well as security in the Baltic region amid tensions in nearby Belarus.

(19. 10. 2020 via thenews.pl)

Detained include parents of students who complained about teacher’s use of caricatures of the Prophet.

French law enforcement officials have detained 11 people in connection with the beheading on Friday evening of a schoolteacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in his class, French media reported.

Police shot and killed the murder suspect, who was not named, but was described by the authorities as an 18-year-old man of Chechen origin, who was born in Moscow.

The victim of the gruesome crime, in Conflans-Saint-Honorine, about 30 kilometers outside of Paris, was identified as Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher at a middle school, who also taught a course in morality and civics.

The 11 detained individuals include relatives of the attacker, including one minor, as well as parents of students who attend the middle school where the victim taught. The parents had complained about Paty’s use of caricatures of the Prophet, which were shown in class as part of a discussion about freedom of expression. The teacher had reportedly offered students the option of leaving the classroom if they were offended by the images.

One parent filed a criminal complaint against Paty, France’s anti-terrorism public prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard, said in a press conference Saturday. The teacher filed a complaint of defamation in response.

The parent also criticized Paty in a video posted to social media that included a call for “mobilization” against the teacher, according to Ricard.

Investigators found a text claiming responsibility for the attack and a photograph of the dead victim on the assailant’s phone, Ricard said, adding that the man was “unknown to intelligence services.”

Police are also investigating a tweet by the account @Tchetchene_270, which has since been suspended, that included a photograph of the victim’s severed head along with a message to French President Emmanuel Macron: “To Macron, the leader of the infidels, I executed one of your hellhounds who dared to belittle Muhammad, calm his fellow human beings before a harsh punishment is inflicted on you.”

Macron, who visited the scene of the attack on Friday, called the killing an “Islamist terrorist attack” and described France as being in an “existential” fight against terror.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also condemned the murder. She described herself as “horrified” and issued a statement in solidarity with educators. “Without them, there are no citizens,” she wrote on Twitter. “Without them, there is no democracy.”

On Sunday, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told French media he would propose “reinforcing controls on the financial flows” of some Islamist organizations in response to the attack, adding that cryptocurrencies “pose a real problem in financing terrorism.”

Paty’s murder, he said, “will remain as a deep wound in the French nation.”

(2020. október 17. via politico.eu)

Historical issues were high on the agenda when the Polish and German foreign ministers held bilateral talks in Berlin on Thursday.

During a meeting with Germany’s Heiko Maas in Berlin, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau voiced hope that the two countries would soon resolve the issue of commemorating Polish World War II victims in Germany, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.

The two top diplomats also talked about ideas to promote Polish language teaching in Germany, the Polish foreign ministry said.

It added that the main focus of the talks was “on a range of topics on the current bilateral, European and international agenda.”

The Polish foreign ministry noted that Rau visited Berlin directly after holding trilateral talks earlier in the day in Paris with the German and French foreign ministers as part of what is known as the Weimar Triangle group.

(16. 10. 2020 via thenews.pl)

The presidents of Poland and Ukraine are on Monday to sign a joint declaration which outlines the two neighbours’ goals in bilateral relations, the chief of staff to the Polish head of state has said.

The document is to be inked after talks between Poland’s Andrzej Duda, who is on a three-day visit to Ukraine, and his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.

Krzysztof Szczerski, chief of staff to Duda, said: “The presidents will adopt a very important political declaration which summarizes and reviews all the most important aspects in bilateral relations, both in terms of security, the economic situation, and also the situation of national minorities in both countries, and historical issues.”

Szczerski added that the declaration would be an “extremely important document that comprehensively outlines the strategy and goals of our joint Polish-Ukrainian policy and Polish-Ukrainian relations in various areas for the coming years.”

Szczerski told reporters that Monday would also see Polish state-run oil and gas giant PGNiG signing a deal that will give it the right to take part in the privatization of the energy sector in Ukraine.

“We want to invest in Ukraine,” Szczerski said. “Thanks to this agreement, the way will be open for PGNiG to negotiate the possibility of entering the process of the privatization of the energy sector in Ukraine.”

During his visit to Ukraine, Poland’s Duda is also set to hold talks with Prime Minister Denys Shmygal and Parliamentary Speaker Dmytro Razumkov.

Duda started his trip to Ukraine on Sunday with a ceremony in a Polish military cemetery at Bykivnya in the capital Kiev to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviets during World War II.

(12. 10. 2020 via thenews.pl)

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has described the former German chancellor as an “errand boy” who is “paid” by the Russian president. DW takes a look at the two men’s close and enduring relationship.

The close friendship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and former German Chancellor Schröder, often described as a “bromance,” is seen by many critics as providing a vindication for Putin’s increasingly autocratic control over Russian politics.

The friendship goes back a long way. Many in Germany still remember a 2004 interview in which Schröder was asked whether Putin was a “flawless democrat,” to which the former chancellor responded: “Yes, I’m convinced that he is.” His answer was, of course, dynamite.

Back in March 2004, the “flawless democrat” had just won 71% of the vote in Russia’s presidential election, taken control of most key state institutions, made it more difficult to set up new political parties and clamped down on the activities of non-governmental organizations.

But it is clearly a different Putin that Schröder has in mind: the Vladimir Putin with whom he shares an intimate friendship. The Vladimir Putin who takes him on a Christmas sleigh ride in Moscow. And the Vladimir Putin who visited Schröder’s home in Hanover to celebrate his 60th birthday.

Buddies with a shared blind spot
As early as 2004, Schröder was willing to leap to Putin’s defense and, in essence, that is the way it has stayed.

But why is the former German chancellor so willing to side with an autocrat? Gernot Erler — Russia expert and, like Schröder, a member of Germany’s center-left Social Democrats (SPD) — believes he has the answer to that question.

“We will never hear any criticism of Putin’s actions coming from Gerhard Schröder,” he said. “And that is precisely because of their long-lasting friendship. For Schröder this means that no matter what the facts are: they stand by each other at all cost.”

In 2005, then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his SPD party lost a snap election by a narrow margin. He gave up his seat in parliament and announced that his political career was over.

At Putin’s request, Schröder was swiftly appointed chairman of the offshore natural gas pipeline Nord Stream. Less than a month after leaving the chancellery, he had allowed the Russian president to convince him of the “European dimension of the project.”

European dimension? Poland and the Baltic republics have vehemently criticized Schröder’s backing for Nord Stream. And in Germany, too, there have been loud rumblings. Schröder’s political opponents were quick to label him a “shameless turncoat” and his new post “indecent.” After all, he had given massive backing to the pipeline project while he was, so very recently, still in office.

Partying in St. Petersburg, war in Ukraine
In 2014, Schröder celebrated his 70th birthday in style: in St. Petersburg — at the invitation of Nord Stream. He greeted his special guest, Putin, with a big hug and described him as an extremely reliable friend with whom he had developed a relationship based on mutual trust. “Call it a friendship,” Schröder said. But, he insisted, the two friends did not “talk politics.”

At that time Russia had just recently violated international law by annexing the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea that officially belonged to Ukraine. And in the east of Ukraine, a civil war had just broken outbetween Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists.

Extravagant birthday celebrations were underway in St. Petersburg while, just a thousand kilometers to the south, there was war. For many in Berlin, this amounted to an unacceptable provocation.

Schröder’s seemingly “uncritical” friendship with Putin regularly makes news in Germany. In 2016, Schröder pointed to history for an explanation of the profound relationship. “Both of our families suffered terribly during World War II. I lost my father. Putin’s brother died during the German siege of Leningrad,” said Schröder. “And,” he continued, Putin had “kept every promise that he has made, as I have, too.”

Schröder goes on the offensive
A year later, in 2017, the Russian government proposed Schröder as chairman of the board of directors at Rosneft. This was shocking for many observers, given that the state-owned oil giant was on the European Union’s sanction list for its involvement in the annexation of Crimea.

“It’s my life and it’s me who decides what to do with it, and not the German press,” Schröder said defiantly in his defense.

In the same year, in the middle of a general election campaign in Germany, Schröder went out of his way to criticize the stationing of German Bundeswehr forces in Lithuania, close to the Russian border. “That sends completely the wrong signal,” said the former chancellor. Germany’s NATO allies were outraged.

In an interview with Die Zeit newspaper, Schröder then applauded the Russian leader for his “rational behavior,” and added, “Compared with the US president, we should be glad to have Putin.”

Two years later, Schröder was again celebrating his birthday — this time his 75th. And Putin took the occasion to praise the former chancellor’s “high level of international authority and his central personal role in promoting German-Russian relations.”

Schröder is still clearly determined to defend these relations. And in his interview podcast at the end of September, he insisted there were “no proven facts” that Russia was behind the recent poisoning of opposition activist Alexei Navalny —although Germany’s military laboratory had announced that thesamples taken from his blood confirmed the presence of a nerve agent from the banned Novichok family.

When Navalny then called Schröder Putin’s “errand boy,” Schröder announced he would sue Bild, the paper that published the interview, for libel.

Navalny also said he was in no doubt that Putin has been making secret cash payments to Schröder, but was quick to admit not having any proof for the allegation.

Schröder’s behavior ‘damaging Germany’s interests’
Speaking with DW, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff of Germany’s opposition Free Democrats said Schröder’s behavior was “damaging Germany’s interests.”

“Even if Schröder’s involvement in Russia is legal,” he added, “it is certainly not worthy of a former German head of government.”

“Companies like Gazprom and Rosneft aren’t private businesses. They belong to the Russian state, which uses its energy policies as a weapon to intimidate its European neighbors,” he said.

There are many in Germany who would like to see closer and more constructive ties between Berlin and Moscow. But across the political spectrum, Schröder’s dealings with the former spy in the Kremlin are seen as counterproductive.

(9. 10. 2020 via dw.com)