"";"url";"date";"title";"body"

"1";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/ursula-von-der-leyen-says-polands-lgbt-free-zones-have-no-place-in-eu";2020-09-16;"Ursula von der Leyen says Poland's 'LGBT-free zones' have no place in EU";"In her first ‘state of union’ speech, European commission president delivers criticism of Polish ruling party

The head of the European commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said Poland’s “LGBT free zones” are “humanity-free zones” that have no place in the European Union in her strongest criticism yet of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party.

In a wide-ranging 77-minute speech spanning from coronavirus to the climate emergency, Von der Leyen pledged to build “a union of equality” and criticised European member states that watered down EU foreign policy messages on human rights.

She made plain her disapproval of Poland’s rightwing nationalist government, which has often hit out at “LGBT ideology”, while a number of Polish towns declared themselves “LGBT-ideology free zones”.

The EU is locked in a long-running dispute with Poland over the rule of law, since the ruling Law and Justice party embarked on policies that weaken independent courts. With no end in sight, that fight is set to intensify, as Von der Leyen signalled she would not back down on linking EU funds to financial probity, following questions over the use of European money in Hungary and the Czech Republic. She said protecting the EU budget “against any kind of fraud, corruption and conflict of interest” was “non-negotiable”.

The commission president lamented that EU foreign policy could be “delayed, watered down or held hostage for other motives”, as she called for an end to national vetoes.

Brussels has long called for an end to national vetoes on foreign policy, but Von der Leyen – who has pledged to lead a “geopolitical commission” – made the point by criticising EU governments for blocking stronger positions.

The EU, Von der Leyen said, needed to call out human rights abuses, whether in Hong Kong or over the fate of the Uighurs. “But what holds us back? Why are even simple statements on EU values delayed, watered down or held hostage for other motives? When member states say Europe is too slow, I say to them be courageous and finally move to qualified majority voting – at least on human rights and sanctions implementation.”

She promised her officials would draft a “Magnitsky act”, a targeted sanctions regime to punish human-rights offenders. Similar legislation already exists in the US and was recently introduced in the UK. The acts take their name from the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow jail aged 37, after uncovering a massive tax fraud by state officials.

The commission president, a close ally of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, criticised the Russian government by describing the poisoning of the opposition activist Alexei Navalny as “not a one-off” and part of a pattern of behaviour. “This pattern is not changing – and no pipeline will change that,” she added in a cryptic reference to the German-Russian Nord Stream II pipeline from which Merkel’s government is under pressure to withdraw its support.

Von der Leyen was delivering her first “state of the union” speech, since beginning a five-year term last December. The annual speech to the European parliament, an idea consciously modelled on its US namesake, is intended to set out EU legislative priorities.

In the speech that cited Andrei Sakharov, Margaret Thatcher and John Hume, she struck an upbeat tone about EU unity, after a shaky start when EU member states closed borders and slapped export bans on medical supplies.

Having chided EU governments in the past for failing to support Italy in its hour of need, Von der Leyen struck a more optimistic note, saying member states had overcome their differences; including by agreeing a €750bn (£688bn) recovery plan.

“We turned fear and division between member states into confidence in our union,” she claimed. She said the EU needed more powers to tackle future pandemics and vowed to create an agency for biomedical advanced research and development, an equivalent to the US agency funding vaccine research, Barda.

Without naming Donald Trump, she made a few swipes at the US president, criticising “vaccine nationalism” and major powers, who are “pulling out of institutions or taking them hostage for their own interests”. But the EU could be on a collision course with a new Democratic incumbent of the White House, as Von der Leyen promised to revive plans for an EU digital tax in the absence of an international agreement. Barack Obama’s administration complained that Brussels was unfairly singling out US tech giants.

As widely trailed, Von der Leyen proposed the EU should cut greenhouse gas emissions by “at least 55%” by 2030 compared with 1990 levels. Green campaigners have welcomed the increase in ambition (upping the current 40% reduction target) but fear “an accounting trick” in how the new target will be calculated.

Preoccupied by coronavirus and foreign policy crises, EU leaders have given little attention to Brexit in recent months. Von der Leyen said the chances of an agreement were fading with every day that passed, as she warned the UK government not to renege on the Brexit withdrawal agreement Boris Johnson signed last year. Noting that the Brexit deal had been ratified by MEPs and MPs, Von der Leyen said it could not be “unilaterally changed, disregarded, disapplied. This is a matter of law and trust and good faith.”

Von der Leyen, who is the first female president in the commission’s 63-year history, said the EU had to do more to confront racism in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests. In a move that could trigger conflict with sovereignty-conscious member states, she proposed extending the list of EU crimes to cover all forms of hate crime and hate speech, whether linked to race, religion, gender or sexuality.

She promised to appoint the European commission’s first-ever anti-racism coordinator “to keep the issue “at the top of our agenda”.

… exposing further allegations of sexual harassment by Donald Trump. A American model became the 26th woman to accuse the US president of indecent behaviour. With an election imminent that will have repercussions around the world, stories like this matter. That’s why we invest heavily in journalism that reveals the truth.

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"2";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/13/party-disputes-thwart-angela-merkels-hopes-of-an-orderly-succession";2020-09-13;"Party disputes thwart Angela Merkel’s hopes of an orderly succession";"The German chancellor is standing down next year, but the handover is not going to plan for the three main rivals

On the rocky road towards Germany’s post-Merkel future, one thing used to seem certain: the shoes of the first female, Protestant East German scientist at the top of German politics would be filled by a male Catholic Rhinelander with a law degree.

That description still fits all the three official candidates who at a party congress in early December will pitch to lead Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the indispensable behemoth of postwar politics in Europe’s largest economy.

But the pandemic has realigned the stars for some of its top politicians to the extent that CDU insiders worry the leadership race’s most likely outcome no longer looks ideal, and the ideal outcome for the greater good of the party looks unlikely.

The impressive lead the conservatives have built up through their handling of the Covid-19 threat, they fear, could melt away as a squabbling party emerges from the shadow of the chancellor that has unified them for the last 15 years.

Merkel, who will not be running for a fifth term at federal elections in 2021, has already had to tear up her succession plan once: her designated continuity candidate, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who took charge of the CDU in December 2018, announced her resignation a year later, her authority diminished by a series of internal power struggles.

Before the onset of Covid-19, a new chair was due to be crowned at a party congress in late April. Armin Laschet, the moderate state premier of North-Rhine-Westphalia, looked like the top contender after winning over the ambitious young health minister, Jens Spahn, as his number two.

Laschet, a loyal defender of Merkel’s refugee policy in 2015, also has the advantage that his home turf is Germany’s most populous state, providing almost 30% of the 1,001 delegates who get to cast their vote on the future leadership. But the 59-year-old with Wallonian roots has floundered during the pandemic, in which he emerged as one of the most prominent voices of relaxing social distancing restrictions – only to then have to coordinate Germany’s first “second lockdown” following a Covid-19 outbreak at an abattoir in Gütersloh. In the eyes of many voters, “pushy Laschet” looked more concerned with local business lobbyists than the welfare of the country as a whole.

“It’s hard to imagine Laschet staring down Putin, Xi or Trump,” said one previously sympathetic CDU delegate.

As Laschet’s popularity ratings nosedived, another conservative politician rose to unseen heights: polls showed the Bavarian premier Markus Söder, who had introduced a lockdown in Germany’s southernmost state before it came into place in the rest of the country, to be the most popular politician in the country.

“In a world that is increasingly marked by insecurities – through migration movements, climate change or global pandemics – we are seeing a high preparedness to trade some basic rights in exchange for stability,” says Wolfgang Merkel (no relation), a political scientist at Berlin’s Humboldt University.

A recent study authored by Merkel shows populist attitudes in Germany to be in steep decline after rising during the refugee crisis – a trend, he says, which was accelerated by strong statesmanship by established parties at the height of the pandemic.

“For governments, there is a new premium on leaders who can demonstrate strength and act decisively, albeit without the populist rhetoric. For the CDU, that means polls will be crucial for choosing its chancellor candidate, and for now they point towards Söder rather than Laschet.”

As the leader of the CDU’s sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), Söder won’t be in the running when delegates gather for a socially distanced one-day congress in Stuttgart this winter, most likely on 4 December.

But he could become the two parties’ candidate for the chancellory – an option that has been tried before, with an unhappy ending for the conservatives. Both in 1980 and 2002 the CDU/CSU lost an election as a result, and many still believe that Bavarian politicians with their broad accents and overtly Catholic brand of conservatism simply cannot win enough votes north of the river Main.

Söder’s growing band of vocal admirers point out that their man is in fact from Franconia, and a Protestant at that. “He’s the least Bavarian leader the CSU has ever had,” says one fan.

For the 6ft 4in southerner to run, however, he would need the support of the head of the CDU in Berlin: something that Laschet would be as unlikely to offer as Friedrich Merz, the veteran hardliner and Merkel critic who is seen as the number two in the three-horse race for the leadership.

Some Christian Democrat MPs envision a “dream ticket” of Söder and Spahn, whose star has also shone brightly during the pandemic. But for the openly gay 40-year-old to run for the leadership would require reneging on his deal with Laschet. “In politics everyone loves betrayal, but no one loves a traitor,” said an official at the CDU headquarters when asked about such an option.

There’s an outside chance that the fiendishly complicated reshuffle at the top of Germany’s biggest party could benefit the outside candidate: Norbert Röttgen, the third Catholic lawyer from Rhineland-Westphalia on the ballot.

After leading the CDU to a crushing defeat in his home state in 2012 and losing his job in Merkel’s second cabinet as a result, the former environment minister has slowly crept back into the limelight through his role as chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee.

As the Alexei Navalny/novichok affair has forced Germany to reconsider its approach to Russia, Röttgen’s outspoken views have impressed conservatives who are frustrated with Laschet and Söder’s soft-pedalling. But the suave, sometimes over-confident 55-year-old’s biggest asset could be his openness to ceding the chancellor candidacy to Söder. If Röttgen made it to the second round, he might end up with the votes of the embittered supporters of one of the two frontrunners almost by accident.

Merkel’s line of succession, which has been planned, postponed and redrawn continuously over the last decade, could in the end be a matter of chance.

… joining us from Germany, we have a small favour to ask. You've read

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

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"3";"https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/07/why-the-germans-do-it-better-by-john-kampfner-review-in-praise-of-the-powerhouse";2020-09-07;"Why the Germans Do it Better by John Kampfner review – in praise of the powerhouse";"A veteran journalist’s even-handed hymn to Germany underlines why Britain will need its help in a post-Brexit world

Books about the contemporary state of a country are hard to pull off. They need to capture the sweep of recent history and sundry quirks of culture, while weaving in their author’s passions, aversions and contacts. Add to this the publisher’s requirements that anything currently written about Britain’s relations with Europe is framed polemically and the result is a title such as Why the Germans Do it Better: Notes from a Grown-Up Country.

John Kampfner’s polemic treads the accompanying line between curiosity and sententiousness. It taps smartly into the hunch that Germany has got a lot of things right that Britain has not, not least in the recent response to Covid-19.

A veteran newspaper correspondent in Germany during the Wendezeit (“time of changes”), after the collapse of East Germany in 1989/90, he is drawn to revisit the country and, as next month marks 30 years of reunification, it’s an ideal moment to take stock. Inevitably, Angela Merkel looms large, having been in power for 15 of those years. In essence, this is a hymn of praise to the Federal Republic under her leadership. For those unhappy about the direction of a Britain “mired in monolingual mediocrity”, as Kampfner puts it, thriving on a TV diet of war documentaries and tone-deaf British politicians, it looks like a very attractive alternative indeed.

Merkel’s status as an icon is sealed by admiration for her bravely open-handed policy on migration in the refugee crisis of 2015, when the rest of Europe was parsimonious with its assistance. As a well-researched chapter here on those events and their aftermath concludes, this was the moment that created the view of Merkel as the high priestess of liberal values.

In other areas, more questionable assumptions abound. On a trip back across the old east, Kampfner praises the amount of money spent on trying to glue the two uneven parts of a country divided by war and superpower standoff back together and cheers the €2tn devoted to that endeavour. The successes are nicely evoked: we discover that Leipzig, the smog-laden city of the 1989 revolution, is so fashionable and popular for investors that it has been dubbed “Hypezig”.

Germany is placid, unshowy and diligent. It can also be smug

Yet the question that worries German policymakers is how vast the economic gap has remained. Its own annual Unity report flags up worrying gaps in pensions and earnings and how slowly these are closing, more so than was intended by the optimistic architects of reunification.

So, yes, Germany is placid, unshowy and diligent. It can also be smug, as underlined by the senior official whose analysis of populism is that “other countries have not learned the same lessons as we have”. In the shape of the AfD, Kampfner finds the resurgent far right peddling a “collection bowl of grievances” with a nasty racist edge to boot. Here is the paradox of German politics - the country that is lauded as the most consensual produces election results in which a large portion of the popular vote now goes to parties of the extreme right and left, and anti-vaxx and anti-mask demos happen on a large scale, even while the Covid-19 response is widely praised.

Being grown up means responsibility in the wider world and here the record is chequered. The laggardly approach to raising defence spending (the money matters less than the implied drift away from the western alliance), armed forces beset by interminable internal problems and a determination to plough on with the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project reflect a fragmented geopolitical outlook in Berlin. The price of the “grown up” – corporatism that powers the German economy – is also that a lot of dubious stuff gets swept under the carpet, as the saga of the car industry and the still unfolding emissions scandal shows.

So to Brexit, which, as Kampfner points out, has strained the “frenemy” relationship. Since 2016, it has not looked as if either side has much appetite to extend an olive branch and those of us who wince at the “you crazy Brits” preachiness must concur that there has been a breach in relations that urgently needs to be healed. Britain’s post-EU future will in no small part depend on rebuilding an affinity with the European powerhouse and rubbing along together in a fragmented world. Whether Brexiters like it or not, the heirs to Merkel will shape the next lurching chapter of our island story.

Anne McElvoy is senior editor of the Economist and author of The Saddled Cow: East Germany’s Life and Legacy

• Why the Germans Do it Better: Notes from a Grown-Up Country by John Kampfner is published by Atlantic Books (£16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15

… joining us from Germany, we have a small favour to ask. You've read

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

If there were ever a time to join us, and help accelerate our growth, it is now. You have the power to support us through these challenging economic times and enable real-world impact.

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"4";"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/06/the-observer-view-on-russias-poisoning-of-alexei-navalny";2020-09-06;"The Observer view on Russia's poisoning of Alexei Navalny";"Western condemnation is worthless. But if Angela Merkel cancels the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, Putin will take notice

Alexei Navalny, who lies critically ill in a German hospital after being poisoned in Siberia, is Russia’s unofficial leader of the opposition and the politician Vladimir Putin fears most. Relatively young, resourceful and smart, he has bravely defied many previous attempts to silence him, including imprisonment and physical attacks. Navalny is not easily dismissed as a pro-western dissident or leftwing intellectual. He is a Russian patriot, a daring, Jason Bourne-like figure who recently flew drones over the private dachas of the Kremlin elite to expose their apparently corruptly acquired wealth, then posted videos online.

That the Kremlin is responsible for Navalny’s plight is not in serious doubt. Whether Putin had prior knowledge of the plot, or personally authorised it, will probably never be known. As usual, the Kremlin is hiding behind a wall of denials and absurd claims, such as that Navalny fell ill after flying on an empty stomach. But his German doctors are unequivocal. He was poisoned by a chemical nerve agent, novichok, which the Russian state secretly developed and which only Russia is known to have used.

Novichok refers to a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s to elude international restrictions on chemical weapons. Like other nerve agents, they are organophosphate compounds, but the chemicals used to make them, and their final structures, are considered classified in the UK, the US and other countries.

The most potent of the novichok substances are considered to be more lethal than VX, the most deadly of the familiar nerve agents, which include sarin, tabun and soman.

Novichok agents work in a similar way, by massively over-stimulating muscles and glands. Treatment for novichok exposure would be the same as for other nerve agents, namely with atropine, diazepam and potentially drugs called oximes.

The chemical structures of novichok agents were made public in 2008 by Vil Mirzayanov, a former Russian scientist living in the US, but the structures have never been publicly confirmed. It is thought they can be made in different forms, including as a dust aerosol.

The novichoks are known as binary agents because they only become lethal  after mixing two otherwise harmless components. According to Mirzayanov, they are 10 to 100 times more toxic than conventional nerve agents.

Why choose this particular moment to assassinate a longstanding opponent? One possible reason is widespread political unrest in Russia’s far east, which Navalny tried to tap into before he was attacked. For a worried Kremlin, the pro-democracy uprising in neighbouring Belarus sets a dangerous precedent he could exploit. Another possible reason is the negative impact of the pandemic on Russia’s economy, which is in freefall, and on Putin’s personal standing.

The timing may also have been influenced by events further afield. Putin reportedly expects Donald Trump to be re-elected in November. According to US intelligence, he is doing his covert best to help him. But if Joe Biden wins, Putin’s easy ride will end. American tolerance for his anti-western subversion operations and malign meddling in places such as Ukraine, the Baltic republics, the Balkans and the Middle East will fall. The same goes for the regime’s internal repression and its egregious habit of killing or jailing critics.

Who attacked Navalny is not realistically in doubt. The bigger, unanswered question is what can the western democracies do about it? As after the Salisbury novichok poisonings, there has been a chorus of condemnation from just about everyone except Trump. As in 2018, sanctions and expulsions of Russian diplomats are mooted. Russia has been sternly told it must provide an explanation for breaching international law and the prohibition on using chemical weapons.

Putin reportedly expects Donald Trump to be re-elected. If Joe Biden wins, his easy ride will end

Yet those making such calls, including the EU, Nato, the UN and Britain, know perfectly well that Putin will do no such thing. If punitive measures are imposed, he will ride them out, as he did over Crimea. Contemptuously flouting western liberal opinion matters far more to him than any damage that may be done to Russia and its people.

But there is a way to hit him where it hurts and it’s in the hands of Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has been outspoken over the Navalny affair. As urged by Germany’s Greens and many in her ruling coalition, Merkel could and should scrap the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which, if completed, will greatly enrich Putin and his larcenous henchmen. Cancellation could also reduce Russian leverage in Europe, sending a powerful message Putin could not ignore.

More important still, abandoning the pipeline would be an environmental boon. It’s crazy to be boosting gas capacity during a climate emergency, thereby increasing use of high-carbon fossil fuels. Merkel should perform a double U-turn: scrap Nord Stream 2 and lift her veto on nuclear power generation to assure Germany’s future energy supply. It’s asking a lot. But Merkel is nearing the end of her career and has political capital in the bank. To adapt her famous words in 2015: “Sie kann es schaffen” – she can manage it.

… exposing further allegations of sexual harassment by Donald Trump. An American model became the 26th woman to accuse the US president of indecent behaviour. With an election imminent that will have repercussions around the world, stories like this matter. That’s why we invest heavily in journalism that reveals the truth.

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in the last year. And you’re not alone; millions are flocking to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day, and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us financially. Thanks for joining us today from Germany.

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

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"5";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/navalny-poisoning-forces-merkels-party-to-ask-how-do-we-hit-back-at-putin";2020-09-05;"Navalny poisoning forces Merkel’s party to ask: how to hit back at Putin?";"The strength of the German chancellor’s condemnation of Russia was a surprise – and the multi-billion Nord Stream project could now be at risk

Germany is demanding answers from the Kremlin over the confirmed poisoning of the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, but is struggling to find methods to extract them that don’t involve a humiliating loss of face.

The assertive manner in which Angela Merkel announced on Wednesday that Navalny, who is lying in an induced coma in a Berlin hospital, had been targeted with a nerve agent from the novichok group raised eyebrows, and not just in the German capital.

Stepping out in front of the press in person, the chancellor described the “attempted murder by poisoning” as “an attack on the fundamental values and basic rights to which we are committed”.

Her foreign and defence ministers reiterated the message on camera: three of the most senior figures in Merkel’s cabinet made themselves personally accountable, knowing the rest of their careers could be judged on whether they will follow up words with actions.

The tone was even more surprising because many felt Germany had soft-pedalled last year after the murder of a Chechen dissident in a park in central Berlin, at the hands of what federal prosecutors believe was an assassin hired by the Russian state: an incident on paper more severe than Navalny’s, who ended up in Berlin for treatment almost by accident, at the request of his friends and relatives.

For years, we have misunderstood the game of chess that the Kremlin has been playing with us, and now we cannot pull the sanction strings any tighter without garrotting ourselves

In the case of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, or the attempted poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Britain in 2018, there were suspects whose movements could be traced back to Russia. With Navalny, there were only traces of the rare nerve agent, which western intelligence agencies believe to be a sole prerogative of the Russian state.

Instead, German exasperation over the novichok find is also an expression of a broader disillusionment with its own “special relationship” with Russia. “Germany’s diplomatic approach to Russia has run out of road this week,” said Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who sits on the foreign affairs committee of the Bundestag.

“For years, we have misunderstood the game of chess that the Kremlin has been playing with us,” Kiesewetter told the Observer. “And now we cannot pull the sanction strings any tighter without garrotting ourselves.”

In the postwar period, German diplomacy towards Russia has tried – and often struggled – to reconcile a tough stance over security or human rights with a friendly dialogue that pays respect to a joint history of bloody wars and shared cultural memories.

The question of which of these strands to prioritise cuts across traditional party lines, not just between east and west but also north and south, with the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s CDU, the CSU, openly in favour of relaxing sanctions against Russia.

“Germany has traditionally pursued a twin-pillar strategy with Russia: on the one hand confrontation, on the other hand strategic selective engagement,” said Fabian Burkhardt, a political scientist at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg.

“But the use of a chemical nerve agent against a political opponent has genuinely shaken the second pillar. Merkel’s reaction on Wednesday spoke of a deep-seated frustration that has built up over the years. At the moment it is hard to see where the common basis for a strategic engagement could be.”

Merkel’s own approach during her 15 years in power, while decidedly sceptical towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia, was never openly aggressive. The Nord Stream 2 project, a twin pipeline running from the Narva Bay in Russia to the German town of Lubmin, was carried over from her Social Democrat predecessor Gerhard Schröder in spite of criticism from the US, the European commission and EU member states in eastern Europe and the Baltics.

As recently as Tuesday Merkel insisted that the €9.5bn project, which is 94% finished, was still on course to be completed. Party allies argue that the commitment to phase out nuclear and coal, coupled with the slow build-up of power transmission routes from the windy north to the country’s south, has made the import of Russian natural gas indispensable.

In the wake of the Navalny poisoning, however, a U-turn on the profitable project may be Merkel’s only way to hit Putin “where it hurts”, as the news weekly Der Spiegel wrote. Political voices calling for a moratorium on the project, mainly from the Green party, but also from the pro-business Free Democrats and Merkel’s own CDU, have grown in volume.

Berlin has not asked for [sanctions] and the location of the poisoning, on Russian territory, makes it different to the incident in Salisbury

The pipeline, which is owned by the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom, “indirectly finances a regime that does not shy away from using banned weapons of mass destruction”, Annalena Baerbock, the Greens’ co-leader, said on Friday.

With work on the pipeline on hold after construction companies withdrew under threat of US sanctions, critics say the time to stop the project has never been better: pulling the plug could be presented as a decisive political act rather than being cowed by American threats.

Penalties for breach of contract, estimated by the European Commission in 2017 to be as high as €800m, would pale in comparison with the multibillion-euro pandemic rescue funds.

Some economists also question whether Germany really needs the pipeline to keep its lights on at all. “Demand for natural gas in Germany has always been lower than forecast in the last 10 years and will decline in the future” says Claudia Kemfert of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).

Europe, she argues, could maintain its natural gas use almost at the same level even if Russia ended its deliveries completely, by shipping in more liquefied natural gas from the Middle East, west Africa or America.

In Merkel’s chancellory such calculations will be studied with close interest in the coming weeks, even as Berlin publicly calls for a joint European rather than a unilateral German response to the Navalny case.

So far, the EU as a whole has condemned “in the strongest possible terms the poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny” but there has been limited pressure within the bloc for sanctions.

Despite the insistence of Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, that such a move has not been ruled out there remains little appetite for it among the larger member states.

“The Baltic states wanted them, of course, but Berlin has not asked for it and the location of the poisoning, on Russian territory, makes it different to the incident in Salisbury,” said one EU diplomat in Brussels.

The incident has, however, thwarted what appeared to be a concerted attempt by the French president Emmanuel Macron to build bridges with the Kremlin. Plans for a visit by Macron to Moscow later this month along with a summit of foreign and defence ministers from the two countries are now in doubt.

A meeting in September 2019 in Moscow had opened a “strategic dialogue” called for by Macron, in a move that surprised European partners. “It was ill advised anyway and this has shown why,” said an EU source.

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in the last year. And you’re not alone; millions are flocking to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day, and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us financially.

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

If there were ever a time to join us, and help accelerate our growth, it is now. You have the power to support us through these challenging economic times and enable real-world impact.

Every contribution, however big or small, makes a difference. Support us today from as little as €1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you."

"6";"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/03/the-guardian-view-on-putin-and-navalnys-poisoning-actions-speak-louder-than-words";2020-09-03;"The Guardian view on Putin and Navalny’s poisoning: actions speak louder than words";"European countries have voiced their outrage at the attempted assassination of the Russian opposition leader. But what will they do?

Outrageous and reprehensible, certainly. The international reaction to the poisoning of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, got that much right. But Germany’s description of the act as “astounding” was less apt. Few were surprised when Berlin confirmed on Wednesday that a nerve agent from the Novichok family had been used, tying the attack firmly to the highest levels of the Russian state, though Moscow has denied involvement. Mr Navalny is being treated in Germany and remains gravely ill.

The question is what follows the condemnation. The wife of the British policeman who almost died after investigating the 2018 Salisbury poisonings gave a tart response to Boris Johnson’s denunciation: “Actions speak louder than words.” The attack on defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia – which led to the death of a British woman, Dawn Sturgess – stirred the west to concerted diplomatic action, with 20 countries carrying out a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats alleged to be spies. But it had little discernible effect, and with fewer foreign diplomats left in Moscow, countries are more reluctant to lose them to tit-for-tat expulsions.

Angela Merkel was unusually vocal in her condemnation on Wednesday, saying the attack was, beyond doubt, attempted murder, which posed “very serious questions that only the Russian government can answer – and must answer”. But she was also adamant that Germany will press ahead with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which could double the amount of gas brought into Europe from Russia.

Mr Navalny had suggested action to rein in Russia should target those with close links to Mr Putin, including in London. In the UK, Magnitsky-style legislation and unexplained wealth orders give the government new options. It shows little interest. The long-delayed Russia report, finally released in July, found that British government and intelligence agencies failed to conduct any proper assessment of Kremlin attempts to interfere with the 2016 Brexit referendum. The Conservative party has received more than £3m from wealthy Soviet-born donors, many of them with close ties to Mr Putin, and a Brexit government wants to maximise foreign investment.

To no one’s surprise, though the White House has condemned the poisoning, Donald Trump has barely deigned to acknowledge it. The US president was unhappy at the extent of the 2018 expulsions. He has yet to challenge Vladimir Putin over intelligence reports that Russia paid bounties to the Taliban for fatal attacks on US troops in Afghanistan. He suggested the Russian president’s denials of election meddling in 2016 bore more weight than US intelligence assessments, and dismisses the reports that Kremlin-backed groups are trying to interfere in November’s election on his behalf.

While many have suggested that the attack on Mr Navalny may have been sparked by Moscow’s anxieties about the uprising in Belarus, and the protests in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk, some have also wondered whether the prospect of a Biden administration might have prompted action sooner rather than later. What is certain is that while the Kremlin faces little or no cost for interfering in foreign democracies, and not much more for endangering foreign citizens with attacks on foreign soil, it will be confident that it can act with impunity within its own borders. Others cannot claim to be surprised by the results."

"7";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/03/merkel-pressured-to-end-nord-stream-2-support-after-navalny-poisoning";2020-09-03;"Merkel pressured to end Nord Stream 2 support after Navalny poisoning";"German opposition calls on chancellor to use gas pipeline project to warn Kremlin

Angela Merkel is under growing domestic pressure to end her support for the joint German-Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline project over the confirmed poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The German Green party called on the chancellor to use the nearly completed infrastructure project to press the Kremlin into answering allegations over what Merkel called the “silencing” of Navalny with a novichok nerve agent.

“This openly attempted murder through the Kremlin’s mafia-like structures should not just worry us but needs to have real consequences,” said Katrin Göring-Eckardt, the co-chair of the Greens in the Bundestag.

“Nord Stream 2 is no longer something we can jointly pursue with Russia,” said the politician for the ecological party, currently second in polls to Merkel’s CDU and a likely contender for the next coalition government.

Russia insisted there was no reason for the west to accuse it over Navalny and said any response from Germany or other countries would be premature. The Kremlin claimed hospital tests carried out on Navalny inside Russia before he was flown to Berlin found nothing suspicious.

“There are no grounds to accuse the Russian state. And we are not inclined to accept any accusations in this respect,” Vladimir Putin’s press spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said.

Instead, senior Russian figures offered their own counter-explanations for Navalny’s illness. Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Moscow’s foreign intelligence service, said western intelligence agencies were to blame. Andrei Lugovoi – who was charged by the UK with poisoning Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 with radioactive tea– accused Berlin. The Germans had contaminated Navalny with novichok, he said.

The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called on Moscow to cooperate with an international probe into the poisoning and said the 27-nation bloc would not rule out sanctions. Brussels “reserves the right to take appropriate actions, including through restrictive measures”, Borrell said in a statement.

Calls to permanently halt the construction of the two 764-mile (1,230km) pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea, from the Narva Bay in Russia to the German town of Lubmin, were echoed within the German chancellor’s own party.

Norbert Röttgen, the chairman of the Bundestag’s committee on foreign affairs and a candidate for the CDU leadership, told German media on Wednesday that completing the joint project would amount to encouraging Putin’s “inhuman and contemptuous politics”.

“After the poisoning of Navalny we need a strong European answer, which Putin understands,” Röttgen said. “The EU should jointly decide to stop Nord Stream 2.”

The tabloid newspaper Bild also called for a change of mind from the chancellor, who as recently as Tuesday reiterated her government’s intention to complete the multibillion-euro infrastructure project.

“The government can condemn the poisoning of Putin critic Navalny ‘in the strongest terms possible’,” said a Bild editorial on Thursday. “It can show its ‘dismay’. It can ‘urgently’ call on the Kremlin to explain itself. But as long as it acts in collusion with Putin on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, all these declarations are just empty words”.

Not just the US, but also states in eastern Europe and the Baltics have repeatedly expressed concerns about the pipeline since the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder approved its construction in 2005, saying it will increase Putin’s geopolitical influence.

The Nord Stream 2 twin pipeline is nearly finished, with only about 160 out of a planned 1,220km (760 miles) remaining.

However, the construction of the gas project has been on halt since late December last year, when the Swiss pipeline manufacturer Allseas ceased its work after threats of targeted US sanctions.

The German utility firm Uniper, one of Gazprom’s five financial partners in the project, last month conceded there was an increasing possibility the pipeline would never be completed.

Though set into motion by Merkel’s centre-left predecessor shortly before the start of her tenure, the construction project is of vital economic importance for the country because Germany is likely to need more imported gas in the future – and particularly for the chancellor’s own constituency in the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The German broadsheet Süddeutsche Zeitung commented on Thursday that Merkel’s strong condemnation of Navalny’s poisoning would make it harder to square the circle of her support for the joint project.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said Navalny’s poisoning was a matter of grave concern. It said the use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances was reprehensible and “wholly contrary to the legal norms established by the international community”.

In April 2018 undercover officers from Russia’s GRU military spy agency tried to hack the OPCW, which is based in The Hague. They were arrested in a car park opposite the building. The mission took place shortly after the novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal by two GRU assassins.

The OPCW said it was monitoring the Navalny situation and was ready to engage with any state that needed its help.

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in the last year. And you’re not alone; millions are flocking to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day, and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us financially.

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

If there were ever a time to join us, and help accelerate our growth, it is now. You have the power to support us through these challenging economic times and enable real-world impact.

Every contribution, however big or small, makes a difference. Support us today from as little as €1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you."

"8";"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/03/germany-extend-furlough-scheme-britain-kurzarbeit";2020-09-03;"Germany is right to extend its furlough scheme. Why won't Britain do the same?";"The Kurzarbeit part-time working scheme is criticised as expensive – but it has protected German jobs and skills

Alongside Zoom, Netflix and Amazon, Germanophilia has to be counted as one of the prime victors of the pandemic that has so thoroughly remade the world this year. It isn’t hard to see why: for every collapse of Anglo-American leadership, there seems to have been a German counter-example. From testing to lockdowns, contact tracing to hospital beds, Germany has thrived where Britain has floundered. Most recently, the decision of Merkel’s coalition government to extend the popular furlough scheme known as Kurzarbeit (literally, “short work”), is being greeted by many as another example of Teutonic good sense.

The Kurzarbeit programme, in which the government provides workers whose hours have been reduced with a minimum of 60% of their lost pay, has been credited by many with softening the economic blow of the pandemic. Shekhar Aiyar, the IMF’s mission chief for Germany, praised the programme lavishly in an interview, claiming that Germany, by expanding the scope of the scheme and making it more flexible, “is doing precisely what should be done in deep recessions”. Dominic Rushe attributes a substantial portion of the difference between the US unemployment crisis and Germany’s moderate bump in jobless numbers to Kurzarbeit, while the Economist claims that for many experts, “the model for a Covid-19 furlough scheme has been Germany’s”.

The scheme wasn’t built in a day. It first emerged in the early 20th century, when it was instituted as a means of softening the mass unemployment that followed the first world war in Germany – in 1924, nearly a quarter of all Germans were on Kurzarbeit, while another 11% were unemployed. The same system was largely adapted by West Germany after the war, and it helped to soften unemployment during recessions in 1967, 1975, and 1983. Beyond the obvious benefit of reducing unemployment, the scheme is particularly adept at ensuring that highly trained workers can continue to use their skills despite recessions. Thomas Fuster, writing in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, claims that it is “no coincidence that Kurzarbeit is most commonly found in countries where on-the job training is especially important”. Companies that invest heavily in their employees are more heavily motivated to invest in their retention. Companies – and countries – whose economies rely largely on unskilled labour are more comfortable with unstable labour markets.

The scheme is not without its problems. There are, of course, concerns about the costs. Christian von Stetten of Merkel’s CDU complained that the programme would constitute a “sabbatical at taxpayers’ expense”, while Katja Suding, a politician from the liberal FDP, claimed that it amounted to “burning taxpayers’ money”. These claims are often coupled with the argument that the system merely delays the loss of jobs, rather than preventing them. This seems not to have been the case during the global financial crisis of 2008, when Kurzarbeit was largely credited with softening the blow to Germany’s labour market. Yet there are substantial concerns that the scheme could help prop up companies, or even entire industries, that should properly be contracting. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warned in 2019 that the German auto industry, which was already struggling with a bad export market prior to the pandemic, should not be propped up with Kurzarbeit indefinitely. Now – after profiting from a massive bailout in 2008 – German automakers continue to rely on government subsidies thanks to the programme.

There are also substantial concerns that the system is rife for abuse – companies can easily claim that their workers are spending fewer hours on the job, while business goes on as usual. Yet the number of such cases seems to be limited. Currently, there are just 900 cases under investigation, while 880,000 companies have claimed Kurzarbeit during the pandemic. A more substantial problem has to do with the nature of the scheme itself. It’s easy to tell whether a factory worker is working less than a full day. It’s very hard to tell whether a computer programmer, lawyer or graphic designer has finished their work in six hours or eight, particularly when everyone is working from home. In one columnist’s view, newspapers that sent their entire editorial staff into Kurzarbeit risk defrauding taxpayers, given that the competitive culture that had long thrived in journalism prior to the pandemic makes it virtually impossible to imagine that editors are in fact working part time.

For all of these problems, the decision to extend coronavirus Kurzarbeit protections has been widely praised in Germany. It’s not hard to see why. As serious as these issues might be, they pale in comparison to the kind of mass unemployment the US is currently experiencing, and investing in the retention of highly qualified workers now may prop up some failing industries, but it will also help others to stay competitive through an unprecedented global crisis. The question, really, isn’t why the Germans are extending their programme; given the widespread acclaim for it among both trade unions and economists, the question is much more why Britain is still resisting extending its own furlough programme.

• Peter Kuras is a writer and translator based in Berlin

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in the last year. And you’re not alone; millions are flocking to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day, and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us financially.

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

If there were ever a time to join us, and help accelerate our growth, it is now. You have the power to support us through these challenging economic times and enable real-world impact.

Every contribution, however big or small, makes a difference. Support us today from as little as €1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you."

"9";"https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/03/wife-poisoned-police-officer-pm-boris-johnson-novichok-tweet-alexei-navalny";2020-09-03;"Germany more likely than UK to investigate latest novichock attack says Sturgess father";"Exclusive: Stan, father of Dawn Sturgess, killed by nerve agent poison, hopes Angela Merkel will put more pressure on Moscow after attack of Navalny

The father of the woman who died in the Wiltshire nerve agent poisonings said he hoped the novichok attack on the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny would lead to fresh scrutiny of Moscow, adding that he believed Germany might work harder to get answers than the UK had done since the death of his daughter.

Stan Sturgess, father of Dawn, who died in July 2018, said he felt Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, would ask more searching questions than did Boris Johnson following the novichok poisonings in Salisbury. Johnson was the foreign secretary at the time of the Wiltshire poisonings.

He added that the revelations from the German government that it believed Navalny, who is being treated in Berlin, had been poisoned with the deadly nerve agent had brought back awful memories.

Sturgess said he was not surprised to learn novichok apparently had been used again. “As soon as I heard Navalny had been poisoned I thought it was novichok. It’s the Russians’ calling card. The Russians want everyone to know it’s them. We always said it could happen again.”

Sturgess said: “At least Angela Merkel may ask more questions than Boris Johnson was ever going to ask. Maybe more pressure will be put on the Russians now. Boris never asked anything. We may get some more answers. I don’t know if we’ll get justice but everything opens the door a bit more.

“It brings back terrible memories, it churns it all up again. It’s scary times for anyone who goes against the Russians.”

Dawn Sturgess’s partner, Charlie Rowley, who is still recovering from the effects of novichok poisoning, said: “They’ve done it once and got away with it and they can do it again and they feel they can get away with it with no come-back.” Rowley suffers from eye problems, shortness of breath and mental health issues, which he blames on his exposure to novichok.

Rowley suggested the evidence continued to grow against Russia. “It comes across more and more that it leads back to Russia. Because it’s happened again, you don’t know when it’s going to stop, or if it’s going to stop.”

Rowley said he was angry. “I want to find out what happened. I’m upset it’s happened again but I hope we get some results this time. I’d like questions to be answered and I hope this time around whoever is in charge will push forward and try to get some answers. I hope they get to the bottom of it.”

The wife of Nick Bailey, the police officer who almost died after investigating the 2018 poisonings, said there had been no justice for the victims of the Salisbury attack including for her husband and Dawn Sturgess’ family. Replying to a tweet from the prime minister in which he condemned the attack on Navalny, Sarah Bailey said: “Actions speak louder than words.”

The former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned with novichok in March 2018. Nick Bailey was contaminated after going into Skripal’s house after the attack. The three survived after lengthy spells in hospital.

At the end of June 2018, Sturgess and her partner, Rowley, were poisoned by novichok in Amesbury, eight miles north of Salisbury, after he found a fake perfume bottle that turned out to contain the nerve agent. Rowley survived but Sturgess, 44, died on 8 July 2018.

The two men suspected of bringing the novichok to Salisbury, Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga, colonels in Russia’s GRU military spy agency, have been charged in absentia over the poisoning of the Skripals, but it is highly unlikely the men will ever be brought before a court in the UK.

Both Bailey and his wife replied via Twitter to a post from Johnson in which the prime minister said the attack against Navalny was “outrageous”.

It’s outrageous that a chemical weapon was used against Alexey Navalny. We have seen first-hand the deadly consequences of Novichok in the UK. The Russian government must now explain what happened to Mr Navalny – we will work with international partners to ensure justice is done.

Bailey responded: “I have so much that I want to say about this tweet. But I can’t, and I won’t.”

I have so much that I want to say about this tweet. But I can’t, and I won’t. https://t.co/1ZzDzl5WKa

Sarah Bailey said: “Justice would be nice. Actions speak louder than words,” before adding that there’s been no justice for the Sturgesses and Skripals in the two and a half years since the attacks, and “now it’s happened again”.

Justice would be nice. Actions speak louder than words. #nevergoingtohappen https://t.co/KbM0xomPZb

There appears to be no consequences for the culprits. The Government are right to condemn these actions, but in 2 1/2 years will it be forgotten about? That’s how it feels for us. #RIPDawn

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in the last year. And you’re not alone; millions are flocking to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day, and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us financially.

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

If there were ever a time to join us, and help accelerate our growth, it is now. You have the power to support us through these challenging economic times and enable real-world impact.

Every contribution, however big or small, makes a difference. Support us today from as little as €1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you."

"10";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/02/alexei-navalny-poisoned-with-novichok-says-german-government-russia";2020-09-03;"Alexei Navalny novichok finding prompts calls for answers from Moscow";"Angela Merkel says poisoning was attempted murder and White House calls it ‘reprehensible’

World leaders are demanding answers from the Kremlin after toxicological examinations indicated that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent from the novichok family.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, revealed that tests carried out at a military laboratory had “identified unequivocally” the Soviet era nerve agent. She referred to the case as an “attempted murder” and said the findings raised “very difficult questions that only the Russian government can answer, and has to answer”.

The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, called the findings “outrageous” and said: “The Russian government must now explain what happened to Mr Navalny.”

The White House called the attack “completely reprehensible”. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called it an “outrageous and brazen attempt on Mr Navalny’s life” and noted that Donald Trump had yet to personally condemn the attack.

Navalny, whose foundation publishes investigations into corruption among high-level officials in Russia, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on 20 August and was transferred to Berlin two days later.

Doctors who treated him in the Siberian city of Omsk, where his flight made an emergency landing, insisted there was no proof of poisoning and were initially reluctant to allow him to leave the country on a specially equipped plane.

The discovery that novichok was used on Navalny will lead many to conclude that the attack was meant as a brazen message to critics of the Kremlin, and Navalny’s associates quickly pointed the finger at Putin.

“Choosing novichok to poison Navalny in 2020 is basically the same thing as leaving an autograph at the scene of the crime,” wrote Navalny’s associate Leonid Volkov on Twitter, appending an image of Putin’s autograph to the tweet.

Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, wrote that it was “beyond any reasonable doubt” that only Russian security services would be able to use novichok.

Born in 1976 just outside Moscow, Alexei Navalny is a lawyer-turned-campaigner whose Anti-Corruption Foundation investigates the wealth of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

He started out as a Russian nationalist, but emerged as the main leader of Russia's democratic opposition during the wave of protests that led up to the 2012 presidential election, and has since been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side.

Navalny is barred from appearing on state television, but has used social media to his advantage. A 2017 documentary accusing the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, of corruption received more than 30m views on YouTube within two months.

He has been repeatedly arrested and jailed. The European court of human rights ruled that Russia violated Navalny's rights by holding him under house arrest in 2014. Election officials barred him from running for president in 2018 due to an embezzlement conviction that he claims was politically motivated. Navalny told the commission its decision would be a vote 'not against me, but against 16,000 people who have nominated me; against 200,000 volunteers who have been canvassing for me'.

There has also been a physical price to pay. In April 2017, he was attacked with green dye that nearly blinded him in one eye, and in July 2019 he was taken from jail to hospital with symptoms that one of his doctors said could indicate poisoning. In 2020, he was again hospitalised after a suspected poisoning, and taken to Germany for treatment. The German government later said toxicology results showed Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.

The nerve agent was used to poison the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Britain two years ago. It is a cholinesterase inhibitor, part of the class of substances that doctors at Berlin’s Charité hospital initially identified in Navalny.

According to the German news magazine Der Spiegel, experts at the Charité sought advice from Porton Down, Britain’s secretive laboratory for research on chemical and biological weapons, because of possible similarities with the 2018 Skripal attack.

The use of novichok nerve agents was banned last year after being added to the chemical weapons convention’s list of controlled substances.

The UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said: “The Russian government has a clear case to answer. It is absolutely unacceptable that this banned chemical weapon has been used again, and once more we see violence directed against a leading Russian opposition figure.”

The US National Security Council noted that Russia had used novichok “in the past”, and said the US would “work with allies and the international community to hold those in Russia accountable, wherever the evidence leads, and restrict funds for their malign activities.”

The German government’s official statement described the attack on Navalny as an “astounding act” and appealed to the Russian government to urgently offer an explanation.

Novichok refers to a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s to elude international restrictions on chemical weapons. Like other nerve agents, they are organophosphate compounds, but the chemicals used to make them, and their final structures, are considered classified in the UK, the US and other countries.

The most potent of the novichok substances are considered to be more lethal than VX, the most deadly of the familiar nerve agents, which include sarin, tabun and soman.

Novichok agents work in a similar way, by massively over-stimulating muscles and glands. Treatment for novichok exposure would be the same as for other nerve agents, namely with atropine, diazepam and potentially drugs called oximes.

The chemical structures of novichok agents were made public in 2008 by Vil Mirzayanov, a former Russian scientist living in the US, but the structures have never been publicly confirmed. It is thought they can be made in different forms, including as a dust aerosol.

The novichoks are known as binary agents because they only become lethal  after mixing two otherwise harmless components. According to Mirzayanov, they are 10 to 100 times more toxic than conventional nerve agents.

“We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms”, said the foreign minister, Heiko Maas, adding that the Russian ambassador in Berlin had been summoned in light of the new findings.

Official reaction in Moscow on Wednesday afternoon was a mixture of denial and obfuscation. The Kremlin said it had not yet been informed of the findings, while some other officials suggested Russia was willing to work with German investigators, but attempted to cast doubt on the test results.

The Russian doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia have repeatedly contested the German hospital’s conclusion, saying they ruled out poisoning as a diagnosis and that their tests for poisonous substances came back negative.

“We will demand that the Germans send their analyses so we can compare with our data and work out what really happened,” Vladimir Dzhabarov, of Russia’s upper house of parliament, told Interfax. “We are ready to cooperate. The main thing is whether they are. Because ideally they should have invited us and familiarised our investigation team with their materials.”

Merkel’s spokesperson Steffen Seibert said the German government would inform its partners in the EU and Nato about the test results. He said it would consult with its partners on appropriate next steps in light of any Russian response.

In the wake of the killing of a Chechen dissident in a central Berlin park last August, the German government was initially cautious to blame the Kremlin, even after federal prosecutors alleged that Russian state agencies had tasked the assassin.

The language of the German government’s statement on the Navalny affair could prompt a more decisive response. Merkel said on Wednesday that the poison attack went “against the basic values we stand for”.

Sergey Lagodinsky, a German Green MEP and former fellow student of Navalny’s at Yale University, said: “I’m impressed by the clear framing of the government’s response. The confirmation that a banned nerve agent was used to poison a Russian opposition politician brings this case on to an international level. We need an international investigation.”

Whether the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has the capacity to carry out such an investigation remains unclear.

On Tuesday, before the use of novichok was confirmed, Merkel had again confirmed that her government would continue and finish the construction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in spite of pressure from the US government.

The infrastructure project, which eastern European states fear will boost Russia’s geopolitical power, plays an important role in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, home to Merkel’s own constituency.

Navalny is being kept in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator at the intensive care unit of the Charité hospital. While his condition remains serious, a spokesperson said last Friday there was no immediate danger to his life.

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in the last year. And you’re not alone; millions are flocking to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day, and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us financially.

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

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"11";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2020/sep/02/angela-merkel-unequivocal-proof-alexei-navalny-was-poisoned-with-novichok-video";2020-09-02;"Angela Merkel: 'unequivocal proof' Alexei Navalny was poisoned with novichok – video";"The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said in a personal statement that testing by a special military laboratory had shown proof that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a novichok nerve agent. 'It is now clear: Alexei Navalny is the victim of a crime,' Merkel said. 'He was meant to be silenced. This raises very difficult questions that only the Russian government can answer, and has to answer'

"

"12";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/30/angela-merkel-great-migrant-gamble-paid-off";2020-08-30;"How Angela Merkel’s great migrant gamble paid off";"Five years ago, as more and more refugees crossed into Europe, Germany’s chancellor proclaimed, ‘We’ll manage this.’ Critics said it was her great mistake – but she has been proved right

Mohammad Hallak found the key to unlock the mysteries of his new homeland when he realised you could switch the subtitles on your Netflix account to German. The 21-year-old Syrian from Aleppo jotted down words he didn’t know, increased his vocabulary and quickly became fluent. Last year, he passed his end of high school exams with a grade of 1.5, the top mark in his year group.

Five years to the month after arriving in Germany as an unaccompanied minor, Hallak is now in his third term studying computer science at the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences and harbours an aspiration to become an IT entrepreneur. “Germany was always my goal”, he says, in the mumbled sing-song of the Ruhr valley dialect. “I’ve always had a funny feeling that I belong here.”

Hallak, an exceptionally motivated student with high social aptitude, is not representative of all the 1.7 million people who applied for asylum in Germany between 2015 and 2019, making it the country with the fifth highest population of refugees in the world. Some of those with whom he trekked through Turkey and across the Mediterranean, he says, haven’t picked up more than a few words and “just chill”.

But Hallak is not a complete outlier either. More than 10,000 people who arrived in Germany as refugees since 2015 have mastered the language sufficiently to enrol at a German university. More than half of those who came are in work and pay taxes. Among refugee children and teenagers, more than 80% say they have a strong sense of belonging to their German schools and feel liked by their peers.

Success stories like Hallak’s partially redeem the optimism expressed by Angela Merkel in a sentence she spoke five years ago this week, at the peak of one of the most tumultuous years in recent European history – a sentence that nearly cost her her job and that she herself has partially retreated from.

“I put it simply, Germany is a strong country,” the German chancellor told the media at a press conference in central Berlin on 31 August 2015, trying to address concerns about the steeply rising number of people – mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – applying for asylum in Germany that summer.

“The motive with which we approach these matters must be: we have already managed so much, we’ll manage this.” During the German TV broadcast of her interview, headlines flashed up to report that Hungary was sending trainloads of people to the German border, 20,000 of whom turned up at Munich central station the following week alone.

The German phrase Merkel used, Wir schaffen das, became so memorable mainly because it would in the weeks and months that followed be endlessly quoted back at her by those who believed that the German chancellor’s optimistic message had encouraged millions more migrants to embark on a dangerous odyssey across the Med. “Merkel’s actions, now, will be hard to correct: her words cannot be unsaid,” wrote the Spectator. “She has exacerbated a problem that will be with us for years, perhaps decades.”

The Alternative für Deutschland party, founded two years previously on a more narrowly anti-euro ticket, discovered a new populist stride: when Merkel said “We will manage”, the rightwing party claimed, she really meant “You will manage”, asking the German public to cope with rising levels of crime, terrorism and public disorder.

“We don’t want to manage this!” the AfD politician Alexander Gauland proclaimed at a party rally in October 2015. Over the coming months and years – in the wake of the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Cologne, the Bataclan terror attack in Paris and the truck rampage on Berlin’s Breitscheidtplatz Christmas market – that sentiment seemed to gain traction with a growing part of the German population, even when the crimes were not carried out by people who had arrived in 2015.

By 2017, there was a prevalent view that Wir schaffen das would be Merkel’s undoing, a “catastrophic mistake” as Donald Trump said in January that year. “The worst decision a European leader has made in modern times,” Nigel Farage told Fox News. “She’s finished.”

Yet today Merkel still sits at the top of Europe’s largest economy, her personal approval ratings back to where they were at the start of 2015 and the polling of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), buoyed to record levels by the global pandemic. When Merkel steps down ahead of federal elections in 2021, as is expected, her party’s successor currently looks more likely to be a centrist in her mould than a hardliner promising a symbolic break with her stance on immigration.

The question is what could she have done differently? You can’t seal a wide-open border with rhetoric and a few guards

The AfD, meanwhile, never reached the point “when it will be the country’s second-largest party”, as historian Niall Ferguson predicted in February 2018. The party has established a steady presence in local parliaments across Germany, especially in the states of the formerly socialist east. But at federal level the AfD has dropped to fourth in the polls, down from its third place and 12.6% at elections in 2017, and has been stricken with infighting since immigration has dropped off the top of the political agenda.

The spectre of jihadist terrorism, which some feared the refugee crisis would usher into the heart of central Europe, has faded from view in recent years. After a spate of seven attacks with an Islamist motive in Germany in 2016, culminating with a truck driven into a Berlin Christmas market that December, the country has seen no further attacks for the last three years.

Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, recalls being invited onto a German TV programme at the height of the crisis in 2015. “I gave my optimistic best back then, but deep down I was worried,” he says. “Will this work out? With nearly a million people about whom we know so little? In the end, those fears were misplaced.

“We know that some of the men involved in the Bataclan attack had exploited the chaos to smuggle themselves into Europe, in some cases posing as Syrian refugees. We also knew that the vast majority of people who arrived were young men, the very demographic that is most susceptible to radicalisation. And yet, we can now say that the worst fears haven’t come true.

“In hindsight, Isis’s collapse happened quicker than we expected. It’s now clear that what made them so attractive for a while is less their ideology than their success. And when Isis stopped being successful, it stopped being attractive.”

However, Neumann says this was also due to the increasing efficiency of German intelligence agencies. According to data collected by Petter Nesser, a senior research fellow with the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, 16 terror plots with a jihadist motive have been foiled on German soil since the start of 2015, more than in France or the UK over the same period.

The events of the summer of 2015 did evidently mobilise and further radicalise Germany’s rightwing extremist circles, who targeted asylum shelters with arson attacks or assassinated politicians with pro-immigration views, such as the CDU’s Walter Lübcke. No other country in Europe saw as much severe and fatal rightwing violence in 2019 as Germany.

Germany’s Federal Office of Criminal Investigations records a rise of criminal offences, including violent crime, in the years between 2014 and 2016, linking the trend to the influx of migration. The percentage of asylum seekers found guilty of such crimes also doubled in the same period. However, the majority of these offences were within the refugee shelters where new arrivals were initially housed. By 2017, when Trump claimed that “crime in Germany is way up” because it had taken in “all of those illegals”, the number of overall recorded crimes was decreasing. Last year, crime in Germany sank to an 18-year low.

What about the organised crime on Europe’s borders, where human traffickers prey on those willing to risk it all in the hope of a better life? In a 2017 book on reforming asylum policy, British economist Paul Collier argued that “while the industry was already well-established in the Mediterranean, the massive rise in demand triggered by the invitation from Germany further increased demand for smuggling by criminal syndicates.”

Gerald Knaus, chairman of the European Stability Initiative, a thinktank that advises EU member-states on migration policy, disagrees vehemently: “The thesis that Merkel created the refugee crisis was absurd in 2015, and it’s even more absurd in retrospect,” he says.

Empirical studies have failed to find data proving that Merkel’s Wir schaffen das significantly intensified the movement of refugees into Europe, although it is likely that the attention drawn towards Germany’s liberal stance on asylum influenced the decisions of those who were already in Europe at the time.

“The question is: what could she have done differently?” says Knaus. “Reintroduce borders and try what France did after the Bataclan attacks in November 2015, sending all irregular migrants back to Italy? That proved futile: France received twice as many asylum applications in 2019 as in 2015. You can’t seal a wide-open border with rhetoric and a few more border guards, while brutality was fortunately ruled out in Germany.”

Germany’s stance in 2015 did prove too optimistic in the sense that Merkel’s government seemed to believe that the tumultuous events of that summer would lead to a quick reform of the Dublin Regulation, the mechanism that determines which state is responsible for examining an asylum application. Knaus says: “The Germans thought everyone would sign up to a quota system because it was ‘fair’, but they couldn’t explain how this would work in practice.”

Instead, Merkel’s government took unilateral steps to slow down the rate of new arrivals to a trickle. An agreement between Turkey and the EU to stop irregular migration and replace it with a resettlement scheme, developed by Knaus’s thinktank, drastically stemmed the flow of migrants to Europe in 2016. Merkel’s government later tried to limit asylum applications from north Africa by adding Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to its list of countries considered safe, though the proposal was later rejected by the upper chamber of Germany’s parliament.

In March this year, Germany launched a social media campaign to deter Syrian refugees from embarking on a journey to central Europe, and Merkel’s “grand coalition” with the centre-left Social Democratic party voted against taking in even just 5,000 vulnerable refugees stranded in Greek camps.

Merkel never recanted her words of August 2015, as many even in her own party insisted she should. But she did ensure a situation like the one that followed won’t be repeated on German soil during her tenure.

On a sweltering afternoon in Berlin’s suburban south, preparations are afoot for the annual summer fete at the Marienfelde transit centre, a sprawling concrete camp that used to be the first port of call for many East Germans who fled to the west during the cold war, and now houses asylum seekers from around the world. While volunteers erect socially distanced benches and hang up garlands in the courtyard, a group of men and women from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq have gathered inside to meet the Berlin senate’s integration officer, to ask for advice and air grievances.

A 44-year-old Syrian is concerned that he might fail next month’s language exam, even though he will need a pass in order to start working. German classes have been cancelled because of the pandemic, and the wireless signal inside the camp is too weak for online learning. “Berlin, on our doorstep, that is Europe,” says the man, who doesn’t want to give his name for fear of getting into trouble with the Syrian embassy. “But this shelter is like a little Syria: everyone speaks Arabic.”

Germany was not the destination of choice for the father of three, who arrived in the country via the resettlement programme of the United Nations’ refugee agency, the UNHCR, in 2018. He is grateful that Merkel’s government took him in, but the wait for a work permit is starting to exasperate him. Before Berlin, he worked for six years as a pastry chef in Izmit, Turkey, but German bakers won’t accept his qualifications – he would need to do another two-year apprenticeship first. “It’s very frustrating.”

It’s a success story even if no one quite has the confidence to say it yet. Germany has managed

The integration officer assures him she empathises with his plight: Katarina Niewiedzial, who has been in the post since 2019, was once a migrant herself, having arrived in Germany from Poland as a 12-year-old. She knows from personal experience the areas of public life where Germany is ill-equipped for the task of integrating newcomers.

German employers are often still reluctant to recognise foreign qualifications. If migrants lack the certificates to prove they are qualified enough to do a job, they can apply to prove their skills in an interview, but they need fluent German to do so – a bigger challenge for adults in their 40s than teenagers like Hallak. Last year, the German Chamber of Commerce only carried out 80 such “qualification analysis” processes in the whole of Germany.

Often refugees end up in jobs they are overqualified for, such as catering, which in turn are more precarious and have cut staff during the pandemic: in May this year, the number of unemployed Berliners without a German passport was up by 40% compared to the same period in 2019.

Many experts think that the integration classes that have been mandatory for refugees in Germany since 2005 are no longer fit for purpose, holding back those with academic qualifications while failing to offer real help for those who arrive without being able to read or write. The percentage of those failing the all-important B1 language test has risen rather than fallen over the last five years. And yet, Niewiedzial is optimistic. “Germany can be a very sluggish country, full of tiresome bureaucracy,” she says. “But it’s also able to learn from its mistakes and draw consequences from them.”

Since 2015, she says, the state had massively expanded its asylum authority, created thousands of posts to coordinate volunteers, turned shelters into permanent homes and trained specialist teachers. Germany has managed. “It’s a success story, even if no one quite has the confidence to say that yet.”

27 August 2015 71 migrants are found dead inside a refrigerated lorry abandoned in Austria. The discovery sparks international revulsion, and contributes to the decisions of several countries to open their borders to people fleeing war and poverty.

31 August 2015 Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, says Wir schaffen das – We’ll manage this – after visiting a camp for newly arrived refugees. Soon after she announces an open-door policy; in the year that follows over a million people claim asylum in Germany.

13 November 2015 The Bataclan attack in Paris is the first of a series of deadly attacks by Isis-affiliated extremists across Europe. In July 2016 a Syrian who declared his support for the group kills himself and injures 15 others with a homemade bomb at a music festival in the German town of Ansbach. The far right uses the attacks to argue against Merkel’s refugee policies.

March 2016 The EU strikes a deal with Turkey to return all refugees and migrants who reach Europe across the Aegean sea. This dramatically reduces the number of people arriving in Germany and other European countries to claim asylum.

19 September 2016 Merkel’s CDU party suffers a slump in support to just 18% in Berlin state elections, while anti-immigration populists Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) enters the German capital’s state parliament for the first time. Mayor Michael Müller warns that the level of support it won “would be seen around the world as a sign of the return of the rightwing and the Nazis in Germany”.

19 December 2016 A Tunisian whose asylum application had been turned down rams a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and wounding 70. Isis claims it inspired the attack.

24 September 2017 The populist radical-right AfD party enters the Bundestag, the German parliament, as the third biggest party. After Merkel forms a coalition with the Social Democrats, it becomes the largest opposition party.

October 2018 After crushing defeats in local elections, Merkel says she will step down as CDU leader almost immediately, and will not contest the 2021 elections, making her fourth term as Germany’s chancellor her last.

2020 Merkel’s effective handling of the coronavirus crisis helps restore her popularity, particularly as the US and UK stumble. One poll finds over 80% of Germans think she is doing her job “rather well”.

Emma Graham-Harrison

• This article was amended on 31 August 2020. An earlier version said that Germany had the second highest population of refugees in the world; this was corrected to fifth highest population. It also said the German government had added Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to its list of countries considered safe; in fact this proposal was later rejected by the Bundesrat."

"13";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/21/cinema-for-peace-the-ngo-trying-to-airlift-alexei-navalny-to-germany";2020-08-21;"Cinema for Peace: the NGO trying to airlift Alexei Navalny to Germany";"Berlin film foundation steps in to help ‘poisoned’ Kremlin critic at request of Pussy Riot member

Germany’s plans to airlift the Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny to Berlin for treatment are being orchestrated by a charitable foundation acting with the explicit blessing of the federal government.

Jaka Bizilj, the Slovenian-born promoter and producer who founded Cinema for Peace in 2002, said his organisation was financing the flight and medical aid through private donors.

The foundation is supported by a group of philanthropists who give aid to humanitarian projects, in particular filmmakers who highlight global social challenges. It hosts an annual awards ceremony for films focusing on political and societal causes, which runs parallel to the Berlin film festival. Previous speakers at its awards gala have included Elton John, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Russian president.

Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition activist, is in a coma in the Siberian city of Omsk after collapsing during a flight to Moscow on Thursday, allegedly from poisoning.

Bizilj’s involvement in the proposed airlift to Germany came about after Pyotr Verzilov, a member of the Russian political punk group Pussy Riot, intervened. Verzilov was himself flown from Moscow to Berlin by Cinema for Peace two years ago, after another suspected poisoning.

Verzilov, who had been treated at Berlin’s Charité university hospital, approached Bizilj on behalf of Navalny’s family this week. Bizilj told the newspaper Bild: “On the request of Pyotr Verzilov, for humanitarian reasons, we organised an aeroplane equipped with necessary medical supplies, so that Navalny can be brought to Germany.”

The Charité has a longstanding reputation for treating foreign patients, including prominent political ones from the Arabic and Russian-speaking worlds, as well as from Africa. In 2012 it sent a team of medical staff to treat the Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko for back pain in prison, and in 2014 she was flown to Berlin for treatment at the hospital.

Paul Ziemiak, general secretary of the ruling CDU, indicated on Thursday that Germany was ready to treat Navalny, saying: “If it’s desired, we have the possibility to help with the treatment.” Angela Merkel, speaking at a meeting on Thursday with president Emmanuel Macron of France, added her support, saying: “What is now very, very important is that this is urgently resolved.”

The Charité’s reputation as a hub for foreign VIP patients was already strong during the cold war when, as the leading hospital in the communist German Democratic Republic, it treated international figureheads such as the Palestinian political leader Yasser Arafat. Its international patients department, which advertises for patients, says on its website that it will “ensure that international patients benefit optimally from the excellence of the Charité”, and that it has translators in English, Arabic and Russian. It adds: “The consideration of cultural and confessional customs is just as much a part of our philosophy as the personal care before, during and after your stay.”

While Russian doctors refused to release Navalny on Friday morning, Bizilj told German media he was optimistic that it would still be possible to airlift the activist to Berlin. “Two years ago, when we transported [Verzilov], there were delays, but in the end everything worked,” he said.

… joining us from Germany, we have a small favour to ask. You've read

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

If there were ever a time to join us, and help accelerate our growth, it is now. You have the power to support us through these challenging economic times and enable real-world impact.

Every contribution, however big or small, makes a difference. Support us today from as little as €1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you."

"14";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/germany-to-extend-coronavirus-furlough-to-24-months";2020-08-18;"Germany to extend coronavirus furlough to 24 months";"Angela Merkel backs proposal to continue Kurzarbeit part-time working scheme

Germany is expected to extend its pandemic furlough scheme to 24 months after Angela Merkel indicated that she welcomed the proposal to let the Kurzarbeit programme run on.

The chancellor’s spokesperson said on Monday she was “positively” inclined towards the suggestion to extend the scheme, which allows firms to put their staff on part-time work to reduce their cost. Britain’s furlough scheme initially only allowed staff to be sent home and not work, but staff have been allowed to work part-time since July.

The finance minister, Olaf Scholz, first proposed extending the benefit programme, which is currently limited to claims lasting a maximum of 12 months, on Sunday. “The corona crisis won’t suddenly disappear in the next few weeks,” said Scholz, who was recently announced as the centre-left Social Democrats’ candidate for chancellor in next year’s elections.

He added: “Businesses and employees need a clear signal from the government: we’ve got your back for the long haul in this crisis, so that no one is being let go without need.”

A final decision on an extension, which it is estimated will cost €10bn (£9bn), is expected on 25 August.

The UK furlough scheme is scheduled to end in October. From August employers have had to start contributing towards its cost, first with pension and national insurance contributions, and with 10% and then 20% of wages in the next two months.

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said this month that the decision to wind down the UK furlough was “one of the most difficult decisions” he had had to make. But he said it was not sustainable, and that most other countries were making similar moves to wind down their schemes.

The UK scheme paid 80% of wages, up to £2,500 a month, for about 9.5 million employees at its peak. The total cost to date is nearly £35bn.

Germany’s furlough scheme is modelled on a programme that won the country praise during the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Called Kurzarbeit (“short work”), it is essentially an unemployment benefit paid out to companies by the government’s Federal Employment Agency, designed to compensate lost earnings for workers who have been temporarily placed on reduced hours, and help companies avoid cutting jobs.

While the economic output of Europe’s powerhouse suffered a 10% slump in the second quarter of 2020, the furlough scheme has so far largely absorbed the accompanying shock on the labour market. German unemployment in July was at 6.3%, an annual increase of a mere 1.3 percentage points. In the US, by comparison, unemployment temporarily rose to a record 14.7% in April.

Companies can apply for Kurzarbeit if at least 10% of their workforce have had their working hours cut by more than 10%. By the end of April 2020, German companies had signed up more than 10.1 million workers to the scheme – almost 10 times as many as at the peak of the financial crisis.

However, not all companies that applied for the scheme used it, meaning the actual number of recipients is considerably lower.

According to estimates by the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, in July about 5.6 million employees we still on the scheme, which has proved especially popular in the manufacturing and retail sector.

Ifo’s labour market expert Sebastian Link predicted redundancies “in the high hundred thousands” if the scheme ended after 12 months.

Link said there were political reasons why the furlough would not end: “I see it as absolutely inevitable that the Kurzarbeit scheme will be extended, not least because we are facing federal elections next year.

“Whether it’s sensible to do so is another matter; in some areas of the economy, such as the car industry, the furlough scheme could end up actually preventing necessary structural changes.”

When the scheme was last used on a mass scale, it only replaced about 60% of workers’ lost earnings. During the coronavirus crisis, Merkel’s coalition government decided to increase payments: after four months on the scheme, recipients receive about 70% of lost earnings, and about 80% after seven months, if they have lost more than 50% of their working hours.

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in the last year. And you’re not alone; millions are flocking to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day, and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us financially.

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

If there were ever a time to join us, and help accelerate our growth, it is now. You have the power to support us through these challenging economic times and enable real-world impact.

Every contribution, however big or small, makes a difference. Support us today from as little as €1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you."

"15";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/female-led-countries-handled-coronavirus-better-study-jacinda-ardern-angela-merkel";2020-08-18;"Female-led countries handled coronavirus better, study suggests";"Analysis points to earlier lockdowns and lower death rates under likes of Jacinda Ardern and Angela Merkel

Countries led by women had “systematically and significantly better” Covid-19 outcomes, research appears to show, locking down earlier and suffering half as many deaths on average as those led by men.

The relative early success of leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Finland’s Sanna Marin has so far attracted many headlines but little academic attention.

The analysis of 194 countries, published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the World Economic Forum, suggests the difference is real and “may be explained by the proactive and coordinated policy responses” adopted by female leaders.

Even after clear and frequently cited outliers such as New Zealand and Germany – and the US for male leaders – were removed from the statistics, the study found, the case for the relative success of female leaders was only strengthened.

“Our results clearly indicate that women leaders reacted more quickly and decisively in the face of potential fatalities,” said Supriya Garikipati, a developmental economist at Liverpool University, co-author with Reading University’s Uma Kambhampati.

“In almost all cases, they locked down earlier than male leaders in similar circumstances. While this may have longer-term economic implications, it has certainly helped these countries to save lives, as evidenced by the significantly lower number of deaths in these countries.”

The two researchers said they analysed differing policy responses and subsequent total Covid-19 cases and deaths until 19 May, introducing a number of variables to help analyse the raw data and draw reliable comparisons between countries.

Among the datasets considered were GDP, total population, population density and proportion of elderly residents, as well as annual health spending per head, openness to international travel and level of gender equality in society in general.

Since only 19 of the nearly 200 countries were led by women, the authors also created so-called “nearest neighbour” countries to offset the small sample size, pairing Germany, New Zealand and Bangladesh with male-led Britain, Ireland and Pakistan.

“This analysis clearly confirms that when women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths,” Garikipati said.

She added that while female leaders “were risk averse with regard to lives”, locking their countries down significantly earlier than male leaders, that also suggested they were “more willing to take risks in the domain of the economy”.

When compared according to the “openness to travel” criterion, female-led countries did not experience significantly lower Covid cases but did report lower deaths, the researchers found, concluding that this may suggest “better policies and compliance”.

Garikipati said the evidence of a “significant and systematic difference” showed that even accounting for institutional context and other controls, “being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis”.

The researchers said they hoped the study would “serve as a starting point to illuminate the discussion on the influence of national leaders in explaining the differences in country Covid-outcomes”.

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in the last year. And you’re not alone; millions are flocking to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day, and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us financially.

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

If there were ever a time to join us, and help accelerate our growth, it is now. You have the power to support us through these challenging economic times and enable real-world impact.

Every contribution, however big or small, makes a difference. Support us today from as little as €1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you."

"16";"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/15/why-germany-would-be-especially-happy-to-see-the-back-of-trump";2020-08-15;"Why Germany would be especially happy to see the back of Trump";"The competence embodied in Merkel provokes loathing from the US president

Donald Trump has declared war on Germany. In a manner of speaking. Europe’s most important country, potentially America’s most valuable partner, has in the mind of the president become an adversary. Of all Trump’s many foreign policy disasters, this is perhaps his most significant.

In late July, it was announced that retired army colonel Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, would become the next ambassador to Berlin. Macgregor is a regular contributor to Trump’s favourite channel of information, Fox News. He has variously suggested that the US border guard should shoot people if they tried to enter illegally from Mexico; described eastern Ukrainians as “Russians”; defended Serbia’s actions against a “Muslim drug mafia” in Kosovo; and criticised Germany for giving “millions of unwanted Muslim invaders” welfare benefits rather than providing more funding for its armed services.

Most painfully for his new hosts, Macgregor seems to have sided with the far right in talking down Nazi crimes. He described the concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with history), which has underpinned culture and politics since the war, as a “sick mentality that says that generations after generations must atone sins of what happened in 13 years of German history and ignore the other 1,500 years of Germany”.

If the Senate’s foreign relations committee confirms Macgregor’s nomination, he will replace another Fox shock-jock commentator. No sooner had Richard Grenell arrived in Berlin in 2018 than he went on the offensive, vowing to “empower other conservatives” across Europe. By that, he did not mean Angela Merkel’s coalition, but nationalists surrounding her, such as in Hungary and Poland. A number of German MPs called for Grenell to be declared persona no grata. Merkel resisted, but the affair spoke volumes for the collapse in ties.

Trump rewarded Grenell for his work, promoting him to acting director of national security in Washington. In a further demonstration of pique, he announced last month the withdrawal of nearly 12,000 troops from bases in Germany.

From the outset, Trump loathed Merkel. She represents everything he is not. On the international stage, she respects interlocutors who do their preparation and don’t spring surprises. She disdains his visceral vulgarity. The leader who let in a million of the world’s most destitute in 2015 refuses to be cowed by a bigot and bully.

She couldn’t be accused of not trying to get along. In March 2017, two months into his administration, she flew to Washington for their first meeting. She prepped assiduously. She studied a 1990 Playboy interview that had become a set text on Trumpism for policymakers. She read his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal. She even watched episodes of his TV show, The Apprentice.

It started badly. She offered him a handshake in the Oval Office in front of the cameras. He didn’t take it. Her studied lack of emotion and her deeply analytical mind were anathema to him. Her aides say she learned to explain complicated problems to him by reducing them to bite-size chunks. He read this as high-handedness.

Trump has a track record of misogyny and some cite this as the reason for his dislike. Others put it down to a narcissistic resentment of praise conferred on others. When she was chosen as Time magazine’s person of the year in 2015, he said: “They picked the person who is ruining Germany.” What particularly upset him was the magazine calling her chancellor of the free world. “What Merkel did to Germany, it’s a sad, sad shame.”

Yet this same woman, who from a young age dreamed of driving across the American plains and adored Ronald Reagan for freeing the world (and her native GDR) from communism, is by instinct a staunch Atlanticist.

She has found the setbacks hard to take. Arguably the single worst incident came before Trump. It was the revelation in 2013, courtesy of Edward Snowden, that the National Security Agency had been bugging Merkel’s personal mobile phone for years. She was incandescent when told, for once losing her famous impulse control. In an angry phone exchange with President Barack Obama, deliberately shared with the media, she told him: “This is like the Stasi.”

This relationship has always been complicated. Germans remember with fondness the liberation of their country, the airlift that ended the Russians’ blockade of Berlin. They devoured American culture. They fell in love with John F Kennedy, his 1963 trip to divided Berlin indelibly etched in the history books. But the left fought tooth and nail against nuclear deployments under Reagan. George Bush’s Iraq misadventure drove a terrible wedge, not least his attempts to divide the continent into New and Old Europe. Even with the more centrist and amenable Bill Clinton and Obama there were bad moments.

Successive US administrations have expressed frustration. The Nord Stream gas pipeline, chaired by former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, has underlined Germany’s dangerous energy dependency on Russia. It contradicts Merkel’s otherwise consistently tough approach towards Vladimir Putin. She was instrumental in ensuring that the EU imposed sanctions after the annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. Berlin no longer praises China as the gift that keeps on giving and belatedly sees it as a strategic competitor, but Merkel balks at strong criticism of it. As for defence, the failure of Germany to meet the agreed Nato target of spending 2% of GDP on defence has been a source of irritation.

But nothing comes close to the current situation.

The German foreign policy establishment is clinging to the hope that Trump will be defeated in November. A Biden presidency would not remove all the tensions, but it would signal that the US was moving back towards the diplomatic mainstream. The country that personifies the mainstream would have reason to celebrate.

• John Kampfner’s latest book is Why The Germans Do It Better: Notes From a Grown-Up Country"

"17";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/10/germanys-sdp-picks-olaf-scholz-as-candidate-to-succeed-angela-merkel";2020-08-10;"Germany’s SPD picks Merkel-like figure to run for top job in 2021";"Social Democrats name pragmatic ex-mayor Olaf Scholz as candidate for chancellor

Germany’s Social Democrats have fired the starting gun in the race to replace Angela Merkel as chancellor by announcing the pragmatist finance minister, Olaf Scholz, as their candidate for the job.

One of the two pillars of 20th-century democracy in Germany, the Social Democratic party (SPD) has seen its support wither away since joining Merkel’s government as a junior coalition partner in 2013. It lies third in the polls behind the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Greens, on about 14% of the vote.

Yet next year’s federal elections will be the first since the second world war in which an incumbent chancellor will not be in the running for the top seat, making the centre-left party hopeful that all could be to play for if it offers up the right candidate.

Scholz, a former mayor of Germany’s second-largest city, Hamburg, surprisingly lost last year’s contest to lead his party but has now secured the support of the SPD’s more leftwing leadership duo, Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken, to lead the party into next autumn’s election.

A taciturn number-cruncher previously nicknamed Scholzomat for his monotone delivery, the 62-year-old has enjoyed high approval ratings since taking over the finance ministry in 2018, and his popularity has risen further during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The former leader of Juso, the SPD’s youth wing, is a more divisive figure among his own party faithful, many of whom accuse him of lacking the courage to go after banks implicated in the “cum-ex” tax fraud scheme and having failed to detect and prevent the Wirecard accounting scandal.

Supporters say Scholz has played a vital role in shaping the EU’s €750bn (£675bn) Covid-19 recovery plan, which involved a historic break with Germany’s commitment to balanced budgets. They say wooden delivery in interviews and hesitant decision-making have never significantly harmed Merkel’s appeal in her 15 years in the chancellory.

Hailing Scholz as “decisive and experienced”, and “brave even in crisis”, a press release announcing his candidacy left little doubt that the SPD would present its contender as guaranteeing a better chance of continuity with the stable Merkel era than any politician from her own party.

Because of the pandemic, the CDU has postponed until December the party congress that will decide the party’s future leadership, and therefore the likely candidate leading the party into next year’s elections.

The Green party, currently second in polls on about 19% of the vote, is likely to field an official chancellor candidate for the first time in its history."

"18";"https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/aug/10/bild-tabloid-newspaper-angela-merkel-germany-culture-wars-podcast";2020-08-10;"Bild, Merkel and the culture wars: the inside story of Germany’s biggest tabloid- podcast";"The newspaper Bild has long poured vitriol on the country’s left-wingers and ‘do gooders’. But now it has a new target: the chancellor. By Thomas Meaney

"

"19";"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/30/germany-european-team-angela-merkel-covid-19";2020-07-30;"Can Germany now hold the European team together?";"Angela Merkel’s triumph in brokering an EU Covid-19 recovery package could mark the resurgence of a shared political dream

The other day, I had a dream. I dreamed that I was sitting on a beach in the summer of 2030 and looking back on how Germany had saved Europe.

The German chancellor had brokered a European recovery package after the Covid-19 crisis of 2020, with large grants and loans to help hard-hit south European economies, drawing on shared European borrowing. It had maintained constructive relations between the EU and post-Brexit Britain, helped the citizens of Poland and Hungary to defend liberal democracy, confounded Vladimir Putin by seriously committing to a common European energy policy, used the regulatory power of the EU to curb Facebook, shaped a common strategy towards China and made a world-leading example of Europe’s green new deal.

All this Germany had done by working as “first among equals” with other European countries, while partnering with the US and other democracies around the world. In realising this ambitious agenda, it had kept its civilised, consensual style of politics and the support of its own people. What an achievement for Germany and Europe at the beginning of the 2030s. What a contrast to the beginning of the 1930s.

My daydream was prompted by the €1.8tn (£1.6tn), seven-year EU budget and recovery deal brokered by German chancellor Angela Merkel, along with President Emmanuel Macron and the EU’s institutional leaders, in a marathon summit earlier this month. The door to this breakthrough was opened by a major shift in Germany’s position, accepting the need for fiscal solidarity. A year ago I despaired so much of major change coming from the grand coalition government in Berlin that I argued that the only way to get essential reform in Europe was for that government to go. History proved me wrong in the way history has a habit of proving everyone wrong – through a totally unexpected development.

With what Hegel would call the cunning of reason in history, Germany’s long overdue shift was precipitated by a previously unknown virus of Asian origin and a ruling of the German constitutional court. The former made it clear even to a sceptical German public that south European countries were suffering from a disaster no one could say was their own fault, and therefore deserved economic solidarity. The latter, firing a warning shot over the bows of the European Central Bank, made it clear that everything could not be left to the monetary policy of the bank. A Europe-wide fiscal response was needed as well. Precisely as I dared to hope in a commentary earlier this year, Merkel has seized the opportunity with both hands. Hats off to her.

But there are also longer-term developments underpinning my hopeful dream. Berlin now has a critical mass of politicians, officials, journalists, thinktanks and foundations who are thinking hard about what Europe’s strategy should be – and not just for the current German presidency of the EU. If a black-green (CDU/CSU-Green) coalition government emerges from next autumn’s general election, that will only strengthen its European commitment. In the European Council on Foreign Relations’ recent EU-wide survey of foreign policy professionals, 97% of those asked said Germany is the most influential country in the EU and 82% identified it as the “most-contacted” country. In Europe, Germany is the indispensable nation.

Yet, awoken from my daydream by a cold shower of rain, something the British summer is always happy to provide, I see two major difficulties down the road ahead. Ever since the first unification of Germany, a century and a half ago, the country has wrestled with the problem of what Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, a federal chancellor in the 1960s, called its “critical size”. His near-namesake, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, put it more pithily: “too big for Europe, too small for the world”. Kissinger’s formulation is brilliant but not quite right. Germany is too big to be just another European country, but it’s not big enough to be a hegemon even in Europe, let alone in the world.

So however wise a German strategy may be, it cannot be realised without a set of international partners. The giant challenges of climate change and the emergent authoritarian superpower China – which is to the early 21st century world what Wilhelmine Germany was to early 20th century Europe – cannot be addressed unless you have the United States under a President Joe Biden returning to a constructive internationalism, and the strategic engagement of powers like Australia, Japan and India. Europe’s own problems cannot be solved without the active involvement not just of France and Spain but also of Italy (understandably preoccupied with its own internal problems), Poland (currently peddling an archaic anti-German line), the Netherlands and others. For foreign and security policy, Europe also needs the clout of Britain – which is the big strategic reason for Merkel to try to broker the Brexit deal which I believe still can be done this autumn.

The other great unknown is German public opinion. On the face of it, there seems to be a solid pro-European, internationalist consensus in German society. But underneath, there are some worrying trends. The outside world is always alert to any possible revival of a greater Germany tendency, yet more prevalent is still the greater Switzerland tendency: just leave us alone to be rich and free. The German stereotype of south Europeans in the Eurozone scrounging off virtuous, hardworking north Europeans has not simply disappeared. The way electoral support surged for the xenophobic nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) following the refugee crisis was a worrying sign. So are well-documented reports of far-right sympathies in the military and security services. And contemporary Germany society has not yet gone through the test of really hard times at home.

To be denounced by Donald Trump as “delinquent” must be infuriating, but the emotional extremism of German alienation from the United States goes far beyond eminently rational anti-Trumpism. A real ideological and geopolitical myopia is revealed in the finding of a recent Körber foundation poll that only 37% of Germans think having close relations with the US is more important for Germany than having close relations with China, while a staggering 36% say it’s more important to get on with China and another 13% favour equidistance.

Germany cannot simply conjure up the necessary international partners, but this is something that’s in its own hands. As a distinguished former German ambassador to China, Volker Stanzel, has argued, foreign policy can no longer be left to the elites. It needs to be anchored in a much wider process of education and democratic debate. That’s all the more true because, due to the country’s “critical size” and the shadows of its past, the international role that the German public needs to understand and support is this historically unusual, difficult, carefully balanced one. For Germany can never be the prancing hegemon, just the steady, skilful football midfielder who keeps the whole team together – and doesn’t even get the applause for scoring goals. Yet sometimes those midfielders are the true heroes of the team.

• Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

• This article was amended on 31 July 2020 because an earlier version misnamed Alternative for Germany as Alliance for Germany. This has been corrected."

"20";"https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/24/germany-calls-on-uk-show-more-realism-brexit-negotiations";2020-07-24;"Germany calls on UK to show more realism in Brexit negotiations";"Comments will be a blow to No 10, which had hoped Merkel would help break deadlock

Angela Merkel’s government has called for more realism from the UK in the ongoing trade and security talks, after the EU capitals were given a “sobering” update by Michel Barnier following the recent round of Brexit negotiations.

After a presentation by the EU’s chief negotiator to ambassadors from the 27 member states on Friday, a spokesman for the German government, which holds the rolling EU presidency, said the bloc was ready to move negotiations quickly forward but “expressed the need for more realism in London”.

The comments will be a blow to Downing Street, where it had been hoped the resolution of the EU’s internal budget and recovery fund debate would allow Merkel and the other leaders to intervene and unblock the negotiation following a month of little progress.

The two sides completed their latest round of negotiations in London on Thursday without being able to agree on the basic outlines of a deal to reassure businesses about the future, which Boris Johnson had said in June should be possible.

But despite publicly warning on Thursday that a deal by the end of the year appeared “unlikely” given the British position on fisheries and Brussels’ demands for a “level playing field”, sources said Barnier had not been overly pessimistic in his presentation on Friday.

He warned the ambassadors that he believed negotiations needed to be wrapped up by the beginning of October due to the lengthy ratification process.

Echoing the language recently used by the UK’s chief negotiator, David Frost, Barnier said that even if the deal on offer was “low quality”, as recently claimed by the British official, a “zero tariff, zero quota” agreement was a prize worth having.

He added the EU would be open to revisiting some issues next year to strike separate agreements if the current negotiation was successful.

The two main obstacles to a deal remain the access of European fishing fleets to British waters and arrangements to ensure neither side can undercut the other by lowering regulatory standards or unfairly subsidising industry.

It is understood a number of the eight member states with the greatest interest in fishing access reiterated to the room of ambassadors that they would not agree to a deal without agreement on fisheries.

Last week’s talks on fishing access focused on quota-sharing arrangements and the list of stocks for which shares need to be agreed. Barnier claimed the UK was effectively excluding European fleets from key stocks of fish in a move that risked destroying the bloc’s fishing industry.

After 47 years and 30 days it was all over. As the clock struck 11pm on 31 January 2020, the UK was officially divorced from the EU and began trying to carve out a new global role as a sovereign nation. It was a union that got off to a tricky start and continued to be marked by the UK’s sometimes conflicted relationship with its neighbours.

The French president, Charles de Gaulle, vetoes Britain’s entry to EEC, accusing the UK of a “deep-seated hostility” towards the European project.

With Sir Edward Heath having signed the accession treaty the previous year, the UK enters the EEC in an official ceremony complete with a torch-lit rally, dickie-bowed officials and a procession of political leaders, including former prime ministers Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home.

The UK decides to stay in the common market after 67% voted ""yes"". Margaret Thatcher, later to be leader of the Conservative party, campaigned to remain.

Margaret Thatcher negotiated what became known as the UK rebate with other EU members after the ""iron lady"" marched into the former French royal palace at Fontainebleau to demand “our own money back” claiming for every £2 contributed we get only £1 back” despite being one of the “three poorer” members of the community.

It was a move that sowed the seeds of Tory Euroscepticism that was to later cause the Brexit schism in the party.

Thatcher served notice on the EU community in a defining moment in EU politics in which she questioned the expansionist plans of Jacques Delors, who had remarked that 80% of all decisions on economic and social policy would be made by the European Community within 10 years with a European government in “embryo”. That was a bridge too far for Thatcher.

Collapse of Berlin wall and fall of communism in eastern Europe, which would later lead to expansion of EU.

Divisions between the UK and the EU deepened with Thatcher telling the Commons in an infamous speech it was ‘no, no, no’ to what she saw as Delors’ continued power grab. Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper ratchets up its opposition to Europe with a two-fingered “Up yours Delors” front page.

A collapse in the pound forced prime minister John Major and the then chancellor Norman Lamont to pull the UK out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

On 1 January, customs checks and duties were removed across the bloc. Thatcher hailed the vision of “a single market without barriers – visible or invisible – giving you direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of over 300 million of the world’s wealthiest and most prosperous people"".

Tory rebels vote against the treaty that paved the way for the creation of the European Union. John Major won the vote the following day in a pyrrhic victory.

Tony Blair patches up the relationship. Signs up to social charter and workers' rights.

Chancellor Gordon Brown decides the UK will not join the euro.

EU enlarges to to include eight countries of the former eastern bloc including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

EU expands again, allowing Romania and Bulgaria into the club.

Anti-immigration hysteria seems to take hold with references to “cockroches” by Katie Hopkins in the Sun and tabloid headlines such as “How many more can we take?” and “Calais crisis: send in the dogs”.

David Cameron returns from Brussels with an EU reform package - but it isn't enough to appease the Eurosceptic wing of his own party

The UK votes to leave the European Union, triggering David Cameron's resignation and paving the way for Theresa May to become prime minister

After years of parliamentary impasse during Theresa May's attempt to get a deal agreed, the UK leaves the EU.

On level playing field clauses, both sides have agreed there should be a “non-regression” on labour, the environment and climate standards as they stand at the end of the transition period.

The EU is demanding a “forward-looking” mechanism to ensure there is no regulatory undercutting in the future should the EU further develop its rulebook.

There is a deadlock on state aid rules, with Brussels calling for the UK to publish its plans for controlling subsidies once the UK is outside the single market and customs union. Downing Street has so far appeared reluctant to respond to Barnier’s pressure, insisting its rulebook is wholly independent from the EU now the country has left the bloc.

EU sources said there was concern in Brussels that interest in striking a deal was waning in London but that an agreement in September remained the most likely outcome given the economic damage of failure.

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in the last year. And you’re not alone; millions are flocking to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day, and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us financially.

We believe everyone deserves access to information that’s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That’s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

The Guardian has no shareholders or billionaire owner, meaning our journalism is free from bias and vested interests – this makes us different. Our editorial independence and autonomy allows us to provide fearless investigations and analysis of those with political and commercial power. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and help bring about a brighter, fairer future. Your support protects this.

Supporting us means investing in Guardian journalism for tomorrow and the years ahead. The more readers funding our work, the more questions we can ask, the deeper we can dig, and the greater the impact we can have. We’re determined to provide reporting that helps each of us better understand the world, and take actions that challenge, unite, and inspire change.

Your support means we can keep our journalism open, so millions more have free access to the high-quality, trustworthy news they deserve. So we seek your support not simply to survive, but to grow our journalistic ambitions and sustain our model for open, independent reporting.

If there were ever a time to join us, and help accelerate our growth, it is now. You have the power to support us through these challenging economic times and enable real-world impact.

Every contribution, however big or small, makes a difference. Support us today from as little as €1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you."

"21";"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/22/the-guardian-view-on-austerity-a-grotesque-failure-that-must-not-be-revived";2020-07-22;"The Guardian view on austerity: a grotesque failure that must not be revived";"Rishi Sunak is preparing an autumn of spending cuts – an economic folly and a political gamble

This is the week that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak began softening up doctors, teachers and other public sector workers for a squeeze to their pay and cuts to their departmental budgets. They have done their best to muffle that particular bit of bad news. Instead, aides to the publicity-conscious Mr Sunak briefed journalists on an inflation-busting pay rise for public servants – and on Tuesday got the desired morning headlines. Later that same day, the chancellor admitted it was a one-off for this financial year, and that over the longer run “we must exercise restraint in future public sector pay awards”. Meaning cuts are coming. It had been a crass and short-lived publicity trick: flash the cash in a big show now, then admit it would all be taken back in time. Not only that but, as the Trades Union Congress pointed out, in all the government’s trumpeting of its apparent largesse, little acknowledgement was given that there would be no such increment for jobcentre advisers, local government employees or care workers.

Spin is a hardly a novelty on Downing Street, but the prime minister has developed a new, yet increasingly tiresome, strategy: blurt a falsehood, confess the truth, then hope the furore around the initial fib fixes it all the more firmly in voters’ minds. So Mr Johnson postures as the new Roosevelt, then announces a small spending commitment – but evidently hopes busy and only half-attentive voters will be left with the magic words “new deal”.

He also promises that “we are absolutely not going back to the austerity of 10 years ago”. And yet the Treasury this week warned ministers that this autumn’s comprehensive spending review would be full of “tough choices” (meaning cuts) and that “departments should be identifying opportunities to reprioritise and deliver savings”. The government that went into this pandemic promising to do “whatever it takes” had to be shamed by a footballer into providing meals to hungry children over the school holidays, and has left deep in the red local authorities that stepped up in this historic crisis. Ministers have spent the past few months issuing rhetorical cheques that they must know will never be matched by hard money. It is a deeply dishonest way of doing politics and one of its ultimate results will be to corrode further the trust that voters place in the state. Perhaps that is the objective.

One upshot of the past few days is that autumn’s spending review will probably usher in a round of austerity. Mr Sunak will talk of the huge cost of the pandemic and point to the state of public finances, then lay out plans for cut after spending cut to areas such as local government, perhaps seasoned with just a few tax rises. If he does that, he will be committing economic folly and a huge political gamble.

First, the economics. This month alone, businesses from Harrods to Poundstretcher, Jaguar Land Rover to Accenture have announced job losses. The fear of more to come, along with the uncertainties of dealing with a virus about which scientists still know comparatively little, will prevent businesses from investing and expanding, and will deter households from major spending. In this situation, the state needs to spend money until, as John Maynard Keynes wrote, the private sector recovers its animal spirits. In Germany, the spiritual homeland of austerity, Angela Merkel has grasped this point: her conservative government is vastly outspending the UK this year (as a proportion of national income). So, for that matter, is Donald Trump in the United States. And neither of those two countries is set to end the year by pulling out of a historic trading bloc on terms that are still unclear.

The political gamble of another few years of austerity would be huge. Research shows that those voters hit hardest by George Osborne’s cuts last decade were also those who supported leave in the 2016 referendum. Another round of cuts in an economy as structurally weak as the UK’s would not only diminish Mr Johnson’s fan club, it would make our democracy even more volatile. Labour lost the last austerity wars by not arguing strongly against the cuts. The opposition must not make the same mistake this time."

"22";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/20/macron-seeks-end-acrimony-eu-summit-enters-fourth-day";2020-07-21;"EU leaders seal deal on spending and €750bn Covid-19 recovery plans";"Euro rises as heads of state finally thrash out agreement on day five

EU leaders have reached a historic agreement on a €750bn coronavirus pandemic recovery fund and their long-term spending plans following days of acrimonious debate at the bloc’s longest summit in nearly two decades.

As the meeting reached its fifth day, the 27 exhausted heads of state and government finally gave their seal of approval to a plan for the EU to jointly borrow debt to be disbursed through grants on an unprecedented scale, in the face of an economic downturn not seen since the Great Depression.

The end of the tortuous process was announced by the European council president, Charles Michel, who had been chairing the leaders’ long debates, with a single word on Twitter: “Deal!”

Deal!

The euro rose against the dollar on the news to stand at $1.145. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, described it as a “historic day for Europe”.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, said the negotiations, lasting more than 90 hours, had been “worth it” and that the EU could not be accused this time of doing “too little, too late”.

Talks for the hard-won deal pitted north against south and east against west as governments haggled over the terms of both the bloc’s seven-year budget and a one-off economic stimulus.

The summit, stretching from Friday morning into the early hours of Tuesday, was so prolonged that two leaders, Xavier Bettel of Luxembourg and Ireland’s Micheál Martin, briefly returned home before coming back to Brussels.

Despite initial opposition from the so-called frugal states of the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Denmark, agreement was finally found, following a final 5.15am session of the 27 on Tuesday morning, to disburse vast sums in the form of non-repayable grants to countries most stricken by the coronavirus pandemic.

The breakthrough followed a new proposal from Michel for the EU to pay out €390bn in grants and €360bn in loans from the new economic reconstruction fund.

The “frugal” states had been pushing for the original proposal by the European commission for €500bn in grants to be reduced to €350bn, to the evident frustration of Macron and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, had at one stage warned his Dutch counterpart, Mark Rutte, who led the way on reducing the level of grants, that he might become a hero at home but that he faced being blamed by the rest of Europe for his lack of solidarity.

But Michel’s new formulation, emerging out of hours of bilateral talks with the leaders on both sides of the debate outside of the full plenary sessions, finally received the unanimous support it required.

“This recovery fund is indeed a historic change and a historic step for Europe,” said Macron, in a joint press conference with Merkel.

At one point during the bad-tempered negotiations Macron had thumped the table in frustration and likened those thwarting his spending plans to the ill-fated British in previous budget negotiations.

The final outcome is a messy bundle of compromises. As part of the deal, the “frugals” will receive significant increases in the rebates they receive on their budget contributions, a throwback from 1984 when Margaret Thatcher secured discounts on the UK’s outsized budget contributions.

Merkel said the British departure had changed the balance among the remaining 27 members and created a new dynamic.

Michel also watered down his initial proposal for holding up the disbursement of funds both where there are concerns over either a lack of promised economic reform or the state of the rule of law in a country.

Where there are fears that reforms are not being implemented by member states in receipt of money, any one EU leader can halt the disbursement to allow the European council of the 27 heads of state and government to “exhaustively” debate the situation.

On the rule of law, France, Germany and other countries had wanted a link to EU funds but Hungary and Poland’s governments, who have been previously accused of undermining judicial independence and minority rights, rejected this plan.

The compromise agreed by the leaders instead puts off designing a rule of law mechanism for another day with agreement to be made by a qualified majority of member states.

The final deal also swung in Poland’s favour by watering down a demand to link green transition funds to signing up to the 2050 climate target to the consternation of activist groups and senior MEPs.

Poland, which stands to gain €37bn in grants from the fund, plus potentially billions more from a “just transition fund” to move away from coal, is the only EU member state not to have made the 2050 pledge.

While EU leaders agreed to increase the core recovery fund, the so-called recovery and resilience facility, they cut proposed funding for a specific climate programme, as well as research and health - all priorities for the “frugal” four.

The recovery and resilience facility, the main economic stimulus to the coronavirus recession, is intended to help fund the EU transition to a net zero carbon economy by 2050, but environmentalists have criticised the vagueness of that promise. A specific fund to help countries ditch coal, the just transition fund, saw its budget slashed to €17.5bn down from a proposed €37.5bn.

Beyond a debate about the size of the recovery fund for countries hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, leaders had to haggle over the EU’s seven-year budget, which is due to start next year.

Michel secured agreement on €1.074tn on EU programmes although the leaders will face severe opposition in the European parliament to its reduced size when it is brought to the chamber for MEPs’ agreement.

The Brussels summit, the first in-person meeting of the leaders for five months, was just a few minutes shorter than the record-holding meeting in Nice 20 years ago when leaders debated EU enlargement."

"23";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/19/bitter-coronavirus-summit-exposes-trust-deficit-among-eu-leaders";2020-07-20;"Bitter EU summit exposes trust deficit among leaders with no end in sight";"Confrontation between ‘frugals’ and countries dubious over rule of law highlights acrimony at heart of union

Bad-tempered, late-running EU summits have hardly been unusual over the last decade of eurozone crisis and endless rows over migration. But the latest gathering of EU leaders, now in its fourth day with no end in sight, may be one of the most acrimonious yet.

With a €1.8tn (£1.6tn) financial plan on the table, the stakes are huge. Nobody expected talks to be easy, but expectations of a historic step towards EU fiscal union had risen since Angela Merkel abandoned Germany’s long-standing opposition to shared debt – reversing the position she took during the eurozone crisis.

After a friendly start, where EU leaders exchanged playful elbow bumps and birthday greetings, the temperature soon plummeted.

Dinner on Friday evening was “a bit surly” according to the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, after other leaders rounded on him over his insistence on being able to veto others’ access to a €750bn coronavirus recovery fund, if their economic reforms were deemed inadequate. Bulgaria’s prime minister, Boyko Borissov, accused Rutte of wanting to be “the police of Europe”, while Poland’s leader, Mateusz Morawiecki, called Rutte and his “frugal” north European allies “misers”. Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, accused the frugals of blackmail.

The second big fight centred on the size of recovery fund grants: a proposed €500bn in grants for the hardest hit countries has been shaved down to €390bn. But it remains unclear if that is acceptable for the frugal club of the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and unofficial member, Finland.

Leaders battled through Sunday night over the size of recovery grants, finally quitting the Europa HQ shortly after 5.45am. As tempers flared during the small hours, Emmanuel Macron banged his fist on the table, saying he was ready to walk out if “sterile blockages” continued. The French president criticised Rutte for behaving like David Cameron, the former UK prime minister whose EU strategy “ended badly” in Macron’s words.

The British are the ghosts at the negotiating table – another big stumbling block is the size of the rebates on offer to the frugal four, discounts on their EU budget contributions that came after Margaret Thatcher got “our money back” in 1984.

The previous night, Merkel and Macron walked out of midnight talks with the frugals – a display of unity by the Franco-German pair, who first proposed a massive recovery fund underpinned by taboo-breaking EU borrowing on financial markets to pull the EU out of the worst recession in its history.

At stake is a €750bn coronavirus recovery plan intended to pull the EU out of a historic recession, as well as a €1.074tn seven-year budget. One big row is how far countries should be able to access grants. France and Germany, backed by the European commission, proposed €500bn in grants (the rest in loans) targeted at countries hardest hit by coronavirus. That has been whittled down to €390bn in a compromise plan, but whether it will be accepted remains unclear.

Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron think the unprecedented crisis requires serious financial firepower, backed by Italy and Spain, who see Covid-19 as a test case for European solidarity.  A group of northern states - Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden,  styled the “frugal four” - are wary of fiscal transfers.  Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte takes the most hardline position, as he also wants his government to be able to veto recovery funds if a recipient is deemed failing on economic reforms.

Adding to the complexity is an argument  over tying EU funds to respect for democratic values. Hungary and Poland, currently subject to EU inquiries on the rule of law, want a veto on any attempt to remove funds from a rogue government. France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, who fear the weakening of democratic checks and balances, say there must be a link. Now some diplomats fear the issue could become hostage to a recovery plan deal.

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

Yet by Monday, Macron said there was “a spirit of compromise”, while Rutte said “progress had been made”.

The third battleground also put the Dutch in the firing line, as Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, compared Rutte to the communist police. The Netherlands, along with many EU governments, wants to tie European funds to upholding democratic values – a plan staunchly opposed by Hungary and Poland, both subject to EU investigations on the rule of law.

The communist police used “unclarified legal terms, exactly the same which is written in the proposal of the Dutchman,” said Orbán recalling his own encounters with state police as a young activist.

Orbán’s chief spokesman tweeted that “only Hungarians should get to decide how to spend the money that belongs to [Hungary]” – a stance that is likely to raise hackles, as the country receives six times more from the EU than it pays in.

Some EU diplomats fear that western Europe’s united stance on the rule of law is beginning to fragment. “It’s a bargaining chip,” said one EU diplomat. The frugals give the impression “we might settle for less rule of law, if you agree to the overall recovery plan”, the diplomat said.

As the fourth day wore on, agreement on the €1.8tn deal (the EU’s next seven-year budget and recovery plan) was still hanging in the balance. Some EU sources are already pencilling in a rematch summit in late July or late August – the latter seen as providing more breathing space for countries to rethink their red lines. The head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, warned against a quick deal that falls short. “The leaders’ agreement should be ambitious in terms of size and composition of the package ... even if it takes a bit more time,” she told Reuters.

The longer EU leaders stay in Brussels, the higher the political price of leaving with no deal. Failure to agree will weigh heavily on the EU. The hardest-hit countries already have access to a €540bn financial cushion, but France, Germany, Italy and Spain see this as inadequate to the scale of the looming recession.

Leaving Brussels empty-handed would also be a damaging political blow, tarnishing the EU’s prestige and triggering questions about its ability to act in a crisis. It would also undermine the newish leaders of the EU institutions, the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the architect of the recovery plan, as well the European council president, Charles Michel, the main deal-broker.

Even with a deal, this bitter summit has exposed poisonous mistrust between some leaders, as well as the EU’s struggle to deal with nationalists in central Europe, who are feared to be trampling on Europe’s basic values. A few bad-tempered days in Brussels may leave political scars."

"24";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/19/eu-leaders-extra-time-tempers-fray-coronavirus-recovery-summit-angela-merkel-emmanuel-macron";2020-07-20;"EU leaders in bitter clash over Covid-19 recovery package";"Orbán accuses Netherlands’ Rutte of ‘communist’ tactics on tense third day of talks

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, accused his Dutch counterpart of using the same methods as his country’s former communist leaders on Sunday, as EU leaders publicly clashed during tense and acrimonious negotiations over the terms of a proposed €1.8tn budget and recovery package for the bloc.

A third difficult day of a summit of the EU’s 27 heads of state and government – the first in person for five months – saw movement towards agreement as talks stretched deep into the night, but laid bare the deep splits between north and south, and east and west.

At a late evening dinner, the European council president, Charles Michel, who is chairing the summit, asked the leaders whether they were “capable of building European unity and trust. Or, through a tear, will we present the face of a weak Europe, undermined by mistrust?”

Dutch prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Monday EU leaders were making progress but warned discussions could still fall apart. “At times it didn’t look good last night, but I feel that on the whole we are making progress,” Rutte told reporters in Brussels. The summit will reconvene at 4pm central European time on Monday.

At stake is a €750bn coronavirus recovery plan intended to pull the EU out of a historic recession, as well as a €1.074tn seven-year budget. One big row is how far countries should be able to access grants. France and Germany, backed by the European commission, proposed €500bn in grants (the rest in loans) targeted at countries hardest hit by coronavirus. That has been whittled down to €390bn in a compromise plan, but whether it will be accepted remains unclear.

Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron think the unprecedented crisis requires serious financial firepower, backed by Italy and Spain, who see Covid-19 as a test case for European solidarity.  A group of northern states - Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden,  styled the “frugal four” - are wary of fiscal transfers.  Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte takes the most hardline position, as he also wants his government to be able to veto recovery funds if a recipient is deemed failing on economic reforms.

Adding to the complexity is an argument  over tying EU funds to respect for democratic values. Hungary and Poland, currently subject to EU inquiries on the rule of law, want a veto on any attempt to remove funds from a rogue government. France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, who fear the weakening of democratic checks and balances, say there must be a link. Now some diplomats fear the issue could become hostage to a recovery plan deal.

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

The leaders have been in intense debates over the size of the recovery fund for countries hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic and the EU’s seven-year budget, known as the multi-financial framework, which is due to start next year.

There are also stark differences over the nature of the conditions attached to the emergency funding and the balance between grants and loans on offer. The money will be borrowed from the capital markets by the European commission.

Rutte has insisted he cannot be expected to take on extra national debt in order for the EU to make cash payments to member states without his parliament having a say.

In response, Orbán, the nationalist prime minister of Hungary, who was an anti-communist dissident in his youth, accused Rutte of aping Soviet methods to crush dissent by failing to properly set out the terms on which funds would be blocked.

The Netherlands is seeking reassurance that commonly issued debt will be properly spent and wants the ability to hold back disbursements where there are governance concerns.

“They would like to introduce a new mechanism that didn’t exist until now,” Orbán told reporters, of the Dutch proposal for a country to be able to stop funding to member states undermining the rule of law. “I think it is questionable whether it has a basis in the treaty at all. I am coming from an ex-communist country. When the communist regime decided to attack us, they use unclarified legal terms exactly as the same as written in the proposal of the Dutch man … Saying ‘general deficiencies’. When I was arrested by the police and I asked them what I had done which is illegal, they say general deficiencies. What the hell does it mean?”

In response, Rutte said on Monday: “We are not here because we are going to be visitors at each others birthday party later. We are here because we do business for our own country. We are all pros.”

The row over the rule of law was dwarfed, however, by a more significant dispute over the size and form of the recovery fund, with “frugal” countries of the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Sweden defying France and Germany in trying to reduce the level of grants.

EU diplomats said the four northern member states, to the evident frustration of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, were pushing to reduce the value of grants available from €500bn to €350bn while increasing the size of the rebates they currently have on their budget contributions. The whole recovery package would also be reduced to €700bn from the €750bn initially proposed by the European commission.

Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, said that in seven years of attending EU meetings, “I have never seen positions as diametrically opposed as this”.

“The negotiations are difficult, perhaps one of the most difficult I have ever been involved in, yet the spirit of compromise has not yet disappeared,” tweeted Latvia’s prime minister, Krišjanis Karinš.

With tempers running high, Macron at one point banged his fists on the table in frustration. He also claimed that the countries seeking to reduce the size of the recovery fund were acting like the former British prime minister David Cameron during previous budget negotiations, warning that such an approach would end badly and damage Europe.

During Sunday night’s dinner, several leaders made emotional interventions. The Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte warned Rutte that hero status at home would “last a few days” but that he risked being blamed for letting Europe down.

The summit had been markedly bad-tempered from the first day on Friday, and Michel was forced to table a new set of proposals on Saturday morning in an attempt to reboot the talks.

Michel had looked to trim €50bn off the amount of grants and to give a member state the power to hold up the disbursement of funds by making a “request within three days … to bring the matter without delay, to the European council or [finance ministers] to satisfactorily address the matter”.

In recent days the UK has seen a sudden sharp increase in Covid-19 infection numbers, leading to fears that a second wave of cases is beginning.

Epidemics of infectious diseases behave in different ways but the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more than 50 million people is regarded as a key example of a pandemic that occurred in multiple waves, with the latter more severe than the first. It has been replicated – albeit more mildly – in subsequent flu pandemics. Until now that had been what was expected from Covid-19.

How and why multiple-wave outbreaks occur, and how subsequent waves of infection can be prevented, has become a staple of epidemiological modelling studies and pandemic preparation, which have looked at everything from social behaviour and health policy to vaccination and the buildup of community immunity, also known as herd immunity.

This is being watched very carefully. Without a vaccine, and with no widespread immunity to the new disease, one alarm is being sounded by the experience of Singapore, which has seen a sudden resurgence in infections despite being lauded for its early handling of the outbreak.

Although Singapore instituted a strong contact tracing system for its general population, the disease re-emerged in cramped dormitory accommodation used by thousands of foreign workers with inadequate hygiene facilities and shared canteens.

Singapore’s experience, although very specific, has demonstrated the ability of the disease to come back strongly in places where people are in close proximity and its ability to exploit any weakness in public health regimes set up to counter it.

In June 2020, Beijing suffered from a new cluster of coronavirus cases which caused authorities to re-implement restrictions that China had previously been able to lift. In the UK, the city of Leicester was unable to come out of lockdown because of the development of a new spike of coronavirus cases. Clusters also emerged in Melbourne, requiring a re-imposition of lockdown conditions.

Conventional wisdom among scientists suggests second waves of resistant infections occur after the capacity for treatment and isolation becomes exhausted. In this case the concern is that the social and political consensus supporting lockdowns is being overtaken by public frustration and the urgent need to reopen economies.

However Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, says “‘Second wave’ isn’t a term that we would use at the current time, as the virus hasn’t gone away, it’s in our population, it has spread to 188 countries so far, and what we are seeing now is essentially localised spikes or a localised return of a large number of cases.”

The overall threat declines when susceptibility of the population to the disease falls below a certain threshold or when widespread vaccination becomes available.

In general terms the ratio of susceptible and immune individuals in a population at the end of one wave determines the potential magnitude of a subsequent wave. The worry is that with a vaccine still many months away, and the real rate of infection only being guessed at, populations worldwide remain highly vulnerable to both resurgence and subsequent waves.

Macron told reporters of his concerns about attempts to reduce the size of the recovery package, insisting there would not be a deal “made at the cost of European ambition”. Merkel had warned there was no guarantee of success.

A second meeting has been pencilled in for the last week of July but there are concerns that a second wave of coronavirus infections could stand in the way.

• This article was amended on 20 July 2020 to correct an expletive used in a quote from Viktor Orbán.

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"25";"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/17/merkel-downbeat-on-chances-of-deal-as-eu-budget-summit-begins";2020-07-17;"Merkel downbeat on chances of deal as EU budget summit begins";"Leaders’ differences over €1.8tn budget and recovery package ‘still very large’, German chancellor says

EU leaders were poles apart on the terms of a €1.8tn (£1.6tn) budget and recovery package as they met for the first time in five months on Friday, with Angela Merkel warning of the possibility of talks dragging into a second destabilising summer summit.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, told fellow leaders in Brussels they had an “obligation” to agree on a response to an economic downturn unparalleled since the Great Depression.

His comments were echoed by Italy’s Giuseppe Conte, whose country, like Spain, was among those hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic and faces a devastating recession.

But EU diplomats said little progress had been made in the first day of what were described as “intense discussions”. “So far the temperature in the room hasn’t substantially risen”, an EU diplomat said. “It seems leaders are preserving their energy for what is to come.” The summit is slated to finish on Saturday but it could run on into Sunday if the negotiations are fruitful, sources said.

The German chancellor, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, offered a notably downbeat assessment about the level of unity among leaders as she arrived in Brussels.

“The differences are still very large and so I can’t predict that we will achieve a result this time,” Merkel said. “It would be desirable, but we also have to be realistic. And it really does take a great deal of willingness to compromise on the part of everyone if we are to achieve something that is good for Europe. In this respect I expect very difficult negotiations.”

Merkel and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, have backed plans to borrow on the capitals markets to fund a €750bn recovery package, but others are at loggerheads over the size of the plan, the terms under which the cash is distributed, and the conditions attached.

There are also major obstacles in getting agreement on the EU’s next seven-year budget, which is due to start next year. The so-called frugal countries of the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Denmark are lobbying for less spending but they are also seeking to retain their valuable budget rebates. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said she planned to push for cuts to the budget ceiling. “We are not in favour of just spending a lot more money in Brussels,” she said.

The European parliament, however, wants to loosen the purse strings and has threatened to block a proposal from the European council president, Charles Michel, to spend nearly €1.1tn over the seven years, a smaller sum than previously tabled.

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, said he believed the chance of finding agreement given the differences was “less than 50%. What’s more, in the end, content is more important than speed. A weak compromise will not take Europe any further.”

Rutte said Hungary’s rejection of any rule-of-law conditions on the distribution of the recovery fund could be “a very big problem”. Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, has threatened to veto any deal that would involve the commission linking the quality of governance at home with a right to EU handouts.

Hungary is facing EU proceedings over claims it has undermined the independence of the country’s judiciary.

A source said that during Friday’s discussions Denmark’s prime minister had been “leading charge on the ceiling and rebates with France demanding the EU to put an end to the rebates. The Netherlands made its case for a new governance mechanism.”

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