BERLIN/WASHINGTON (our own report) – The German government is releasing a part of Germany’s emergency diesel reserves - unnecessarily. This coordinated move by Europeans to ease market tensions will boost US President Donald Trump’s flagging campaign for the American mid-term elections. Trump is keen to avoid a painful fuel crisis shortly before the elections because significant sections of his voter base are threatening to defect. US farmers, for example, are facing record-high diesel prices and are threatened with economic ruin. The chief cause of an unprecedented hike in diesel prices is the US-Israeli war on Iran. While 19 per cent of all global diesel exports came from the Middle East last year, the Iranian response to being attacked means that a large proportion of this supply source is missing. At the same time, Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russian refineries are damaging Russian diesel production. Although German politicians regard these hits with schadenfreude, it is bad news for the global economy. Moscow has now moved to halt exports. As the world’s second-largest diesel exporter, Russia is making the diesel market even tighter. Trump reacted last week by forcing Europe’s G7 economies, including Germany, to release part of their emergency reserves under the threat of the US cutting of all future American diesel supplies to Europe. Europe’s, and especially Germany’s, dependence on the US is also acute when it comes to crude oil and liquefied natural gas imports. The US share of European LNG imports has risen to around 60 per cent. Read more

TEL AVIV/BERLIN (our own report) – Israel’s far-right government is stepping up its cooperation with radical right-wing parties in Europe. The AfD, too, has become a potential ally. Following systematic efforts to build ties with parties affiliated to the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group in the EU – including France’s Rassemblement National (RN) and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang (VB) – Israeli ministers are now also reaching out to the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Israel’s Minister for the Diaspora, Amichai Chikli (Likud), for instance, has described a speech by FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl, in which Kickl declared his party to be the “new protectors of Jewish interests” as an “historic turning point” in relations “between the FPÖ” and “the State of Israel”. Shortly after Germany’s last federal election, in February 2025, Chikli was talking up possibilities for cooperation with Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), provided it could distance itself from certain figures who have glorified Nazism. The deepening of relations with Europe’s far right accompanies Israel’s use of systematic violence to strengthen its power. Berlin, for its part, hopes to gain greater influence in the Middle East by supporting Tel Aviv. Those in Germany who speak out against their government’s involvement find themselves subjected to an unrestrained smear campaign in the public sphere. Read more

TEL AVIV/BERLIN (our own report) – Germany is systematically stepping up military, police and cybersecurity cooperation with Israel. The agreements formally concluded at the start of the year are now being implemented. The ‘Cyber and Security Pact’, signed in January, provides for closer cooperation between the respective police agencies and the establishment of a ‘Cyberdome’ in Germany. Berlin hopes its security cooperation with Israel will offer “practice-based know-how from a country with a high frequency of military operations.” Another agreement, concluded in February, enables greatly intensified military cooperation designed to make the Bundeswehr “war-ready” in practice. The idea is for Israeli ground forces to pass on to the German army the capabilities and experience gained in Israel’s past and current wars. With their “unrivalled expertise in the field of ground operations”, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are helping the Bundeswehr “adapt to an increasingly volatile global environment”. These steps to strengthen security collaboration with Israel are taking place against the backdrop of the ongoing wars for dominance in the Middle East. Read more

BERLIN/TEL AVIV (our own report) – Israeli defence contractors are increasingly moving into Germany, setting up a rapidly growing number of arms factories. Rafael, for example, plans to manufacture components for its air defence systems at what was Volkswagen’s automobile plant in Osnabruck. Meanwhile Elbit has announced the establishment of “up to eight” new production sites in Germany, which are expected to employ “well over a thousand” people. On the one hand, the new arms factories will contribute to the rapid rearmament of Germany’s Bundeswehr. On the other, they enable Israeli companies to manufacture the weapons needed by the Israeli armed forces at a safe distance. This strategy secures Israel’s arms supplies should the conflict in the Middle East escalate still further. It offers additional backing in the event, for example, of another war of aggression against Iran. The new forms of German-Israeli arms cooperation build on a longstanding partnership between the two countries’ arms sectors, which goes back as far as the mid-1950s. The Federal Republic can benefit, not least, from access to some of the high-end, high-tech capabilities of Israel’s powerful and battle-tested defence industry. Read more

WOLFSBURG (our own report) – The troubled Volkswagen Group is pushing ahead with the biggest corporate restructuring in its history. The radical shake-up of the automotive giant, bringing huge job losses, has been greenlighted by the Lower Saxony state government and the company’s main trade union, IG Metall. The group’s supervisory board unanimously agreed in early September to move forward with tough cost-cutting measures. Prior to this understanding on restructuring there had been public speculation about the Porsche and Piëch owner families entering into a power struggle with the state of Lower Saxony and workforce representatives. Group CEO Oliver Blume wants to slash the global range of models, reduce production capacities by around one million vehicles, and shed up to 100,000 jobs worldwide. The aim is to secure an operating profit margin of nine per cent, a figure that stood at just 3.8 per cent in the first half of 2026. The target now is to make savings of around 30.9 billion euros by 2030. However, inside the VW Group, management is already modelling an even tougher scenario that could require savings of more than 40 billion euros. The future of several German plants remains uncertain. The defence industry has now emerged as a potential alternative to automobile production. In Osnabruck, for example, VW is set on a future of producing arms in partnership with the Israeli defence firm Rafael. Hoping to rescue jobs, the IG Metall trade union welcomes the plans. Read more

BERLIN/WASHINGTON (our own report) – American energy experts are warning of a full-scale global energy crisis with prices for crude oil and natural gas skyrocketing. According to the US oil industry, there was enough capacity in the first six months of Washington’s war on Iran to compensate to some extent for the shortfalls caused by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. On the one hand, various Western states could draw on their strategic reserves; on the other, China has significantly reduced its imports, thereby easing demand pressures. But neither of these steps is likely to be sustainable. So further hikes in oil and gas prices have to be expected. Another critical factor is that Ukraine has managed to severely damage a number of Russian refineries with its drone attacks. This is leading to a diesel shortage: Russia, previously the world’s second-largest exporter, has completely halted diesel exports. While natural gas storage facilities in Germany and the EU are at their lowest levels ever for this time of year, Berlin and Brussels continue to insist on a total phase-out of Russian liquefied natural gas imports by early 2027. Most recent data shows that Russian supplies still account for 19 per cent of the EU’s liquefied natural gas imports. Read more

german-foreign-policy.com spoke to Ulrike Eifler about current developments in the anti-war movement in Europe and the role of trade unions within this movement. Eifler, who works in the Würzburg secretariat of the IG Metall union, has been campaigning for years for trade unions to pursue a resolute peace policy. There have recently been two union-backed anti-war conferences, in Paris (October 2025) and London (June 2026), which in her assessment have already contributed significantly to “building a Europe-wide movement against war”. They have, she says, succeeded in raising awareness within the trade unions of the need to counter war and militarisation. On the one hand, the exorbitant costs of militarisation lead directly to massive cutbacks in social spending; and, on the other, war itself is fundamentally “incompatible” with the progress achieved by the labour movement, not least the right to strike. Indeed, war threatens “the very existence of free trade unions”. As for “job security”, Eifler argues that employment must be “based on civilian peaceful production”, not “on murderous war production”. Looking at the many protests planned for the coming autumn, she warns that these activities against militarisation and social cuts should not be too fragmented. She urges all anti-war forces to pull together in combatting the warmongers. Read more

BRUSSELS/NUUK (our own report) – The European Union is consolidating its position in Greenland in a quiet power struggle with the US. Several European NATO member states, including Germany, have again launched military manoeuvres on the island. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was in Nuuk on Sunday and Monday to announce a funding pledge of 200 million euros, primarily for raw materials and infrastructure projects. Work on new infrastructure is needed to enable Greenland to transport raw materials out of the country. At the same time, a NATO manoeuvre began on Monday in which eleven European NATO member states are rehearsing operations on Greenlandic territory without any involvement whatsoever from American armed forces. The Bundeswehr is participating with military observers and logistical support. European efforts to exert influence include the signing of a new partnership agreement between the EU and Greenland. The background to these developments is the Trump administration’s as yet unrelenting push to annex Greenland. Trump is once again having maps published in which the island is shown as part of the US. Meanwhile a US oil company is now transporting drilling equipment to Greenland without authorisation from Nuuk, Danish autonomous territory’s seat of government. Read more

MAGDEBURG/BUCHAREST/MANCHESTER/GRAZ (our own report) – For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, a far-right party has secured over 40 per cent of the vote in a state election. In yesterday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) came first by a wide margin, with 43.8 per cent of the vote. In terms of seats in the Landtag, they have only narrowly missed the majority required to form a single-party government. With 39 out of a total of 83 parliamentary seats, the AfD has fallen just three seats short of an absolute majority. The right-wing surge reflects a trend that can also be observed across Europe: populations in deindustrialised, impoverished and structurally marginalised regions see no prospects for themselves and are turning against the ruling elites. But where there is no strong left-wing alternative commanding credibility amongst the disadvantaged communities, these voters will shift to the right. A clear example is Romania, where the far right dominates the poorer regions beyond the capital Bucharest. In the UK, too, there are plenty of run-down working-class neighbourhoods where people have moved sharply to the far right. Saxony-Anhalt is now following suit. An example of what bucks the trend can be found in Graz, Austria’s second-largest city, with its communist mayor. Read more

MOSCOW/BERLIN/LONDON (our own report) – The debate surrounding the drone attack on Leipzig Airport has once again raised the question of Russia’s red lines with regard to the Ukraine war. In recent years, Moscow has repeatedly warned Western powers not to cross its red lines. Chief among the moves considered unacceptable by the Kremlin is the willingness of Western powers to supply long-range missiles to Ukraine, enabling strikes targets deep into Russian territory. Russia says in this case it reserves the right to respond. Meanwhile, targets in the Russian heartland are being struck by long-range drones of British manufacture. Drones of this type are also being produced in Germany explicitly for export to Kiev. A Russian government adviser recently confirmed that there “sooner or later, there might be not only verbal but maybe some visible reaction from Russia towards the UK.” Cyber-attacks or “semi-military” measures were, he said, quite conceivable. The targets could be chosen asymmetrically. Should it be proven that the perpetrators at Leipzig Airport were actually working for Russian authorities, the incident could then be understood as such a Russian response to its red lines being crossed. And Germany would find itself one step further into war. Read more