BERLIN (Own report) – Germany is facing a massive restructuring of its economy and society following the latest announcements by the new German government on its planned upgrading of the Bundeswehr and its competition for military leadership in Europe. Last week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that the Bundeswehr should become “the strongest conventional army in Europe”. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul expressed his explicit support for the projected new NATO target of spending five instead of two percent of Germany’s gross domestic product (GDP) on military measures. Berlin is “ready to take on a leading role in Europe” and “to call on others to follow us,” declared Wadephul. With a massive debt-financed arms build-up, the Bundeswehr could actually outpace the French armed forces, which, due to its already high levels of debt, cannot afford to take out excessive arms loans without fearing a drastic financial crisis. This development is accompanied by a significant increase in the power of the arms industry at the expense of civilian sectors and a dramatic militarization of the society. The most comprehensive social change since 1990 is looming. Read more

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Own report) – At their meeting beginning today in Antalya, NATO foreign ministers will discuss, for the first time, new plans to boost military spending to five percent of their gross domestic product (GDP). Under the plan, 3.5 percent of the GDP is earmarked directly for the armed forces and 1.5 percent for infrastructural war preparations. A binding decision on the increase could be taken in six weeks at the NATO summit in The Hague. For Germany, five percent of the GDP would today be €215 billion – 44 percent of the current budget volume of almost €489 billion. Simultaneously, NATO is forging ahead with the expansion of its own infrastructure to complement the respective national arms buildups. According to reports, the NATO pipeline system, particularly supplying military airfields with fuel, is to be extended onto the territory of the former GDR - “as far to the east as possible, close to the potential theater of operations” in a war against Russia. NATO is thus colliding with the Two-Plus-Four Treaty, which prohibits any foreign military presence in East Germany. This treaty is already being violated. Read more

BERLIN/MOSCOW (Own report) - The German Bundestag is barring all Russian and Belarus diplomats, whose predecessor state had liberated large parts of Germany – Berlin included – from attending today's commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of the war. Already last Sunday, the Russian ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany had been barred from attending the commemorations at the Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück Concentration Camps. Both concentration camps were liberated by the Red Army in late April 1945. Twenty-seven million citizens of the Soviet Union and around a quarter of the Belarusian Soviet Republic’s population had perished under German terror. Diplomats of their successor states are no longer welcomed at German commemorations. Russia’s waging a war of aggression against Ukraine, is the reason given. Ambassadors of several states, which have been invading foreign countries in recent years, are expected to attend today’s commemoration in the Bundestag, which had itself given the green light for a war of aggression in 1999. Germany's obvious discrimination is motivated by the fact that Berlin is seeking Moscow's defeat in the Ukraine war. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul declares that Russia will “always be an enemy.“ Read more

BERLIN (own report) – Germany has a new Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery for Culture and the Media. Known for his provocative views, Wolfram Weimer laments Europe’s “precipitous loss of power” as a result of decolonisation. He praises the alleged “civilizational accomplishment that came with world conquest”. Weimer also stated in ‘Das konservative Manifest’, which he published back in 2018, that the “commitment to Christianity” is “an important component of European identity”: “The baptism certificate is the ticket to entering European civilisation.” The next head of policy on culture and media has also bemoaned what he calls the “cultural self-destruction” of European societies, in which “the numerous kebab shops, the unrelenting immigration and the homage to Kanak-German” are being used “to eradicate the old national instincts”. In his “manifesto”, Weimer goes on to mock “the equal opportunities officers and integration counsellors” as “high priests of do-gooderism”. In his latest outpourings he is urging the centre-right in Germany to take into account the far-right AfD’s demands for pushing back immigration. The positions he advances can provide the ideological foundations for reshaping the EU and for an aggressively expansive global policy. Read more

BERLIN/BRUSSELS/BEIJING (own report) – Disputes over future economic relations with China are escalating in Berlin and Brussels. They were sparked by the Trump administration’s offer to grant countries more favorable tariffs for exports to the USA, if they reduce their economic cooperation with China. Washington is also luring automotive corporations with an exclusive cooperation in the development of autonomous driving – with the objective of jointly sidelining Chinese auto manufacturers. German car companies have long since begun close cooperation with Chinese companies. Last week, for example, BMW announced that it was developing new models in cooperation with Huawei and Alibaba, as well as with the support of the new AI start-up DeepSeek,. Around three dozen German companies have written to the incoming German government, expressing that to a growing degree they are depending on Chinese companies, which are increasingly becoming “innovation leaders.” Therefore, they are hoping for closer cooperation with China. In the latter half of July, the EU is preparing to hold an EU-China summit in Beijing. Read more

WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS/BERLIN (own report) - Internal contradictions are hampering an EU response to the unprecedented tariffs being imposed by the United States. The first tranche of import tariffs came into force on Saturday and more are to follow on Wednesday, hitting stock markets very hard. Share prices have plummeted not only in economies that are key trading partners of the US, such as Japan and Germany, but also in the United States itself. In fact more than six trillion US dollars have been wiped out in just two days. The dollar is also weakening. President Donald Trump has made a “huge mistake” with his tariff wall, says the President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Marcel Fratzscher. Trump will, he argues, “get the short straw,” which is why he advises the EU to stand together and fight back. However, Brussels has so far showed little inclination, having postponed the implementation of retaliatory tariffs it announced not even against the latest steel tariffs but against those already imposed earlier on Europe. The backsliding results not least from objections to countermeasures by several member states that fear significant losses. Their position is that they would have more to lose than the United States in the event of an escalation. Other countermeasures targeted at US tech corporations are being considered. These, too, have so far been blocked, especially by Italy. The Meloni government maintains particularly close relations with the Trump administration. Read more

PARIS/BERLIN/WASHINGTON (own report) - A Europe-wide think-tank warns of “far-reaching European consequences” of Marine Le Pen’s de facto exclusion from the next presidential election in France. The court ruling has deprived Le Pen of the right to stand for election with immediate effect. This development is, as a recent article from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) put it, likely to lead to an immediate upswing of support “for anti-establishment movements throughout Europe”. Opinion surveys indicate that almost half of the population in France believes that the judgement was politically motivated. Leading politicians of the extreme right from all across the European Union, including a prime minister and a deputy prime minister, have voiced their support for Le Pen. The Rassemblement National (National Rally) leader has also received wider widespread international backing beyond the EU. Condemnation of the sentence has also come from the right in North America, Latin America and Israel – in the case of Israel, from a government minister who recently hosted representatives from far-right parties around Europe at a conference in Jerusalem. In the United States, the highly influential Trump-advising Heritage Foundation has also weighed in. Le Pen’s conviction has consolidated core elements of a new network of the transatlantic far right as it closes ranks. Read more

TEL AVIV/BERLIN (own report) – Israel’s ultra-right government seeks to deepen its cooperation with the extreme right in Europe and, in principle, does not rule out working with the AfD. Representatives of various parties aligned to the far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) bloc, now the third largest group in the European Parliament, attended an international conference in Israel last week. Organised by Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs, it was billed as a gathering to discuss the fight against antisemitism. Attendees included Jordan Bardella, President of the French Rassemblement National (RN). Likud, the party of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had earlier been accorded observer status with the PfE grouping in the EU. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, has instructed Israel’s diplomats in France and elsewhere to normalise relations with various extreme right-wing parties. Yet the majority of these parties grew out of traditionally antisemitic circles. In many cases they are directly linked to Nazi collaborators. Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli, says that he “hopes” the AfD will break with certain controversial politicians, clearing the path for direct cooperation with his government. The German government works very closely with Netanyahu, who supports Chikli. Read more

BERLIN (own report) - A leading German daily newspaper is now calling for the country to “pull out of the Two Plus Four Treaty”, clearing the way for Germany’s nuclear armament. A recent editorial in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) argues that “German military preparedness” requires nuclear warheads as part of the ramping up of the military, but notes the obstacle of treaty obligations. Berlin is prohibited not only from procuring nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons but also from increasing the number of Bundeswehr personnel beyond 370,000. The push in some quarters for Germany to become a nuclear power comes as experts confirm that, technologically, Germany is certainly capable of building nuclear bombs and setting up nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The only problem in terms of logistics is, according to the FAZ opinion piece, finding a location to conduct the unavoidable nuclear tests for an independent nuclear weapons programme. Politically and legally, this move would also demand Germany’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This could have far-reaching global consequences. For one thing it would only encourage a number of countries already considering nuclear weapons to take the leap: not only Iran and Saudi Arabia but also South Korea and Poland. Surveys indicate that public approval for a German atom bomb is growing, but more people are still against it. Bundeswehr experts identify longstanding “moral reflexes” behind public reservations – reflexes which, they say, must be overcome. Read more

BERLIN/ANKARA (own report) - German politicians are reacting to the arrest of Turkish opposition politician Ekrem İmamoğlu and many of his supporters with empty words. Their inconsequential appeals are a face-saving exercise. İmamoğlu, the popular mayor of Istanbul and a potentially strong candidate for president in the next election, was arrested on Wednesday. The charges appear to be flimsy. Many of his supporters have also been arrested, while a company he owns has been expropriated. İmamoğlu’s CHP party speaks of a “an attempted coup against the potentially the next president.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared that the move “weights on relations between Europe and Turkey”. No practical consequences can be expected. For Germany and the EU are dependent on cooperation with Ankara when it comes to preventing refugees from moving on to Europe, not to mention European efforts to bring Ankara into an anti-Russian alliance. Brussels is also keen to engage with Turkey as a trade and energy hub. There are, in any case, hardly any effective instruments for exerting political pressure on Turkey. On the contrary, it is Ankara that has grown in strength over recent years and secured options with alternative cooperation partners. As a leading Berlin foreign policy journal put it, Turkey is an “unpredictable, indispensable” partner. Read more