Tag Archives: Germany

The first decade of the 21st century confirmed that the armaments industry has begun to play an important role in the economy of the country and performs a crucial function for the FRG. The armaments industry still serves four basic functions: satisfies the current needs of armed forces when it comes to arms and military equipment, provides the appropriate readiness of the mobilization base, conducts the research and developmental activities regarding the new types of arms and military equipment and increases the prestige of the country in the international arena. However, because of the global economic crisis of 2008-2010, when thinking about the armaments industry, it is the economic logic that is playing an increasingly important role, while the military logic is slowly loosing ground.

Today, Iran and the 5+1 group of permanent UN Security Council members (plus Germany) will sit down in Baghdad to discuss the terms of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Danaiifar, explained that merely hosting the talks demonstrated a historic chapter in the history of Iraq. But what does the event actually mean […]

Jochen Flasbarth, President of Umwelt Bundes Amt (UBA – Germany’s central federal authority on environmental matters), was in New York last week, where he discussed, among other things, Germany’s efforts to create a national electric supply that relies completely on renewable energy. Germany’s goal is to reduce its overall greenhouse gas emissions by 80-90% by the […]

Considering the unpredictability of fear-driven markets the eurozone is not yet out of the woods. Neverthless,  it doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that Europe has ridden out the worst of the storm. The piecemeal rescue process has not been pretty, but the sum of measures taken – the incremental build up of a firewall, the six pack, […]

Yet another euro crisis summit is over, and yet another deal has been struck. This time, the deal has taken the shape of an intergovernmental agreement. If I am not mistaken, and I may very well have lost count by now, that makes nine summits and five deals in the past 19 months. Although it […]

Book Review Assassins of the Turquoise Palace by Roya Hakakian 322 pages- published by Grove Press “Number seven,” he said to the agent beside him”. These were the words uttered by Parviz Dastmalchi, a survivor of and witness to an assassination that shook Europe and the continent’s relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Parviz […]

Wednesday, November 23, 2011, Germany sold 10-year Bunds at its debt auction worth 3.64 billion euro with an average yield of 1.98%, and the bid-to-cover ratio was 1.1 , while the Bundesbank retained the remainder of the 6 billion euro offering. To most people, that’s just Wall Street gobbledegook, but in fact, it is a […]

The Foreign Policy Association just released its latest annual National Opinion Ballot Report. Many issues have been tackled in this very interesting report, from the reconstruction of Haiti to the financial crisis to multilateralism to the Horn of Africa. Interestingly, one section was dedicated to Germany and its relevance to US interests. However none dealt […]

The recent release of the FPA’s National Opinion Ballot Report once again provided valuable insights into the thoughts and opinions of informed Americans on the important foreign policy issues of the day. Among other items, the poll returned an overwhelmingly positive response to Germany’s insistence on austerity measures for the crisis stricken euro countries. By a […]

The – formerly – most exciting city in the world has voted, bear me out in telling you how it matters for Germany, Europe and the rest of the world. As can easily be perused on the left, the Social-Democrats (SPD) won with a less than astounding 28.3%, followed by the Conservatives (CDU) at 23.4%, […]

Germany’s Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen announced that Germany is going nuclear-free by 2022. The country’s seven oldest reactors were taken off-line shortly after the Fukushima meltdown, and an eighth (the glitch-prone Kruemmel facility in northern Germany) has been off-line for technical reasons and won’t be returned to active service. Six more will go into shut […]

Germany and Austria opened their labor markets for the EU class of 2004 over the weekend, the last EU nations to do so. However, based on press reports from Germany and Poland, there appear to be divergent views regarding how much labor will actually transfer. The Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung believes that any Pole seeking work […]

It’s Saturday morning Central European time and the world has changed significantly in the last week. Fukushima has confirmed the worst suspicions of the possibilities of a nuclear meltdown which industry and political experts had been denouncing as outrageously wild for decades. Meanwhile a French proposition to enact – and enforce – a no-fly zone […]

In a telling leading editorial, the Zeit, Germany’s biggest and most important weekly newspaper, praises Merkel for making Europe more German. After the others had only wanted our money up to now, now the idea were to create a European economic government, give up decision-making powers to Europe and in return force everyone else to […]

There is a number of terribly unexciting and obvious, or maybe rather dubious candidates for a European Person of the Year award of course. Thus Benedict XVI slackened his church’s stance on the sinfulness of condoms, yet he was forced to deal with (or at times: ignore) constantly recurring pedophilia revelations in Ireland as well […]