GERMANY |
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Kirchentag
Every two years, the Church Congress attracts a city for five days under his spell. More than 100,000 people of all ages, different religions and origins come together to celebrate a feast of faith and reflect on the issues of the day and to discuss. The Kirchentag invites to participate. It pretends not what is right or wrong, but opens up an open and contentious dialogue - or before 1989 in the East-West conflict, during the debates on NATO retrofit in the 1980s or, at present, on the world economy and social justice. The Church Congress is a social forum for discussion and community. The European Union likes to see itself not just as an economic community but also as a community with common values. Yet the question of our still common identity remains unanswered. It is rare to hear European stories about “us”. We have European institutions, trade unions, business associations, parties, NGOs and – of course – associations of churches. However, something that has been almost entirely lacking so far is regular meetings of European Christians committed to civil engagement in society. Although a common public agenda has emerged in Europe in the last few years, precisely due to the economic and financial crisis, this agenda is not being tackled by an alert civil society as a joint project. Instead, nationalism and extremism are on the rise in many EU member states. It is worth remembering that the peace and reconciliation project called Europe was initiated and taken forward by Christians. Many Christians still feel particularly responsible for Europe today. A united Europe is the precondition for shaping our common future in the light of human rights, social justice and cological sustainability. Members of the German Protestant Kirchentag community regard the idea of inviting Christians from the whole of Europe to gather together as a great opportunity. |
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John F. Kennedy visited Berlin in 1963 and held his famous speech. Here's the best part: "There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin ..................... There are some who say - there are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin ............................ And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin ................ And there are few who say that it's true that Communism is an evil system, but permits us to make economic progress. Lasst sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin .................. Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us .........................." On the 9th of November, 1989, the Border separating Western from Eastern Germany was effectively opened and paved the way for German reunification. |
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Guido Westerwelle, the FDP foreign minister, has been replaced by Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who held that job during the last grand coalition. Steinmeier is less of a true believer in European integration than Westerwelle. Nevertheless he will be one of the strong figures in the government and the weight of the foreign ministry – traditionally, sympathetic to the EU – in decision-making may grow. The agreement advises Brussels to “focus on the big issues of the future” instead of meddling in policy areas that are better left to the member-states or their regions. It also calls for a measurable reduction of EU regulation in selected areas, specifically those that affect small and medium-sized businesses. The new German government also wants to see a “more streamlined and efficient college of commissioners, with clearer responsibilities for individual commissioners”. This implies that the German government is open to the idea of dividing the college into junior and senior Commissioners (as proposed in a recent CER report). The coalition agreement seems to confirm a gradual disillusionment of the German political class with the European Parliament. Traditionally, Germany has been one of the strongest backers of the EU’s legislature. However, the coalition deal states that for the democratic legitimacy of the EU, the involvement of national parliaments in EU business is “equally important as” a strong European Parliament. This will please people in Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and other countries that want to see a stronger role for national legislatures in the EU. But it will surprise and infuriate many MEPs. Relations between Berlin and the Parliament may be rocky in the coming years, partly because Merkel does not like its idea that the party with the most seats after the European elections should see its designated candidate automatically become Commission president (see the recent CER essay by Heather Grabbe and Stefan Lehne). The coalition agreement does not deal with this topic, but instead calls for an EU-wide electoral system with a minimum threshold to keep fringe parties out of the European Parliament. When it comes to handling the euro crisis, the coalition treaty reconfirms the traditional German line that the main responsibility for dealing with it lies with the euro countries that got into trouble. “The public debt ratios in the euro countries need to be reduced further”, states the agreement. And it calls for the EU to strengthen its oversight and control over national budgets. But the coalition parties also acknowledge that fiscal overspending was not the only reason for the crisis. The debate in Germany has in any case moved on from stereotyping work-shy Southern Europeans. But it is noteworthy that the coalition text explicitly lists fundamental flaws in the construction of the euro, mentioning financial market distortions and macro-economic imbalances among the causes of the crisis. It is equally noteworthy that the agreement does not offer new solutions to these problems. The agreement states that economic imbalances in the eurozone need to be addressed through the efforts of “all euro member-states”. But those who had hoped that the inclusion of the Social Democrats in the government would result in Germany spending much more, and thus helping to rebalance the eurozone economy, are likely to be disappointed. Sebastian Dullien from ECFR has calculated that the extra spending promised for infrastructure, education, municipalities and pensions amounts to 0.1 per cent of German GDP for each year that the new government can expect to be in power. Most of the additional spending will go on consumption. A new national minimum wage and the first strengthening of trade union rights in decades could push wages up, which might lower Germany’s large current-account surplus. What Germany particularly needs for sustained growth, however, is more investment. On growth-boosting structural reforms in Germany, the coalition agreement says little. The agreement demands that the EU must finally break the “interdependence between private bank debt and public debt”. It does not promise faster or more wide-ranging steps towards a banking union than had hitherto been proposed by Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schäuble, her finance minister (who will stay in post). The new government insists that shareholders and creditors must be first in line when a bank gets into trouble, and that a new eurozone resolution fund should be paid for by the banks themselves, not taxpayers. Until the new fund has collected enough money, the European Stability Mechanism, the eurozone’s bail-out fund, may be used for bank recapitalisations, but only as a last resort (if bail-ins and national bail-outs are exhausted) and only up to a limit of €60 billion. As expected, Germany does not want its local savings banks included in the banking union, and it still rejects joint European deposit insurance. Looking beyond the crisis, the coalition agreement puts a lot of emphasis on the need for structural reforms in the eurozone, to increase economic growth rates in a sustainable way. The idea of “reform contracts” between individual euro countries and the “European level” is taken up again. However, there is no explicit commitment to a new eurozone budget to motivate countries that struggle with tough reforms. Instead, the coalition agreement calls for a better use of EU Structural Funds and the European Investment Bank to underpin structural change and modernisation. The SPD’s influence is visible in a lengthy section about the need to strengthen the “social dimension” of the EU. However, the only tangible measures in this respect are German help for neighbouring countries that want to improve their apprenticeship systems (this started under the last Merkel government) and the drawing-up of an EU social “scoreboard”. This scoreboard (a Commission idea) would be an attempt to feed warning signs of high employment and social pain into the EU’s strengthened fiscal and economic surveillance. It should not come as a surprise that the coalition agreement largely perpetuates Germany’s euro policies of the last four years. |
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Zum Abschluss seines Staatsbesuches in Frankreich (2.-8. Juli 1962) besuchten der deutsche Bundeskanzler Konrad Adenauer (links) und der französische Präsident Charles de Gaulle (rechts) eine katholische Messe in der Kathedrale von Reims. Due to the celebration in 2012, Bundeskanzlerin A. Merkel and President Hollande represented their countries.
Die Wahl des Ortes als Symbol der Versöhnung war auf mehreren Ebenen besonders bedeutsam: In Reims war der Merowingerkönig Chlodwig getauft worden; zudem wurde hier Ludwig I., der Sohn Karls des Großen, gekrönt. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in his book 'The Gay Science' (German: Die fröhliche Wissenschaft from 1886) about the old problem: 'What is German?' and refers to Leibniz' 'the consciousness is only an accidental feature of the show, only one state of our spiritual and psychic world and by far not the world itself.', Kant's impressive mark behind the notion that he placed causation and Hegel's argument that conceptions are developed from each other. |
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He defines: 'German? Yes, without a doubt. In all three cases we feel something of ourselves and guessed and are grateful for that and surprised at the same time, each of these three propositions is to thoughtfully provoking piece of German self-knowledge, self-experience. Our inner world is much richer, more comprehensive, more hidden, so we find with Leibniz; as Germans we doubt with Kant the absolute validity of scientific knowledge and in general to everything that is there in connection: the knowable seems to us as such already lower value. We Germans are Hegelians, even if Hegel would never have existed, in that we (unlike all the Latins) assign to 'to be' a deeper and richer sense than to what we believe 'ís' - hardly the justification for the concept of 'being' - also in so far as we are not inclined to admit our human logic, the logic that they themselves, the only kind of logic would be.
Brave politics and cheerful patriotism, that without hesitation measures all things to a little philosophical principle and from the perspective of the kind, namely the German species, considers, clearly testifies to the contrary. No! The Germans of today are not pessimists! |
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