EU discussion / and other European countries

Buster15 said:
By whom?
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China looks like the most likely culprit right now. I think the Danes (might be Norway or Sweden) have stopped a Chinese cargo ship in the area and are investigating the ship. It was close to the cables at that time and apparently moved in suspicious ways.
 
HTG said:
China looks like the most likely culprit right now. I think the Danes (might be Norway or Sweden) have stopped a Chinese cargo ship in the area and are investigating the ship. It was close to the cables at that time and apparently moved in suspicious ways.
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Very interesting. Thank you.
 
Buster15 said:
Very interesting. Thank you.
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Doesn’t have to mean much, though. In the Nordstream case, everyone was happy to blame Russia and it later turned out that it has most likely been an operation by Ukraine and Poland. So who knows?
 
VorZakone said:
Thoughts on Merkels legacy?

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She has been a disaster and this confirms it pretty much. Had a good time due to reforms Schröder made (and which cost him the election), but pretty much froze the country. Worst thing is her mantra of "no alternatives" to her decision which pretty much squeezed any political discussion out of the mainstream. A dangerous sentiment of "disapproval = extremism" was the result and leads to the rise of AfD and BSW - if every other valid opinion is labeled extremism, voting for extremists becomes acceptable for a lot of people as the "extremism" label (and it's variants - "everything is Nazi" is a pretty common saying amongst many people I know) lost any meaning.
 
VorZakone said:
Thoughts on Merkels legacy?

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Disastrous. Austerity has fecked our infrastructure and education, creating immense damage to our economy. She destroyed a thriving renewable energies sector to appease the fossil fuel industry, only to start investing in renewables later, after our industry either went broke or was bought by China.
I applaud her for accepting so many refugees, but that’s pointless, because we failed to provide them with a perspective, leading to huge issues regarding integration.
Her politics in regards to Russia is nothing short of cowardice and a refusal to accept reality.

She can go rot in hell.
 
HTG said:
Disastrous. Austerity has fecked our infrastructure and education, creating immense damage to our economy. She destroyed a thriving renewable energies sector to appease the fossil fuel industry, only to start investing in renewables later, after our industry either went broke or was bought by China.
I applaud her for accepting so many refugees, but that’s pointless, because we failed to provide them with a perspective, leading to huge issues regarding integration.
Her politics in regards to Russia is nothing short of cowardice and a refusal to accept reality.

She can go rot in hell.
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This is very interesting.
Having spent some time working with a German defence equipment supplier in the 80s and 90s, one thing I was always most impressed with was the way they thought long term about things.

So to read about the way short term policies have adversely affected the German economy is something of a surprise.
 
Seems that some Orban-esque figure did well in Romanian elections? Maybe we have resident Romanians here who can provide some context?

 
A Chinese commercial vessel that has been surrounded by European warships in international waters for a week is central to an investigation of suspected sabotage that threatens to test the limits of maritime law—and heighten tensions between Beijing and European capitals.
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Their probe now centers on whether the captain of the Chinese-owned ship, which departed the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15, was induced by Russian intelligence to carry out the sabotage. It would be the latest in a series of attacks on Europe’s critical infrastructure that law-enforcement and intelligence officials say have been orchestrated by Russia.
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According to reddit, constitutional court annulled the election in Romania.
 
Arruda said:
According to reddit, constitutional court annulled the election in Romania.
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Yes.

Romania's top court annulled an ongoing presidential election after accusations of Russian meddling and ruled on Friday the entire process, which had been due to conclude this weekend, would have to be re-run.
The second round had been scheduled for Sunday and voting has already begun in polling stations abroad. It would have pitted Calin Georgescu, a far-right, pro-Russian candidate, against pro-European Union centrist leader Elena Lasconi.

"The electoral process to elect Romania's president will be fully re-run, and the government will set a new date and ... calendar for the necessary steps," the court said in a statement.
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https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...a-ahead-presidential-run-off-vote-2024-12-06/
 
On the election shenanigans in Romania:
Documents declassified by Romania's top security council on Wednesday said the country was a target of "aggressive hybrid Russian attacks" in a period of consecutive elections.
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In one of the unclassified documents, Romania's intelligence agency said Georgescu was massively promoted on social media platform TikTok through coordinated accounts, recommendation algorithms and paid promotion. Georgescu has declared zero funds spent in the campaign.

The intelligence service also said access data for official Romanian election websites was published on Russian cyber crime platforms. The access data was probably procured by targeting legitimate users or by exploiting the legitimate training server, the agency said.
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https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...attacks-during-elections-security-2024-12-04/
 
Hungarian intelligence spying on EU officials.
Hungary’s intelligence agency spied on EU officials visiting the country, searching their hotel rooms and recording their phone conversations, according to a bombshell report. A joint investigation by Direkt36 and De Tijd found Hungary’s Information Office (IH), Budapest’s equivalent of the CIA, targeted investigators at the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), which at one point was looking into a Hungarian company owned by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law.
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The report added that it is common practice by Hungary’s spy agency to search the hotel rooms of visiting EU delegations and download information from their laptops.
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https://www.politico.eu/article/hun...u-officials-information-office-budapest-olaf/
 
German central bank slashes growth outlook for 2025, 2026
The German Bundesbank on Friday said the sluggish growth of the German economy would last significantly longer than it had previously assumed, cutting its economic forecasts for 2025 and 2026.
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The forecast is even more pessimistic for the current year, with the Bundesbank expecting German economic output to decline by 0.2% in 2024. In June, the bank had foreseen a 0.3% increase in real gross domestic product (GDP).

"The German economy is not only battling with persistent economic headwinds, but also with structural problems," explained Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel on Friday.
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https://www.dw.com/en/german-central-bank-slashes-growth-outlook-for-2025-2026/a-71045577
 
The European Union's economy is struggling to keep pace with the US and China. Decades of low productivity, reliance on traditional industry and a failure to invest have lost it trillions of euros in growth, leading to this moment of reckoning. With France facing political upheaval and Germany’s economy in a downturn, the continent is at risk of losing its seat at the table, and maybe its ability to protect itself in a world where security is no longer guaranteed.
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Lately I've been seeing incidents of people in Germany allegedly being arrested just for online insults? Not even a call to violence or outright hate rhetoric but just insults?

 
VorZakone said:
Lately I've been seeing incidents of people in Germany allegedly being arrested just for online insults? Not even a call to violence or outright hate rhetoric but just insults?

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Being arrested is stretching it a bit. Dude got sentenced to a fine and didn't pay, hence the arrest.

But yeah, weird trend amongst our politicians to go this route over insults/abuse, not sure what they're trying to prove, feels incredibly small time
 
‘Powerful consiglieri’ run von der Leyen’s Commission, EU transparency chief says
The EU ombudsman described a powerful unelected and untransparent culture at the top of the European Commission, laying the blame squarely at the feet of its president, Ursula von der Leyen.

Emily O’Reilly, who’s served as the EU’s accountability and transparency watchdog for more than a decade, told POLITICO’s EU Confidential podcast that the Commission’s opacity has got worse over time.
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They are “intelligent people — but they’re not elected,” she added.
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https://www.politico.eu/article/con...u-commission-cabinet-ombudsman-emily-oreilly/
 
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