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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/23/world/europe/nato-france-germany.html


NATO Differences Stoke a Franco-German Feud

With relations at a new low, Chancellor Angela Merkel berated President Emmanuel Macron over his comments about the alliance’s ‘‘brain death.”

By Steven Erlanger
Nov. 23, 2019, 3:50 a.m. ET

BRUSSELS — Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was uncharacteristically furious. At a dinner to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, she huddled with President Emmanuel Macron of France, who had just given an interview in which he cited the “brain death” of NATO and wondered whether its commitment to collective defense still held.

Mr. Macron had also been the sole leader to veto the start of lengthy membership talks for North Macedonia to join the European Union, despite Skopje’s having done everything Brussels had asked of it, including changing the country’s name.

“I understand your desire for disruptive politics,” Ms. Merkel said. “But I’m tired of picking up the pieces. Over and over, I have to glue together the cups you have broken so that we can then sit down and have a cup of tea together.”

Mr. Macron defended himself, saying that he could not simply go to a NATO meeting in London in early December and pretend that the United States and Turkey had behaved in the collective interest in Syria.

“I cannot sit there and act like nothing has happened,” he said.

The conversation underscores the serious strains in the Franco-German relationship and the tensions surrounding the abbreviated NATO meeting on the outskirts of London, which was carefully downgraded from a summit to a gathering of leaders to celebrate the alliance’s 70th anniversary.

“I haven’t seen Franco-German relations at such a low point in a very long time,” said Claudia Major, a security analyst with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “I’ve rarely seen such bitterness and misunderstanding.”

Mr. Macron, as an ambitious French president with nearly royal powers, is increasingly impatient with Ms. Merkel’s slow pragmatism and Germany’s federalism and coalition government, Ms. Major said.

His wish, “in his impatient and almost nervous style,” to lead and disrupt “clashes with the German system, which is very slow with Merkel in her last term and a coalition just trying to survive,” she said.

Mr. Macron is eager to put forward longer-term strategic proposals, but is increasingly impatient with a more stagnant Germany and a divided coalition in that country, where the left-leaning Social Democrats block his European military and security proposals and the conservative Christian Democrats block his proposals for more economic integration, higher spending and eurozone reform.

Mr. Macron misread Ms. Merkel, thinking that in her last term she would want to create a historical legacy for the European project, as Chancellor Helmut Kohl did by accepting the euro, and the French leader feels almost betrayed by her caution, a senior French official said.

But that is to misunderstand Ms. Merkel, who “does not have big visions and is as pragmatic as you can get, and she is not going to change after 10 years,” Ms. Major said.

Then there is NATO, which Germany relies on for deterrence along with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, whose leaders have been sharply critical of Mr. Macron’s musings about the alliance’s weaknesses. Ms. Merkel refused to publicly accept Mr. Macron’s “brain death” criticism, calling his words “drastic.”

While many agree privately with Mr. Macron that President Trump’s unpredictability and moodiness have hurt NATO, made worse by his special dealings with an increasingly authoritarian and Moscow-leaning Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, they believe it was wrong to state those doubts publicly.

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, called Mr. Macron irresponsible, describing his comments questioning NATO’s commitment to collective defense, known as Article Five, as dangerous. Mr. Morawiecki told his Parliament that any moves to question the guarantee included in the NATO treaty were a threat to the future of the European Union and the military alliance.

As François Heisbourg, a French defense analyst, put it, Mr. Macron was “talking like a think tanker” instead of as the leader of a key NATO ally and nuclear power. But there are divisions in NATO, he said, and “at least Macron is trying to address the problem at hand.’’

NATO officials are struggling to agree on a joint statement, something less than a formal communiqué, celebrating the anniversary and recommitting NATO members to more military spending.

French officials are pressing for a reference to the need for a new strategic review of NATO’s mission, to replace the last one, which was completed in 2010 and is severely outdated, while most countries prefer to wait to see whether Mr. Trump is re-elected before broaching such a fundamental discussion of NATO’s purpose.

Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, trying to prevent a clash in London like the one that marred a tempestuous NATO summit meeting in Brussels nearly two years ago, has proposed an “expert group” to strengthen NATO’s political thinking.

The idea would be to put the group under the consensual direction of NATO’s general-secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, who works hard to maintain good relations with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Stoltenberg is also traveling to Paris next week to meet Mr. Macron, presumably to discuss the French president’s interview comments calling into question the continuing validity of Article Five.

To question it aloud is to undermine it, something Mr. Trump was criticized heavily for doing early in his presidency, when he initially hesitated to endorse the provision and then mused over whether America would fight for Montenegro, a NATO member.

All of that has brought some glee to Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, who praised Mr. Macron’s remarks and his veto of accession talks to the European Union of North Macedonia and Albania, something Moscow has been working for years to forestall.

Moscow has also worked to undermine NATO and keep it from enlarging to the Balkans, Georgia and Ukraine.

“In the light of President Macron’s statement,” Mr. Chizhov told The Financial Times, NATO “has a lot to discuss in close format” in London next month. He added: “We all know what President Trump had to say about NATO at different stages of his presidency.”

There are also concerns among allies that Mr. Macron is considering a speech about creating a nuclear deterrence based on Europe, so as not to rely on the Americans.

That idea will further infuriate Berlin and the Central Europeans, in part because no one believes that France’s nuclear deterrent is capable of covering the Continent, and British nuclear deterrent is almost entirely dependent on American nuclear missiles.

Mr. Macron loves being disruptive and asking questions that others do not ask, at least in public. But if he does that on the question of nuclear deterrence, Ms. Major said, “it will be champagne on ice in Moscow.”

...under the European Birds and Habitats Directive, the Netherlands is obliged to protect certain species and their habitats, and to limit potential threats. Having a cat walk around without supervision is actually forbidden, say the lawyers: “Whoever starts a lawsuit against the Dutch government, who must enforce European rules, therefore has a good chance of success.”
So far, a lawsuit has never been filed, but it would not surprise Trouwborst if a stakeholder group arises and does. Or that the member states – because there is not a single European member state that forbids letting cats outside – are blamed on the European level.

The proposed directive was designed to shine a light on how some of the world’s biggest companies – such as Apple, Facebook and Google – avoid paying an estimated $500bn a year in taxes by shifting their profits from higher-tax countries such as the UK, France and Germany to zero-tax or low-tax jurisdictions including Ireland, Luxembourg and Malta.

Anduril wrote:I opet su gadovi odbili predlog EU Komisije da se konacno uvede transparentnost placanja poreza za multinacionalne kompanije:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/nov/28/12-eu-states-reject-move-to-expose-companies-tax-avoidance

[size=38]Twelve European Union countries, including Ireland, have blocked a proposed new rule that would have forced multinational companies to reveal how much profit they make and how little tax they pay in each of the EU’s 28 member states.[/size]

The proposed directive was designed to shine a light on how some of the world’s biggest companies – such as Apple, Facebook and Google – avoid paying an estimated $500bn a year in taxes by shifting their profits from higher-tax countries such as the UK, France and Germany to zero-tax or low-tax jurisdictions including Ireland, Luxembourg and Malta.

Kad se pogleda ko je kako glasao, postaje ocigledno gde je glavni problem - Merkel i buranija.

Filipenko wrote:U soku sam. 

Brisel -- Sve zemlje članice EU dale su saglasnost da Srbija do kraja godine otvori poglavlje 4, koje se odnosi na slobodu kretnja kapitala, saznaje Tanjug u Briselu.