Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly
loveable.
- Christopher Howse: A
Pilgrim in Spain.
Cataluña
- Blame. As expected . . . .
Spain
- The continuing drought throughout Iberia. Here and here.
- And air pollution problems in major city.
Portugal
- During the recent financial crisis, the Portuguese government decided to increase revenue by making every half-decent road in the country a toll road. But they didn't install payment booths; instead, they erected gantries every few kilometres and placed cameras there to capture your car's registration number/matriculation. This would be OK if it were easy to register with the system but it ain't. What would be helpful is a machine at the entry point to each new toll road where you can simply insert you credit card and then drive knowing there'll be a legion of small payments appearing on your next statement. But this, I guess, would be very expensive. So, as far as I know, there are only 3 such machines in the country. There are at least 2 other ways of making sure you pay the tolls but these are too complex for me to understand. In other words, the same approach is taken towards the new toll roads as to the payment for metro tickets – the installation of a system far more complex than it needs to be. Or is it me?? Anyway, the result is I drive without paying on the new toll roads and expect one day to be stopped and fined. En passant, I am not the only one who does this. The Portuguese government is owed millions by Galician transport companies which take advantage of it. Did no one anticipate this?
- Wifi in Portuguese hotels: They all offer it but my impression is that - unless you're in a 5-star hotel – you're lucky if you can decent wifi in your room. Or maybe it's my 6 year old Mac laptop.
Germany
- See the first article below, by someone who asserts that: The chancellor has repeatedly mishandled or ignored her country’s most pressing problems.
The EU
- See the second article for a view of how German developments impact on 'The [vainglorious] Project'. By Gisela Stuart – an English MP who's German.
Finally . . .
As every
driver knows, a satnav/GPS can be brilliant or useless. Two days ago
mine insisted that a restaurant I was looking for was in the middle
of a field. And yesterday it led me on an hour-long merry dance in
the centre of Santarém – in the car and on foot – in search of
an hotel which didn't actually exist at the address I finally found.
The perils of modern travel . . .
THE ARTICLES
1. More Merkel is the last thing Germans need Roger Boyes
The
chancellor has repeatedly mishandled or ignored her country’s most
pressing problems
Germans
have become too comfortable with the rule of Angela Merkel, so cosy
in their governing compact, so gemütlich that they
failed to recognise they have a Merkel problem. For the past 12 years
the chancellor has ducked big choices about Germany’s role in the
world, about the need for change, and now the country is paying the
price.
The
meltdown in Berlin is about more than Merkel’s future. It is about
the governability of Germany. A constitutional order installed after
the defeat of Hitler to ensure a stable political centre and the
stifling of dangerous populist movements is turning out to be
ill-equipped for the modern world.
The
result: the arrival in parliament of 92 far-right deputies, the
failure of mainstream parties to agree a common vision for
Germany or a common diagnosis of its problems, and an enduring
confusion about national identity. It’s a system frozen in aspic.
And a recipe for trouble.
The
great hope that accompanied the election of Merkel in 2005 was that
she would usher Germany into the modern world in a non-threatening,
non-Thatcherite way. Instead, without a guiding idea, her various
coalition governments have been about crisis management: the global
financial breakdown, the eurozone in disarray, Greece hurtling
towards bankruptcy, an increasingly aggressive Vladimir Putin, the
flood of refugees from apparently insoluble wars. She was never
under-employed but along the way she lost the plot.
Since
her political convictions were never laid out clearly, she felt free
to steal the political clothes of her various coalition partners, the
Free Democrats and the Social Democrats, claiming them as her own.
She even dressed herself up as a Green by suddenly renouncing nuclear
power after the Fukushima accident in 2011, thus keeping options open
for a future alliance with the party.
The
corrosive effect of leadership without a compass has become clear
over the past weeks. Neither the Free Democrats nor the Social
Democrats trust her as a partner; they both bled votes after being in
coalition with her. All parties are feuding furiously with each
other, making a nonsense of the chancellor’s claim to be a
consensus politician. Her Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social
Union is alarmed by her drift leftwards and by her misjudgment in
opening up Germany’s borders to a million migrants and refugees.
The CSU faces a regional election next year. In public it swears
loyalty to Merkel; in private it knows that the association with
Merkel is likely to be toxic, driving even more voters towards the
far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Out
of this stew, a successor for Merkel will eventually emerge. The
question is not so much who that person is, but rather what Germans
want from a new chancellor. The lazy formula of the Merkel team, that
Germans demand stability and security, is no longer an adequate
answer. Her own policies have undermined stability. The AfD notched
up an extraordinary 12.6 per cent of the national vote in the autumn
election, and are likely to better that in new elections, because of
the Merkel government’s failure to control the borders. At a local
level the problem of integrating hundreds of thousands of newcomers
is creating real social strain and resentment. On the other side of
the political spectrum, the Linke, a leftist anti-austerity grouping,
won 9.2 per cent of the vote.
Both
parties have been ruled out as too extreme to be part of a Merkel
government: that is, some 22 per cent of the electorate has been left
out in the cold. Yet their views do address some anxieties felt by
ordinary Germans, the frustration with the fudge of the quarter of a
century since unification.
When people complain about the global
business elite and the featherbedding of the banks, they’re not
crying out for revolution. They want companies to start building
trust with consumers. The diesel emissions scandal covered up by
Volkswagen was a big blow to national self-esteem, to the Made in
Germany brand, but it did not trigger a Merkel crackdown on corporate
accountability.
The
nuclear shutdown meant deepening German dependence on coal-fired
power stations and on Russian gas; Merkel is fond of saying that all
decisions carry consequences yet these consequences were not properly
thought through. Privately too you hear far more eurosceptical
opinions than in the public domain. That adds to pent-up tensions
between the leaders and the led.
Germans
don’t want to pay the bill for a global leadership role that they
did not seek. Budgets are squeezed. Merkel allowed herself to be
celebrated as a putative leader of the free world. She is wise enough
to know she stood out largely because the supposed statesmen and
women around her in Europe have been so mediocre.
To
the German voter, though, it seemed like hubris. Too many problems
have been ignored or mishandled on her watch. As the master of damage
control she now has to realise that she herself is damaged goods.
2. The collapse of Angela Merkel's coalition shows her
dream of a united Europe is falling apart: Gisella
Stuart
The rise of
Euroscepticism is an inevitable consequence of the EU's failure to
secure consent for its designs
A new
sensation is coursing through the German body politic: panic. It has
been brewing since September’s dramatic election result, which saw
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party much diminished, and the
Right-wing Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) capture 94 parliamentary
seats. Naturally, Chancellor Merkel did what she always does when
things get tough – reassure her people “das schaffen wir” –
we can do this.
Not
this time. Her attempts to form a colition have unexpectedly collapese and Germany is in turmoil. I have no doubt the Federal Republic will find
a short-term solution. It has a functioning government and while this
is inconvenient for Brexit talks, it’s all manageable. But it does
raise wider issues about consensus, democratic legitimacy and the
future of the EU. We are talking tectonic plates here, not just local
difficulties.
Before
we had a single currency it was perfectly possible to talk about a
two-speed Europe, but there has never been a currency union without a
political union. With its dream of creating a supranational identity,
replacing ideology with a bureaucratic promise of a better tomorrow
and becoming a significant global player, the EU has over-stretched
itself.
Like
it or not, to have a functioning single currency you need some basic
things such as a single minister of economy, the ability to transfer
debts and enforcement mechanisms. Not that the superstate is simply
economic.
Last
week, 23 EU members signed a defence pact to increase military
cooperation. Meanwhile, President Emmanuel Macron sketches out his
plans for a refounding of the European project, Jean-Claude Juncker
delivers aspirational speeches, and there are suggestions that the
European Parliament seats vacated by departing British MEPs be given
to members elected from a pan-European list.
Politicians
may have stopped talking about a United States of Europe, but all
their actions point to one. There is just one problem: the voters
aren’t with them – not even, as the failure to form a government
has shown, in Germany. And in a democracy, that is a fatal flaw. The
failure of the German coalition negotiations reflects the deeper
fracture of democratic consent apparent across the EU.
Every
European election I’ve ever been involved in has been decided on
national issues fought by national political parties. We have no
pan-European political parties and no European demos. The European
constitution was rejected by voters first in France and then in the
Netherlands.
The
The UK was promised a referendum by all three political parties in
2005, only for the promise to be ditched after the rehashed
constitution emerged as the Lisbon Treaty. Having learnt the lesson
that asking the people is a dangerous thing, France, the Netherlands
and the UK passed the treaty by parliamentary procedures. The
rise of Eurosceptic parties should come as no surprise.
What
loyalty do the people and governments of the EU27 have to Brussels’
fetish superstate project? Poland and Hungary may hope to profit from
EU membership, but they show no great eagerness to comply with rules
and obligations. And while German politicians are reluctant to talk
about “German interests”, in Germany you see border controls when
coming from Austria.
Nor
is there appetite for tax increases to make up for the funds lost
when the EU’s second largest net contributor – Britain –
leaves. Talk of transfer payments to Greece or any other euro country
that may run into trouble is a complete no no. Indeed, objections to
debt mutualisation were one of the reasons German coalition talks
failed.
The
reality is that Germany, like other European nations, still puts her
own interests above EU interests, because democracies require
consent. If eurozone countries want a superstate they must spell out
what that means – fiscal transfers and all – to their voters. And
if the voters say no, act on that.
Currently
EU members like to fudge things, and if voters disagree they are
tempted to “dissolve the people and elect another one”, as
Bertolt Brecht said. Heeding people’s wishes is a far better way
forward, and for the EU that may mean shelving its grandiose
superstate dream and accepting the reality of doing less. For if
Angela Merkel can’t sell the dream, who can?
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